Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Peace & Resilience

Category Archives: self-awareness


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Unlearned lessons

I’m learning that your opinions about me come from your experiences not mine.

Your beliefs, values and habits were formed not by my behaviors but by your experiences.

So next time I judge you or think you are making a mistake, I will remind myself to pause and explore the roots of my feelings.

They were more likely than not aimed at something or someone that came long before this moment with you. This encounter just somehow shook them up or rattled them loose.

If we can both remember this we can both forgive and understand that the mistakes of other are really just reminders of our own unlearned lessons.


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Holding on too tight

Control creates the illusion of safety.

The more I seek control, the more insecure I become.

The more I allow myself to trust the not-knowing to result in wisdom, the uncertainty to to inspire clarity, and the gift of others’ feedback to grow my confidence, the less I approach life as a field of potential failures and instead find a river of opportunities.

The less I grapple with control, the more I understand how much there is to learn and realize how much I already know.


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No loss, just lessons learned

Change can be a trigger for grief when I view it as resulting in something I don’t want, something that requires me to lose what I have.

But when change is received as a marker of accomplishment of a stage or triumph over a challenge, it inspires a sense of renewal and growth.

To receive change in that way requires diligence and optimism. It requires a belief in me that all of my experiences are opportunities to get to know myself better and to play in the dance of life with you, this body, this world, even if it means it looks different along the way.

In this way, change becomes not suffering but nourishing, evolutionary, and a source of freedom.


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Walking Confidently

How often I have longed for the confidence of another, the apparent success of others, and what seems the ease with which they live.

Then I remember I have my own gifts and talents.

These thriving others are likely not concerned with what I have or don’t have and rather are living within their own gifts and abilities.

It is in living within our gifts that brings ease to our existence, success in our challenges, and the knowing that each of us contributes a beautiful and very special piece to the tapestry of all.

Much like in painting, when the unique colors blend just at their edges they are often more vibrant than when they stand alone or try to take on characteristics of the others and simply become mud.

Today, I aspire to walk confidently and brightly in the shades and shadows of my own unique talents and abilities.


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Loss, Not Lost

Grief…it’s not about the loss as much as creating and being able to access a little warm place in your heart where you hold that connection forever.

I used to think that grief was the act of severing ties and throwing away something special because it was lost.

But now I know that grief is a process of storing the memories of the specialness of every experience regardless of its labels, conditions, and how it came to be or not be.

Grief is experiencing the loss without getting lost.


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Walking

Life presents challenges.

Challenges confirm purpose.

Purpose is the path I walk.

I walk in purpose, not on purpose.

I walk this path not because I am supposed to

But because I chose this direction.

Together with challenge – in purpose – we move towards that which serves a greater good…

To love,

to serve,

to heal

freely.


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Devotion

Today I invite new consciousness,

Awakening to my experiences,

And clearing my mind of the familiar chatter.

I engage in devotion,

Not for the sake of routine or simple predictability and familiarity,

But because it fuels my heart and ignites my soul.


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At the Starting Line

Today I begin again…not as a punishment or starting over but launching from a new starting line.

To begin again is to feel into an experience in a new way and invite…and then allow… an unexpected outcome.

To joyously and curiously invite variety, spontaneity, and change in such a way as to begin again and begin again, freely cultivating an openness to the unknown while at the same time feeling stable, connected, confident, and grounded.

To begin again is to be fully present, wildly open, and happy in every moment.


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The Pieces

Frequently I stumble over my desire to align myself with someone else, to feel liked, to fit in.

Then, I realize a little piece of me is already aligned with everyone else and that is what allows me to stand out.


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An antidote for loss

When you are suffering, my smile does not mean I don’t care. It may be that I am just opening my heart more in a time when yours may feel closed off.

I am holding a space of warmth and hope in which you can feel sad but not alone.

Allow my smile to soften your pain and be not a blinding light but a guiding light.

Feeling and noticing love and joy in others does not negate the loss. It just reminds us of our capacity to heal and honor loss without getting lost in it ourselves.