“The hardest thing you’ll do today is quiet your mind.”
We’re balancing on one leg, pulling our back leg up high, higher than our heads. We’re trying to take our foreheads to our knees; the tops of our heads to the floor. Oh, and the room is 106 degrees. Over and over again, the yoga instructor’s refrain is: “The hardest thing you’ll do today in class is quiet your mind.”
Oh, so true.
After many starts and stops, I seem to have truly and legitimately started and stuck to a meditation practice. I’ve been doing it every day for about the past month, usually in the evening, right before bed. It’s a great way to quiet my mind, and I think it’s helping me to sleep more soundly and deeply. I find I really look forward to that space of time where I can really just sit quietly and breathe.
Meditation can certainly be intimidating, because lots of us focus on doing it “perfectly.” We think that unless we can totally clear our minds, and keep them clear for an extended period of time, then we aren’t doing it right. So, why even try?
I’ve discovered that meditation can be many different things, and even I don’t approach it the same way every time. Here are the many different faces it’s taken on for me:
1. Guided meditation: This is a great way for beginners to try it out, and for experienced folks to try something new. I use the Omvana app on my iPhone; there are many different podcasts and thousands of other recordings out there you can use for this purpose. I do my best to focus only on the words being spoken.
2. Affirmations: Sometimes I will pick a topic I want to focus on – a feeling I want to cultivate, a goal I’m seeking, a spiritual or emotional change I want to make – then concentrate on that topic for a specified period of time, usually about 10-15 minutes. (I use binaural sounds or white noise as a background with this.) It might be focusing on overcoming a fear, saying kind and loving things to myself, cultivating a sense of gratitude and peace, and so on. When my mind starts to drift I just gently bring it back to the affirmation I’m using that day.
3. The vision exercise: Remember my previous post about building the life you want through belief? This goes to that end. I’ll think of what it would look like and feel like if I became everything I wanted to be, and if all of my desires were fulfilled. A few years back, many people became devotees of “The Secret,” and I’ll admit that I scoffed at the notion … seemed like a bunch of hocus-pocus, just another spiritual fad perpetuated by Oprah, a woman who seemed to already have everything she could ever want. But now I’m thinking the tenets of that actually do work, if you truly believe it deeply enough, and, beyond everything, truly feel worthy of it. It all begins with the deep belief that you are worthy of getting the things you want, and capable of achieving them.
4. The quiet mind: I meet with a meditation group regularly, and this is the approach I most often take in that setting. (I do this in yoga as well.) I try my best to be absolutely present in the situation, to concentrate on how the chair feels below me, the sounds of the room around me, the temperature of the air, and so on. It’s hard for me to hold onto that mental silence for an extended period of time, so I will often bring a simple affirmation into it in order to refocus myself.
There are many ways to think about “what meditation is” and its benefits. Some say that prayer is asking God for things, and meditation is listening for the answer. Some say it’s a way to manifest beliefs and to improve concentration. Some say it’s simply a means of growing more peaceful and serene. Whatever you’d like to get from it, I hope you’ll try it out. Like everything else, it gets better with practice!
I wish you all a peaceful, present, quiet mind.
The Abandoned Shopping Cart
Is anyone out there familiar with the concept of the “abandoned shopping cart” in the realm of internet marketing/sales? Basically, this is when someone shops online, adds product(s) to their virtual shopping cart, but never clicks through to buy. Maybe they decided the shipping costs were too high, or they clung to a resolve to stick to a budget and this purchase just wasn’t going to fit. Maybe their favorite TV show came on, or the phone rang, or the dog barfed on the rug, or they just found a product they liked better somewhere else.
Some internet retailers run near-obsessive campaigns to bring you back to that purchase. Maybe you’ll get an email the day after you abandoned that cart, perhaps even with a discount involved if you decide to go ahead and buy.
But when you get back to that “shopping cart,” isn’t that a sad image? The word “abandoned” … picturing it as isolated, forgotten … you could say it’s a strange thing for me to get sentimental about, but I’d like to think it’s my empathy speaking.
Now for a personal story of my own experience as the metaphoric “abandoned shopping cart.”
I randomly met someone … he approached me, we started talking and getting to know each other a bit. We spent a little time together. Even though I hadn’t been looking to date and wasn’t feeling especially pressed to get into a relationship, my initial impressions of him were that he was the kind of person I’d pursue. While outwardly I was tempering my excitement, inside I was feeling good about it and where it was going.
In my mind, I felt we were going to keep getting to know each other, and I was enjoying the process.
And then …. nothing.
