Mindfulness

My beautiful coloring book. It's called The Secret Garden by Johanna Basford.

Hello. I wanted to take a moment to write about mindfulness. I have already started my health and wellness classes and can't believe I'm already three weeks in. Time flies so fast...Last week in class, we touched on how we could be more of service to our clients. A good portion of our class was in regards to mindfulness and the art and practice of being mindful. Before class, we had readings and audios assigned to us. I remember trying to listen to the audios but also multi-tasking. I knew I was supposed to solely focus on the audio assignment at hand but I figured if I were to multi-task I would get more done. 

In these audio assignments, there were people who spoke about what mindfulness meant to them. Basically, mindfulness means being in the present moment, focusing on the present moment. Something I work hard at but often lack. Even when I was listening to what mindfulness meant my mind was off wandering elsewhere while my body was doing other things instead of practicing the art of stillness.

Recently, I started meditating again. I have been out of my mind with a shit load of distractions lately. I usually do really well with living and focusing on the present moment. But lately I have been over thinking. You may say something like, "it seems like you do this often Suzie. In previous blogs, you've mentioned before how you over think." Yes, this may be true but I will always be a work in progress and will always continue to evolve. But reality is, I'm fucking human and there will always be an ebb and flow to my life. I welcome it, acknowledge it, appreciate it, and learn from it. Hence, why I work hard to practice mindfulness. Sometimes it comes natural to me, and I'm ecstatic for living in the moment. Sometimes it gets a lot harder to be mindful because things suck at the present moment. I guess I'm sharing this with you to offer support if you ever find yourself over thinking or falling off track from positive thinking. It's like poison. It hurts and from my own experience, I can tell you that when I'm not mindful of the moment, my actions also showcase a destructive behavior. 

Can I share something? Remember that NYC guy I wrote about in a previous blog? Well, we started talking to each other again. Actually, we started talking to each other a couple months ago. And yes, I still have strong feelings for him. I'm trying not to lose myself in it but I recently started stalking his social networking page. Yea yea...I know. I'm a little crazy. And low and behold, I found something that my mind misinterpreted. When I asked him about it, he explained and things were fine. But really, I knew there was something that needed to change within me. I'm ashamed of my actions and noticed by that negative action, it caused my mind to have a snowball effect of negative thoughts. 

This lesson in class about mindfulness could've not come at a better time. I am so thankful because it reminded me to take a moment and focus on my moment now. Not someone else's which in this case, I was focusing on NYC guy's moment and thinking about what he was doing and what he was up to. Definitely natural but when it comes to a point of stalking, not natural and true to our inner self. In class, we discussed some exercises that could be done in order to bring ourselves back into the present moment. There's always deep breathing exercises involved of course. For instance, they said you should take moments out of your day to take three deep breaths. One lady said that every time her phone rings, she takes that opportunity to focus on the present moment and give thanks. I recently just bought a coloring book and will take some time out of my day just to color. Yes, to color! And only color...instead of thinking of something else, I'm going to focus on what color I want my picture to be and that's it. 

It's hard. I'll admit. To focus on the present moment. My mind goes a hundred miles a minute. Always thinking about what's next. And what I think is being productive by always thinking of what to do next, can actually be destructive. Something I've noticed that works for me is whenever I'm faced with a challenge that I can't figure out, I give it to the universe. I even tell the universe I'm handing it over. I literally tell myself, "I'm no longer going to worry about this because I'm handing it to the universe to take care of." And 100% of the time it works out in my favor. Of course these are things not in my control. So if you have a bill to pay don't be irresponsible and think the universe will take care of that. Take care of the things you can and the universe will take care of the things you can't. 

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