Nearly Mindful

Listen to my dear friend Dr Cecilia Lopez on those automatic thoughts that influence our behaviors in so many ways. Dr. Lopez has been practicing therapy for eight years in California’s South San Francisco Bay Area. She has a doctorate and master’s degree in counseling psychology and is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She has worked at a non-profit as a clinician for seven years and now runs her own private practice. Cecilia takes pride in helping others work through mental, emotional, behavioral and stress-related challenges by supporting the development of skills and insight that promotes a life of well-being and flow.  She playfully refers to herself as a "Fear Coach". Her passion for helping others and her energetic (and sometimes playful) personality provides an ideal blend for promoting the improvement and awareness of mental health. Follow her website: drcecilialopez.com,  podcast Mindful Living with Dr. Cecilia Lopez and look for her work on TikTok!

My wish for you for 2021 is to know that you are good enough, strong, enough, smart enough, and to wish for you all that you need to be your best self. 

If we can take just a second or two to appreciate before we move on? We open the door to making appreciation and gratitude an integral part of our lives. We can LIVE in gratitude and enjoy the benefits all the time.

When we allow ourselves the freedom to simply Be, without having to DO, it can be incredibly freeing. Give it a try?

This concept of equanimity, of letting go of struggle and letting what is be– can be challenging and yet, liberating.  We can struggle and struggle, or we can change how we approach life and challenge. 

This meditation offers a short 5 step practice to get grounded when you're feeling anxious or stressed. Gi e it a try!

We have such interesting relationships with the days of the week. Monday is the beginning of the week for most of us, and can have quite a lot of emotion connected to it. Take a listen and let me know how you feel about Mondays! 

Sometimes we feel like a feather on the wind, our emotions ruled by external forces and unable to get grounded. Those are the times when we forget that we have the power to choose our own path. 

When we are running so fast we can't even remember how we got here or what we were supposed to be doing? That's a very good time to take a moment to check-in. To just be, even if it's only for a heartbeat. To stop the endless stories in our head and focus on what is truly real, in this present moment. Listen to learn how to create more space for yourself. Right now.

These days we are on edge, quick to judge ourselves (and others) and all of that judgment weighs on us. This meditation/journaling exercise is a useful way to let go and move to forgiveness. 

I am so grateful for the beauty and gift of trees, so naturally, I wrote this  meditation to honor them and Mother Earth. 

There is a beautiful word in Spanish - querencia. It can loosely be translated as a place where one feels safe, at home, where one draws one’s strength from. WE all have this place inside us, we need only to find it.

These are difficult times, CoronaVirus is filling our minds with fear and grief. How do we find that sense of security, wellbeing and peace? It's right here, inside you. 

It's not always easy to really connect with emotions just as they are. This meditation can help you turn the microscope of attention, to process the emotion by expressing it more fully. 

Learning to meditate is actually much simpler than many think. It's the stories we tell ourselves that are holding us back. Here's an alternative idea in a super-simple meditation practice.  Read  the script at http://www.nearlymindful.com/blog/training-attention-and-meditation

It's my belief that becoming a more mindful person is more easily done by taking small actions throughout the day. These mindful moments may help you make mindfulness a bigger part of your life, and that benefits all of us.

When we are in a stressful, perhaps chaotic space, this meditation can help focus on the present moment and quiet our heart and mind

On this Martin Luther King Day, let's talk about how we see through different lenses, how judgment appears and what we can do to see things from a little distance, and a different perspective.

It’s so easy to get hung up in rumination about things that we can’t fix right now. The short #meditation might be helpful. #NearlyMindful

 #MindfulMonday  We have been constantly bombarded by judgment since the day we were born. Did we walk soon enough, talk soon enough, excel at school, make our teachers, our friends, our parents happy. Are we successful at business, in love, in life? No wonder we wallow in self judgement most of the time! But we don't have to! We are enough, just as we are, and if we just check in with ourselves more often and the stories we tell ourselves, we might just realize that.  

 #MindfulMonday  We are constantly told as we grow up and go through our adult life that we should play to our strengths and that understanding our strengths and our weaknesses can help us to be more successful.    But it’s really our approach to those strengths and weaknesses that needs to be addressed.    Do we trust ourselves as a friend, to be there when we need us?  

 #MindfulMonday  Do you know what phubbing is? It's the practice of snubbing others, either unconsciously or consciously, with our phones. I know, I know, it’s your communication tool, but bear with me, OK?   According to a study by Meredith David and James Roberts of 145 adults, phubbing decreases marital satisfaction, in part because it leads to conflict over phone use. The scientists found that phubbing, by lowering marital satisfaction, affected a partner’s depression and satisfaction with life.  

 #MindfulMonday  We encounter emotional triggers throughout our day and sometimes we respond to them more skillfully than others. We can adopt a gentle acceptance of our emotional response. Instead of fighting against the trigger, we can recognize it and by doing so minimize it’s hold on us.   This gives us space to be more skillful in the conversation, allowing the emotion to pass through us like a rather than fighting it.  

When we give ourselves time to pause, it can open new doors that we haven't been able to see. We simply need to pause and allow what is to show itse;f. Take 5 minutes to practice with me, won't you?

 #MindfulMonday  A body scan meditation helps you get in touch with the physical feelings in your body. Connecting these feelings with your emotions is an important step to self-awareness. Give this a try!  

 #MindfulMonday  Offering yourself some self-compassion is the best thing you can do for yourself when you're feeling stressed.   

