Windmills Of My Mind

/mīn(d)f(ə)lnəs/

noun

Ben Michaelis Ph.D. in Psychology Today

“Running is a mental sport, more than anything else. You’re only as good as your training, and your training is only as good as your thinking.” – Lauren Oliver

When I first started running, I didn’t think about why I ran.  I needed to lose some weight, and I was too cheap to join a gym so I just ran.  Honestly, I didn’t feel good while I was running.  Truth be told, I kind of hated it, but I always felt better after I ran. Over time I began to enjoy the running itself, and now, after many years of running I finally figured it out why running has become such a major part of my life. Running is not about running for me anymore. It’s meditation.  As I have matured as a runner, it allowed me to be present in the moment - fully aware of the here and now. I have learned to be in the zone, where all my activities were focused on maintaining presence in the present.

We all know that running has long been praised for its health benefits: it’s good for our cardiovascular health, general fitness, physical and mental resilience. It’s also one of the most natural forms of exercise for human beings. Because running has a centering effect, it is also meditation in it’s own right.  After looking at the literature about meditation and prayer I have discovered that one of the key factors for effective meditation(link is external) and prayer is repetition, and running is all about repetition. I have found that meditation and prayer can be hard for some people and so for my patients who have a hard time sitting still I often prescribe running and have seen amazing results.

Running as meditation offers you a few things:

1. Concentration. Believe or not, you can focus and meditate when in motion. In fact, the natural rhythm of running offers an ideal opportunity for your mind to concentrate on the present moment. Focus on your breath and stay attuned to your surroundings. As you are getting familiar with the process of breathing, you are essentially developing a beautiful relationship with the very aspect of being alive. Allow your body, mind and soul to start functioning in a harmony together.

2. Contemplation. Running is the catalyst for self-exploration. It allows you to connect to the space between your thoughts to discover your inner voice. Positive self-talk is one of the most effective tools out there to boost our mental health and foster life success. It helps you change your focus and see your actions in a bigger perspective.

3. Relaxation. A tranquil mind usually follows after each running session: our mind is calm, our body is relaxed and our nerves are cooled down. If you find yourself stressed out during the day, it can be very therapeutic to let go of all your daily clutter and just run.

If you have a hard time sitting still and the idea of taking 40 minutes a day to meditate seems like torture to you, or even if it doesn’t, running may be just what the doctor ordered.  Give it a try and let me know what you discover.

Happy Running!

These are self-care techniques that work for me. Use them if you need a sense of order, if you need to think straight, or if you carry stress from work into other parts of your life.

Take a shower, brush your hair, feed your dog, and all that morning stuff before you eat. Food and coffee or tea are your rewards. If you have depression, these Pavlovian rewards will help you automatically start to do the things you need to get done. If you need a pick-me-up, have just a few sips of coffee/tea before getting ready. If you accomplish your morning routine, you’ll take care of the most important things you have to do for the day. Later, do some chores before you eat dinner. If you don’t get things done, eat anyway and try again the next day. Do not attempt these if you have an eating disorder.

When you first wake up in the morning, make coffee, take off all your clothes if you’re wearing any, and take a selfie of you drinking coffee in the nude. If you want, you can cover up by sitting behind a table, holding throw pillows, etc. You’ll get used to how you naturally look, before you brush your hair, exfoliate, etc. Maybe follow it up with some nagna yoga (nude yoga) poses (there are DVDs that show you how).

Do yoga or tai chi. If you’re stressed, you’ll get the same relief that you get from an intense workout session. Depression is physically painful. If you have it, the poses help with the pain and the deep breathing will help with removing negative thoughts. There are many types of yoga, so you have to do your research. Yoga is great because you can make it as challenging as you wish by staying in poses for longer periods of time and choosing more advanced poses. You progress at your own pace. It ranges from slow motion slow to military boot camp fast. Tai chi focuses mostly on the legs, so it pairs really well with yoga, which focuses more on the arms. My favorite type of yoga is yin yoga, because it’s not too fast and not too slow.

Throw out anything you haven’t used in the past three months. If you have T-shirts from special events, have them turned into a patchwork quilt. Take photos of items that hold memories and toss out the items themselves. Make your home feng shui.

Drink water. It makes you feel a lot less sluggish. You can infuse the water with fruit or cucumbers for flavor. The bigger the cup, the more water you’ll drink because you won’t have to keep getting up. You should probably drink about 6-9 eight ounce cups.

Wake up at the same time every morning. You’ll start to do it automatically instead of getting mad at your alarm.

Make your bed. You probably won’t be inclined to go back to bed and feel sorry for yourself after it’s all made up. Also, shaking your sheets makes them fluffy like a cloud.

