April Showers, Bring May WEDDINGS OMG OUR WEDDING IS NEXT WEEK
Hi all!
In 7 days, I am getting married! Mix of reactions I'm getting from folks:
- Woo hoo!!! CONGRATULATIONS, YAY! 🎊 — 68%
- Cool! Have fun 👍 — 25%
- [with look of concern] How are you holding on? Are you okay?? — 7%
To you 7%'ers out there, BLESS YOU, yes, I am very very excited but thank you for also acknowledging that whoa this is a big life event, and no, I did not perfectly plan it all out, and yeah work is still happening and other life stuff and #whenitrainitpours even with the wedding around the corner.
Which brings us to our topic for the week: How to deal with extreme stress!
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Do that self care thing! (1 minute read)
All around phenomal human Anneke Jong sent me this Mental Health All-Stars Graphic ages ago and by the grace of internet serendipity it popped back up this week.
YES, to all of the things, especially that strong meditation man. Also, "Creative Outlet" green goblin with the shades and hot pants on? Sir? Please refer to this newlsetter, as exhibit A of Maria's Creativity.
Seriously though, this is a lovely reminder that 1) things that sound squishy and saccharine like "love" and "social activity" are actually sources of strength 2) these are our allies! don't turn against them when you need them most!
More cartoons: Honey Dill (0 minutes to infinity procrastination)
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Stop, drop, and notice...HOW are you stressed? (1 - 2 min)
Fellow humans, the more I learn about bodies and brains, the more I realize we know basically nothing about them and aren't paying attention to either like 99.999999992% of the time.
But if we stop and chill for second our bodies we might find our bodies screaming out HEY THIS IS NOT COOL in ways we didn't even notice.
Case in point, stress.org provides this list of 50 different stressors, and some of them (e.g., #10 Dry mouth, problems swallowing, and #15 Excessive belching, flatuence (!)) I would normally *not* consider stress related.
But as this terrifying* graphic of the stress response on the body shows, whoa, stress gets all over the place! Which I'd reframe as a lovely thing, because our body is actually able to give us tons of clues that — yo, we need to chill.
Case in point: I'm currently feeling like woo hoo I'm in a good mood, I'm having a great time writing! but when I listen to my body, I'm dealing with some major shoulder pain, fidgetyness, and distraction. Which all points to more stress than I'm surface-level aware of...and the fact that maybe I should go to sleep.
*This graphic isn't terrifying for the stress response mind you, but because it gives me flashbacks to when I had to wear business formal skirt suits.
Try it now: Where might your body be holding more stress than you realize? Close your eyes (yup, like now now) for 10 seconds and just check in w/ your breathing & muscles. (10 seconds)
Learn more: Popular Science on Chronic Stress (3 min)
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Give yourself a mind hug (1 min)
Wait you say, didn't we talk about mind hugs last week? Yup, we did, and they're back.
In meditation land, the big big big theme is equanimity which is essentially feeling chill and calm no matter what's going on. To do that, we have to learn to be very accepting, and compassionate, and non-judgmental.
How? Mind hugs.
Seriously, we are usually absolute pieces of garbage to ourselves in our own minds. Our inner critics are...MEAN! And sneaky mean, too!
I see this in my own thoughts (OUCH!!!), and then with my work with my meditation students and coaching clients, too. What is funny is that if we could hear everyone's inner critic we'd realize how very ridiculous they are + we are not alone in feeling stressed / down / impostersyndroming / bad parents / lazy / whatever.
To be clear:
- I am very much working on my own equanimity, and
- I do not have this figured out, but
- I do believe we can all benefit from being nice to ourselves, aka mind hugs
So go do that.
Practice a mind hug: Imagine your nastiest meanest inner critic as a silly cartoon (maybe like that weird drawing of a brain I drew), and then imagine giving him/her/it a big hug. Sounds stupid? It is. But beating ourselves up relentlessly? Probably stupider. So, uh try it! (30 seconds!)
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Final words!
I'm off next week for the wedding! :)
Shout outs to Teddy & Joshua for the amazing comments on what you'd want to see in a Mind Matters Most newsletter. If you, too, have newsletter dreams and feedback, help a lady out and shoot me a note!
Big hugs, as always.
xxx maria 🙋
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