I’ve written about mindfulness before and some moments when I’ve observed my own thoughts without judging them. These days I often get down on myself for not spending enough time practicing mindfulness. This is the catch-22 of being well—if we don’t do our wellness activities, we put on a layer of guilt/frustration/crap that makes us feel worse than if we hadn’t even been aware of such activities in the first place. So, despite me not doing a lot of mindfulness practice these days (I’m still whole!), I’m practicing one of its principles:

Taking away the layer of guilt I feel about my own thoughts, feelings, actions & choices

Easier said than done. For. Sure. For me, this has been a very recent and active epiphany. Every situation I encounter that creates even a little bit of stress (thoughts about how I show up for others, feelings about how I performed, moments when I act passively) I pause my thoughts for just a minute. I ask myself, What part of my stress is based on my own judgments about me? Turns out, the answer is usually about 60%. 60%! So then if I take away my own judgments, every stressful situation becomes only 40% of its original stress level. This makes it much easier for me to approach such situations, figure out how I’m going to respond, do so, and move on. 

This is not a simple suggestion or idea. It’s a practice—literally several times a day—sometimes several times an hour. Sometimes you go back to the same situations you’ve already paused and reflected on and remind yourself again that the bulk of your stress is somewhat self inflicted. In a world where there’s a lot of stress than isn’t self inflicted, I think we owe it to ourselves to not make our lives any more complicated or unpleasant.

Wishing all my readers a very good (and pleasant) new year! Looking forward to cultivating more bravery and clarity with you in 2020. Cheers!