3 Ways Gratitude Can Cultivate More Mindfulness in Our Lives

On my journey to greater well-being, creativity and mindfulness, I started out by recording what I was grateful for on a daily basis, thanks to the inspiration of Oprah Winfrey who talked a lot about the importance of having a gratitude practice. It helped me feel more positive and I began to feel a little less anxious. While on this path, I was invited to a dear friend’s spiritual center because she thought I would enjoy the talks because they talked about gratitude a lot. I loved it there! This led me to studying more about mindfulness, which led me to transformative experiences like going on a 5-day silent meditation retreat, starting my own wellness blog, and signing up to become a certified life coach to be able to teach and help others on this incredible journey! All sparked by focusing on gratitude.

So I wanted to share 3 ways that gratitude can lead us to live a more mindful, peaceful, and fulfilling life.

1. Taking a few minutes to remember what we’re grateful for slows us down and has us focusing on one task or feeling or thought in that moment: what we’re thankful for.
2. Recording our gratitude everyday in a journal brings us back to the present moment after a busy day through the action of sitting or standing still for a few minutes, writing or typing most likely with our hands and bringing our attention to the positive and/or simple things in our lives.
3. Feeling thankful helps us stop negative thoughts or spiraling worries or feelings of lack and brings us to a place of peace by remembering all we already have.

Do you have a regular practice of remembering what you’re grateful for in life? 

I find it’s especially important during life’s darkest moments but if it can sustained during the joyful moments too, you’ll create a positive habit that will see you through future challenges when they arise and ground you in the present grateful moment.

Happy Thanksgiving! I’m grateful you’re reading this.

Namaste,

Maret

P.S. Would you like support in cultivating more mindfulness in your life? Contact me on my sister site, Maret Carrillo Coaching: Owning Your Goodness to find out more about my transformational life coaching packages.

My Life Before and After Mindfulness

Before I learned about mindfulness and conscious awareness of my thoughts, feelings, actions, and the world around me, I viewed myself and the world differently. Anxious feelings meant something was wrong with me and mean people were just mean. But as I learned to be more mindful, through LOTS of practice--and I still practice and will do so for the rest of my life, I started viewing my anxiety as energy pent up, needing to be released in some way and not as much about me or who I am at my core. 

As Rumi described in the amazing poem, The Guest House, sometimes certain feelings come for a visit but through conscious awareness, we don't have to let them stay for good. By recognizing that they're only visitors, it gets easier to let go of difficult feelings and not that them on as an integral part of us. We’re bigger than our feelings. Our feelings are energy coming and going, not a permanent part of us at all. We are a vessel for life and energy and emotions or feelings flow through us but they don't become us, thankfully. There was so much relief in that realization for me. I am not my feelings. Whew!

Self-love, self-compassion and even self-care become easier to practice when you're not constantly beating yourself up about how you're feeling. Accepting that all feelings--even the amazing ones--come and go helps release us from their power. And as a result, we regain our own power. Power to live in a more relaxed state. Power to step aside and watch feelings come and go, seeing them for what they are, energy and messengers that teach us when to slow down, when to savor, when to give ourselves more love and compassion.

What are your feelings telling you? 

It can sometimes be a balancing act of listening with conscious awareness but also letting go and remembering it's all just energy flowing through our bodies..

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,

translation by Coleman Barks

If you would like more support on your mindfulness journey, please visit my coaching page at: http://owningyourgoodness.wordpress.com

The Little Girl Inside

I want to befriend the anxious little girl who lives inside me. I want her to know I love her and support her. I want to tell her that we are doing great and that we will be okay no matter what. But it's sometimes hard to get her messages. I find breathing deeply helps though. She also seems to remember she's ok and can enjoy life again when I'm moving or creating--through dance, photography, nature walks, hiking, collaging, making jewelry, planning workshops. When she is put in a stressful situation or feels pressure of any kind, she begins to tighten and churn. Sometimes only time can rid her of these sensations, even after moving and breathing deeply. This is why it's so important to remind her that these feelings of fear will change and we will once again feel the joy of life. Living in the moment is key but requires constant, LIFELONG commitment, daily practice and self-love, because with anything that you are practicing comes goof-ups and being hard on her is only going to exacerbate the anxiety.