 #MindfulMonday  This whole concept of forgiveness is somewhat confusing to people. We may think that if we forgive someone we are letting them get away with it, right? Saying what they did is OK?  But forgiveness really isn’t about the other person at all, it’s about you.  

 #MindfulMonday  The challenge, of course, is to find ways to make mindfulness more a part of your day, bringing it into every aspect of your life. The easiest way to do this is to start small. Do small acts throughout your day until it becomes second nature. Here are some ways to bring moments of mindfulness to your day.   

 #MindfulMonday  How does paying attention help us with stress? Understanding the types of attention and how to improve our ability to bring open awareness can enhance our experiences.

 #MindfulMonday  A lack of empathy can leave us feeling disconnected, conflicts and mis-understandings flare up. Feelings get hurt.   In a team environment this can create quite a lot of discord. Isolation and alienation, it also can highlight diversity issues and a sense of “otherness”. 

 #MindfulMonday  Sometimes we don't allow ourselves to be happy. We'd rather be grumpy! But we can create happiness with this simple trick. Give it a try! 

 #MindfulMonday  Personality traits are characteristic behaviors and feelings that are consistent and long lasting. Unlike traits, which are stable characteristics, states are temporary behaviors or feelings that depend on a person’s situation and motives at a particular time. 

 #MindfulMonday  Today I'd like to share a way I use to get settled and centered. It’s How can we go beyond feeling grateful to being a more grateful person? It takes practice to consistently know gratitude on a regular basis. It’s so easy for us to lapse into negativity and griping and just skip over opportunities for gratitude. 

 #MindfulMonday  When we are sick or in pain our focus is often on wanting it to just go away isn’t it? According to Jon Kabat Zinn, the creator of MBSR, awareness of the pain, our feelings and emotions about the pain can be healing, rather than thinking and stewing about the pain, which can make it worse. 

 #MindfulMonday  Managing our emotions is not enough, we need to be able to accept the emotions we are feeling, rather than trying to "fix it". Acceptance of what is takes practice, but with time we can find ourselves with the space to be able to let reality to be what it is. 

 #MindfulMonday  Practicing kindness makes us feel good emotionally and physically. As we move through the world offering tiny moments of kindness, the ripple effect spreads it to the world.  Doesn’t that sound like what we need right now? 

 #MindfulMonday  Bringing a mindful approach to diversity and inclusion can break down some of the barriers by reminding us that we are all human, we all want to be happy and healthy. You are just like me in so many ways. 

 #MindfulMonday  A mindful approach to how we listen to others at work, at home, when we are out and about, can really make a huge difference in how we communicate and how others think of us. 

 #MindfulMonday   Today's lesson is about unpacking and perhaps ridding ourselves of some of our limiting beliefs.

 #MindfulMonday  Speaking mindfully takes some consideration. Are we in the right place conversation? If we waited, could we have a better conversation? Is it true? Is it kind? Is it in the best interests of all concerned?

 #MindfulMonday  For many of us though, our intentions get lost in the day to day. We set an intention to eat more healthfully but forget to pack a lunch and end up eating out of the office vending machine.   We intend to respond kindly to our friends, and then find ourselves in a shouting match over something inconsequential. So let’s give that a little more thought today. 

 #MindfulMonday  About this meditation thing. We get so obsessed about whether we are doing meditation right, it’s almost impossible for us to just allow ourselves to BE. And that’s a lot of what meditation is about, just being. So what to do??? 

 #MindfulMonday  Understanding that the alarm bells that go off in our heads all day are there to protect us is helpful. When we can bring awareness to how we respond to these threats we can begin to gain control over it.  When our mind begins to feel threatened we can take a breath and see the threat more clearly, leaving us less freaked out and able to deal with it through our rational mind. 

 #MindfulMonday   If you aren’t paying attention it’s very easy to get captured by negativity bias. It may present itself as the feeling of “impending doom” or lack of trust in others or ourselves. It can be the beginning of an amygdala hijack. Rick Hanson explains it really well here. http://www.rickhanson.net/how-your-br...   The first step to combatting this is to understand that we all have an innate negativity bias and to simply recognize it. Then we can begin to turn it off and accept things as they truly are. 

 #MindfulMonday   Loving kindness is a meditation practice we can offer to ourselves, and everyone in the world. There are many ways to practice, and the micro-practice I offer you here today is one that you can do any where, any time.  Make it a regular part of your life and the changes you’ll see in yourself and the world around you will be amazing. 

 #MindfulMonday  It’s an accepted fact that being a virtuoso violinist takes methodical daily practice isn’t it?  And what does that virtuoso do every time she picks up her violin? She tunes up.  Testing each string, each note, making sure her instrument is ready.   We can do the same with our most precious instrument, our attention. 

 #MindfulMonday  Today we’ll learn about what we can do to manage our emotional triggers more skillfully using a technique called SBNRR. Over time you can develop the skills to do all or part of this practice when you feel an emotional trigger coming on and handle it more skillfully. 

 #MindfulMonday  Today we are digging into those emotional triggers we talked about yesterday. The is a short practice here to get in touch with yourself and understand those triggers, what you amygdala has to do with that and their effect on you a bit better.  

 #MindfulMonday  Today we're talking about emotional triggers, those moments that can spark outrage, frustration, shame or guilt. Of course, there are positive triggers too, sparking joy, amusement and even love. 

 #MindfulMonday   Today I'd like to share a way I use to get settled and centered. It’s easy and you can do it in pretty much any circumstance to help you be fully present.