Tag Archives: Meditation

Phone a Friend

January 7, 2015 By in Friendships Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Phone a Friend

“Have you meditated today? Maybe that would help.”

“I DID meditate, actually. Twice, Jane! I meditated twice already!”

It’s a rare day I meditate twice in a row, especially before noon, but the other day it felt necessary. I woke up in an anxious and out of sorts mood. Ironically, I’d been having a great week. I’d been writing a ton, seeing lots of friends and family, had been off from work for awhile, had run 10 miles the day before, and was blazing through my to do list.

I should be able to calm myself down now that I’m in my thirties, I kept repeating to myself- I should have it together by now- I’m a frigging adult! All my days should be happy and bright! After all, I meditate these days. I’m in the flow of love, dammit!!

But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough.

So I called Jane- my trusty co-blogger and best friend- and talked it out. I went through all the reasons I felt anxious…most of which were silly and repetitive. It actually took a lot of digging to get to the reasons- at first I was like I have no idea why I’m anxious..why the hell am I anxious???

But then things started to become clear as I talked.

Do you want me to make you feel better about any of your anxious days and actually list some of the dumb things that were upsetting me? A little schadenfreude for ya? 😉 Ok, for you I will.

  • I was upset that someone asked me to choose a new restaurant and I couldn’t think of one..not the perfect one, anyway. This made me anxious. (I told you…so ridiculous!)
  • I felt like I didn’t meditate ENOUGH…or that I couldn’t absorb my meditations. (Ahh, whyyy??)
  • I felt like there was still so much I. Had. To. Doooo. (And my lists included crazy long items like ‘find your real passion’, ‘go after new sources of income,’ ‘complete hours of online marketing classes,’ ‘discover meaning of life’, etc (okay, maybe not exactly that last one…)
  • I felt like my days off were passing me by and I kept getting sucked into Google and Facebook vortexes (ahh, this STILL upsets me now, haha..)

But when I called Jane and just talked on and on (even when it was repetitive), I started to feel better. I calmed down a bit.

Even though none of the things on my crazy to do list had gotten done while I was talking, and Jane had heard it all before, it just helped to talk.

And it helped to have someone just listening. Happily. Patiently. Again. And again. And again.

Thank you, Jane.

Do you have friends like that? Or maybe a family member? A coworker? Or even a therapist?

I try hard to be that kind of friend. Because I really think it’s everything to be heard when you’re feeling anxious..or even when you just want to talk about nothing. Even if- ESPECIALLY IF- you feel like you’re being repetitive. Or ridiculous.

There are going to be those crazy weird days, even if most days are good…even if you’re a spiritual, flow of love optimist. It’s the way of the world!

So phone a friend when it happens. Talk it out. It may actually make your day better.

  • This is probably not the phone you'd want to use, though.
    This is probably not the phone you’d want to use, though.

We All Have the Same Amount of Time

December 16, 2014 By in Grab Bag Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Dear Ones,

Haha, I only started this out by calling you guys ‘Dear Ones’ because it’s something Elizabeth Gilbert, author of ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ does in her Facebook posts all the time… And honestly, it sort of annoys me. Did it annoy you when I called you a ‘Dear One’? Or did you like it? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I actually LOVE Elizabeth Gilbert, and her Facebook posts just about always make me very happy, but the ‘Dear Ones’ thing just seems…patronizing? Old fashioned? I’m sure she doesn’t mean it that way AT ALL, because she seems like the sweetest person, but it rubs me the wrong way every time I hear it.

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BUT if I can get past that (and I can), she writes some very inspiring mini essays on Facebook. Today she wrote a thought-provoking little post about not giving up the great for the good. She was recounting how there’s always the same amount of time in a day and we usually fill that time with GOOD things- important things that we need to do- such as emails, holiday shopping, jobs, housecleaning, etc. Most of these things are, of course, necessary to life. But then she said that there are GREAT things we can be doing with our days as well, and that we have time for them too.

Now, at this point in her post, I thought Ms. Gilbert was going to go on to explain great things to be ‘travel to Indonesia,’ or ‘learn to code,’or ‘go windsurfing’ or ‘‘volunteer at soup kitchens everywhere,’ or other major activities in a similar vein. Elizabeth Gilbert’s a travel writer and an inspirational speaker after all. I expected great things to equate to major goals I guiltily feel I SHOULD GET TO or want to get around to doing ‘some day.’

But instead her GREAT THINGS were the exact opposite. They included:

  • Going for a long walk or a run alone on the beach, or in the woods, or in the city. (I LOVE doing this! This is, indeed, great!)
  • Going to Target with my best friend for absolutely no reason (YES! I love going to department stores or even grocery stores with my best friend for absolutely no reason. Great!
  • Sitting down at the end of the day with a glass of wine (I do this! I love this! Easy!)
  • Calling my mom just to say hello (So simple. So doable. Yet I don’t always do it.)

