Mindfulness

[PartTimeBrewer]

              I am starting a new thread here mainly for purposes of my own catharsis. It is my intention, at least at this point, to make regular contributions. Of course, if anyone else has anything to add, they are more than welcome. If you have any input, please contribute.

              Over a year ago I decided to deal head-on with my self-diagnosed adult attention disorder, (ADD). The inability to stay focused was becoming too stressful. I found myself sitting around watching the clock tick, yet I couldn’t keep “on task” with any project I started. Nothing was getting done and just starting something was becoming depressing.

              The smart thing to do was probably to get professional help, so instead I decided to try to heal myself, at least as a first try. Cognitive therapy and pharmaceuticals (UGH) might be the approved way to go but I decided to try meditation first.

              18 months and countless self-help books later, I still can’t bring myself to a regular, formal meditation program. But, along the way, I discovered informal mindfulness. Yes, I know it is the “Fad” right now. It is hard to navigate modern social trends without “tripping over” somebody extolling the benefits of mindfulness.

              Let me add my voice to the chorus.

[PartTimeBrewer]

Happiness isn’t the absence of problems, but the ability to deal with them. Find perspective. Mindset is everything. Focus on what you have, instead of what you have lost. Because it’s not what the world takes away from you that counts; it’s what you do with what you have left."  ~  Marc & Angel Chernoff

[Jozee]

Yes.

[PartTimeBrewer]

"If we put off our happiness until all our reasons to suffer are gone, we’ll never have a chance to be happy. If we don’t feed ourselves with moments of happiness, we’ll have no energy to make the world better."  Tim Desmond

[Jozee]

So true.

[PartTimeBrewer]

"I recognized that the fear I was feeling was rooted in thoughts about all of the ways the situation could go horribly wrong. Although my fear might have been perfectly rational, it was also profoundly unhelpful."  ~  Tim Desmond

[PartTimeBrewer]

"We are stuck in patterns of grasping and fixating, which cause the same thoughts and reactions to occur again and again and again. In this way we project our world." ~ Pema Chodron

[PartTimeBrewer]

"We seem to be emotionally reactive around things like anger, shame, jealousy, and envy—it’s like they happen to us. The truth is we choose these reactions, and with practice and insight we can make entirely different choices when circumstances arise." —Jun Po Roshi

[PartTimeBrewer]

“Feel your feelings. They won’t harm you, they can just feel very uncomfortable in your body. When we can slowly let them in, they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. To feel them is to start healing them.” ~ Unknown

[PartTimeBrewer]

it sometimes seems that real harm is being done by negative feelings, but on closer inspection, the harm is being done by our desparate attempts to deny the feelings.

[PartTimeBrewer]

“If you’re brave enough to explore your anger, you can map it. When you’ve mapped it, you can navigate your way out of it. “ ~ Thu Zaw

[PartTimeBrewer]

It seems that this can apply equally to other disturbing mind states as well as anger. In my case it is the the vast land of Melancholia that needs to be mapped.

[PartTimeBrewer]

"In the small hours, things tend to look gloomy. What you are telling yourself is probably untrue."  ~  Everyday Mindfulness