Do you sometimes feel you're rushing about sorting out one child, encouraging another, answering an email from work, keeping your business in front of customers, cooking meals and trying to be a good friend, good mother, good wife or partner and a good colleague. It can get too much and we teeter on the verge of a meltdown quite a bit of the time.....and breathe!
You can't move without reading something about mindfulness and indeed this is a brilliant way to carve out some quality peace and quiet. The easiest way is probably to download the app Headspace on your phone and then whenever you can, take a 10 or 15 minute meditation. I do it in the car waiting for my son to come back from a rugby match or while the water's boiling for the pasta, early morning if I've woken before the alarm or just when I think it would be nice to just grab some 'me-time'.
Andy the speaker on the app, has a lovely gentle voice and totally understands how we can get distracted by difficult thoughts, sad thoughts, angry thoughts, things we suddenly realise we 'must' do right now. But he encourages us to be mindful. Notice the thought and then come back to the breathing and to the meditation. There's nothing that can't wait 15 minutes. I find that taking this break refreshes me, recharges me and quietens my thoughts. Those things that were there before the meditation seem much easier to manage afterwards. When we respond in the moment with all the initial emotion of the moment, we don't necessarily make the best choices. Then, if you're anything like me, you end up having to apologise for blaming the wrong child, shouting, being grumpy or whatever it may be. What if you could just let the thought float by like a cloud or a bus that's not going your way. My Mindfulness teacher Gayle Creasey describes these thoughts as like guests coming to your door. Will you let in those guests who will upset you or annoy you? Or will you let them go on their way?
You can't move without reading something about mindfulness and indeed this is a brilliant way to carve out some quality peace and quiet. The easiest way is probably to download the app Headspace on your phone and then whenever you can, take a 10 or 15 minute meditation. I do it in the car waiting for my son to come back from a rugby match or while the water's boiling for the pasta, early morning if I've woken before the alarm or just when I think it would be nice to just grab some 'me-time'.
Andy the speaker on the app, has a lovely gentle voice and totally understands how we can get distracted by difficult thoughts, sad thoughts, angry thoughts, things we suddenly realise we 'must' do right now. But he encourages us to be mindful. Notice the thought and then come back to the breathing and to the meditation. There's nothing that can't wait 15 minutes. I find that taking this break refreshes me, recharges me and quietens my thoughts. Those things that were there before the meditation seem much easier to manage afterwards. When we respond in the moment with all the initial emotion of the moment, we don't necessarily make the best choices. Then, if you're anything like me, you end up having to apologise for blaming the wrong child, shouting, being grumpy or whatever it may be. What if you could just let the thought float by like a cloud or a bus that's not going your way. My Mindfulness teacher Gayle Creasey describes these thoughts as like guests coming to your door. Will you let in those guests who will upset you or annoy you? Or will you let them go on their way?
Whilst using Headspace to get some control in your life is what I'd recommend, in addition I also use a break state exercise. Let me explain what this is and you can teach it to your children because there may be times at school when they can't just sit and do a meditation (yes there is a section on the app that is specifically for kids).
Your state is basically how you feel right now. It's your state of mind, whether that is sad, unmotivated, lonely, feeling taken for granted or hopefully happy and full of energy. It's that feeling you have in the moment, right now as you read this. Just ask yourself, 'how do I feel right now?'. We are calibrating or checking in with ourselves. Maybe give yourself a score out of 10 for how positive you feel. Think about what needs to happen for this score to increase. Now think about what can happen that makes it go down. This just checks your score is what you feel in the present moment.
Your state is basically how you feel right now. It's your state of mind, whether that is sad, unmotivated, lonely, feeling taken for granted or hopefully happy and full of energy. It's that feeling you have in the moment, right now as you read this. Just ask yourself, 'how do I feel right now?'. We are calibrating or checking in with ourselves. Maybe give yourself a score out of 10 for how positive you feel. Think about what needs to happen for this score to increase. Now think about what can happen that makes it go down. This just checks your score is what you feel in the present moment.
Now we need to break state. What we're going to do is change the state we're in (assuming you want to of course!) and choose a better one. There are lots of ways of doing this. One is by having a really good belly laugh because that uses all the muscles in your body, increases the oxygen in your blood and re-energises you. So you can either imagine something hilariously funny or actually laugh at something by putting on a comedy show, download some jokes or remember something funny that happened recently but play it up in your mind so it's even funnier than it was at the time.
Another thing you can do is to run about, do some exercise, run for the train (even if you have plenty of time) skip, jump and move fast. Again this does the same thing as laughing, it recharges the oxygen in your system and puts you in a different state. You can't cry and run, I've tried it and I can assure you, you can't!
Breaking state is all about the breath, as is mindfulness so you can also break state by sittign quietly and breathing deeply feeling the breath coming in and out and counting it. That way you're focusing on the breath not your thoughts.
So next time you get the feeling that you're being overwhelmed with your thoughts and you want to take back control, break state.
Another thing you can do is to run about, do some exercise, run for the train (even if you have plenty of time) skip, jump and move fast. Again this does the same thing as laughing, it recharges the oxygen in your system and puts you in a different state. You can't cry and run, I've tried it and I can assure you, you can't!
Breaking state is all about the breath, as is mindfulness so you can also break state by sittign quietly and breathing deeply feeling the breath coming in and out and counting it. That way you're focusing on the breath not your thoughts.
So next time you get the feeling that you're being overwhelmed with your thoughts and you want to take back control, break state.
RSS Feed 
