A quick comment: You will have noticed that I am only posting around once a month. This is to allow my time for the other things that I have become passionate about. I have been playing a lot more guitar over the past 18 months and in order to have a better balance in life and to keep from trying to force myself to write each week, I have decided to take a slower pace and post once a month. Please let me know if there are specific questions that you would like me to respond to in the future. Thank you.
Today, I would like to share something that I have been practicing very regularly and find very helpful for maintaining my sense of daily wellness. Some folks call this creating a gratitude list, or remaining grateful. This is common practice in the 12 Step Recovery community. I strongly associate wellness and recovery. I know that personal wellness promotion is essential to maintaining a long term recovery from any addiction or trauma.
There are so many ways to engage in a gratitude practice. The way that I have found myself working this delightful process is through my mindfulness practice. I take the opportunity when I do not have a specific task to focus on and place my awareness on the present moment. As I do this, I take deep breaths and open to the sensations that are in my body. Once I am grounded and centered and in this space, I can open my mind to appreciate all of the positive aspects of the moment. Sometimes I do this as I walk to my office in the morning. I find myself grounded in the appreciation I have for the daily work that I am allowed to do. I experience the opportunity to make a contribution to the various efforts that my division is advancing as one of the valuable blessing that I have in life.
I also experience the loving relationships in my life and find gratitude in the present state of the significant intimate connections that I am blessed to have. The opportunity to bring an optimistic view to my life and all that I am experiencing in the moment gives me a powerful sense of gratitude. If there are any events that I am experiencing in the moment that require extra effort to process, I relate to the challenges as opportunities to develop new coping skills, or at least to apply my current ones more effectively. Anytime there is conflict or something is not working according to plan, it is so important to consider my role in the conflict and to consider the likelihood that the plan may not be correct and could require modification.
For those of you who are thinking, “That’s easy for you to say”, I would recommend that you begin to use moments where you are not occupied by a task to create a space for grounding and centering. This can be the time it takes to walk down a flight of stairs or the time it takes to ride the elevator to your floor. If you have not developed the deep diaphragmatic breathing practice that is the foundation of many stress management techniques, I suggest you make the effort to do so. This breathing technique will be the basis for almost every wellness practice that you can use.
The practice of noticing the moments where you can use your breath and shift your attention to the appreciation of the blessings in your life will develop over time as long as you “practice”. Remember any new habit requires a great deal of effort to repeat the activity until it becomes second nature. None of us learned to walk in one day. Most of us learned to crawl first. Be kind and compassionate toward your effort to develop any new practice. Since time passes no matter what we do, it makes so much sense to engage in wellness promoting activities whenever we have moments where we do not need to be engaged in a specific task. If we use these moments in this way, it is amazing how much personal wellness will evolve as time passes.