I am on an endless pursuit to become the best person I can be. I want to wake up each day feeling full of purpose, heart, love, and passion for who I am and what I do. I have been reading quite a few articles and books on spirituality and mindfulness and the need for understanding both areas in the counseling world that also help me better understand my own personal spirituality and mindfulness in my life.
So today I will be writing about a bit of mindfulness and one way that I am starting to become more mindful in my actions.
Through these readings and soul searching I have noticed things that I still need to work on embracing and somewhat changing in my own life. I use to think that the best thing to do with my flaws was to either push them aside or change them completely so that they were non-existent. However taking away these flaws takes away parts of me that have been there for years and have helped me get to where I am today. I am not interesting in changing who I am, instead I am interested in making the real me into a more whole being.
Now I bet if you are still reading this you are thinking "why is Shelley being so hokey?!?". Well I will let you in on something......sometimes I even wonder why I am being this way!!! However I then sit back and think about the person I am aspiring to be and understand that this "hokey" part of me has always been there waiting to be noticed. Being able to look into myself and understand that I will forever be striving to become the person I am meant to be is scary and exciting. I have spent the majority of my life stifling this side of me and I am now ready to start letting it come out and be noticed.
Now if you are still reading after that paragraph I will explain a part of me that I am starting to embrace and tweak to help me become more in tune with myself and the world. Since I can remember I have had a bad habit of holding in my feelings and emotions and then when I did let them out it was through aggression or denial that led to me being hateful towards others that did not deserve the treatment (this is one of my coping mechanisms when times get tough, uncomfortable, or I get upset). A classic phrase you would hear me say when these situations would arise is "I'm FINE". I am pretty sure I know where I learned to hold in my feelings, but at the moment I am still not comfortable sharing it but hopefully one day I will be, so for now I will just say these coping mechanisms were formed from past experiences and situations. Holding in my emotions and treating people badly is detrimental to my friendships, my well-being, and my place in this world. We all deserve to be heard and acknowledged for our actions and our feelings but for some crazy reason I did not feel validated in that area. Due to this feeling I would hold in my emotions until I exploded. This was not fun for anyone.
I told you about these coping mechanisms because I want to work on getting better at expressing my emotions in a way that makes me feel validated and comfortable and also allows others to express themselves towards me so that we can communicate in a positive manner. I am working on becoming more mindful in my intent and understanding that I am valuable and so is the person I am communicating with. You would think that I would already know this but to be honest I need to be reminded. I have started to meditate and write down my thoughts in order to promote mindfulness in my everyday life. This is helping me express myself and also be able to express myself to others; meaning I am not holding in my emotions :)
It just so happened that while I was writing this novel of a post the song "Shake it out" by Florence and the Machine came on and the lyrics were basically speaking about what I was writing in this post (ok I am not sure if they are because lyrics are for interpretation, but they seemed to be =]). Now I usually do not like comparing songs to life situations (that was SO 6th grade when I did that!) but this one part of the song stood out to me:
"And it's hard to dance with the devil on your back
And given half the chance, would I take any of it back
It's a fine romance but it's left me so undone
It's always darkest before the dawn"
It is hard to dance when the "devil" or "unhealthy coping mechanisms" are on my back. If I was given the chance would I give back? NO! I would not take back having these coping mechanisms because they helped me stay alive and get to this point where I am ready to tweak the way I deal with situations and become a better more whole individual. I understand that it is not going to be easy but I also believe that nothing good in life every came easily helps me continue on the pursuit of being more mindful and continuing to become the person I am meant to be.
Here's to coping mechanisms that helped me thrive, continuing to grow into a mindful individual, and remembering to shake it out and let it go.
-s.
