Finding Calm in the Chaos

A while back I did a post on mindfulness and how we can bring it into our lives. It was incredibly popular, so this time we're going to go a little deeper into mindfulness, what it is, it's benefits, and how we can be successful in taking control of the chaos around us by managing our emotions, deepening our understanding, and strengthening our thought processes. 

Mindfulness

Have you ever stopped, taking only a minute, to fully quiet your mind from the chaos around you and just be? Sounds simple enough. But in fact, it proves to be a challenge for even the most committed people. Mindfulness is important for peace and good health. Practicing mindfulness trains our brains to respond positively in emotional or negative situations. 

What is mindfulness and what are the benefits? 

Simply put, "Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we are doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what's going on around us." mindful.org. It's about being intentional in the moment we're in, not hanging onto the past, nor feeling anxious for the future. The benefits of practicing mindfulness are innumerable, but to name a few:

1. Decreased stress, including anxiety, depression, PTSD, and sleep disorders
2. Decreased irritability
3. Decrease in headaches and migraines
4. Improved concentration and productivity
5. Increased immune function
6. Lowered blood pressure and heart rate 
7. Improved general health, including obesity 

Positive Psychology Program provides a more in-depth list of the benefits of mindfulness.

Questions to get to know our inner-self: 

Self-awareness is a key to cultivating mindfulness, and we can strengthen our understanding of ourselves when we ask the hard questions. Questions are powerful. They force answers. Find a quiet place, with minimal distraction, and ask yourself the following questions, listening carefully to the small voice inside.

1. How do I respond when I don't get things that I want?
2. How do I deal with negativity in my environment?
3. How do I respond when I make a mistake or fail at something?
4. How do I spend my free time?
5. How do I recharge, rejuvenate, and replenish my energy?
6. How fulfilling is my every day life?
7. How much do I follow through with what I preach and talk about?
8. What deep needs do I have that aren't being met?
9. Am I feeling unresolved about something?
10. How can I be more present in my life?
11. What habits do I have that feed insecurity or fear?
12. What are my vulnerabilities?
13. How do I respond to people when they make choices differently from my own?
14. What negative self-talk do I feed myself on a daily basis?
15. What am I passionate about and how can I spend more time doing those things?
16. What are my core values and how do I apply them to my every day life?
17. What are my personal goals and how can I attain them?

Mindfulness is an incredible tool to help us manage our emotions and redirect ourselves in more positive ways. Lisa Firestone, Ph.D. says "It helps us to alter our habitual responses by taking pause and choosing how we act." Compelling questions force us to dig deep into our inner-selves, allowing us to examine and re-evaluate things that we know to be true. Cultivating mindfulness is one of the best ways we can live our best lives, leading to a healthier, happier you. 

Powering Through Adversity

A friend came to me the other day and shared with me the story of another friend of hers. I'll call her Lisa. Lisa has an intense story in her life and is climbing a mountain of adversity.

Lisa has three boys, her oldest is four, her middle is two, and her youngest is nine months. Her oldest was born with her first husband. After a very violent and abusive marriage, Lisa was able to get away and filed for divorce. Her ex got partial custody of their son and one day when she was bringing her son to him for visitation, he raped Lisa and she got pregnant with her second son. Not long after, Lisa married again. But during her pregnancy with her youngest, her second husband, a schizophrenic with no job, left her and moved in with his mother. He is currently fighting for custody of the baby, whom he has never met and is still being nursed. Lisa, currently enrolled in college, is unemployed and living in a one bedroom apartment. The boys share the bedroom, and Lisa sleeps on the couch. To say she has little to offer her boys is an understatement. I heard Lisa's story and felt compelled to act, to do something for her. Recently I did a major overhaul on our toy room... I have a pile larger than my kids of toys that are going to be donated. Immediately, I raided the pile looking for anything for boys four years and younger. There was a plethora and I happily pulled them out, loaded them into laundry baskets and brought them to my friend. These toys, despite their use, were still in excellent condition. I made sure these boys got the best!

My friend brought Lisa our donation two days ago and she was so overwhelmed, and her boys had died and gone to heaven over their new toys. Lisa's first response... tears... and then gratitude. Lisa paints rocks, beautiful, intricate paintings on these rocks you can fit in the palm of your hand, and hides them around the city with a note to either keep and enjoy, or to re-hide for someone else to find. Lisa had painted a rock with the simple word peace on it. But she felt this rock wasn't meant to be hidden but rather that someone special needed it. She found the rock and gave it to our mutual friend and said, "This is for her. I feel she is the one meant for this rock."

My friend brought me that rock and I took one look at it and nearly broke down. It was exactly what I needed in the moment. In my current season of adversity, that rock brought me the very thing painted across it... peace. It was more than worth the full value of everything I could have given her.

