Sunshine and work flow

Good morning! It's been a crazy week with graduation, putting in my two weeks at the fitness center, applying for more jobs, and my car is currently in the shop being fixed. I got to go home for Mother's Day after work, and it was great to see the family. Also Storm's wedding is approaching, and I'm getting excited!

Reading

Recently in the book, Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, both authors discuss the importance of building your inner compass to guide your decisions which will lead you to a more happy and productive version of yourself. To build your compass, Burnett and Evans state that you must understand your work view reflection and your life view reflection. These reflections (a set of answers to the questions prompted in Chapter 2) need to be coherent and compatible in order for a person to find happiness and joy in their job. I will be working on creating these reflections today, and applying it to Chapter 3 and 4 (I tend to read ahead and come back to writing prompts/ other tasks sometimes; especially when I just want to read when I'm out in public).

Mindfulness Cards

About a month ago, I bought these mindfulness cards from a craft store. At first, I was skeptical and assumed they were superficial, but they have become a part of my morning routine with meditation. These cards are super cute and helpful! They are bright in color, come in four different sections ( Rest and balance, Curiosity and Joy, Insight and Awareness, and Kindness). The purpose of the cards is to help expand one's thoughts about mindfulness by introducing new ideas. The cards can be arranged to create a circle, showing the connections of the topics. My favorite part about these cards is they help when you feel stuck in mediation, have trouble focusing on a particular topic or thought, or when you need some type of support.

Card topics this morning

Rest and Balance-

Walk the Walk: Your body and mind are interconnected

Curiosity and Joy-

Who Knows?: Questions of who and what are important. If we become aware of our thoughts, then can we actually become our thoughts?

Insight and Awareness-

Meet the difficult: Embrace discomfort in a nonjudgmental way. This will open/ change your perception of the situation.

Kindness-

Thank you: The world is interconnected. Your actions are affecting others, and others actions are affecting you.

Appreciation

Last topic this morning. Appreciation. Appreciating the universe. Appreciating others. Appreciating the weather. Appreciating yourself. This idea is not a new one. Having an attitude of gratitude helps change the negative perception of the world. Also having a strong faith that everything will work out helps too. But the only way to build the faith muscle is to try. If I never got the courage to go to Chicago I would have never been able to put my faith in myself, the universe, and the knowing that everything would be okay. There are so many things, people, thoughts, creative ideas, to be grateful for. In Mike Dooley's Instagram post this morning he quoted, "There are many different types of currencies," which is very true. In addition to that, I want to add, "There are many different types of appreciation." With so much to appreciate, there are a multitude of ways to show your gratitude: Thank you letters, Thank you post its, remembering what someone said a week ago and ask them about it, giving a helping hand to someone in need, sharing your resources.

Until next week!

Mindfulness Cards that create a circle- these aren't from today but you get the idea