My good friend Heather Tomko, over on instagram @theheatherreport, graciously shared what mindfulness means to her. And what she does to pracitce it. Thanks for sharing Heather (also check out her insta, it's so cute and full of knowledge!).
I’ve always been a planner and a control freak. A lot of times, my mind feels like it’s racing, thinking ahead to what I have going on in the next hour, the next day, the next week, the next month. I’m thinking about the outstanding things on my to-do list, the next meeting I have, the next trip that I’m going on. My mind struggles to be a place of stillness.
And then COVID hit. Suddenly, the frenetic pace of both my mind and my life basically came to a standstill. I had a lot less going on, but that didn’t mean that my mind slowed accordingly. In fact, it was largely the opposite. It felt like I was so filled with anxiety all the time, worrying about COVID and my health and what the immediate future was going to look like. My chest felt heavy with the stress (which, ironically, just made me more worried – was that a sign of anxiety, or of COVID?).
Very quickly, it became clear to me that something needed to change. It wasn’t healthy for me to continue the way that I was living, especially as it became apparent that COVID wasn’t going anywhere soon. So I began, slowly but surely, to work on changing my mindset.
Instead of spending time thinking about the coming days and weeks, I really focused on thinking about the present. While there were lots of things that I wanted to be doing but couldn’t, I chose to focus on the small things that brought me happiness each day. For me, mindfulness became a practice of gratitude. Reading a book outside on a beautiful, sunny day, making the perfect cappuccino, or snuggling in bed with my dog – I focused on the joy that each of these small moments brought me. I was present in those moments of happiness, rather than zoning out and thinking about a future (hypothetical) moment.
Mindfullness is still not something that comes easily to me – it is something that I work at, constantly. But without it, I don’t think I could have gotten through these past six (plus!) months.