Posts in Every-Day Mindfulness
Tips to Create Habits that Serve

I have a sense of the types of practices that help me. And yet there are times when I find it really hard to keep consistency. The very times when I MOST need these practices in my life, the times when I am MOST in need of the peace, grounding, and strength that they give me, are the times when it feels like like I have no time or energy to do them. I had the thought that I would like to see what it feels like to live in my optimum state. What would it feel like to be taking care of my mind, body, and spirit in ways that are healthy and beneficial...and sustainable?

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Expanding Definitions of Productivity & Accomplishment

I am drawn to (driven to?) productivity, as many of us are. It comes through our culture, this emphasis on doing, doing, doing. It feels good then, to be productive and to accomplish a lot in a day. It feels gratifying, as if all of this doing means something. If I dig way down deep, achieving seems to mean that I am enough-- good enough, hardworking enough. At the same time, this can feel like a kind of tyranny-- that I MUST accomplish a lot, and if not, it could mean that I failed in some way. But what if I’m tired? What if I’m not feeling well?

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The Practice of Honoring Yourself

Now I use this as a practice not just of the body, but of the mind and heart. Can I listen to my own body? Can I honor my own strengths, needs, and limitations? With back, shoulder, and knee tenderness, I am always modifying the poses, shortening them, sometimes doing a totally different pose that feels right at the moment.

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Gifts to Grow On

I feel sometimes like I have been given a ten-speed again. Opportunities come my way that are justout my my comfort zone, that I need to really stretch to meet. My emotions go all over the place-- gratitude, fear, excitement, anxiety, overwhelm, and then the guilt of feeling negative feelings at all, when clearly opportunities are GOOD!

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My Highest Ambition is to Be What I Already Am

Indeed, why not honor our own feelings? Why does it ever occur to us to doubt ourselves and question ourselves as much as we do?

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Look at Your Moments— Are Your Needs Being Met?

I heard someone say recently, “Hard is different than bad.” I really love this distinction-- it helps somehow. When I am in a challenging time, sometimes I do a check-in with my needs.

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Water Thoughts

That swim seems to me like a miniature model of life. Anxiety crescendos and decrescendos; joy alights and then flies away. Grief goes on and on; overtaking me for a time and then lying low. Those anchovies are still out there somewhere in the ocean; sometimes they're all I can see, and sometimes the water is clear. Things come and then they go.

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What is Required?

To ask what I should do next encourages me to use my brain and my judgement to think about what activities are valuable or desirable. But to ask what is required encourages me to be mindful of myself, inside and out. It asks me to scan the state of my mind and body and figure out my actions based on what I need at the moment.

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Flourishing

Fredrickson gives a map of how to induce the upward spiral in our lives-- by intentionally creating  and savoring positive moments, states, activities. I took the general principles that she mentions and brainstormed my own lists-- things I could do in my life to shift the balance just slightly from the negative to the positive. Each week, I would create a set of little goals for myself.

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Talking to the Person in the Mirror

Our challenge is to notice the moments when we start to feel insecure and shaky, defensive or aggressive, put off balance by something that life has thrown at us. In these moments, can we try to whisper, I am enough instead of What if I can't do this?

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Making Space for the Sunday Blues

What to do when it's just a down day? It's Sunday. Sundays can be sort of inherently sad. I think for many of us, Sunday represents a difficult mental transition from fun-time to work-time, and it might contain a fair amount of anticipation or dread for the week to come. Sunday afternoon is basically the opposite of Friday afternoon. But, there's something more than that Sunday malaise that I'm feeling right now.

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