Mindfulness IRL
It’s well past January 1st so why the heck am I writing a New Year’s resolution post now?
Well, because I didn’t then. And ever day is a new year! In fact, every moment is a new year. An opportunity to make a fresh start, to make changes, to set new goals.
And how many of you have already given up on those resolutions you set back at the start of 2021?
No judgment here. But I will give you some tips to keep setting goals any dang time you feel like it!
In the last week a lot of people have given some extra thought to death. And to life. Neither of which the average person thinks much about on the regular. We all logically know that we’re alive and that someday we’ll die, but part of us also believes in immortality. It can’t happen to us. It can’t happen to our loved ones. Not now anyway.
I’ve been feeling some things the last day or so. By things, I mean emotions. More uncomfortable emotions than I’d care to feel. There’s some good ol’ sadness, anger, and resentment mixed in with a bit of fear and regret. I’d rather not feel this way so there’s been some resistance to feeling them. Which is never helpful. But alas I’m as human as the next person, no matter how much I try to fight it.
Sometimes, okay, often, I can get caught up in the day-to-day obligations or wish that things were different. Easier, more exciting, more abundant, more magical. Lately, the desire for magic has had a starring role in my thoughts. The wanting to experience that feeling of seeing a firefly soar around the night sky for the first time as a child over and over and over.
This morning I woke up from a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad dream. I won’t get into the details because it’s way too long and complicated, and the details are becoming more fuzzy as the day goes on, as often happens with dreams. But it was rough. And I dream deeply. There’s nothing lucid for me. I’m wholly in another reality, another dimension, entirely believing it to be the truth, no matter how strange it is. I often wake from these dreams incredibly relieved that it’s only a dream. Although, sometimes it takes me hours to connect back to waking reality and regroup from the emotions I experienced during it.
This past Saturday, September 21, 2019 was World Gratitude Day. I’m a couple days past acknowledging this, but gratitude isn’t reserved for simply this one day (and Thanksgiving). Gratitude is an incredibly important daily practice that can drastically improve life quality.
I recently realized that as much as I talk about the importance of being mindful, I haven't been so mindful of explaining what the heck mindfulness actually is. And how to do it. Thus, I committed the cardinal sin of mindfulness. Assuming. I figured because "mindfulness" is so hot these days that everyone already knows what it is. But come to find out, not so much.
It’s Friday the 13th! The exclamation point is a happy exclamation point as I have a love affair with Friday the 13th. I don’t look at it as a day of bad luck at all. It’s more like an interlude between Halloweens. Unfortunately without the costumes, candy, and parties, but I still enjoy the mysterious and unexplainable and some good ol’ fashioned getting the crap scared out of me.
The amount of information and options out there these days, and access to it, is astronomical. There’s actually a term for this now “choice overload.” Access to too many choices can lead to anxiety and depression.
At one point in my life, when I was much less mindful, I googled the phrase “how to let go.” It was a lifetime ago, so I don’t remember what I was struggling to let go, but if I was asking google, I must have been struggling.
The google search didn’t turn up much that was useful.
That’s because, as I learned in the years since, there isn’t a set algorithm to letting go.
Awhile ago I wrote an article “How I Deal With People Who Suck.” At the same time I started an article entitled “How I Deal With the Suck.” When I say started, I mean that phrase is all I wrote. I thought after the last week and a half in my part of the world, it might be a good time to write the rest of it.
Running your own business can be hard. Working for someone else can be hard. Not working at all can be hard. Being in a relationship can be hard. Raising a family can be hard. Being alone can be hard. Training for a competition can be hard. Learning a new skill can be hard. Having an illness or injury can be hard. Freaking filling out a form can be hard.
Life can be hard.
I’ve always lagged a bit behind the social media trends. I’ll blame that on a childhood without much technology. We didn’t have a TV until I was in late elementary school and rarely had cable after that. There wasn’t a computer until I was a high school senior and it was essentially a fancy word processor. No Internet. I swear to you I hand wrote letters until I went to college and then had to set up an email in order to attend.
