Mindfulness Struggle

Today is a day where I am struggling with Mindfulness. I keep hearing the nagging in my head of “it’s okay, because when ___ happens, you’ll feel so much better”. Fill in ____ with a) you lose some weight b) you learn to shower regularly c) you sell your car d) you get out of this job e) you have some money in the bank f) you finally get into that exercise groove you’ve been trying to manage for twelve years now g) you finish your Christmas-gift-making h) you go grocery shopping i) you land that extra job j) you live somewhere where you can hang out with a large group of friends regularly k) your hair grows out l) all the way down to z). Everything will make me feel better.

And this is not in an I-really-feel-terrible or an I-am-depressed or even an I-am-not-happy kind of way. It’s just in the way I’ve always thought about things, which is a future-minded sort of way. But the truth is, I’m still struggling to lose the weight I convinced myself would be gone by now four years ago, and I still am not in the exercise groove that I know will make me feel good, and I still have no money. And none of these things, frankly, is really bound to change all that much. Unless, of course, I CHANGE THEM. But that is for a different post.

I struggle with these things because; while I can be a terribly disciplined person when I am passionate about something, rarely is there anything I am passionate about enough to be disciplined. I only occasionally feel like I need to lose weight, and that is inevitably tied in to the grocery shopping and exercise and therefore money issues, and it’s never a need that I feel needs necessary to be actioned, it’s only really a side note. But there is always one of these thoughts that grows out of the other, until I am not only thinking “wow, my chafing sore hurts from my run, perhaps if I ate less chocolate I wouldn’t hurt for days after for no good reason”, but I am thinking “if I thought about my life more than I would be happier” because, of course, more thinking means better decisions. Apparently.

The problem I have with this kind of thinking is – if I let myself be consumed by it, I am unhappy. And the results will never change. And I can see myself therefore being infinitely unhappy. Needless to say that I really am at the time worried and upset about any number of these things which is a pain in itself. But it’s the effects of this worry, or the influence of this worry, that bother me, and less the worry itself.

I had a conversation with this morning with the boy, where I mentioned how these past few months have been pretty hard. We ended up having a long e-mail conversation about what exactly I meant, which is not the relationship-centered thought he had (‘no it hasn’t, we’ve been great!’), but the individual-centered one I had (‘we have each had our frustrations recently’). It got me thinking how these frustrations never go away. Ever.

So what makes a really happy time different from a less-than-happy time, even with the same frustrations? (Because, my car-money problems now are equivalent to my house-money problems and my recently-lost-my-job money problems and my medication-money related problems etc.) I’m not sure. Endorphins? I am inclined to say that my cure-all-might-as-well-be-CALORIC answer of Oxytocin is the difference. But maybe not. Maybe these times are just needed, because, whenever I have one of these days I go home and I am ever so much more disciplined about all these little things. And someday, maybe, they will become habit. And I will have fewer of these days.