I now see this little girl as beautiful and courageous and intelligent. She's the little girl I was when I was young. She's the part of me who was too scared to develop into an adult. And maybe that was her purpose all along, her intention, to help balance out the rest of my adult self in order to stay young and full of creativity, energy and hope. Because without this little girl, I wouldn't be able to experience the sheer joy of nature and love and life in the same way. I love skipping. I love feeling joyful. I love giggling. The little girl keeps me balanced and filled with zeal for life. After all, when I think about where the sensations of my joy are located in my physical body, more often than not they are in the same places where I feel the anxiety. Anxiety and excitement create virtually the same sensations for me, only one is associated with negative or scary thoughts and emotions and the other with joyful and positive thoughts, albeit sometimes scary too.

When I'm feeling joyful and excited about life, I welcome the scary parts and do the things that scare me anyway, which is where my courage is born. As I practice everyday, I will continue to tell the little girl inside me that she is amazing and talented and so brave and so loved. So needed. So joyful. She must only stop and breathe in that energy so that the situation can shift and the anxiety will dissipate with practice. It will never go away completely. We need anxiety for our safety sometimes but as we shift, we can lean towards excitement and zest for life instead, in order to train our thoughts and emotions to respond differently or shift and lean more quickly towards joy.

I Am Whole.

I am love. 

I am whole. 

I am safe.

This was my mantra today during my dentist appointment, and it worked! I feel calm, thank goodness! I had a rather traumatic flashback of my open wound (from surgery over a year and a half ago) during my last dental visit, which motivated me to come to this appointment better prepared & equipped to handle any possible anxiety and fear with grace and love. And I am happy to report that I did it! (I feel almost like a little girl who was brave despite a scary event.)

I also realized as I was trying to visualize sunshine and puppies and beaches--word images that came to my mind at the last appointment after having an awful flashback triggered by the pain and needle for numbing the area in my mouth that they were going to work on--that the people who may have goofed up or didn't do as thorough of a job as we had hoped before, during and after my surgery 20 months ago, are only human. They were trying to help me; they weren't trying to hurt me or make me suffer. And coming from that place really makes me want to forgive each person who I have been holding responsible for a piece of the misery I went through. As Karen Salmansohn says in her awesome book, Instant Happy, we must reframe the stories of our lives. She writes that "mistakes = discoveries" and "anger and resentment = lessons in forgiveness." And I am definitely finding this to be true and the best remedy for letting go of painful memories and feelings.

As I type this on my little iPhone, from the dentist office parking lot, part of my nose is numb, and a little bit ago even my eye felt a little tingly. These sensations, instead of triggering traumatic memories, brought forth the desire to forgive those whose mistakes instigated incredible growth experiences for me. I didn't feel that way at the time or even a year after, but because of the post-traumatic stress I had at my last dental appointment, which came on all of the sudden and totally unexpected, out of the blue, I have now begun to shift my focus off of what happened and onto where I am going and how I can forgive and let go.

So here goes:

I forgive you, anesthesiologist and anesthesiologist-in-training, for not getting the epidural in the exact, correct spot, causing me to awake from surgery actually feeling half of my incision.

I forgive the hospital for not ridding the operation room and supplies of the pseudomonas bacteria.

I forgive the hospital administration who had my recovery wing under construction during my stay.

I forgive the worker who didn't read the orders correctly and gave me food on the first night, when in reality I couldn't eat until several days later.

I forgive the nurse who convinced me to take the catheter out after only a few days, which resulted in extreme pain and discomfort when they had to put it back in.

I forgive the doctors for not seeming very concerned about my 30 pounds of water weight obtained after 5 days in the hospital.

I forgive the doctor from the ER a week after going home who reopened my surgical wound without giving me anything for the pain he caused.

I forgive the medical staff and doctors who kept telling me my wound would heal in just a few more weeks, over and over again, as the weeks turned into months.

Breathe. 

I'm taking deep breaths during this writing session. It's painful to remember all these grievances but it's essential to get these memories out of my head and onto paper--or the screen in this case.

I am safe. I am whole. I am love.

As I remember these trying times in my life, it takes a lot of courage to write them down and share them, and it also takes a lot of courage to just sit with them and feel what I'm feeling and breathe into the painful memories, rather than avoiding them or running from them.

I cannot move forward if I continue to ignore these memories and feelings that have begun to pop up and break through the facade of "everything's better now" and show up in unexpected places like at the dentist. I believe my flashback served a very high purpose and that was to drive me to forgive by really looking at what happened and seeing the good intention of everyone during my surgical experience--they all wanted to help me. And they were trying to do what's best for me with the knowledge they had at the time. 

I forgive them. 

And I send them love and light.