I tend to be the sensitive type, so I have a habit of reading too much into my interactions with people on a daily basis. Somebody says something, I get my feelings hurt, it ruins MY day, and then if I haven’t done a very good job of controlling my actions, it might ruin THEIR day too. I consider being an adult a work in progress, so when I make a wrong turn, I look for ways to improve my habits.
People who know me well have heard me talk about “mindfulness” as a practice for all kinds of things, but lately the mindfulness exercise that I’ve been working on daily is known as “spacious mind”. Our mind creates our reality. If we have a negative experience, we ultimately control the amount of power that it has over us.
Here are some little floating heads to illustrate this concept:
SPACIOUS MIND = Space to “walk around” a negative influence, observe it, and decide the level of importance to apply to it.
I’m making an effort to cultivate these habits in my daily life and I feel like this lesson has been particularly poignant for me. Negativity isn’t just someone who rains on your parade, but can be helplessness, sadness, or stress, or worry. Being a parent means I have an extra heaping helping of all those things, but I am learning that I can do a better job being a parent, and partner, if I choose to have a spacious mind and not allow those things to consume me.
{read more about developing a spacious mind here: Type In Depth}
What an awesome tactic! I try to follow this same thinking, but the other morning someone cut me off in traffic on the way to work and I was in a terrible mood for an hour. Then I got mad at myself for being negative, which made it worse. Eventually I had to laugh at myself and shake it off — I have to say it’s nice when being super negative feels like a novelty!