Monday Mindfulness Minute: Welp, back to Reality...

“That was an awesome trip! I can’t believe we rode 17 dolphins, drank 96 pina coladas, and saw a man blow up a condom to put on his head during a magic show.”

“Same, I just felt so alive and happy the whole time. I’m so glad we took time to get away.”

“Me too! But it's back to reality now (heavy, dramatic sigh).”

We have all been there. We experience an exciting “get away” where we seem to unplug from the world and find the peace, happiness, and contentment that somehow elude us day to day, and we dread returning to the grind of work that seems to be the exact opposite of what we want to do. On a smaller scale, this is something most of us experience every Monday morning as the number of "welp, it's back to reality" and "the weekend just wasn't long enough" pile up because of the internal monologue that convinces us we would be happy if we were doing something different somewhere else.

Our current reality has somehow morphed into a cycle of working 5 days of reality to get 2 days of "peace" and working 49 weeks a year to get 3 weeks of PTO. I'm not a math major, but that math doesn't add up. And I've lived this type of "life." Except for me, my reality was that I only enjoyed a few hours each week on Friday Night when I was in the sweet spot of being glad the weekend had arrived but was also far enough from it being over (which I immediately started fretting come Saturday morning - "Only a few more hours of freedom before it's back to the grind"). It's not a fun reality.

The reality is that the average person will experience (really dread) 4,004 Mondays in their lifetime. It's time for us to reclaim Monday as a day of celebration, where we return to reality and focus not on what the mind tells us should be different, but on learning to appreciate the joy of everything real in the here and now (yes, this even includes the less-than-ideal Mondays). As Neal Allen says in his book "Better Days Ahead,"

"Check yourself right now. Do you need anything? I mean right now, in your chair or on your bed as you read this sentence. Not in an hour, right now. I can promise you the answer is no, you don't need anything this second... Right this moment you are protected from the weather, you aren't starving, and you aren't being mugged at gunpoint. Your needs are being met. For everybody in civilized society, this fact of not needing anything is true for about 99.9% of the conscious moments of our lives. And yet instead of recognizing that we're 99.9% satisfied, we complain that life is constantly letting us down." p. 65-66

The good news is that if we slow down, we'll see that the happiness, contentment, ease, peace, joy, and excitement that we think are only found on Saturday and Sunday or during vacation on some exotic island, aren't outside things at all. These are all emotions that are alive inside of us and that we can cultivate moment to moment. Does this mean that we'll never again have an awful Monday where nothing goes right, we're tired, and we want to be anywhere other than the office? No! But it does mean that even on those days we will be invited back to reality that even on our worst days, there is still 99.9% of satisfaction that we can look for. Find it!

Monday mindfulness Minute: Sharpen Your Axe

Once upon a time, there was a blacksmith who spent his days sharpening axes in a small village. This blacksmith was fortunate because he not only sharpened axes for sale, but he also spent any extra time he had sharpening a special axe that had been passed down through his family. But the more he sharpened, the worse he felt. He reached a point where he hated sharpening axes.

So one day, after months of throwing the idea around, he decides to go off on his own with nothing but a few items and his sharpened axe.

After wandering for a few days, he happens upon a band of tree cutters who make their living harvesting trees. They ask if he wants to join in, and he says, “Sure, but I’ve never done anything like this.” So they say step right up and offer him an axe.

As he steps up, he starts to hear a few folks in the crowd murmuring that he has no shot at this. “How could he possibly cut a tree down if he’s never done it before?” they all say. Hearing their doubts, he second-guesses himself and says, “You’re right, I’ve never cut down a tree, so how could I possibly do it?”

Hearing this, and sensing his self-doubt, one of the elders of the group walks over and says, “Just give it a shot. What’s the worst that can happen? You aren’t able to cut it down? Once you know this, you’ll have crossed one more thing off your list on your way to discovering your purpose here.”

The blacksmith contemplates this for a second and feels a strange energy inside. The elder says, “Somebody get this man an axe,” but the man explains how he already has one. “So which tree am I cutting down?” the blacksmith asks. The elder points to a tree that appears to the man to be 30 feet tall and 10 feet around. Trying to control his nerves, the man steps up to the tree.

He lifts the axe, and with the first swing, the axe glides through the timber, and the tree falls. The sound of the tree hitting the earth isn’t loud enough to overcome the gasps from the crowd.

Amazed, the man slowly backs away into the waiting arms of the astonished crowd. “So how did you manage to do that?” one person shouts. Another shouts, “We’ve found the messiah! A true superhero right here on earth.” The man tries to tell him the story of the axe being passed down and his days of sharpening when no one was looking but the crowd excitedly ignored that part of the legend. They wanted to see another “miracle.” 

Monday Mindfulness Minutes: Are you seeing 0s or Os?

CALL ME! NOW!

When you get this text from a family member, especially your mom, it's easy to let your mind immediately descend into the rabbit hole of thought. "Did someone die?" "Did the House burn down?" "Is there an impending zombie apocalypse?" Fortunately, I'd gotten enough texts like these from my mom over the years, so I paused before panicking.

It seemed like the phone didn't ring once before she answered, "I just can't believe it! I work so hard with your brother to help him make good grades in school, and he can't even do well in gym. He brought home his report card today, and he has a ZERO in gym. A ZERO! Can you believe that? How do you even get a 0?!?!?!?"

By this point in my life, I had worked with my thoughts and emotions enough to know better than to believe whatever presented itself first, so I listened patiently as she presented her case. While staying centered as I listened, my mind flashed to my middle school gym days, and it hit me.

"Mom, are you sure it's a 0?"

"What do you mean, am I sure? I'm looking right at it!"

"What if it's not a zero? What if it's an "O"?

The other end of the line suddenly got quiet. Sure enough, my mom checked with his teacher, and that's exactly what it was - my brother's gym class wasn't graded on a numeric rubric, but a simple Unsatisfactory/Satisfactory/Outstanding grading scale - he had earned the highest mark possible.

I don't share this story to slam my mom or her perspective; if anything, it serves as an important (and humorous) reminder to CONSTANTLY question how we look at situations. We have an abundance of opportunities every day to step back from our normal way of looking at life, which usually includes a bunch of dead ends (0s). Dead-end living is when we go with the first thought/emotion that we experience, without taking a pause to step back to imagine other possibilities.

Let's try to stand back and get a wider perspective on situations this week and see if we notice anything different. The quality of our life is not determined by what's outside, but by our perspective of it. It's up to us to see a life of 0s or a life of Os.