Using my tool kit

I am cleaning out some old documents and found some advice from past me. Thought I'd share them here. I wrote this in 2018 & find it still relevant.

Here it is:

I’ve been dealing with this case of hives and I’ve started to figure out that it’s likely a seafood allergy or something connected to an adverse reaction I had to an iodine dye used for a mammogram I had a few months back. So, I had terrible dreams this morning. I woke up crying out of one of them, which has only happened a few times that I can remember. 

Needless to say, this set me off on a funky foot this morning. I did my usual morning meditation, which helped settle me a bit, but I’m not going to lie- seeing a few hives on my legs set me into a state of worry. Now, I know worry is not beneficial, but it is a normal human response. What we can control is how we deal with the worry. 

So, as I sat outside and ate breakfast- what is usually a peaceful time of day for me, I found my head spinning with the what ifs. And so, I pulled myself up, changed clothes and decided to do a few things that make me feel good: exercise, outdoors, and listening to an interview with a Hay House author. I also shared my anxiety with my parents who listened and tried to make me feel better in the best way they could. I allowed myself to have my feelings, but then once I began to feel a little better, I took that chance to ride the upward swing into my walk.

While walking, I logged into my Hay House account and found an interview I had begun listening to the day before. The guy’s name is Mastin Kipp. I found him to be quite inspiring with wonderful perspectives and some explanations of things I’ve been grappling with in my mind for awhile (not related at all to the hives). And so, upon returning home, I found myself thinking “I can handle whatever the allergist tells me”, which was not at all the place I was in when I left the house one short hour before.

So, what’s the point of this story? It’s not to tell you to get outdoors, exercise, and download the hay house world summit. But it is to suggest that everyone finds what helps them get connected to their inner strength, become aware of those things, and load them into your tool kit so that you can pull them out when needed. 

To wrap up, you may be wondering what this has to do with meditation and mindfulness. It may seem that since I’m a meditation teacher and an advocate for a mindful lifestyle that I would choose to sit in meditation when feeling worried. Sometimes that IS what I do actually. But more so, engaging in a regular meditation practice allows me to be self aware- to gather those knowings and fill my tool kit, to know when one tool is rusty and needs replacing with another, and to know when to pull them out, use them, and bring myself back to my center.

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Would you like to learn some practices?

I’m your gal!

I teach mindfulness and meditation lessons to individuals and groups, and I’d love to teach them to you!

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