Change hovers like the morning sun-mist over Lake Carolyn.
I no longer fear change. One of my lessons along the journey I began nearly two years ago is that we cannot be consumed by that which has no power. Fear cannot exist in a powerless environment.
There’s No Time Like the Present
As I began my journey of then to now, “there’s no time like the present” was my what-are-you-waiting-for mantra. In the spring of 2009, while I hadn’t yet begun voicing the mantra, I think it was trying to burst through the groundcover of my mind. I found myself asking those questions of the universe like, “Is this all there is to life?” And then to myself, I posed the question, “Do you want to live the second half of your life as you have the first?”
The Holy Instant
With that question, I initiated a hidden series of events over which I had no consciousness. And I certainly had no control. After much anguish and jockeying for position to race against the inevitable changes (I am as mule-headed as the next person from the Show-me state.), I threw my arms in the air and yelled the shortest and most powerful prayer of surrender:
“Okay, God, Whatever!”
God was waiting to plow the ground in front of me. He tilled, planted, fertilized and watered. Oh, how I was thirsty! Little did I know that in two years time, the change I had invited would pick me up and drop me in Texas, that I would start this blog and contemplate its becoming a business, that I would be graced with a friendship blossoming into a soulmate-ship, and that I would walk through the valley of the shadow of my mother’s death.
Turning Corners
Now I’m about to step around another corner. In two days, I’ll attend a workshop that probably will create new shifts and opportunities. I’m eager and ready to turn the corner. In fact, I just may skip around the corner. After all, there is no time like the present.
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Sunday nights are seldom easy for me; it’s been this way since I was a kid when I escaped into a weekend world of books and the imaginary life of a writer.
Sunday nights caused great anguish as I struggled to shift gears and prepare for re-entry into the school, and eventually, the work world. Even today when Monday promises work I love, I still occasionally find myself out-of-sorts and dreading the start of the work week.
Surely I’m not the only one out there with the end-of-weekend blues. Ours is a work hard/play harder culture but at least we get to mostly choose our play. Some of us are blessed with careers that allow a great deal of autonomy (I’m one of those blessed.) so work and play are not on rigid schedules.
And yet I still don’t do Sunday nights very well. I know I’m not alone. So here’s what I propose:
Mindful Mondays
Would you like to get your Sunday evening back? I sure would! Would you like a sure-fire method of not dreading Monday? Me too!
Earlier today, I decided to look this Monday monster thing squarely in the eye. I made a decision to get my Sunday mojo back and that would begin with designating Monday as mindful.
Mindfulness essentially means that one completely focuses on the present moment. Since that is what I write about (she says, sarcastically), I need to learn to practice what I preach.
I’m as likely as the next person to fill my mind with obsessive garbage about what may transpire this week or next month or five years from now. I am a master at dredging up the past to “process” it. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against looking at the past with professionals when we honestly need guidance.
But don’t you think some people hide behind their pasts so they don’t have to take responsibility for their present and their future?
So, Mindful Mondays it is, at least for me. Focus on the present moment.
B Here Today
Mindful meditation helps immensely. This kind of work encourages concentration on the breath with an easy acknowledgement of interrupting thoughts followed by a simple return to breathing awareness. I have to be honest. I’m not that great with meditation. Or maybe it’s that I don’t practice the practice of mediation enough to feel comfortable with it. Either way, in theory I love it, but I had to find another way.
I call my method the Pounding Surf and a Spider Web Mindfulness.
Think a
bout these two elements of nature for a moment. Have you ever watched ocean waves slap against rocks when the tide is in? The rolling surf hurls itself against a shoreline or massive outcropping with so much intensity that foamy waves are reduced to bubbles. Mother Nature doing what she does—throwing her elemental self around with intense abandon.
What about the spider web? An industrious arachnid weaves a dainty doily of a web on a railing about 30 yards above the crashing waves. Spray blown by the wind in the waves clings in teeny-tiny orbs of water on the web. It gently sways back and forth in the breeze.