My text messages went unanswered. No response. I was hoping I’d hear something … anything … but it seemed that wasn’t forthcoming.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hurt and confused by it all. What had I done? Did I say something wrong? In our last meeting, all indications were that he was interested in continuing to spend time together. I spent entirely too much time replaying it all in my head, wondering where it had gone awry.
I felt … abandoned.
I don’t know what happened, and chances are I’ll never get those answers. All I can do is accept it. While I would’ve appreciated some honest communication, even if hurtful (“I’m sorry, I’m just not interested anymore;” “I don’t see this going anywhere,” etc.), I may not get that, and I can’t see the point in chasing it down. I wasn’t going to be that desperate retailer, offering a “discount” (in this case, my emotions) just to rope him back in again.
I certainly spent plenty of time in the “dark side” of this encounter; a whole series of thoughts like “This is why I wasn’t dating; it’s always just disappointing and painful.” “I didn’t look for this encounter, and yet it appeared in my life – why me?” “I’m never going to end up in a good, honest, intimate relationship … I am fated to these types of people/encounters.”
But how does that serve me? Remember, I believe that your thought patterns are going to directly affect the things you attract. If I choose to focus only on the negative, that negativity will perpetuate itself continuously. But if I affirm myself with the positive, I will stay out of that negative space, and in turn attract all elements of positive energy into my universe. Things get better in my life because I WILL them to be better.
I have been meditating daily, and focusing on these affirmations: Good things will happen for me, and already are happening for me. I am lovable, good, and kind. Another’s opinions of me or actions toward me do not determine my worth. Things are happening as they should in God’s plan for the universe.
So, instead of being the abandoned shopping cart, isolated and unmoving, I chose to get behind myself and push. I’m worth that, and I’m much happier being my own driver and source of forward movement … rather than looking for someone else to do it for me.
Manifesting the Best Possible Life … through Belief
What do you believe to be true about yourself and your life right now?
Do you think things are pretty good? Could be better? Likely to get worse?
What sort of energy to you project on a daily basis? What do you tell yourself about who and what you are?
Something I’ve been working on recently is the use of meditation combined with affirmations to guide me toward my best possible self and life. If I had everything I desire … if I was the person I wanted to be … what would that feel like? What would it look like? How would I be different than I am right now?
Here are some ways I’ve been working on manifesting the things I desire for myself:
1. Meditation: Every night before bed, I’ve been meditating on envisioning myself in the life of my dreams. I picture myself there, and really feel what it’s like. Sometimes I do this with a guided meditation … the Omvana app has a lot of great ones just for this purpose (available for iPhone; not sure if they’ve created an Android version yet). Other times I just listen to some ambient sounds and concentrate on this topic.
2. Affirmations: If something is troubling me, I work to tell myself that the opposite is true as a way of bringing myself around to believe it in my mind and manifest it with my actions. Living in clutter? Tell yourself: “I am organized.” Struggling with money? Tell yourself: “I am prosperous.” This has limitless possibilities: I am creative. I am a leader. I am capable. I am brave. I am loved. Say it over and over again each day until you come to believe it – even if your “inner critic” is screaming at you that it isn’t true. The more you say it, the quieter that critic will become.
3. Journaling: Remember that “dream life” I mentioned in No. 1? I wrote it out, as many details as I could think of. It’s a useful guide for the meditation. This isn’t so much about material things – I’m not aiming to live a life of gold-plated bathroom fixtures and caviar for breakfast. While I did write about where I’d like to live and what that dwelling would look like, I also included the spiritual and emotional aspects of it all as well – a true picture of complete fulfillment.
4. Setting a daily intention: Each morning, I try to set my intent for that day. What do I want to feel today? What do I want to accomplish? It could be as simple as “I want to relax,” “I want to feel joyous,” “I want to feel peaceful.” It could be bigger, like making a decision or completing a project.
5. Setting a long-term intention: This is all part of that big “dream life” goal. All those smaller daily intentions will add up to moving you toward the bigger ones.
You CAN get there – if you truly believe!
Selling Fear? I’m Not Buying
Alexandra Petri is an excellent writer for the Washington Post. She’s featured on the ComPost blog but also writes a delightful column that appears in the Saturday print edition. Sadly, I’ve been unable to find those print columns online. I really wanted to share her July 27 entry with you, because it was nothing short of brilliant. It talked about the fears that other people will try their hardest to also push onto you.
Since I can’t find a link, here’s an excerpt:
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If you want to be absolutely safe in life, listen well. Imbibe my fears. Let them guide you.
