3 Mindful Choices for Staying Above the Fray

Our lives are so full, we are crazy busy. Overwhelm has become an accepted way of life. Most of us are juggling some combination of career, family, health, or money issues. These personal challenges are taking place in the context of our planet and the humans on it facing more challenges than ever before and can easily cause us to feel stressed or overwhelmed or just make us feel like the proverbial hamster on the wheel!

In reality, every day life here on our little blue planet can give rise to a whole range of confounding emotions—from frustration to hope, anger to disappointment. Often we respond by disconnecting and don’t allow feelings to be felt.

In the face of challenge, the good news is that we can use it to breakthrough old beliefs and automatic ways of reacting. A disturbance caused by feeling so much uncertainty can be the precursor to increased mindfulness, spiritual growth, and real transformation.

The ability to make new choices is the key to using life’s upheavals to keep us energized, on purpose and shifting the way we show up in our lives.

Shift what challenges you into breakthroughs to discover your strengths and resiliency.

3 ways to awaken to the opportunity to make new choices:

• When stress or overwhelm become your daily experience, it can sometimes be difficult to break this pattern. You may yearn for vacation time to move into balance and restore your energy but until then, you can use your awareness to make new choices in this moment to shift the challenge of everyday life into a deeper discovery of your inner resources.

New Choice: Throughout your day, take a few minutes to stop, breathe deeply. Try taking 10 mindful breaths, inhaling slowing and exhaling slowly for a count of 10. Stay focused on each of the 10 breaths. Hold your attention steady. Allow yourself to drop into your body and relax. At the end of the deep breaths, resume normal breathing, and feel the results. Allow yourself to connect with your breath and enjoy the sensation. Soon you will choose 20 breaths!

• With so many demands to keep up and show up, feelings of being out of control and anxiety can become overwhelming. You react by trying to control more, and strategize more. If you were to stop and feel the actual sensations that this hyper- activity produces in the body, you might feel how damaging and painful it is. Trying to cope by mental strategies creates imbalance. Becoming familiar with what feelings arise in the body when you are doing too much, will give you a place to better manage your choices.

New Choice: When faced with events that cause you to feel out of control, choose to feel your body rather than putting all your attention on your story about the situation. Feel the gripping, tense and uncomfortable sensations in your body, find your breath, and use it to clear the heaviness. The objective here is to ground and be fully present in your body. Do your best to not believe the story about what’s happening but continue to choose to find your center in your breath. Feel the sensations and choose to keep your attention in the moment. It really does work!

• You know how vital it is to find time for your inner practice whether it is meditation, prayer, yoga, or spending time in the quiet of nature. But you may find that you talk yourself out of the importance of these things that bring pleasure. You justify with stories that you have too much to catch up on and by placing a priority on getting things done, or you can’t overcome the thought, “What good is it anyway?”

• New Choice: Make a commitment each day to find time to do something you love or that brings you pleasure. If your practice isn’t bringing you pleasure, then allow yourself time spent doing something that does. Or even consider doing nothing, or actually resting when you’re tired. This choice is all about valuing the positive, good feelings that are available to you when you enjoy what you are doing. Choosing something you love to do, that is fun, even if it is for 30 minutes, puts you in touch with your heart, which is your most valuable source of tapping into more energy and insight.

AND…sometimes the best choice you can make is to remember that no matter what’s going on in the external, you can make an aware choice for how you respond to it.

In a world that often feels confusing and crazy, you can bring forward full-hearted expressions of joy, love, gratitude and compassion and actually shift the world you are experiencing with each one.