The enormous contrast of the web with the surf pounding behind it struck me as the yin and yang of nature when I observed them in mid-February during my walk along the southern California shore.
I called my walking companion over to see the incredible sight. She was suitably impressed. The photos I took were to record my finding as well as to serve as a daily reminder of mindfulness.
Where is the mindfulness, you ask? It wasn’t the act of finding the juxtaposition of web against waves. It wasn’t even the awareness of web and wave.
The mindfulness came into play when I realized that I was acting in a mindful and present manner. That, my dear friends, is how we become mindful—by choosing to be really, really present to ALL the details that comprise our days.
You’re human and you won’t get it everyday. But much like meditation, I promise you that if you practice, you’ll get better and better until one day you realize it’s Tuesday and you don’t remember the Sunday Night Blues but you do remember Mindful Monday.
Trips to the beaches and islands help too and encourage the behavior of practicing presence at other times during the week. Heck, a trip anywhere—even the neighborhood park—will do the trick if you’ve been bitten by the boo-hoo bug.
The key is lots of practice, lots of noticing, lots of presence and awareness. Try it for 30 days and if it doesn’t help with the Sunday evening blues, let me know and I’ll happily refund your money. Seriously, make a commitment to try.
Also, let me know your successes. Better yet, take a picture of what you observe, then email the picture to me along with a few sentences about how and why what you snapped affects your mindfulness. I’ll feature you in a follow-up post.
Let’s celebrate mindfulness on this Monday!
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Let’s start with examples of what is hopeful and good about Sunday, March 20, 2011.
Today is the first day of Spring. Here in north Texas, shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops came out of the closet six weeks ago. Still, when the calendar announces that winter has passed and spring has sprung, we’re grateful for solid confirmation that we’re safe to move about outdoors.
Last night’s Super Moon–the first seen in nearly 20 years–lit up the eastern sky and cast amazing beams of light across Lake Carolyn. The dogs,
while unimpressed with a 30% brighter path, did seem to appreciate the evening breeze during their long walk along the lake shore. So did their humans.
Sunday morning healthy breakfast of ham and Laughing Cow cheese on a Wolferman’s sourdough English muffin with a side of grapes. My body appreciates conscious eating while my mind is grateful for the clarity to crave positive spiritual, mental, emotional and physical energy instead of toxins like negative thoughts, hurtful emotions and harmful junk food.
All these hopeful and good things–plus many, many more–fill the basement of my being. I store them, stacking and labeling them just as Mama taught me, for ready access when urgently needed.
God knows there is plenty of urgent need these days.
Images of the aftermath of Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plants tug at our heartstrings. Do you feel like I do–powerless and even trivial? Have you had the thought, “How can prayer possibly be enough?” I wonder how many people are like me and look at the photographs of the Japanese, such noble people half a world away, and guiltily count their blessings?
Ugliness and hatred in the Middle East. Democracy is quite a double-edged sword, isn’t it? We ask ourselves why the cost of freedom carries such a high price tag. We wonder why we must kill and be killed in the name of peace. With our constant news sources, will there ever be a time when we tune in news and not hear about car bombs, suicide bombers and the ever-present and all-too-often faceless casualties?
In the U.S., spiking gas prices, growing homelessness and job searches that last for years. We watch as entire communities struggle with real life issues and their significant trickle-down effects. What are we to do? What happened to the good old American Dream?
And yet, like the Japanese and the good people of the Middle East, we soldier on. We cannot escape life’s realities. To do so would cast us into a Stephen King-like bubble of falseness.
I believe that even in the most dire situations, we can foster incremental slivers of hope and by doing so, learn how to bring balance to the dark corners of our lives. The world’s history records many examples of strong-willed, power-filled people.
Perhaps you are one of those people, one whose greatest desire is to conquer present circumstances. I promise you that each of us has the spark of divinity necessary to bring about such extraordinary change.
