Meditation: Calm, 7 Days of Calming Anxiety: Befriending Anxiety
Length: 13 minutes
Where: Bedroom, Los Angeles
How It Felt: Peaceful
Finished the Anxiety series! After all, who wants to think about anxiety on vacation? Not this girl.
I tried to be really present this week because I wanted to go on our anniversary trip already in a happy, relaxed mindset. Usually our lives are so hectic it takes a day or two to come down from the spin of things.
But not this time. I was determined to get the most out of our first trip out of the country since before the pandemic started! Not to mention to soak up my hubby, since summer gets crazy for him with kids’ schedules and his work is always busy. Plus, my days are getting full again! A week of pure QT is such a gift.
So, I stayed consistent, and I didn’t procrastinate. I stayed ahead of the game this week. And I took my time packing last night, having fun picking out outfits, tucking my new bikini in with the perfect cover up, making sure everything was in order before rolling it all into packing cubes and laying out my outfit for the plane.
I never pack like this! At a leisurely pace, early. The one time I ever did it was for our first big trip together to Belize when we were first dating. I was sooooo excited, I actually packed the afternoon before and went to bed early! But I must have gotten too comfortable knowing I was so prepared, because I slept through my alarm, missed my flight, and we had to push the whole trip back a day!
(Marry the one that is a good sport even when you left them waiting for you at the airport while you slept the morning away peacefully at home!)
Since then, I’ve been superstitious about packing too fully too early. Silly, I know, but I feel like a little panic gets me up in the morning!
This time, I trusted my alarm (and Steve’s alarm and the backup alarm I set with Alexa…) and decided to enjoy the process. Then I settled in for my meditation at the end of the evening.
It was a loving-kindness mediation of sorts, but sending that loving-kindness to yourself and your anxiety. A lot of body scanning, being super present, and allowing “bad” feelings to just be. Examining them. Not running from them or stuffing them down.
It was hard to have a single bad feeling considering how excited I felt, but I took the lesson. I know I can be an avoider of those really sad feelings, the ones where you have to face grief or deep hurt from someone you care about or shame over something you wish you could have done differently. None of us like facing those feelings, but it helps to remember we all have them sometimes. We all suffer. And we could stand to be kinder about it.
Maybe then we could face those feelings more easily and work through what we need to as we go.
We are in Mexico now so I have no idea how meditating will go the next week, or if I’ll find time to write much, but I will meditate every day and I will post something to mark those meditations. I’m actually really looking forward to doing it on the beach, by the pool, maybe even on our sunset cruise tomorrow for our anniversary! Let’s see. Maybe I’ll just get up each morning and have a little gratitude mediation before I start my day in paradise.
That is the number one thing I’m feeling right now: grateful. For my life, my marriage, the vaccines, for the opportunity to travel again, for our upcoming birthday celebrations, my friends, family, the insanely delicious ceviche I just had by the pool- everything.
We may have “lost” a year, but I’m going to make damn sure to cherish these moments ten times as hard from now on. Take nothing for granted. We’ve all seen how fast things can change!
My Year of Meditation 