Mindful March

I woke up on the morning of March 1st feeling refreshed. It seems weird to think of it that way, especially since I had just had a dream where I was set to die via a boat explosion… but it’s true. I always try to take the 1st of any given month as a kind of reset and since February was so terrible mental health-wise, it seemed as good a time as any. I got up, made coffee and breakfast, and sat down with my journal. I then made a pledge to myself that I would try to be more mindful as the month went on. If you’re reading this now it means that I succeeded.

But what does that mean exactly?

There are a lot of ways to be mindful and a lot of different facets of your life where you can apply basic principles. For me, mindfulness is most useful when it comes to how I express myself, what I choose to react to, and how I acknowledge what I’m feeling. Think of it this way…

You see someone post something online that you disagree with but it’s not anything that is hurting anyone or life and death (i.e. they said they don’t like peanut butter… to use a very basic example). You have a lot of options here. You can yell and scream at them and tell them they’re an idiot (expression). You can rant and rave to a friend about the indignity of it all (reaction). You can recognize that it made you feel a certain way and why… and simply move on. The latter is a mindful approach.

Again, this is very basic and not based off of anything really but simply an example. If you want to go bigger you could think about a time that someone said or did something to you that hurt you. What did you do? Did you tell them? Did you sit and stew in your feelings? Did you ramble to someone else about how the person made you feel? In all of these reactions, the only thing you have control over is your own actions. You can’t control what someone else is going to do and/or say. You also can’t control how you feel about it. All you have control over is how you react to any given situation.

Read that again…

You only have control over how you react to a situation.

If you’re still stuck and not sure what I mean, try this analogy:

When you’re driving a car, what do you have control over? Only your actions within the car, right? You can’t control what other people are doing on the road. If someone is driving like a jackass, you can only control how you react to their driving. That’s the basic principle of mindfulness.

So, again, what does all this mean? Well I, like so many others I know, get very caught up in things sometimes. Ok, not sometimes. More like the majority of the time. I’ll see something and it’ll rub me the wrong way and I’ll just spin about it until I’m exhausted and then wait for the next time to happen. That’s not living. That’s waiting for the next thing to happen so you can react to it. I had all this emotional energy that was just being spent on reacting to every little thing around me and it wasn’t healthy. So I really took a look at things and thought, “What can I do differently?” I started focusing on myself more. Not in a self-centered way, but in a way that’s allowed me over the last month to feel lighter.

This is not to say that I don’t still have an occasional spin or that I don’t still obsess about things. I do. That’s in my nature and something that, if I’m being honest, is just always going to be there. I obsess about book sales and if people are reading this very blog. I obsess about my past and what I’ve been through and obsess about the future that hasn’t happened yet. I have an obsessive personality which makes it very easy to get lost in my thoughts and, for lack of better words, spin cycle.

Mid-month I felt like all the effort I had put in was about to get thrown out and decided I needed another reset. I took a weekend off: no book promos, no tweeting, no obsessing about sales and reads. I meditated, read, did yoga, slept, and just stayed present with myself. By the time Monday came around I was back in the spin cycle, but I was looking at everything with fresh eyes. Then the next weekend I did the same thing. This one little change has helped me to stay more focused during the week because I’m allowing myself an actual break on the weekends.

Mindful March didn’t end up being what I expected, but it was still a good thing and something I’m hoping I can carry with me for a while. Since the book came out I’ve felt like I have a 2nd full-time job in promoting it (a job I don’t get paid for) and it’s just been exhausting. It takes so much time and energy (and money) to be constantly out there making sure people are seeing me. I’ve stepped back a bit and simply continued to tweet as me. Being myself and being authentic is my “brand” I guess, though I hate saying that. To put it another way: I always want to be myself and as soon as I feel like I’m deviating from that then it’s time for me to reevaluate my approach to things.

That’s what this last month has given me. I’ve been able to look inward and say, “What is serving me? Is this helping? How can I make this better and stay true to myself?” If I can’t stay true to myself then no amount of meditation or mindfulness training will make any difference.

Just remember that you can only do as much as you’re physically and mentally capable of. If you need a reset, take one. If you need a break, do it. Don’t wait until you’re completely drained and running on empty. Pause. Take a breath. Think about what you actually can control and make adjustments. If something is out of your hands, let it go.

Breathe.

Keep going.

- Danielle