Mindfulness for the perpetually stressed



If there ever was a woman who needed mindfulness I would be her. I am a big ball of stress, sugar and coffee most of the time and the rest of the time I run on stress alone. For those of you not familiar with mindfulness, its not a new concept. Eckhart Tolle is quite well known in spiritual circles for bring the idea to light with his Power of Now and its quite straightforward. It's about living in the moment and actually enjoying and experiencing things as they happen. I am not very good at this. I frequently find myself driving somewhere and realise I have missed a good chunk of the journey. This is probably because I know the route well enough that I am driving on automatic but this is worrying both from a mental and safety point of view. I eat much too fast. Often I don't quite taste the food. As you can imagine this plays havoc on my digestive system as well as meaning I often eat more than I intended at any one sitting. Just recently I ate a sour dough sandwich so fast I blocked my airway and started choking on it. Pretty scary stuff but luckily I pulled through and even finished my sandwich. I know I should eat slower and not read or watch shows while I eat but quite frankly I get very bored just eating. I once decided to try really slowing down my eating and started running a timer so I could leave a decent pause between each mouthful but my food got very cold and I got bored of it before I could change my eating habits forever. 

 Logically I know if I keep going at this pace I'll wear myself out and I did actually read the Power Of Now nodding along because even though he sounds like Gollum (from Lord of the rings) Eckhart Tolle is a smart man and there's a lot to be said for his way of thinking. I found that implementing his thinking into my everyday life a little more difficult however. I am often so busy worrying about things coming up or fretting things that have already happened that I forget to enjoy what I am doing in that moment in time. I am working on changing that and sorry to my parents but meditation never really took off for me. I could not still my mind long enough to actually relax so I found all it did was give me more mental space to worry about my life. I do have lots of lovely relaxing tea which is nice and all but obviously there's more to my plan than that. I have dug out my adult colouring book I received last year and I have been colouring up a storm. In fact when I showed my parents some of my handiwork they said wow you must have been really stressed ( I was !) and I even treated myself to a lovely pack of colouring pencils for my mini mindfulness colouring book so I can start bringing it with me. As well as that I have Crossfit which some days feels like the only thing keeping me sane. The great thing about it aside from all the endorphins is that when you are just trying to finish the workout or get the next rep it really doesn't leave a whole lot of mental space for everything else. The moment is the only place you can be. So I'll keep on going with that and will get through the holiday season a happier, calmer person unless I run out of things to colour. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sometimes I open my mouth and my mother comes out ..

Image
I have been told on more than one occasion that I'm sarcastic. Often that I'm too sarcastic (as though there could be such a thing) and I have retort up my sleeve for such occasions which is if you think I'm sarcastic you should meet my mother. No, really you should because my sarcasm is but a pale imitation of hers. Every so often though I come out without something that makes my friends or other family members pause because sometimes when I open my mouth, my mother comes out.  It's funny how people always take the words you are turning into your mother as such an insult because the reality of the matter is it's a both a good and bad thing. Obviously there are certain qualities I am perfectly happy to emulate and others not so much and on the whole I am not entirely sure how much control I have over it. It's not quite a pick and mix counter here. I think there are some habits you are not even aware you have picked up until someone else kindly points it out....
Read more

How long does it take to learn to drive?

Image
I remember my nieces a year or so back asking me in an incredulous tone how long it takes to learn to drive because for as long as they could remember I had L plates on my car. The answer in my case is four years. Admittedly I probably could have gotten my full licence sooner if I hadn't been so hesitant to do my test in the three years that have passed since my last attempt. I get very anxious during tests or Interviews and so do not perform particularly well at either. I will put that in my list of things I need to work on in the new year. In time since I have learned to drive I feel I have accomplished a lot and yet I will go out of my way to avoid having to parallel park because I feel like its always going to be my Achilles heel. At least I have come a long way from the days when I used to feel anxious about getting into my car and was likely to bunny hop across roundabouts in third gear. The problem with learning to drive is that the older you do the harder it is and...
Read more

Burnout: the sequel

Image
  I am burnt out. Hardly the most shocking declaration given I have been saying it out loud for a while now but here we are. This isn't my first run in with burn out nor will it likely be my last. Not only am I working in a stressful job, a social care worker in residential care, which is no stranger to burn out but also I am autistic so its like I know a secret short cut to getting there. I think as bragging goes this is up there with declaring how many times I have managed to catch covid. Which is 4 at my current count and they say there are no benefits to working in Health care. If you are lucky enough to not have experienced burnout then I can tell you its not an experience I would recommend to a friend. If you have friends working in social care then you probably wont need to.  Some of the things I have been experiencing are random bouts of crying. Given high sensitivity is part of my autism profile, I am no stranger to crying and the first time I experienced burnout it t...
Read more