The Quest to Mindfully Engage with the Moment

I wish I had these mindfulness skills when I divorced. This is the start of my recent piece about mindfulness, being present in the moment and all things letting go...

Learning to let go of each moment in order to be fully present in this moment is key to mindfulness.

 Being present in the moment is a mindfulness essential. Unless you've willfully ignored 15 years of health and wellness articles, you know that research shows that mindfulness meditation improves health and wellbeing in a variety of ways (e.g., it reduces anxiety, depression and blood pressure). The jury is in: Cultivating mindfulness makes a lot of sense.

To be in this moment, you must release all those moments that came before. This idea of letting go of each moment before the present moment, which, by the way, is now past, is one of those persnickety meditation conundrums.

How do you let go of those moments? While it's easy to let go of a neutral moment, perhaps a thought about what you want to have for dinner, you must also let go of positive moments. That's not to say that you should not savor your successes—you absolutely must. But not when you're trying to focus on the present. Wins are a lot easier to release.

The most challenging to release are those moments with a negative tone. Maybe it's a memory of why you chose one path instead of another, or something as small as why you said one thing instead of another. Our mistakes, missteps and other misses tend to be very sticky. We seem to have a paradoxical need to hang onto them.

Continue reading here... 

 

12 Coping Skills You've Discovered In The Last Year That Can Sustain You For Life

Divorce is its own kind of trauma. Any new coping skills you've picked up to help you cope with COVID will also be helpful in dealing with your personal crisis. This is the start of a piece I wrote about the skills you may have discovered...

There is considerable research in psychology to suggest that after a trauma we can come back stronger than before. We can become more resilient. 

Tragedy can prompt the development of new coping skills.

This can be the case with the Coronavirus pandemic. The difficult times called for new habits in order to keep yourself, your family, and your mental health safe.

Have you developed any new and positive habits during Covid? You can decide to keep these new behaviors as you move through 2021 and beyond.

The virus didn't vanish on January 1^st, but we're edging closer, so deciding on your intentions post-pandemic will help you maintain those healthy routines.

Here are 12 examples of some coping skills you may have developed and should definitely keep doing.

1. You exercise and go outside more.

A combination of not having much to do and wanting to get out of the house yielded a huge crop of new walkers, runners, and cyclists.

Like the seesaw diet, it could be a situation where once things return to their new normal, you ditch your new habits. It doesn't have to be that way.

Keep reading here...