We are 2 weeks into the New Year and I had a moment where I thought “sometimes being in the present is easier said than done.” What do I mean by being in the present? I mean living every day feeling at peace, in the now, and where my mind isn’t occupied by worries and fear. Since the New Year I set my intention by the day with how I wanted it to feel and how I wanted to feel that day. Overall, I wanted to feel happy and be at peace because happiness and peace are naturally within us. There’s a lot of positivity at the beginning of the New Year and I always wonder, are the people who talk about mindfulness like always happy? At what point do the good vibes and energy run its course?
I hit my point a few days ago. Where I was feeling happy and positive in moments where I can normally get annoyed. I was running on lots of excitement and being nice to myself. Then I had a moment where I felt like maybe I was just fooling myself with this being happy through everything. And I just wanted to sit in worry and be annoyed so bad about a certain situation where I’d already made a productive roadmap of how to make the most of it.
But I did feel a change in myself with how I dealt with this situation. Practicing being mindful and having self-love helped me to not stay in the bad mood so long. I found that worrying almost felt good because it was so easy to do. It was like the negative self-talk was like “oh hey there you are again. Let’s let this take over my brain. We missed you!” And I was able to ACKNOWLEDGE that that is what was happening and not feel like I was doing the whole self- care thing wrong by feeling emotions that aren’t “happy”. I was also able to take note of what influenced my emotions. I pointed out that I was essentially comparing myself to where I thought other people were at and worrying that I wouldn’t measure up. With this known, I was grateful to read through my post-it notes with my affirmations written on them and read each one of them as a reminder of who I am. I’m not going to have happy or positive emotions all of the time. Mindfulness isn’t about being zen every day all day. I understood what it was like to be aware and point out the feeling and let it flow through but not sit in it too long to where it affects me physically or the course of the rest of my day. I was able to bounce back from the slump I was in a more productive way which I think is self-love because it didn’t involve me talking negatively to myself and being overly critical. I decided to take a long nap later that day which is my source of relaxation and a stress release since before I can remember.
Mindfulness is a journey. It’s not about counting how many days straight I can be happy without being in a bad mood. I’m not going to do that anymore. There will be ups and downs where there’s like a center of gravity and then sometimes you’re very much above that center and sometimes you’re below it. But I am inspired to keep flexing the muscle of being able to bounce back. Resiliency is what that is. Resiliency can get you through anything.
As always,
