Welcome to a guest post from my good friend Jenna Green on mindfulness. You can find Jenna on instagram here. Thank you Jenna!
Mindfulness is one of those chronic illness or ‘spoonie’ superpowers that I think we don’t often realize we even possess. As humans, we are default programmed to take the easiest route. When you walk into the room, you don’t do circles around the table to get to the couch, right? No, of course not. You go straight to it.
When you’re diagnosed with a life altering illness, you start to subconsciously adjust pieces of your daily life to make things easier on yourself. For example, I just moved and I bought a new circular coffee table (because less chance of bruising when I bump into it, of course). But I also do smaller things, like combining a trip to the kitchen trash with refilling my water bottle (when I remember) to minimize how much I have to get up when I’m in pain.
I find that I’m not even usually ‘mindful’ of what I do to make things easier/better for my body/life each day, but when I tune into it, I am really surprised at how much I can adapt.
Guess what? We can adapt our mindset or internal dialogue in a mindful way too, and for me, that has been both the biggest challenge and the biggest reward of mindfulness. When we tune +into what we are saying to ourselves, without judgement or guilt, we can learn a lot. If you’re up to the challenge, I want you to write down or just list in your head, 3 things you said to yourself today that you’d like to be more mindful of and turn into kinder thoughts . Here are mine:
1- OMG why didn’t I bring the water bottle with me when I went into the kitchen, I’m ridiculous!
2- Seriously I can’t believe I forgot to write back to that text, I’m such a jerk.
3- I’m so stupid for not stretching last night now I’m paying for it.
So these aren’t the meanest things I could be saying to myself (I’ve made some great strides on working on my self-talk and self-love!), but they aren’t the nicest either. Just as Eliz and Heather said, mindfulness doesn’t come easy, it’s a practice. For me, recognizing how resilient and adaptable I am with things out of my control has helped me to recognize that I can also change the things that are within my control. Being present in my own thoughts, and correcting them with kinder ones without judgement, is where mindfulness has made the biggest positive impact for me. Here are three ways I would correct the above thoughts:
1- I wish I had remembered my water bottle, but I’ll try to be more mindful next time I get up.
2- I thought I wrote back, I’ll explain to Sarah that I made a mistake and I know she’ll understand because I’m human.
3- I didn’t prioritize stretching last night so I’m going to prioritize it now so I can get some relief.
We’ve all got a LOT of ‘ugh’ going on this year especially, so why are we adding to the negativity and being our own worst critics? Now, more than ever, I hope you’ll take a minute to be mindful of how you speak to yourself and show yourself some kindness. When in doubt, I try to talk to myself like I talk to my dog Dixie... who is always the best/cutest/sweetest/smartest girl in the world (even when she’se kind of a sassy pain in the butt!).