meditation – The Healing Modalities

Drop it.

One of the things that can get in the way of our self-care practices is all-or-nothing thinking.

All-or-nothing thinking is an unhelpful thinking pattern that we may be engaging in. We can recognize when we’re doing this when we’re thinking in extremes: we’re either a success or a failure. Our performance was perfect or terrible. If we’re not one hundred percent, then we’re a zero. If we can’t exercise for an hour, then we won’t do it at all.

That last example creates a majority of the reasons why most people don’t engage in self-care practices. Some people might have an unrealistic idea – an ideal – of what self-care looks like for them.

And when they can’t meet that ideal, they don’t do ANYTHING.

For example, because Sara thinks she has to exercise for an hour 4 times a week, when she has to stay 20 minutes later at work than expected one afternoon, she decides that she can’t exercise for a full hour before going home to make dinner, so she doesn’t go to the gym at all that day. And because she didn’t go to the gym that day, her gym momentum takes a hit and she doesn’t go again for a week and a half.

If Sara dropped her all-or-nothing thinking, she could’ve gone to the gym and exercised for 30 minutes – even 20 minutes would have been beneficial.

Or because Kevin thinks he has to meditate for 30 minutes every time he sits down to practice, when he finds himself with only 10 minutes one day, he skips his practice entirely. And his meditation practice momentum takes a hit and he finds himself skipping practice for several days because he “doesn’t have time.”

If Kevin dropped his all-or-nothing thinking, he’d recognize that meditating for 10 minutes can still be beneficial.

Or because Charlie thinks she has to stick to her diet 100% or it won’t work, when she finds herself eating two more cookies than she planned on Tuesday, she quits her whole diet for the next two weeks. Quitting won’t get us to our goal faster.

If Charlie dropped her all-or-nothing thinking, she could instead think, “OK, I ate two extra cookies today, but I can still stick with my plan for dinner. And tomorrow, I can stick with my meal plan too. I don’t have to give up just because I went off part of my plan today.”

It’s great to set ambitious goals for ourselves. But not at the expense of us meeting those goals. It’s about having realistic plans for the time we DO have, with the decisions we CAN make, and with the CAPACITY we have.

With any practice, consistency and commitment are important. Showing up is key. Even for 5 minutes.

So when we want to have a movement goal of exercising every day and we only have 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening to do something, we DO something during those 5 minutes.

It could be 10 pushups and 10 squats, twice a day.

It could be a 5 minute walk twice a day.

It could be 5 minutes on a bike/treadmill in the morning and 5 minutes stretching at night.

But we DO it when the time comes. We show up for ourselves when the time comes.

Showing up for ourselves consistently builds trust in ourselves to do what we say we’ll do. Even if it’s only for 5 minutes at a time.

And what we may find is that those 5 minutes build strength, energy, and motivation to extend our movement time. We might find ourselves wanting to make more time to build on what we started and do 10 minutes at a time. Or find a 30-minute time chunk each day. We won’t know what’s possible for us until we try.

And still, maybe it happens that one day, we don’t even have 5 minutes and we only have 2 minutes. We can still do SOMEthing during those 2 minutes to move our body around intentionally.

So we can drop the all-or-nothing thinking. We can start having more realistic ideas of what our self-care plan looks like. And then we show up for those plans. We show up for ourselves.

Your turn: Where in your life might you be engaging in all-or-nothing thinking? Do you find yourself wondering why you’re not engaging in the self-care practices you KNOW you can do? Are your self-care plans realistic or unrealistic to fit into your life right now? How can you create self-care practices that FIT into your life exactly the way it is right now?

Dig Deeper: In what ways might you need to make changes in your life to help support your self-care practices? (Hint: making those changes IS part of self-care.)

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What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Create vs. Consume

Last week we talked about “deciding to” vs. “wanting to.” This week we’ll talk a little more about what we can DO when we decide to make changes in our lives.

We take two types of actions when it comes to our goals: passive action and massive action.

Passive action is when we’re learning, gaining, and organizing knowledge about our goal. We’re consuming information about it.

Massive action is when we actually DO something with what we’ve learned. We apply it in our lives in an active, creative way that moves us towards our goal.

Here are some examples:

Goal: Exercise 4 days/week

Passive action = Research gyms to join, learn about what exercises to do, make a plan for exercising by working different muscle groups each day, buy new workout clothes, watch social media videos of people showing you their workouts

Massive action = wake up an hour earlier 4 days a week, put on the workout clothes, drive to the gym, DO the exercises each of the 4 days as planned even when you think it’s too hard

Goal: Eat less sugar

Passive action = research low-sugar items, learn about how sugar affects your body, make a plan for how much sugar you want to eat each day, make a list of things that are OK for you to eat, watch social media videos about how to eat less sugar

Massive action = remove extraneous sugary items from your home/office, stick to the plan that you made, decrease your desire for sugar, eat only the items on your OK list, eat only the amount of sugar on your plan, allow the urge to eat more sugar and don’t react to the urge (don’t eat more sugar) even when you think it’s too hard

Goal: Save more money

Passive action = decide how much to save every month, review your expenses and see where you can decrease spending, read a book about budgeting and reducing expenses, participate in a workshop about debt, make a plan for saving and decreasing expenses, watch social media videos about saving money

Massive action = set up automatic savings every month, allow the urge to spend money when you see something you “want” but don’t necessarily “need,” stick to your savings plan even when you think it’s too hard

Goal: Meditate 3 days/week for 20 minutes

Passive action = read about meditation methods, listen to talks by meditation teachers, choose a practice you want to explore, find a meditation group/class, purchase a meditation app/program, watch social media videos about people talking about meditation

Massive action = make a space in your home for meditation, show up to the group/class, sit and practice for 20 minutes even when your mind wanders and you think it’s too hard

Goal: Be kinder to yourself

Passive action = read books about self-love and self-compassion, make a list of ways to be kinder to yourself, heart and save social media posts about self-love and self-compassion, watch social media videos showing people talking about self-love

Massive action = look in the mirror and tell yourself “thank you” every morning for a month; when that feels comfortable, look in the mirror and tell yourself “I love you” every morning; when you feel overwhelmed, ask yourself, “What is the kindest thing I can do for myself right now?” and honor the answer; do some of those things on the list you made every week or every month

The point is to DO the actions that are part of our goal. While we do need to do some amount of passive action by consuming information, we can read, watch, and learn about our goal all we want, but if we’re not DOING the actions that will lead towards our goal, we’re just consuming and not creating. We’re staying where we are. Let’s not get stuck.

Even making a plan is passive – it’s not until we carry out the steps on the plan that we’re creating and taking massive action. Let’s create more than we consume.

This is not to say that we don’t also take care of ourselves while moving towards our goals. A lot of us want to stop when it begins to feel hard because we think it should be easy. Let it be hard. And keep going. We can be kind and take care of ourselves when we need to, but there’s a difference between giving ourselves some grace and self-sabotaging or giving up.

Your turn: Are you able to tell the difference between the passive and massive actions you’ve been taking in your life? How can you become more aware of the amount you’re consuming vs. what you’re creating? What massive action(s) will you decide to commit to?

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Tag: meditation

All-or-nothing thinking

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