Here is a vague smorgasbord of anecdotes, prejudices and bad experiences my uncle once had that will, I think, protect you from death or at least from new experiences that could change your mind about people, which are in some ways worse.
- Don’t jog at night. Don’t jog during the daytime. Never jog. One hundred percent of joggers who were mugged were jogging in the first place. …
- Don’t walk through certain areas of downtown Los Angeles, ever. One of your distant relatives once walked through that area, and he was savagely attacked by a saber-tooth tiger and dragged into a tar pit. …
- Avoid bus stops, parking lots, schools, houses, cars, the pyramids, the suburbs, the city, lakes, oceans, rivers, Kansas, your own back yard, hole-in-the-wall cafes, fancy restaurants, the environs of the Eiffel Tower, places where they serve food that is different from the food your mother cooked, barbecues, street festivals, Grandma’s house. Terrible things have happened in all those places. …
So far, no one who said that a life lived in fear is not worth living has ever made it out.
Try, if possible, not to be born. If you are born, you will have to interact with people who are different from you, and you will learn, and you will change your mind, and you will discover all kinds of wonder and unlooked-for happiness, and, one day, you will die.
This must be avoided at all costs.
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While Petri’s irreverent tone is joyful to read in and of itself, it’s also quite a serious look at the fears that people try to place onto others. I think this often happens between parents and children, but to some degree in any other type of relationship as well. People are afraid of things because of their own wounds, their own insecurities, their own bad experiences. Now they want YOU to be afraid too.
But doesn’t it all sound so ridiculous? And imagine it applied to larger things: Why you should avoid people of a certain cultural or ethnic background. Why you should never travel to foreign lands. Why you shouldn’t like something or want something or pursue your dreams – because they fall outside of the norm, because it’s different or strange, because people like us just don’t do that.
I’m writing about this because much of my emotional journey has been examining my relationship with fear. It’s the thing that’s kept me back from many things. Kept me from standing up for myself. Kept me from going after things I wanted. Kept me from living a truly fulfilled life at times.
I still confront fears at times and try to take inventory of them as a means of keeping them in check. I know they’re poking at me if I’m afraid of honestly and respectfully speaking my truth. If I’m afraid to take a risk, even if it would mean an opportunity to grow. If I’m more concerned with your feelings than with my own. Vulnerability and abandonment are two fears that have kicked at me for years. What if I say or do something that makes you not like me anymore? I’ve had to learn to put that thought in its place … to realize that the people who would walk away from the honest version of me are the ones who are best let go.
As I grow, I find my fears slipping away, holding less influence. As I find my courage, I find more freedom, more joy, more serenity. I find truth. I find the essence of who I really am. I hope that all of us, in some way, can find the means to be brave, to leave fear behind and instead be guided by faith. To let go … and truly live.
Convinced Yet?
I have a nice daily reader of meditations that I find quite insightful and helpful (The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie, if you’re wondering). The theme of an entry a couple of days ago was about the hazards of trying to convince another person about how great/loving/wise/wonderful we are … that exhibiting that kind of behavior is a warning sign that we may not actually believe those things ourselves.
Well, to say that was a wake-up call might be a mild understatement. I thought of a recent situation where I was trying to do just that – convince someone of my greatness. And I wondered … for thinking that I already know and believe this of myself, how much do I really know it?
If I already believed this, would I have been content just knowing it, without feeling like I had to go through the accompanying actions to demonstrate it? Would I have walked away from the situation sooner, or even stayed in it and not cared so much? Would it have influenced the outcome?
I suppose I’ll never know the answers, at least not for this particular episode. But it was a realization for me that maybe I wasn’t believing it strongly enough for myself … I was needing someone else to reinforce and validate the belief for me.
There’s something to be said about not wasting time with people and situations where it seems your worth is being questioned. But certain situations in essence force us to do this – say if you’re auditioning for something, or going on a job interview, or if you want to make a sale or score a new client. The point is to prove why you’re better than the competition. Even then, though, an inherent belief that you ARE better is likely to increase your chances of coming out on top.
In personal relationships, though, why waste time trying to prove this to people who seem to question it, or leave you questioning it yourself? Or perhaps that’s a chicken-and-egg question, that if you believed this of yourself already, you wouldn’t waste that time. You’d just know it, and that belief would shine through. Outcomes because of that would be an entirely separate matter.
This is much for me to think about, but worthwhile. I’m praying for God to help make my greatness inherent knowledge for me, not something of which I need to convince anyone – least of all myself.
Young Spirit, Old Soul 