Summer's End

As the days grow longer and the nights get shorter I sit here and wonder where did the summer go? I am just two weeks away from returning to work and as always I wonder why didn't I do more this summer?  This summer was a crazy one for me because the first month of it was spent burying my past.  So many strong women died that I was shaken to the core remembering their lives and the impact they had on mine.  July luckily was spent biking, hiking, and crafting.  Most importantly it was spent reviewing my life, what do I really want from it.

I think I wasted so much time worrying about a life I don't have and not enjoying the one I do have.  This seems to be the central theme in most of my blogs. I understand this concept, but have difficulty practicing it. My mind just does not shut up.  I have ruminative thoughts that plague me on a daily basis.  I do not think I should be left alone for long.  I talk to myself  too much and eventually talk myself into a tizzy.  I have figured out the things that help and I want to share, just in case anyone else out there is goes through the same things.

Number 1: When stressing about something, take action if you can.  If you can do something about it, by all means do it.  I sometimes stress about the house being a mess or I hate seeing that stupid thing still sitting on the floor and driving me crazy, stop complaining get off your ass and do something about it and voila, it's done and you feel so much better!

Number 2:  Don't believe everything you tell yourself.  Challenge that voice in your head.  My worry is that something bad will happen to the people I love when they are out in the world, honestly I will lose sleep worrying about all the evil in the world and how it will affect my family.  I have to take a realistic approach and tell myself the world is not all bad, yes bad things happen, but not every time my family walks out the door, get over it!

Number 3:  Do something else, when I am in a full blown scare fest I stop myself and do something that requires my full attention, like knitting, sewing little cloth circles, drawing and scrapbooking, once my mind is engaged in something else I forget what I was stressing about.  DO NOT WATCH TV, though that activity is mindless sometimes will provoke more thoughts to stress about, especially if you watch the news.

Number 4:  Don't talk about it with a friend.  What??? I know as bad as that sounds sometimes it is not a good idea to dissect every little negative detail because it just stresses you out more in the end.  Now you have someone else involved in your drama and they will be just as concerned about your craziness and they will try to help, but you and they do not realize half the stuff you were stressing is 80% imaginary.

Number 5: meditate about your thoughts, think of them as leaves on the river.  Acknowledge their existence and then watch them float away, do not act or react to them just let them go.

Number 6:  Be nice to yourself, if you can not stop the ruminating it is okay.  It takes practice and you can not do it if you are worrying about not doing it. It takes a lot of practice and that is why meditation and yoga are called practice, because you really got to work on it.

I still have a lot to work on and one summer is not going long enough to get it all right, but at least I'm trying. That is the key also, keep trying to fix yourself because otherwise you end up doing crazy things like that dude.  I do not want to mention him or his actions or even to think that something as the six things I have outlined here could have helped him, we will never know. I don't want to start ruminating about that one, because that will require a whole new blog.

For now I am going to enjoy the last few days, maybe not hiking around but just sitting here with a computer at my side and my legs up trying to solve the problems of the world.