Sing in the shower. Getting ready is hard. Turn it into an opportunity for karaoke instead. Then let’s see if you can recite an entire Parks and Recreation episode by heart.

When it’s not raining, hang your wet clothes on a line instead of using a dryer. You’ll save money on your electric bill and it feels really good to be out in nature. It doesn’t feel like an actual chore. Don’t do it if you’re arachnophobic. I see about one spider each time I hang clothes, but I’m not afraid of spiders so I just whack them off onto the grass with a rag. In my experience, they just hang out on the clothes pins, not the actual clothes.

If you have trouble sleeping, drink herbal teas and eat a small handful of raisins, sultanas, or currants (to keep you from having to go during the night). When trying to fall asleep, you can listen to talk radio or ASMR videos. However, you may find ASMR videos arousing instead. I find that listening to NPR keeps me from having nightmares because I listen to the dialogue instead of thinking troubling thoughts.

Wear your nice clothes. If you save them for special occasions, then you’ll never wear them. Polish your jewelry, shine your shoes, and be the best dressed person in the grocery store.

Instead of eating in front of the T.V. all the time, eat in your front/back yard. While doing that you can listen to the radio, listen to podcasts, read the newspaper funnies (you can read them online on your phone), or do a word game (a crossword puzzle, a word search, woozles, sudoku, etc.). This is particularly satisfying when it’s breakfast because the crisp morning air is a relaxing way to wake up.

Eat breakfast while watching a T.V. show that you watched as a kid, and haven’t seen in years. It’ll give you that ‘Saturday morning cartoons’ feeling. Plus, cartoons and anime made for kids are full of jokes that only adults would understand, so they’re probably much funnier for you now.

Make your bathtub feel like a spa. Put on music that relaxes you, but try not to pick music that will make you emotional. Light incense or scented candles. Add bath bombs or bubble bath. Spread rose petals. Get hot towels out of the dryer. Use that really soft organic soap. Rub on aromatherapy oil or a salt scrub. Wear a face mask. Sip sparkling cider. Completely intoxicate your senses.

Create a fort out of blankets and pillows, and string lights around it. It creates a cozy, safe space.

Do an arts and crafts project or a home improvement project. If you don’t have much time, go outside and sketch what you see, or color in a coloring book.

Learn a hobby that you can use on a regular basis, like tea blending or pickling. Hobbies that save money are definitely a plus, like making candied citrus peels (instead of throwing the peels away and thus wasting them).

Learn a new dance or make up a dance for a song you love.

Cook something that you’ve been meaning to try.

Play board games or card games. Netflix binging makes people extremely depressed, so cut down on it by learning other rainy day activities. My favorite card games are spit and stealing bundles. The board games I have are chess, mahjong, Taboo, Scattergories, Pictionary, Cranium: WOW, and Monopoly: Pokémon Edition.

Learn some magic tricks to impress your younger relatives, or drunk friends. To be honest, I’ve always found them to be a huge turn-on.

Send one funny picture or video to a person each day. You will feel the joy of giving and that person will feel cared about. They might need it more than you know.

Once a day, compliment a stranger or someone you don’t know too well on an accessory they’re wearing. Earrings and shoes are probably the most innocuous articles of clothing, but there’s also briefcases, watches, etc. Whatever you do, don’t compliment people on their clothes. That is way too personal and creepy. Alternately, you can compliment co-workers on how well they did a task that day. I had a power yoga instructor who walked around the room while we were holding our poses and she helped people out, but also gave out compliments. They were as brief and simple as “Lovely, Heather” and “Beautiful, Heather,” but, coming from someone as talented as she, they meant the world to me.

Give yourself a mani-pedi. Al Capone got manicures too, so don’t be shy about it.

Get a massage, acupressure, acupuncture, reflexology, or some other form of tension relief. You don’t need a whole spa day. Just a short session. You can make your own spa treatments at home.

Go to a museum, art gallery, historical reenactment, or Renaissance faire. Being immersed in other time periods is a great escape. Better yet, join a reenactment group.

Make or buy a bird feeder and keep it stocked. That way you can feel the joy of taking care of pets without the stressful work. You could also plant something outdoors (not an indoor plant) and take care of that. Even if you have pets, you still feel good when you see a blue jay perched on your bird feeder or your strawberry plants bloom.

Have a tea party outside with one special person. Keep it to one person so you don’t stress over the details.

Roast marshmallows on a fire pit or fire up a grill. If you don’t have either, there are public grills at parks.

