I’m pretty immune from feeling rushed, hurried, or frazzled.
This isn’t because I’m so zen things don’t affect me.
It’s because I consciously choose what I engage in.
I don’t watch the news. (It isn’t news. I search the internet for subjects I care about every few weeks.)
I don’t have cable or regular TV (only Netflix for me!).
I don’t listen to rhetoric radio.
I don’t check my cell phone every 5 minutes or even every 5 hours.
With the holidays approaching, people refer to the holiday rush.
There is no holiday rush.
It is made up.
If you find yourself getting wound up about everything there is to do, will you pause?
The key to a peaceful holiday season is within you.
My definition of success is inner peace regardless of my external circumstances.
If you feel like everything and everyone is coming at you, you are operating from a space that assumes you are supposed to respond.
Inner peace and outer peace happen when you learn to be the eye of the hurricane – the still center that exists with intense wind and movement around it.
Being that still center comes from your state of being, not your state of doing.
It comes from being a compassionate observer of your thoughts, emotions, and sensations first. In mindfulness practice, this is called your witness consciousness.
Once you’ve mastered compassionate self-observation, then learn to be the neutral observer of other sensory input – this includes people, media, messages, and your environment.
You don’t have to react or respond to anything.
You can consciously choose to engage or not engage, but only when you know there is a choice.
But with being so over-stimulated, often times, you may not see there is a choice, only something to respond to.
Pause.
Take a step back.
When you sense your chest tightening, jaw clenching, heart rate increasing, body buzzing, mind racing, your breath stopping, and/or a fast rate of speech, you are over-stimulated.
Pause. Sit with the discomfort of doing no-thing.
Ask, ‘What am I experiencing?’
Ask, ‘What is really happening NOW?’
Soften your breath, your belly, and jaw.
Allow yourself to neutralize.
Then assess how you want to move forward, if at all.
This is a moment-to-moment practice, not a destination.
If you are accustomed to accommodating everybody and everything, reacting to every request, conversation, commercial, email, or text, this may be a challenge.
The best place to start is exactly where you are.
The outside world may experience a holiday rush, but you can be still.
You can choose to gift give or not, which party to not attend, which family members to embrace and which to let go.
The root of chronic stress is living a life disconnected from the heart.
And your heart – not the holiday rush – is waiting for you.
Stop Looking Outside and Look Within,
Angela
