I love being in control. No, not the power trippy kind, but the sense of control over myself and my emotions and behaviors. As you know life has its crazy moments, such as a job change like mine at the beginning of the summer, along with all of the grad parties, weddings, birthday celebrations, the random unplanned things that come up, and just your normal everyday life. My list could go on and on. For me, and I’m sure some of you can relate, when there is a lot of craziness, my brain gets crazy (I imagine it looks like a tangled mess of electrical wires buzzing and sparking). When that happens I feel like I lose my personal control, my sense of self that is naturally cool, calm, and collected. When I finally realize that my brain is about to start an electrical fire, I like to take on a challenge of some sort, to prove to myself that I still have control. I have a friend that willingly embarks on these challenges with me, which is great because it helps us keep each other accountable.
For the month of July we took on a challenge to, wait for it… spend time on ourselves and calming our minds. The challenge is to see how many days of the month we can spend at least 15 minutes focusing on one point of interest, staying in the moment, and reflecting on it. There are six major pieces to our personal wellness puzzle. One of those pieces is spiritual wellness; something that I have never personally dove into as a challenge. Spiritual wellness can be defined as the ability to find peace and harmony within our lives, developing congruency between values and actions, creating awareness of life as a journey, personal tolerance, and integrity.
I have to be honest; carving out even 15 minutes is really hard for me. Free time for me is a rare entity. So to make this work I have given up spending time on things that don’t match my personal values, like if my toddler’s toy emergency vehicles are not put in their distinct spot arranged by size and type, I will be ok! Slowly but surely, I’m finding that refreshing sense of control sneak back into my being. It feels really good!
Here are a few things that you could try if you want to practice more time for reflection.
- Yoga
- Keep a Gratitude Journal
- Meditation or Meditation 2.0. You can also check out what Coach Megan said about Meditation in a blog post earlier this year
- Breathing Exercises
- Listen to music that comforts you; immerse yourself in it, where you are thinking about nothing but the rhythm, melody and harmonies.
- Read inspirational quotes or versus and reflect on them.