Go to a park and stay for a couple hours. Have picnic. Swing on a swing (it won’t be creepy, as long as a friend is with you). Bring some non-electronic toys - blow bubbles, do yo-yo tricks, play cat’s cradle, play pick-up sticks, play hacky sack, hula hoop, or fly a kite. Check out park amenities like canoeing, fishing, or geocaching.

Walk along nature trails, or along the beach. If you want peace and quiet at the beach, go early in the morning, before work. It’s a relaxing way to wake up.

Watch the sunrise or the sunset. Make out shapes in the clouds or look for constellations. If that seems kind of boring, listen to music while you do it.

Pick flowers and press them. You don’t have to use them for anything artistic; going out and admiring nature is the purpose. Just put them on top of a sheet of fancy scrapbook paper, take a photo, then throw the flowers out. You could also glue them to the paper, write an inspirational quote, and give it to someone as a gift.

Feed the ducks at a nearby lake and make up names for all of them.

Take a short road trip to nowhere in particular. Drive an hour or two, pulling over to take folksy pictures of farms and olde timey gas stations.

Go outside every day and take one photo. You’ll notice neat-looking things like cracks on old buildings, birds’ nests growing bigger, or plants breaking out from under the sidewalk. You can take more than one photo, but only pick your favorite one to represent your photo of the day, and put it in a folder. It’s like a zen garden on your computer.

Why we all need challenging experiences to become a better person.

In challenging times, it brings us back to the essentials, the bare minimums, the things that are truly important to us.

It is the things we live for. Whether it is love, your passions, family or friends, it is what makes you tick. It is what makes you — you.

Challenging experiences are powerful and healthy for the soul, because It cleanses you of the unnecessary. It strips your soul bare, it enables it to become naked and vulnerable. It shatters the excess and the things that are superficial. It rejoices in the absolute truth of what really matters to you.

In a world of overwhelming superficiality, we must remember what’s truly important to us, or we risk getting distracted. Distractions will lead you to greater unhappiness as you start to invest your time in things that don’treally count. You need to do things that matter.

Over the last year, I have gone through many challenging experiences that have completely changed the way I see myself and the world. It has shown me why they are valuable to enable anyone to grow. But at the same time, I’ve seen a lot of people get stuck or shrink because of a challenge.

It isn’t easy, but challenging experiences are necessary to make you a better person. One after another, these challenging times rip away the excess, and enables the necessities to breathe and shine. It brings the best of out of you once you overcome it. It’s like a cleansing fire.

These experiences enable you to become wiser. It enables you to speak not just from opinion, but from pure real experiences.

Challenging experiences are life lessons in chapter formats, and they exist to deliver you a reminder and an important message.

Moments like losing a family member, breaking up with the love of your life, getting fired from an amazing job, or even near death experiences, are a few examples of experiences that push us far out of our comfort zones and enable us to come back to what’s really important. You remember what matters.

In those moments, your brain will remove things that are unnecessary for your survival or happiness — it will eject things that are not essential and let you come back to your roots.

It won’t be easy, but I reassure you that they happen for a reason, and they are worth it, despite the negative feelings you may have.

Sometimes we must get off our self-made pedestals of invincibility and let ourselves to get knocked down, not one step, but to the bottom — so we can understand how to understand what’s really important to us.

You get a chance to either drown in it, or grow from it. You must choose the latter. A challenge will kick you and beat you down, but you can never let it keep you there. Keep your head high, realize what’s happening and keep going.

What if you’re having a hard time getting up? There will certainly be many moments where getting up will take more time, and that’s okay. We’re human and we all have our flaws. Recognize your weaknesses and surround yourself with the support system that compliment what’s missing, and let them empower you day after day. Whatever you choose to do, don’t consciously stay down.

Learn. Think. Act. Repeat.

It is in moments of vulnerability where we truly open up ourselves to the world and embrace it sincerely and fully.

Challenge after challenge, this is what shapes great people and great leaders. If we look at the great leaders in the world, time and time again, their stories are paved with many moments of great challenges, but the one thing that separates them from ordinary people is the ability to never give up. They preserve and grow stronger from the challenge.

So why haven’t I said failure? Because to me, failure is a word that signals a complete loss as if there is nothing to win. Failures don’t exist unless you let it be a losing game. We must see it as a growth opportunity to learn and become better individuals.

So don’t forget — see it as a challenge to overcome, not a dead-end failure. Challenging experiences shapes leaders, survivors and resilient souls who have come from the darkest depths and back. They realize what is most important to them and they stick to that so they can do what really matters to them, and what makes them happy.

Because when you do things that make you happy, you will end up doing great things naturally. Happiness should be your bottom-line.

For those readers who are going through uncertain and challenging times. Persevere my friends, and don’t give up. All will come together so long as you never stay down.