Elegant Environmentalist: Mindfulness

My Yoga Journal

I've been keeping a daily journal for 3 years now. I'm now on my third copy of this one from Daily Greatness as I love it so much!

The journal starts with a series of questions to ask yourself and sections to fill in to find out your overarching goals for how you want to live your life and what is really important to you. I found it really helpful to sit down for a therapeutic hour and go through this at the start and it really does help focus your mind. Each time I start a new copy I still repeat the exercise as as people grow up things like this can change with time and I find it helpful to check in and see if my path is still working for me.

The journal then is divided into 4 sections of 90 days. Each 90 days you set goals that you want to achieve over this time, that can be as big or as small as you want. You also decide smaller steps and things you can do to help you as with all goals, breaking them down to smaller chunks makes them much more manageable.

Each week you then have an opportunity to set goals just for the week ahead and plan your week. I really like doing this on a Sunday as it helps me to see where my week is heading. You also take the time to review the week thats just gone in detail.

The daily pages contain quite a bit of information! These allow you to break your day down into hour long blocks. They also have a list of questions for you to answer including what you are grateful for that day, if there was anything you are proud of, how you are feeling and if there was anything you would have done differently. Part of my bedtime routine is now taking 5 minutes to work through these questions, to evaluate my day and find something I am grateful for, even if it is only as simple as a good cup of tea! I find this has made me much more positive and has helped me to be more realistic when things have not gone quite according to plan. It also helps me keep my depression in check as the regular questions on how I'm feeling force me to evaluate this.

It also has space to record your daily yoga and meditation practice and space to dream, reflect or get creative!

I find this is such a simple but effective tool to help me wind down at night, assess my goals and help me to achieve them and as a tool to help monitor my feelings and nip any bouts of depression in the bud before they really take hold.

You can get your own Yoga Journal from the Daily Greatness website here.

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, by Jaqz

In Mindfulness,

Failure and Mistakes

Failure and mistakes. The one thing in life nobody wants to ever admit to. It's perhaps the hardest thing to first of all realise and accept something has gone as far as it could do or not as well as it should and then deal with the feelings that come with this like I should have tried harder.

Every time something doesn't go well, don't waste time dwelling on it. When you descend into this dark and dangerous place full of blame (usually very hurtful and negative aimed at yourself) you will find it harder and harder to get out the deeper in you get. Think, the last time something didn't work out, what did you think? I bet it was something along the lines of "you're so stupid, why couldn't you have done this? You should've done that! You are rubbish at your job and now everyone knows it!" and if you aren't careful this can quickly spiral out of control and be so far removed from the actual situation you are in you can barely see it anymore.

The first thing to remember is nothing is ever as bad as you think it is. I can guarantee you that if you think the world is ending, it isn't. Our brains are hardwired to anticipate the worst case so we are prepared but our version of worst case is usually never accurate and more often than not completely far fetched!

You may not think it, but there will be people prepared to help you fix it (if it needs fixing) and to help you so if possible, this doesn't happen again. You only have to ask.

One way to help you visualise your way out is to think you are the water in a river. The water hits a rock and it doesn't just give up. It finds another way. Even the tiniest crack, the smallest chance it has it takes and it pushes on, until that small crack erodes and becomes a massive channel making it easier and easier all the time for it to pass.

If you ever come up against a rock, never descend into feelings of (as Samantha Jones says in Sex and the City) "shoulda, woulda, coulda". I even find it helpful when I catch myself going down this path to catch myself doing it and say "shoulda, woulda, coulda" so I can recognise where my head is going and remind myself that I shouldn't be going there.

All failures can teach us a lesson. The trick is to stop the hurtful negative talk, stop the endless "shoulda, woulda, coulda" and honestly and from a place of love and acceptance for whats just happened look forward and see if there is anything you can do to make the situation ok again (if you can). Once that's done, look for the exact lesson and see if there is anything you could do to stop it happening again. Sometimes, theres nothing you could have done. Usually theres something productive, for example I can do a checklist so this isn't missed off again.

Remember though, you will get through this, just like you got through everything else you've come up against!

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, by Jaqz

In Mindfulness,

New Year, Not New Me

0Comments

, by Jaqz

In Mindfulness,

Flow Mindfulness Workbook

I recently purchased the Flow Mindfulness Workbook and it's really helped me learn how to be a bit calmer and quieten my mind down. Flow is a magazine that I really love and it always comes with some sort of paper "goodies" as extras. This one came with a free mini journal, poster, precious moments keepsake cards, post-it notes and a bookmark.

Its full of articles on aspects of mindfulness and how writers for the magazine learnt to become more mindful and lessons they have learnt.

My favourite thing in it is the three minute breathing space. Its really quick and simple to do and as it's only three minutes, you really can do it anywhere when you just need that bit of time out and to calm down. I find that taking a few minutes out if somethings got a bit much really helps me get enough distance to start to see things in a different light and allows me distance I need to not follow my brain down whatever (usually batshit crazy and completely OTT) path it wants to go down in response to a situation.

Heres what you do:-

1. Imagine an hourglass. You are at the top of this and scan your body and thoughts to have an awareness of how you think and feel right now. Are there any parts of you that are holding tension? What are you thinking about? Don't go into the thoughts, just acknowledge that the thought it there and that't it.

2. You are now going down to the thinnest part of your hourglass. Breathe in deeply and feel how the breath feels throughout your whole body. Feel your chest expand upwards an outwards and your shoulders rise and then fall with each breath in and out. If you like, direct the breath to any parts you saw tension when you did your body scan before.

3. Once you have taken a few deep breaths, travel down to the bottom of the hourglass and widen out your awareness to the environment around you. Feel your clothes on your skin, the place you are sat and hear the sounds around you. When you are ready open your eyes and carry on with your day.