Surfing the Waves

Mindfulness is a skill that is talked about so much and yet so many people find difficult to truly grasp. In my mindfulness journey, I found I was not practicing regularly so whenever strong emotions welled up inside, the skills I knew were not easy to access in the moment. I would allow those waves of emotion to pour over me and not until I had fought them back and distracted myself could I move on with my day. However, later on when those emotions came back to me (and they always do), the waves resumed their relentless crashing.

I found that I was truly trying to fight back the waves. As we know (and not just from this Jon Kabat-Zinn quote) we can't stop the waves. However, we can learn to manage our response to them. It isn't an easy task as I described above and until I committed to mindfulness practice on a regular basis, it was hard. I couldn't "learn to surf" in one day.

So as you start out on your journey, be present in the now, be gracious to yourself, and practice daily. It will happen. You will fall into the surf, but you can get back on until you one day learn how to ride those waves.

If you need mindfulness resources, check out these exercises you can download for free.

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Counseling with Leigh Anne - a Teachers Pay Teacher store offering materials for mindfulness practice, expressive arts, and therapeutic approaches like ACT/CBT.