Fight Your Instinct and Stay Still

While sitting through a meditation, I found it difficult to stay still. The meditation was focused on connecting us to the elements so that we could feel grounded. It was strange that I could not stay still because when I feel grounded, it is normally easy for me to remain still. However, in that moment, while baking in the sun, feeling the warm Florida breeze brush across the surface of my skin, I was unable to attain a sense of stillness.

I was feeling discomfort. I was fidgeting: pulling at my shirt, wiggling my fingers, that sort of thing. Frustration was building inside of me, why couldn’t I stay still?

It’s funny how feelings of discomfort cause us to want to move. We are barely able to maintain a state of discomfort. The moment something feels uncomfortable, we abandon all rationality and fall victim to movement, pulling away, therefore, falling victim to this discomfort. Although often acting in our favor, like when you pull your hand away from a hot surface because you instinctively know you will be harmed if you leave it there, giving in to this urge to move away from uncomfortable thoughts can be a bad thing. Unfortunately, because of this instinct, we are unable to feel a sensation so necessary to our growth, the sensation of stillness and reflection. Moving away from thoughts and feelings of discomfort stop you from experiencing stillness and it is with this sensation of stillness that we gain the ability to truly reflect on tensions we are attempting to work through, which leads to internal growth and strength.

Our instinct telling us to move from this place of discomfort is, therefore, inhibiting our ability to grow. By moving away during this time of discomfort, you are not allowing your thoughts to travel towards solutions to problems that may be causing tension throughout your life. It is important to remember that in times where things feel uncomfortable, sometimes it is best to stay still and breathe through your thoughts rather than flee at the first sign of tension. The act of staying still will allow you to deeply work through tension that has been building up in your mind and your body.

Remind yourself that the first instinct or solution is not always the best option, and it is crucial to give yourself the privilege of staying still, thinking through your tension, to bring out answers that will ultimately benefit your physical and mental stability.

To Zoom or Not to Zoom

In this time of widespread panic, people have been turning to different vices to feel more secure about their health and their future. For this reason, I decided to devote today’s free write to talk about what I do when I am feeling overwhelmed by forces that are virtually out of my control.

At this point everyone has heard of Zoom. Whether you use it for meetings that could’ve been emails, virtual happy hours, or celebrating your cousins graduation, Zoom has probably become a big part of your life.

Don’t worry, I am not going to spend an entire page talking about Zoom meetings. Instead, I am going to teach you a new kind of zoom, a method that I have used to be more mindful by zooming in or out in order to shift my focus.

I started practicing this method back in middle school, unintentionally, but honed in as I got older.  

Here is how it works:

Zooming Out:

On a day when I am feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the tasks on my plate, a day where it seems like my responsibilities are overflowing from my planner, a day where there is not a single thing I can do to calm down my workflow, I do my best not to press pause, but to zoom out. 

I imagine myself spinning a wheel on a microscope to the left or pinching my forefinger and thumb together on the screen that is my life, zooming out. I shift my perspective from the tasks at hand to the greater vision of life itself.

I shift my perspective to focus on my surroundings, and everything under the sun that is not my day to day work, anything that is not right in front of me. I visualize my trip to the beach this summer, waves crashing on my feet as I run through the surf. I visualize anything that is not right here.

By shifting my focus, I am able to silence the noise in my head that is stopping me from completing the task at hand. This helps me be more mindful with my intentions so that I am able to get through my workload.

Zooming In:

On days where everything around me seems to be suffocating, I use my Zoom method.

This method can be used when you feel stuck in time and drowned in existential thoughts. Breath in existential thoughts like a wave and breathe them right back out, like the tide.   Create space in your mind for new, less clouding thoughts. After several deep breaths, begin to zoom in, hone in on the specifics. 

This time, instead of turning the dial to the left, or zooming out, imagine yourself turning the dial right, spreading your forefinger and thumb apart, zooming in.

Instead of worrying about what it is you are supposed to be doing for the rest of your life, focus on what you are going to make for dinner. How is that food going to savor in your mouth? Zoom in even more and focus on how your shirt feels on your shoulders, is it soft? Clean? Focus on what you will be doing tomorrow, not ten years from now.

Remember that things will fall into place if you take the steps every single day to move forward and not get tied down by thoughts that make you feel stuck.  Sometimes all you need is a shift in perspective to get out of a sticky spot.

Reframing Uncertainty

During a guided breathwork meditation, I had the opportunity to travel into my thoughts whilst silencing my anxiety and greet my concerns about the future, amicably.

That is because my breath gives me power. Just like your breath gives you power. It gives you energy. 

Without breath flowing through you, your feelings get trapped, stay stagnant, within your body because there is no release. Coming back to my breath empowers me to have my emotions flow through my mind and be greeted as they are, and flow out with my breath, letting go of feelings of discomfort that come come along with them.

This mindfulness in my breath enables me to purify my thoughts so that I can confront them head on, as they are, not as I often perceive them to be. 

A thought that kept coming up during the meditation was the feeling of uncertainty. More often than not, along with uncertainty comes an enormous wave of anxiety. I believe this is because security in our future calms us down, and uncertainty cannot provide this sense of security. But what if it could? What if we reframed our experience of uncertainty to remind us of security?

What if we were able to rewire our brains to welcome this feeling of uncertainty, meet it with open arms, rather than allow it to control our thoughts and emotions?

Maybe then we would feel truly secure about the situation we are in today, and any similar situation that could occur in the future.

As these questions entered my mind, I instantly began to scan my body for the answer.

How can I find security in uncertainty? 

I think that one way we could view uncertainty is as a constant. We need to remind ourselves that uncertainty is constant, and besides that, there really is no other real constant in our lives. The truth is, everything is uncertain to an extent. We need to find closure in the fact that being fluid and flexible will allow us to travel through uncertainty and feel secure. 

Repeat to yourself, “this is just uncertainty and my task is to tolerate it.”

There is no need to always unpack it or attack it to make sense of it all, just tolerate the feeling. Let the feeling of uncertainty sit with you, greet it like a friend, and allow it to contribute to the sense of security that you so deeply crave.