A Mindful New Year

Happy New Year!

As you can tell, I took a brief vacation from writing on this blog.  It was a break I desperately needed.  Over the last few months, I realized that my stress levels were at an all-time high, for several different reasons, and while I find writing (especially here on my blog), extremely therapeutic, I also was starting to feel a bit "burned out" by all of the things I "have to" do in my life.  I needed some time to pare things down to a minimum so that I could recharge my depleting battery, and so that I could spend as much time with my boy as possible. 

One of the things that I realized over this holiday vacation is that I still have so much past mental and emotional conditioning that I need to undo, and I am now more committed than ever to being present and mindful in all that I do, but especially as I parent Theo, so that I am not bringing old wounds to the way in which I interact with my boy and my life.  Sometimes we think patience with our children is what matters most, when really it is having patience with ourselves that goes even further.   Giving myself the emotional nurturing I may not have gotten as a child will help me to see how best to provide that to Theo.  Letting go of some of the outdated and non-useful ways in which I react to things will give me the inner patience I need to stop reacting, and to actually start meeting the needs of the situation.  I know I won't always be able to be mindful, that sometimes being preoccupied and harried and stressed will take over, and that having full presence of mind will be absent at times.  I'm not striving for perfection.  What I am striving for is more mindfulness. more presence, more peace.  I am striving for more control over how I interact with my life and those in it.  I'd say that's a pretty good way to start a new year!

If you can do one thing for yourselves as a New Year's resolution, perhaps you can look at the ways in which not being fully present is allowing your "automatic pilot" to bring unhappiness into your life.  If you are mindful of being present - there, in the moment, and not with your problems, or stressors, or preoccupations - then you can continually bring what is needed to the moment, instead of merely reacting.  Reactions rarely, if ever, bring about new solutions, because often they stem from what happened last time.  You are not actually there, dealing with what is, from a place that is present.  I will be doing my best to focus on being fully present, and bringing myself back to the moment in which I find myself if my mind and/or emotions begin to wander.  I am still learning this process.  I may always be learning it.  Mastering presence may take a lifetime.  I am committed to keep learning, though. Why don't we learn together?