Last week I was away on my family vacation. This was a perfect time to practice loving
kindness because many people I love surrounded me. While it was easy to make time for the daily
activity, it was much more difficult to force myself to do school work!
I found the exercise to be helpful to me. At first, the timeframe provided to reflect
on each section seemed a bit long. In
addition, I spent the majority of the time trying to figure out what I should
be thinking about and trying to decide if I was thinking about the right
thing. As the week progressed, I was
able to settle in to the practice and was more comfortable with the time allotted
for thinking. Another interesting
observation was that as the week progressed, I noticed subtle differences in
some of the decisions I made. I do not
see myself as a selfish person, but there were times when I wanted to do
something but I did not because I decided it was more important to be with
everyone else.
The concept of a mental workout is not new to me; however, I
think there are different types of mental workouts. The loving kindness practice is more of a
personal, psychological mental workout.
I think religion or meditation are more of a spiritual mental
workout. I also think there is an
educational mental workout (i.e. schoolwork, Sudoku, research). Each is important to the holistic picture but
each is very different. Research has
proven that mental workouts can improve every aspect of a person. They can improve mood, stress management,
health, disease, wellness, and every other aspect as well. The best way for me to foster my psychological
health is to continue to practice and remain persistent.
Your first impression of your experience reminded me very much of mine,minus the part that you actually stuck with it. I had a hard time doing it more than 3 times lol. But I did get one thing out of it that I didnt think I would which was a huge sense of awareness. Did you feel at all this way too? After the confusion and I completed the exercise I felt extremly inspired in a way. Almost like I was so aware of what I COULD do for myself that I was anxious about actually doing it. I was ready to do more...of something else though, not that same exercise lol Thanks for sharing your experience with us. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for your response! I did feel inspired but more to do for others rather than look for other mental exercises. I found myself being more thoughtful before I made decisions or before I did or said anything. It was a tough one to stick with! I'm looking forward to trying new exercise in the future.
DeleteHello Deb that is the perfect time to do a exercise like this I don't reelly get the chance to do something like this to often but when i have it is has been a really good experience i participated in a transadental meditation exercise with a gropug of my friends at an event. The event was designed to target people who were suffering from post tramuatic stress disorder ( PTSD). I found the experience to be very reaveling I know that there are many different types of meditation to me they afre very effective in helping us to relax and clear our minds of any negative thoughts that are going on inside our heads. Very good responce to this exercise CK.
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