I wanted to start off by saying I’ve been free of my own negative toxins this past week, that being tobacco, alcohol and caffeine. This choice really came from being pretty sick on Sunday and parts of Monday, but more from my wife being offered a contingent position with the local Police Department (as long as she passes background check and psych). She’s a bit older than me, so we had planned on her becoming pregnant in the next few months to start our family, with the new job on the horizon, we decided to switch gears and have me prepare, so here I am preparing mentally and physically for this change I will be accepting. This is why the exercise for this week was so meaningful to me, because my worst enemy is stress, anger and negative emotions. I’m quite the hot head, and the smallest of things make me angry. I find it almost impossible to forgive someone without them hurting worse than I did, or letting a wrong word go. I snap quickly, and loving and kindness are something I struggle to show, even though I feel them immensely. I never thought I was much of an emotional person because I tended to see the glass as half empty, but when you think about it, I’m extremely emotional because anger, fear, hate; they are all emotions. I’m learning to be more open to love, affection, and not only accept it from others but show it so others around me feel as special as they make me feel. One part of the exercise said “loving yourself is essential in order to love others”, which couldn’t be more true. If you don’t find yourself worth loving, or attractive, or good enough, then you’ll never be able to believe someone who does.
Even though this exercise was easier to listen to because
a woman’s voice is just more soothing to the hear, I wouldn’t recommend this
others because it’s primarily water sound and requites a bit more mental
fitness than most of my friends have. Since
there is no science that yet proves physiological changes from mental workouts,
there are, however, numerous studies that prove the effects, like those of Lutz
(Dacher, 2006) which compare the ability to concentrate on a specific emotion
between scholars and a control group. A
mental workout is basically the same as a physical workout, only instead of
reaching a limit to your physical abilities; you never reach an end to the
amount of potential the mind can reach.
Working it out is training it to concentrate, to feed off positive emotions
and to deflect the negative ones. I can
use mental workouts to alter my state of mind, make peace with a past decision
or quell negative emotions. This is why
I meditate, to be away from myself, and become nothing.
One of the greatest things I ever learned in a guided
meditation session was this; take a clear glass jar, fill it with sand on the
bottom and water in the rest. This is
our minds, at perfect peace, all the negativity that never goes away is happily
suppressed at the bottom, until we think, and boom! Shake up that jar and everything is jumbled,
this is our minds every minute of the day.
Even when we stop shaking that jar, and put it down to rest, it’s
clouded. Try to look through it, you can’t
see clearly, our mind is just like that, jumbled and distorted, and only
through true NOTHINGNESS, can we achieve that sense of peace.
-Jess
I understand where you are comming from when you say that you are a hot head. I am the same way I swear if the news said it was going to be sunny and it starts to rain heck that could set me off sometimes, thats only if my day sucked from the first minute. Congrats on dropping the bad habbits, i too resantly quit smoking and I am still doing the compasionate exercise because I am finding myself extremly irratable because of the lack of nicotin.
ReplyDeleteHi Steven and Jess,
ReplyDeleteSorry for answering late, I was sick so a little behind.I think a lot of us have the problem of being hard headed. I enjoy the relaxation technique because it but us have a moment to observe emotions that we felt in terms of the highs and lows with loving somebody. I think we are all really hard headedor we wouldn't have so much difficulty adopting to lifestyle changes as we do. I too am trying to quit smoking and I'm very irritable without it I know it ate a lot but it doesn't seem to help because something about inhaling and exhaling the cigarettes also relaxes me even though it is causing harm.