Rad Relief
June 14, 2022
I’ve been having a tough couple of days. Anxiety, overwhelm, irritation. Such a lovely and charming combo of feelings. Especially when I’m hosting my mom for a week and starting summer vacation with my 18-year-old son. People I love! I’m supposed to be happy and gay! Flitting through the days like flower petals on a languid river!
HA!!!
Instead I’m obsessing, freaking, palpitating, planning… trying to find order in a chaotic universe. Trying to believe that I am safe when some ding-dong switch in my head is giving me a message of eminent doom and disaster. Oh brain chemistry, why-for-art-thou brain chemistry!
Help! What to do?
Well, duh Anh. I created My Happier Mind Cue Cards, FOR THIS REASON! There are 71 tips and tricks for sh*t like this. And I know them all BY HEART! How about follow my own advice?
So as I tried to navigate nerves and lunch, I imagined the various My Happier Mind Cue Cards. Which one would best help me calm the f*ck down?
A blue card, in the Change Your Mind category did the trick: Be Radically Present. And I mean RADICALLY, infinitesimally present. Like a crazed person. Because so much of what has been jangling me is thoughts of the future (my NEXT house guests, my drive to Denver, finding a college for Moss) and from the past (the pissy note from the landlady, the bulldozing conversation I had with a colleague who talks to much and never listens…).
If I can wedge my toe in that little crack between the past and the future, that place known as Now, I can find an entire universe filled with simple things – things I can see, hear, feel, taste and smell only in this moment. The love of my mom, the grin on Moss’s face, the concern (bless him!) of my beleaguered husband, the flowers on the table, my feet on the rug, the pencil with the chewed eraser.
It’s quieter in the Now. It’s prettier. It’s more manageable.
I hope we all find our Now more often than not.
Ahhh.
with love, Anh
More Posts
Related Posts
