Work has been busy this week, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to write for this week’s newsletter. I looked through my notes and found a draft of a blog post from 2014 that I never finished. Whew! Happy weekend, everyone.
We’re constantly bombarded by memes that distill lengthy practices into one-sentence inspirational blurbs; people promising happiness in three easy, fail-proof steps; or someone declaring that a certain practice will make your life all unicorns and rainbows. I’m annoyed by those, because it has taken me years of dedicated practice to find and maintain inner peace, and in all my experience and experiments, I have never found a quick fix. Navigating life would be a lot easier if only we could be zapped into inner peace, right?
Well-being takes practice. A lot of practice. It’s not 15 minutes of meditation in the morning, and then the rest of the day is always super-fine. I have structured my life around my well-being practices, because when I lose my grounding, it takes a loooong time to come back to center. As with all things health-related, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I take these practices as seriously as I take my work—without these practices, I’m not going to be as effective for my clients. If I miss a few days, my mind begins spinning me away from my center. For me, that’s wandering into a danger zone where the mind can easily take over and wreak havoc.
1. Walking (or other exercise)
Walking is essential to my well-being for multiple reasons. It’s my primary form of transportation. It’s my exercise. It bubbles up the creative juices. It’s an energy equalizer: It revs me up when I’m feeling blah, and it calms me down when I’ve got too much whirling around in my mind. Walking also gives me the opportunity to notice my surroundings in detail: emerging buds in spring, changing leaves in autumn, the way the seagulls play on air currents.
When the weather becomes too cold or rainy to make walking practical, I try to get my heart rate up (in a good way) at home, through exercises or cardio. The endorphins from exercise are real and nearly always lift my mood while keeping me grounded.
2. Mindfulness
This less a practice and more a way of being. As often as possible, I bring my awareness to what I’m doing and to my surroundings. I don’t think, “Now I’m washing the dishes,” but instead, I pay attention to the sensation of hot water pouring over my hands or my arm moving the sponge. Sometimes I’ll get lost in daydreaming and then remember to come back to the breath, to feel my abdomen rise and fall.
Losing attention or focus is the human condition. Bringing attention back to our breath or what we’re doing is the practice. Every time we notice that our mind is somewhere else, and we come back to the breath, we’re strengthening our mindfulness muscle. When we can notice and become curious, we’re less likely to fly into a rage or beat ourselves up when something doesn’t go our way.
3. Meditation
I notice a significant boost in my well-being when I meditate regularly. When everything external fell away, I spent hours meditating on a waterfront bench. My favourite place to meditate is in the forest. When I walk, I’m often in a meditative state, feeling my legs rise and fall. It’s okay if you’re not always sitting on a cushion, though there are benefits to that discipline, too. I meditate outside when the weather is amenable, or on a couch in my office, or sometimes while lying in bed. What I’m getting at is: Meditate wherever you can, in whatever way you can.
Often I listen to brainwave music designed to help the brain into a meditative state (Brain Sync’s Deep Meditation), and I focus on the sounds in each ear. Occasionally I listen to a guided meditation from Calm. Less often, I just sit still and notice—sensations, thoughts, or activity.
4. Giving something
I’ve written extensively about the unexpected joy I found in developing a giving practice. I still do formal rounds of giving occasionally, but most of the time, I look for opportunities to give. Sometimes, the action is automatic—like opening a door for someone, giving another person directions, or letting someone go ahead of me. Other times, especially when circumstances are challenging, I have to make a concerted effort to look for opportunities to give something—like time, patience or attention.
I firmly believe that sharing what we have is the core of being human, and I want everyone to discover the joy that comes from meeting someone else’s need in the moment. While I give much more easily than I did, say, 20 years ago, this is still a habit I need to practice daily.
5. Gratitude and appreciation
These are two overlapping but slightly different practices. I’ve written about appreciation as a practice for emotional wellness and how gratitude rewires the brain.
For the first 40 years of my life, I was the person who always noticed what was wrong. So wrong. Hilariously wrong. To me, that was just ‘critical thinking’. What I didn’t realize was that I was being indiscriminately critical, and the constant reinforcement of negativity was making me miserable. Our brains are highly plastic, and whatever we focus on will become our default. It’s taken 12 years of daily gratitude journaling to begin to incline my mind away from relentless criticism of myself, my situation and others.
Appreciation is less weighty than gratitude, and I often play a game when I’m walking, of noticing how many things I can appreciate. A beautiful mural, an adorable dog, or a mother comforting her child all count.
The more I practice noticing what’s good (which is not the same as pushing away what I perceive as negative), the better my baseline mood. Another practice is to incorporate both gratitude and appreciation throughout the day.
Do you have any regular practices to get you out of your head and into your body and the moment? Please share in the comments.
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