 

Sometimes just walking the street can be so happy-making!

Sometimes just walking the street can be so happy-making!

Or spending time with my friend and wandering through stores and to bus stops..

Or spending time with my best friend and wandering through stores …and from bus stop to bus stop

Elizabeth Gilbert’s personal list consisted of activities that…were easy to do. And they provoked simple, easy joy because they were basic little things. And they blew my mind because I already did them! I’d just never considered them ‘great things’ before. But they are. And I don’t recognize them.

Many days, my ‘great things’ slip through the cracks while I anxiously check off a never-ending to do list.

We all have the same amount of time in a day…and we can fit great things into our lives in such doable ways. The requirement is only to recognize those teeny moments of joy and allow ourselves to live them.

Is Love Really Everywhere?

November 21, 2014 By in Health and Wellness Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

I’ve mentioned before that I’m newly into meditation. It’s somewhat daunting and somewhat the best thing I’ve ever discovered.

Jane and I have both been following Deepak Chopra and Oprah’s 21 day free mediation challenge, but before that, I’d discovered a podcast I love called ‘Learn to Meditate.’ It’s created by the Meditation Society of Australia, and I highly recommend downloading it (it’s free!) if you like meditation or want to try it out.

I have trouble sitting still without a guided meditation to help me, and the podcasts are amazing and extremely straightforward, if not somewhat above my normal comprehension level.

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I am not actually meditating here. But I am very happy.

The first part of these meditation podcasts are always a brief overview of a topic- for example ‘desire’ or ‘fear’ or ‘letting go’ or ‘manifesting through playfulness’ or something of the sort. A speaker talks about a topic for a few minutes before the meditation starts. I love this first part almost more than I love the meditations themselves- they’re super calming and enlightening. Maybe it’s the Australian accents, but something about the opening messages put me in a calm state of mind. I usually feel the need to hear a lesson again because I really want the message to sink in.

Almost all of the meditation podcasts mention love, especially ‘unconditional love.’ I realized from the beginning and I still realize- even after listening to all 50 of the ‘Learn To Meditate’ podcasts- that I can’t exactly comprehend what unconditional love is.

I mean, I sort of get unconditional love from a dog or cat or other pet, or possibly a baby? But from a grown up human?…It’s hard to wrap my mind around that.

The podcasts recurrently talk about how love is flowing freely everywhere, and we just need to open ourselves to it. One talk mentioned that the love we give and receive from romantic relationships, friends and family is only 1% of the love that’s out there to give and receive, and 99% of love is actually everywhere else.  Yet 99% of the love most people experience in their life is from and to romantic partners, friends and family. That’s not to say that the love you get from and give to those people should be any less, but rather that there is just THAT MUCH MORE love out there. What??

How do we find this love?? Where is it? What is it? Is it divine? What is that exactly?

The podcast explained that meditation is a simple path to opening ourselves up to the love that is everywhere. But that kind of knowledge feels ungraspable…the same way that the universe expanding infinitely in all directions is ungraspable. The same way that string theory is ungraspable. If 99% of the love out there is untapped by us- love as strong as the love from and to our family, romantic partners and friends, where is this love and where does it live? Inside of us? In the sky? As a part of nature? How do we find it?

Even if I figure out the answer to any of these questions myself, I wonder if opening up to this kind of love would even be measurable, sustainable, or teachable. So I open up the floor to suggestions. Does this love baffle your mind? Do you agree that it’s out there? Have you found any of the other 99% of the love supposedly all around us? …And has it changed your life?

Restarting In Your Thirties

November 12, 2014 By in Career, Health and Wellness Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Has your computer ever stopped working? Perhaps it completely froze up after you tried to download something, or the timer kept spinning when you attempted to install a new operating system? Were there times when you couldn’t fix the problem? Did you have the urge to take the whole beautiful machine and just throw it on the floor?

Last week I was working at an event in New Orleans where all technology kept breaking down. We had an Apple TV, various iPads, spotty wifi, scanners, lots of sound equipment, HDMI cables, bluetooth, and more all used in our multiple presentations throughout the day. Various times, after troubleshooting a problem for awhile ourselves, we’d break down and have a tech person come over and look at things. More often than not, the solution ended up being:

1. Hold down button to force close device.

2. Count to ten.

3. Push button again to turn on device.

That was it. Then it would be smooth sailing once again. I’d say about 70% of the time, that was all it took. After catching on to this deceptively simple trick, I was troubleshooting issues like a pro, and we had a lot less need for tech support. Strangely enough, people kept commenting on how tech savvy I was, even when I explained the solution to them. 70% of the time, it’s such a simple answer!!