Here she was, with nothing to offer but a rock, which became everything to me.

Lisa is standing at the bottom of a mountain of adversity. But she's making the best of it, and is fighting like hell for those three little boys that depend on her.

"Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes." - Buddha

Today, I face my own mountain of adversity, as I'm sure every one of you face. Adversity is a part of life. We've gotten through it in the past, may be standing in the middle of it now, and we will undoubtedly face it again in the future. The adversities we face in our life do not define us. They don't determine our paths and where we go. Instead, we forge our own paths through our reactions, our responses to adversity. We can't control circumstance, but we get to decide what we do with it, and where we take ourselves because of it.

Here are a few ways to arm ourselves when our seasons of adversity fall upon us:

• Resiliency: don't give in to fear, anger, or despair. Move forward, past the pain and grief, by setting goals that go beyond yourself. They don't have to be big lofty goals, but rather goals than can serve as stepping stones along your journey. Goals can help lead us in the direction we want to ultimately go in.
• Strong sense of purpose: nothing reveals who we are more than adversity does. Knowing yourself, and what is at the core of who you are will help forge your path in the right direction because you know where you want to go. Adversity becomes a lesson. Not a setback. We can bend in the face of hard times, but we will not break.
• Acceptance: hard times will always fall upon us, and learning to accept them when we enter a season of adversity doesn't mean we are giving up, it means we are letting ourselves feel the full range of emotion that comes with it. We give ourselves grace in pain and grief. When we accept and acknowledge our mountains of adversity, then we can begin to scale them.
• Self-reliance: when we pair our strong sense of purpose with self-reliance, we understand that we have what it takes to move forward. We may not always be certain of our steps as we begin our climb, but we believe in ourselves, in our purpose, and we believe that we already have the capability within us to make the trek. 
• Strong support system: in times of crisis, we don't have to fight alone. We may have the tools within us to traverse our adversity, but when we have a strong support system, we have people to journey alongside us. No man is an island, and we don't have to be alone, isolated, and made to go through our hard times solo. We just have to be brave enough to reach out.

In times of uncertainty, never forget who you are, what dreams you have, or that you are loved. Give yourself grace when you are in pain or are grieving, but rely on who you know yourself to be to help pull you through your season and take you to where you want to be. Like the tagline on the header of the blog... Sometimes we win. Sometimes we learn. Let those lessons strengthen you and give you a deeper understanding of who you are. Let them strengthen your resolve, and live in the knowledge that you can get through your time of adversity. Let your heart find peace. Girl, power through. You've got this.

Finding Our Best Selves: Mindfulness

Have you ever stopped, taking only a minute, to fully quiet your mind from the chaos around you and just be? Sounds simple enough. But in fact, it proves to be a challenge for even the most committed people. But mindfulness is important for peace and good health. In a world full of computers and tablet, and smart phones, and TVs, with digital this and high-speed that, it's even more important now than ever before that we find ways to unplug and simply just be. We spend very little time in the present. Dr. Donna Rockwell describes our lack of presence by "bemoaning the past or catastrophizing the future." The present is the only real moment we have. But to truly live in it, we must reflect upon ourselves. We have to pay attention to the moment we are in with intention and focus, letting go of resentment from the past, judgment of our present, and anxiety of the future.

"Mindfulness helps improve our concentration and reduce ruminative thinking that contributes to the high levels of stress that is so prevalent in our society."

Psychology Today  

So how do we step out of the chaos and messiness that is life, every day, in search of our inner-self? Even if it is for only a minute? Building self-awareness is key to mindfulness. And we do this by digging deeper into who we are. When we look at life, we see things not as they are, but rather as we are. But when we can understand ourselves, we can begin to expand our thinking and ultimately our horizons, letting us move past our present and into a better, healthier version of ourselves. 

Here are a few questions that we can ask ourselves, one for each day of the week, to help us dig deeper into our inner-self. I challenge you to take a minute each day for a week, asking one of these questions and exploring the truth that lives in our hearts and souls, to reveal who we truly are so that we can live our strongest selves.

1. How do I respond to situations that I have no control over?
2. How do I deal with negativity in my environment? 
3. How do I respond when I make a mistake or fail at something?
4. How do I spend my free time?
5. How do I recharge, rejuvenate, and replenish my energy?
6. How fulfilling is my everyday life?
7. How much do I follow through on what I preach and talk about?

Mindfulness is an incredible tool to help us understand, tolerate, and deal with our emotions in healthy ways. "It helps us to alter our habitual responses by taking pause and choosing how we act," Lisa Firestone, Ph.D. Allow yourself permission to slow down and be present. Cultivating mindfulness in our lives can be the greatest gift we can give to ourselves, freeing us to be our best selves.