Daily Zen

"You might want to consider the possibility that the root of your problems doesn't have quite as much to do with the external world as you might imagine.  It's more likely that your reaction and interpretation of any given situation will dictate the nature of your experience.  Yes, you can try to change the world, you can move to another town, you can divorce your spouse and find a new one, but your experience of the world cannot change until you become mindful of how you react."- Steve Ross, Happy Yoga

This morning I woke up in something of a funk. I slept in until 10am, which hasn't happened in I don't know how long. Because I'd fallen asleep watching football last night, I essentially slept 12 hours. Again, I cannot tell you the last time I slept that much.  So I woke up groggy and confused, to say the least. 

After walking Masala for 45 minutes or so, I was feeling more alive and awake, so I decided to take my book, Happy Yoga: 7 Reasons Why There's Nothing to Worry About, into my yoga room for inspiration.  I figured a lot of people were in church working on their spirituality at just that moment, so I should take a crack at it, too. 

The passage above was part of what I read today. It was followed by an "Inner Yoga" exercise which instructed me to set a timer for three minutes. In that three minutes I was supposed to ignore the external world and focus on myself. Observe my thoughts. Notice what I was thinking and feeling, without judgment. Become aware of my relationship with myself.

I rolled my eyes and set my phone alarm. To be honest, I expected this mini-meditation to be torture, but the time actually flew by. And you know what? I learned that I am internally fidgety, that nothing is ever just right. That I am always expecting a little bit more out of myself and am never satisfied.

In retrospect, this self I discovered is completely obvious. I'm Type A. Ambitious. Perfectionistic. But to see it within myself for three minutes really drove the point home that the paragraph was teaching me. If I don't learn to accept myself - and my circumstances and people around me - I will never truly be happy.

So just for today, I tried to stop figeting. I tried to quiet my mind and take everything as it comes. I tried to remain calm and not stress about the thousand other things I could/should be doing other than the one thing I was doing.

And you know what? It actually worked. I did the suggested yoga poses to get me in the right frame of mind, and after that, today was marvelous. Content. I accomplished a fair bit, but did so with a peace of mind that was astonishing and refreshing.

I know tomorrow and the next day continuing this practice of calm acceptance will be more difficult, and to be sure I will not be perfect. But today I learned that that will be okay, that I don't have to be perfect to be happy.