When I got back to New York after the event two days ago, I was exhausted. However, I went to bed really late and didn’t get enough sleep, so I was even more tired yesterday. Still, I put some major items on my to do list for the day. Since I finally had a day off, I was going to attack the list, which included ‘write 3 articles, meditate, switch summer/winter clothes, clean out closet, go for 7 mile run, cook lunches for the week, unpack suitcases and do laundry, clean out email inbox, return all emails. These items seemed pretty basic to me, and I was sure I could get them done in a day. But instead of doing any of them, I forced myself out of bed and wandered my apartment like a maniac, sitting down to meditate and then getting up immediately. I turning on the stove and then turned it off. Sat down, got up, opened the laptop, closed it again. Turned on the shower faucet, turned it off. I couldn’t concentrate. I felt jittery and anxious. An hour or two went by and nothing got accomplished. I berated myself for wasting precious time and made myself even more anxious.

Then I remembered all the ‘broken’ technology this weekend. I felt broken.

And then I thought about my solution. It had worked 70% of the time before: Turn it off. Wait. Turn it back on.

I scrapped my to do list. I lay in bed. I stared at the wall.

Then I opened to a blank page and wrote:

1. Shower

2. Meditate

3. Take care of self.

4. Enjoy day.

I stared at the paper. “I can do this.” It was actually still difficult. I found it hard to move, but eventually I dragged myself into the shower.

With that simple action, I started to move forward, and afterwards I turned on my meditation music and stayed seated. When I finished, I stared at the ceiling again for awhile. Then I watched a show on Netflix. Then I went and met a friend for dinner. I listened to podcasts on the subway. My shoulders slowly unclenched. Then I slept for almost 12 hours last night… I must’ve been pretty tired.

Today I feel slightly better than yesterday, although I’m still prioritizing a careful need for rest. And for time.

Sometimes solutions are as simple as turning off and turning back on again. Meanwhile, let yourself enjoy the off moments in between. Sometimes you just need to restart. Try it for yourself- it seems to work 70 percent of the time.

 

 

The Day After the Best Day Ever

October 29, 2014 By in Grab Bag Tags: , , Leave a comment

There was a wedding in Canada I went to last summer that basically went on for a week. It felt like every day leading up to the “big day” was a celebration. The bride and groom planned food tours around Montreal, different city walks during the day, and all sorts of expeditions on the days before the wedding.

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Neat buildings seen from a boat ride around the Montreal harbor.

The wedding day itself was amazingly fun, creative and beautiful. It was one of the most enjoyable weddings I’d ever been to. And then the week continued on.

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We tried all different flavors of delicious Canadian poutine! Woohoo!

The afternoon after the wedding a bunch of the wedding party and a few friends all met up again to have lunch and get some poutine (which is a delicious Canadian french fry dish where fries are mixed with cheese and gravy, creating pure happiness.) While we ate, I asked the bride how she was feeling. She replied in an only half-joking bittersweet tone: “It was the best day ever… I want to do it again!! I wish I could get married every day…I can’t believe it’s over!!”

As we wandered around one of Montreal’s parks with our cheesy gravy-covered fries, I thought about how her long anticipated big day had come and gone. The bride’s “best day ever” was now yesterday.

The day after the best day ever always feels like a gamble; Even if it’s pretty good, it’s worrisome that the happy feelings will subside. There’s this residue of greatness now gone that hangs in the air. It’s so hard to hold on to that best day- when it occurs, the urge arises to grab it, but it always slips away.

Sometimes a yearning for ‘yesterday’ will leave me feeling unsatisfied and melancholy; And what’s funny is that even though this ‘day after the best day’ will happen every time, I always struggle against it. I wonder when and if another ‘best’ day will come again…and I wait. And I remember.

But then, in certain moments when things are calm, I think of all the other days and what they might mean. I wonder about them- there are so many more days stretching before me than there are those special, momentous ‘best days ever.’ Will they mean anything in my life? Are they only here to be squandered?

And in my clearest seconds, sometimes during a run at dusk or mid-meditation or on a long bus ride home, I feel a spark of contentment, a flicker of gratitude, a flash of clarity.What if today- and all those ‘other days’ and ‘other moments’ – are equally as great as the best days? Sometimes the clear feeling is as subtle as a touch of wind, and is gone as fast as it came. For the moments in its wake, I’m left confused, struggling to grasp the insight and bring it back to me. But as of late, my goal has been to embrace the confusion and just let it go.

What if the best day ever wasn’t yesterday or won’t even be tomorrow, but is actually right now?