Breathing in the Day

(Originally published 1 August 2015)

This is one of my morning rituals, that I perform to put myself in a positive mood. I devised it to help combat the emotional pain and sometime despair that plagued me all too often when I contemplated the poor management, negligence, and dissatisfaction I experience at work. After more than a year and a half of active looking, I still have not secured the right position, but I rarely feel demoralized and hopeless these days, and this has been one of the tools to help me.

After brewing my morning coffee, I get out my journal, and using different colors on alternating lines (this isn't essential, I just like the visual impact), I write the words "Breathe in ____. Breathe in _____." Sometimes I will pair alliterative attributes such as Strength and Success, Flexibility and Focus, Purpose and Passion. Other times I will pair a longer word and a shorter one so as to fit them on a single line, so that "Breathe in" appears at the start of each line down the page. Such long/short pairs are Abundance and Love, Determination and Hope, Compassion and Joy.

Other attributes I invite are Clarity, Prosperity, Healing, Calm, Peace, Acceptance, Contentment, Cheerfulness. Occasionally I think to verbalize the words as I walk on my breaks at work, sometimes combining it with actual conscious breathing. I'd like to cultivate this habit, as I have so successfully as part of my early morning routine. On the very few days I haven't done so over the last few months, I find I miss it. So I offer it to my Spark Friends, in case the practice should resonate with you.

Blessed Be, Amanda 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Big Rocks

(Originally published 2 August 2011)   Yosemite National Park has some of the most glorious scenery on Earth, in my opinion. I always buy myself a Yosemite wall calendar, so I can enjoy its beauty throughout the year. I was rather disappointed when I turned the page for a new month and beheld a single tree standing next to a boulder. My sarcastic reaction was "Oh whoopee, a big rock!" But at my choice of phrase, I had to laugh. Have you heard the story of Big Rocks? Supposedly a man leading a workshop on time management began with a demonstration. He had a glass cylinder into which he put several rocks, until they reached the top. He asked the class if the container were full. They agreed it was full. He then poured several scoops of gravel into the container, where it settled around the rocks, until it reached the top. This time when he asked the class if the container was full, they were divided, and none were certain what the answer should be. So he took a bag of sa...
Read more

Hypocrisy of the “Pro-Birth” Zealots

First, I refuse to refer to these hypocrites as “Pro-Life.” Contrary to their claims, they care nothing about life—only birth. They don’t care about the quality of life of the pregnant women they want to force to give birth or of the babies they decree must be born. If they did, these same rightwing extremists would be earmarking funds to support prenatal & postnatal care, community mental health services, public education, child protection, free and mandatory DNA testing to identify the fathers of these unwanted infants they want to legislate into being. Heck, they should be supporting gun control, so every child can attend school, go to the store or a place of worship without risking being gunned down by a mad man with an automatic weapon! At a time when parents everywhere are scrambling to find formula for their infants who are already here, these anti-abortionists want to flood the population with many more babies who may go hungry. They don’t care if they are condemning th...
Read more

It doesn't have to be hard!

(Originally published 8 March 2012)  This is a comment I wrote on a Spark Friend’s blog about living with a recovering type 2 diabetic:  “What saddens me the most is that people assume change has to be hard. It doesn't have to be. Moderation and babysteps will produce improvements. We don't have to be perfect. As long as we make better choices most of the time, we will get stronger, slimmer, and healthier. To me, that's not hard--it's fun, it's empowering, it's motivating!” Losing weight, getting stronger and improving your health (or getting organized or making any other improvement in your life) does not have to be hard. But if you tell yourself it will be hard, or worse yet impossible, that will most likely be your experience. The question is, do you want it to be hard or not? Notice, I'm not saying it will be EASY to change. But it does require a willingness to make changes in the way you do things, and especially in the way you think. I love Louis...
Read more