My husband left Saturday morning for London for a week for work. Instead of pitying my single parent experience and stressing over childcare for my evening job while he's gone, I thought I'd put some energy into my mindfulness work. I guess that was one over-arching thing that I did to work through negativity and resistance. I realize the actions that I choose for this blog are sometimes too vague for people who like structure and direction, so I'll try now to list some of the specific actions I took for last week:
- When I felt myself having a negative thought, such as "Brian gets to go enjoy London while I'm stuck here with no break from work/parenting and no support." I would try to counter the thought with an immediate positive thought, such as "I am so lucky that he's willing to take on the primary childcare every single Tuesday and Wednesday night, often leaving work in the middle of a project in order to get to daycare by 6. He does this for me, allowing me to have a carefree mind as I go into super long work days at my practice. Not to mention a 2 night break from the whole bath time- bedtime challenge.
- I went to church on Sunday. Yes, I said it. I haven't gone to church for my own spiritual practice .. well, ever. Both my aunt and a friend told me about a progressive, liberal offshoot of the Unitarian Universalist religion, called Micah's Porch in Wicker Park. This was a really neat and sort of extreme practice for me to try for last week's mantra/action. I have some really strong negative thoughts about religion and I've struggled for many years to integrate my deep, inherent spirituality and longing for a spiritual community with the philosophical and cultural friction I have always felt with religion. So just going was a huge process of working through lots and lots of long-held negativity and resistance. This was just another moment in life in which I learned a great life lesson from my son. My child, who has difficulty with transitions, new things, being told what to do and when, and being separated from me without a great deal of prep work, was able to sit with me for two songs (played by the in-house band) and then when all of the kids got up to go to "Kids Church" one of the adults just said "Let's choo-choo" and he joined right in the train and walked out of the room, completely trusting the situation and opening himself up to the experience. What a kid.
- A general practice I try to use, and something that I help my clients learn to do, is to notice a negative thought and then examine it, looking at the feelings that the thought precedes and the evidence for the reality of the thought. (Let me know if you want me to email you a thought record. They're fantastic.) Looking for evidence is huge. Usually, when you have a negative thought, there is really no actual evidence that the thought is a true thing, other than just being a thought in your head. It really works like magic.
After this past week, I've noticed that I am still holding onto some negative thoughts that I really need to let go of more so than I had been willing to admit to myself. Some are things that I have tried and tried to release. Others are things I am only now becoming fully aware of. A huge stumbling block to really being present / aware / positive is holding onto grievances. I'm not talking about grudges. It's a little different. Holding onto grievances is more like holding onto your own negative thought about something. Maybe something that didn't go your way, something that was out of your control or something that brought up a lot of negative emotions in you.
I may stick with this mantra for a while and use some of the actions listed here:
http://www.wikihow.com/Forgive
Please share your thoughts and even the grievances you choose to work on in the comment section. I haven't picked mine yet. But I will.
Week 15
Mantra | Forgive
Action | Choose 1 Long-held Grievance to Work on
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