Do You Meditate?

I do. And I love it. I always feel much calmer, more focused and I sleep better when I meditate.

The first time I meditated was in college with my friend Kirsten. I remember thinking the whole experience was kind of hokey. Sitting in a room with our eyes closed while listening to "weird" music silently for an hour with the goal of "clearing our heads" and not thinking. Hmmmmm. Okay. As you can imagine, this Type A Personality didn't do too well and I never went back.

Years later, I discovered a friend of mine was a certified hypnotherapist. She invited me to join a group she was starting of other Type A women for a once-a-week 1 hour guided hypnosis or meditation. To say I was skeptical was an understatement. At the end of the first session, we talked about our experiences and each of the other women talked about what they saw while they were in some hot air balloon, but I had no idea what they were talking about. So I talked about what I remembered and could recall a certain amount of the session, but suddenly my experience took a turn and rather than being in a hot air balloon, I was off on some other journey. Each week, my experience was vastly different from that of the groups' experiences.

A few weeks later, I had an experience in our session that would change the way I looked at guided hypnosis/meditation forever. As we were discussing our experiences, as we did each week after the hypnosis/meditation I was surprised to learn that the hypnotherapist hadn't taken us all down a road where we were to recall a tragedy and taught us to overcome it because in my hypnotized/meditative state, I relived a truly horrific and terrifying experience I'd had about 15 years earlier, fought back harder than I did at the time and actually changed the outcome. It was amazing and liberating. My skepticism was gone. I was sold.

Now I do self-hypnosis and meditate on my own a few times each week. I find it incredibly relaxing and a terrific way to help me release stress. Often I do it at night, but I also have some that I use in the mornings. Self-hypnosis/meditation has changed my life.

My friend Cindee posted the relaxing meditation below on Facebook today. It's a little different from the ones I use in that you should actually watch the video rather than focus on breathing and have your eyes closed, but I was surprised at just how effective it was nonetheless. I encourage you to take the next 9 minutes to watch this video. Turn off your phone, close your email, close the door so your kids can't walk in, turn off Pandora and just focus on you for the next 9 minutes. Trust me, your day will be better.

The Serenity Prayer

The Serenity Prayer is often associated with AA but it was originally written by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) and was not written for AA. I find that it helps keep things in perspective when I'm feeling overwhelmed, stressed and can't quite figure out how I'm going to manage it all in life. It reminds me that I can't control everything and I need to let go of what I can't change.

Most of us are probably familiar with the abbreviated version used by AA:

God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change . . .
Courage to change the things I can . . .
and Wisdom to know the difference . . .

This is the actual Serenity Prayer as written by Mr. Niebhur:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

I Feel Overwhelmed

I feel overwhelmed. I don't know if it's the snow I woke up to this morning that just feels like the last straw (I do get that it's winter in Chicago, but this winter just feels longer and snowier than usual). I don't know whether it's the economy. I don't know if I've spread myself too thin. I don't know if I've lost my focus. I don't know if I'm just bad at time management (something I've always prided myself on). All I know is that I feel like I'm being pulled in a million different directions and achieving nothing in the process. I'm not sleeping well. Some days I have an appetite and others I don't (not that it's stopped me from eating).

Sure, in certain moments, the feeling of overwhelm disappears, but it keeps returning. I feel like I've spent the last month pleasing no one, including myself. I feel like I haven't been a very good boss to myself, friend, daughter, sister, or volunteer lately. It's partly why I haven't blogged much in the last month. I haven't known what to say or how to say it even if I did know.

I've tried the things that usually work to de-stress me and help me overcome the feeling of overwhelm . . . hypnosis and meditation, long bubble baths, a massage, a glass or two of wine, cleaning, snuggling with Betsey & Ross (I dare anyone to argue a purring cat is not soothing), exercise . . . and am not sure how to lose this feeling.

I don't mean to whine about this. Really, I don't. I'm only writing about this today in hopes that by throwing it out to the universe, a solution will come to me.

Update 2:56pm: In the midst of writing this post, I happened to jump over to one of my new favorite blogs (can we say ADD?), Kittens Farting Rainbows (seriously, doesn't that title make you giggle?) and read a post called "100% Better 60% of the Time." As I read it, I kept thinking to myself, "yep, that's how I'm feeling." But then Bergsie ends her post with the things she knows and that got me to thinking that maybe I should write about the things I know for sure (not to sound to Oprah-ish). Maybe that will make me feel better. Look for that as my next post. See, maybe the universe does give me the answers I need when I reach out.