I woke feeling rested and serene, this morning. My shower felt refreshing. I meditated from a starting point of alert awareness and physical comfort. My morning yoga eased my stiffness, and my body felt graceful and strong. My coffee tasted warm and nurtured my heart while it warmed my hands, wrapped contentedly around the white porcelain mug. It was the beginning of a lovely spring morning.

The garden on a spring morning.

The garden on a spring morning.

Then I got to thinking, because I was writing (they sort of go together)… and within minutes I was irritated, discontent, frustrated, annoyed, saddened, and really just struggling with myself and my experience. It was all a reaction to the thoughts I was thinking, which although they were about something ‘real’, the thing they were about wasn’t going on in the moment, and isn’t even a for-real-for-sure factual understanding of circumstances. It was more like my brain was test-driving optional understandings of my experience, and that particular one was a rather poor fit.

Instead of the change of mood driving my day, today, I put myself on pause, and selected from my increasingly vast list of topic-relevant reading material a fairly short article that had really caught my attention just a couple of days ago. I took a few minutes to read, took some notes, followed up on a cross-reference, and now find myself feeling content once again, and in a comfortable emotional space to begin the work day. 😀

I don’t find the success quite a simple as ‘distracting myself’; it matters a great deal what I distract myself with. What has been effective is to pursue something intellectually or creatively engaging, that simply doesn’t allow room for the challenging or problematic thinking, because the new topic requires too much bandwidth. It is also necessary, for me, that the new topic or activity must be emotionally positive; neutral isn’t particularly effective, and things that stress or upset me definitely make things worse.

Mindfulness is part of this strategy, too. To move from the thing that is throwing me off-balance, to some new and engaging thing, I find that the best success is found in really giving my full attention, quite actively, to the new thing. I don’t know how to explain the difference, but it feels like a very different process than trying to disengage from the stressful or upsetting thinking.

The clock reminds me that words about work are not work; it’s time to go.