Mindfully Aware of Myself

My daily aim is to be mindfully aware of myself? Easier said then done. Do you have something in your life that makes you become a little irrational and crazy?

I used to find rejection really hard to come to terms with. If someone decided that they didn't want to be friends with me on Facebook anymore I'd get upset, even if I didn't really know the person that well! Now I consciously take a pause, a moment for my thoughts to stop and for things to settle. I am much more mindful about people choosing to leave my life, allowing them to go and recognising that this is for the best for both of us, or allowing relationships to change. In fact now I find myself choosing who I want to share parts of my life with.

This feeling of rejection stemmed from the memory of never being good enough that I held when I was younger, from a feeling of always having to be the best and if I wasn't the best I had failed. I always felt that I wasn't good enough therefore in my own eyes I was a constant failure.  Writing thoughts and feelings down has always helped, I now journal daily.

Another thing that I find useful is to come to terms with the idea that what someone else thinks of you is actually none of your business. People on this planet will love you and hate you, and you will have absolutely no control over this.  The one thing that we can control is our reaction to this, and that is why the pause before thoughts is so effective, it allows you to put a perspective on things and recognise when we are being completely irrational.  For example, in my case it saved me from sending a pleading message to the person who de-friended me begging them to reinstate me as a friend, which would just make me even more bonkers!

A friend once told me a wonderful thing.  She said to me that if you can imagine that in this world, every single living thing acts on an urge to either give or receive love, then if people act in a way that seems to be malicious or upsetting towards you, the person in question must not have very much love in their own lives and as such they don't know how to request or receive in a loving way.  When you think about people in that way, putting them and their needs first you stop worrying about your hurt feelings.  It's a very effective way to refocus your thoughts.

These little techniques can be used for many issues you might be facing, not just rejection but before acting in anger towards someone, before confronting someone, before entering into a discussion with someone, before making a judgement about someone else or blaming them for something.  By creating a more mindful state in our own minds, being present to our thoughts and memories and choosing our reactions carefully, we in turn create a more mindful world.