{ staying present } { staying mindful }

It is March 17th, 2020.

& welcome to your morning announcements.

For reading this in the future,

or those living under a rock,

a virus that looks like a suction ball

{ covid19 }

is spreading across the world.

In other absolutely unrelated news,

in the last week I'd been reading up on mindfulness

as part of a presentation I was doing about anxiety.

Mindfulness

Staying present
Observing the moment by moment experience
Being non-judgmental; staying curious

Last week, when I presented the information,

it was just information.

It was just sharing the how-to from

a very objective pov

and I didn't really question about how

I was practicing mindfulness in my own life

because to me, it came easy,

it was something I'd been practicing.

Here is what I shared:

Why mindfulness?

If you're like me, you have an internal monologue, and that internal monologue is a professional Time Traveler
to the past: ruminating thoughts about how I said something, how I did something, regretting something I did in the past
to the future: worrying about the stuff I have to do in the future, whether I'm prepared enough for the future, thinking about all the steps that have to be done
& this internal monologue rarely sits there and thinks about the now, except for very fleeting moments (i.e., wow I'm hungry)
We think about the past to help us learn lessons, so it's a useful thing to do in moderation, but if we do it too much, we're stealing from our experiences now, and are we truly then using what we learned and applying them now? Or are we forever regretting the moment that JUST passed us by?
We think about the future to help us prepare, so again, useful to help us live our lives functionally, but if we do it too much, we're so focussed on preparing for the future that when it arrives, are we even enjoying it or are we already time travelling to the NEW future for MORE planning?
The idea of mindfulness is to ensure that the here & now get equal spotlight in your day, so you get to live & experience the now too!

It has a bunch of different forms,

you've probably heard of a few...

Mindfulness in activities

goal: focus on all aspects of your experience of DOING the activity and noticing each piece of sensory information coming into your body
mindful eating: paying attention to every aspect of eating -- tasting the flavour, feeling the crunch and texture, smelling the smell, seeing the colours vs. eating your meal while watching a tv show
mindful walking: really taking in the sights (trees, clouds, mud, flowers, birds, etc.), the smells (grass, mud, flowers), feelings (your feet against the ground, the breeze on your skin), sounds (chirping, your footsteps, light chatter).
It can literally be any activity, and my most recent wildly mindful activity is mindful dishwashing, which is wild because I HATE washing dishes. But now it's become this meditative thing I do because it's oddly ... soothing? If you put your entire attention towards something and its not constantly being drawn away to something else?

Mindfulness breathing

goal: focussing on the sensory aspects of your breathing
literally exactly like above, except you're focussing on the sensory aspects of breathing
The feeling of air filling your lungs, your stomach and core expanding, your chest falling as you breathe out; the feeling of the chair against your body, your feet against the ground, etc.

Mindfulness meditation for thoughts

goal: allow thoughts to come and go in your mind, without judgment, let your internal monologue play but don't react to it, be non-judgmental, curious about the thoughts as they come by
For me, I visualize each thought popping out as a thought bubble, being able to see the thought, and slowly letting it go.
You might have thoughts like "I'm hungry", "I'm cold", "I should be doing homework"; you might even have thoughts like "I suck at this", "this is dumb", "I am bad at doing this". It's ok. Your brain just THINKS thoughts all the time and it'll continue popping up those notifications. Swipe those notifications away like you do promotional emails that you deleted without reading.
If you love visualizing stuff I have two versions of this that are visually based:
leaves on a stream: envision placing each thought on a leaf that is slowly flowing down the stream ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1C8hwj5LXw&t=17s
sushi train metaphor: envision placing each thought on a plate like a piece of sushi on a conveyor belt ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzUoXJVI0wo

It was all easy peasy until this 24/7 news cycle about COVID19 updates started happening

Every day there's more news about shutdowns,

and questions about why we haven't done more,

or what we SHOULD be doing,

or what we SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING.

Mindfulness is REALLY REALLY hard to practice during this time

And I found myself easily forgoing that

saying to myself that I need to

do the anxious scroll to get the latest and most important updates

about this virus,

so I can be #prepared.

It probably only took half a day before I felt overwhelmed

Unable to cope with the hourly emails from

ALL THE COMPANIES I have EVER encountered in my life

updating us on how they are dealing with this pandemic.

I spent all of Monday updating and updating and updating and updating, until

I stopped.

This is your permission to unsubscribe from news updates.

SPECIFICALLY, this is your permission and my permission

to unsubscribe from CONTINUOUS STREAM of updates where

information is thrown at you and you're constantly

constantly making decisions.

Stop that.

Instead, set aside intentional time every day

to grab information that you need.

Set boundaries with people who might be sharing this info with you.

Let them know what those boundaries are.

(no insensitive memes? no sad news after 10pm or before 6am so I can go the fuck to sleep and not have nightmares? don't send me screenshots of dumb and ignorant replies I only want the news info? only send me info that has an actionable step I can do? etc.)

This is really first and foremost a reminder to me,

to not let this bleed into my entire day,

so I can compartmentalize and focus on living.

It does kind of feel wild, carrying on and "living in the present", while the world is in panic

Key disclaimer, I am not ignoring the recommendations

and pretending the pandemic doesn't exist.

I am still:

exercising social distancing to flatten the curve
maintaining daily activities and staying active
staying updated

But all in a more intentional way.

Remember when this was my goal of the year?

it's still word of the year,

pandemic or not

I'm sticking to it y'all

But I'm doing a lot more

I don't need to commute anymore

A lot of meetings got cancelled

So I have so much freedom (!)

with my time

And here's what I've done so far:

mindfully wash them dishes, we are on day 3 of 0 leftoever dishes each night
I have mindfully eaten 5 apples, ranging from a rating of 2/10 to 3.5/10. one friend asked me to just stop eating apples. we will see.
I've discovered free audiobooks from the library, and have listened to Spark Joy by Marie Kondo almost in entirety
And simultaneously deep cleaned my house

And yes

the news still scares me

as more stringent measures are placed into action.

Thoughts that come to mind are usually:

Did I prep enough for this social distancing and self-isolation? #past
Was I careful enough when I met with clients who were sick, or with lab members who showed up to lab, ill? #past
What will I do when I run out of food in 2 weeks, how will I get food? #future
What will I happen if I get ill, I live alone? #future