The first step is choosing to believe your tomorrow can be different than your today. In that moment of choice, you’ll find your first Super Moon beam of hope.
And if tomorrow you focus a little bit more on your new-found hope, and a little bit more the day after that, you’ll soon have a Super Moon rising to seemingly inconceivable heights. Just think what that 30% increased illumination could light–and how much further the circle of darkness will fade.
The choice of hope is yours. My hope is that each of you reaches for a moon beam. Let me know how your journey transforms.
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Engaging in electronic media provides an open road of insights, opinions and opportunities to connect with both like-minded and completely diverse travelers.
You get to choose your direction, your pace, how much ground you’d like to cover during a certain travel period and in what manner you abide by the journey’s signposts.
Lately, I’ve been flying down the road faster than I would like and consequently I’ve been missing some signs. Fatigue and other health concerns crop up. Not taking breaks to nourish myself results in mistakes that need correcting. Without time-outs, my mind can’t rest and I become grumpy, gritchy and snarly.
I wonder if anyone can relate.
Meandering Off-Road
Fortunately, I’ve learned that side-trips are a necessary element of the journey. These jaunts, which in my case, are a few hours of perusing my favorite stimulating blogs, catching up on my personal writing and reading articles and books rich in mental upliftment, are my lifesavers because they force me to slow down. Moving slower means I’m more likely to see the signs meant for me.
If I’m lucky, as I have been recently, I’ll see a sign as a result of a blog entry, RSS feed or hard-copy article, that nicks at the edge of a personal challenge. That’s when I know I’m following Good Orderly Direction, or as an acronym, God.
Steps Toward Good Orderly Direction
Set an intention. Regular readers know that with the start of the new year, I set an intention to take better care of my body and to listen to the messages it sends. Acknowledging that intention automatically set me on a path where I will eventually arrive at a more healthy goal. But as is often the case, the path is a little rocky.
I’m experiencing neck and back pain that is interfering with my ability to comfortably do some day-to-day tasks. The neck stuff–arthritis and bulging discs–is causing periodic debilitating headaches. On those days, I don’t function well and I certainly don’t care about my steps to Good Orderly Direction.
But I did set that health intention and I am NOT a quitter, so . . .
Use pain to activate motion and motivate action. It’s true that pain is a great motivator. If you’re like me, though, sometimes the thought of taking action causes more pain! Loopholes and workarounds are far too common in my life; I can be the queen of “yeah-but’s” and delude myself into thinking that a little bit of action is good enough. I’ve learned though, that settling for “good enough” can come back to haunt me.
An intention to take action must be accompanied by a secondary action to change the thinking or behavior causing the pain and then MOVE. An action in motion serves two purposes: it keeps the body more fluid and limber and it also acts as a forward-motion propellant toward your intention.
Stay in-step and focus on the intention. Yes, it’s possible to do both. You can concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and be present to each step while keeping your eye on the prize.
On March 1, I embarked on a 21-day trip to crave food less and crave God more, courtesy of Lysa TerKeurst’s “Made to Crave” teaching/action plan for losing weight. (for more information, go to www.MadetoCrave.org). Right away I realized that trying to not crave my comfort junk food while being in pain didn’t work so well. I started to give up.
And then I remembered my intention to treat my body to better health. That’s my prize and it’s okay to have missteps on the way toward that prize. A few. So long as my missteps don’t through me completely off-track.
Step-by-step, I move in a Good Orderly Direction toward my intention.
That’s the bottom line. What are your intentions today and how is your trip going so far?
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In July of 2009, I had an epiphany. For about a month prior, I was emotionally distraught, increasingly depressed and having serious thoughts of drinking again (after 18 years of sobriety).
I struggled to wrap my arms around what could possibly be wrong with me. I had all the trappings of a good life, one others would love to emulate--great job, dream house, traveling for a living, a life mate . . . the list goes on. 
