Build calm by focusing on gratitude, through meditation, and by focusing on self-compassion. Need to catch up? Check out Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, and Day 5
"Shhhh... sh sh sh... hold on, wait..."
Believe it or not, this is literally how I get my mind to quiet down when I meditate lol
In my head, I have to tell myself to be quiet because that's what we do in real life when it's noisy right? We tell people to be quiet or we physically turn off everything around us.
You have to pretend that you are being nosey and listening in on a distant conversation or like you're listening to hear if someone is breaking in the house. Whatever it takes for you to do a HARD PAUSE and be silent in real life, pretend you're doing that.
It works like a charm, for real, and even those few moments of silence do wonders when you're used to your mind going and going and going. Being able to quiet, what's called, the monkey brain is helpful when trading because obsessive thoughts can get you, and your account, into a world of trouble.
Today we are building calm and the first point of meditation seems to be the hardest thing for a lot of people because they can't get their mind to be quiet. And we hear all these meditation guides tell you that you don't have to focus on silencing the mind, focus on the breath blah blah blah
I feel that but here's how I see it: some of us grew up needing ways to force things into action and had I never found out that little trick for myself, I would probably never know the peaceful feeling and mind-altering effects of a truly silent and still mind.
Being able to get moments of silence in my mind allowed me to think better and thinking better LITERALLY rebuilt the damage on the left side of my brain. I literally felt parts of the left side of my brain activate as if I had unclogged some pipes.
My story is very tough to talk about and I won't go into it but I will say that trauma of any form causes damage to the brain and reconditions the way you think and feel about yourself. And when your self-talk is altered, your outer world reflects it.
There may be A LOT of things you are genuinely not responsible for in your life. One being your initial programming and today's "motivational" speeches make you feel like it's just easy to SNAP right out of that original programming. It's a long process.
This is why the next 2 points in building calm are important because you must learn to have compassion for yourself and what you have experienced. The best way to do this is by focusing on gratitude for how far you have come, whether alone or with assistance.
In certain communities, expressing your emotions and feelings is something that could get you laughed at, ignored, gaslit, hurt, and made fun of.
Compassion for yourself is basically feeling sorry for yourself.
Feel sorry for the fact that you couldn't figure out ways to change your life sooner. Feel sorry for the fact that a lot of the things that happened TO you, you allowed them to happen. Feel sorry for the fact that you continued to make decisions for your life that were based in the problematic teaching you may have received.
And now DEAD THAT ISH! Feel free to mourn, as well. You have to literally have a funeral for the old self because that person is not coming back.
Let's go back to Day 3 and check out how to seek gratitude in terms of good and bad vs better or worse because that's how we normally look at things right?
Do not look at yourself in terms of what can be better or what could be worse. This is dismissive of the current place you are in your life. What is good about you? What is bad about you? Be real with ya self
On the self-assessment, I challenge you to complete it from a place of compassion and try to look from the outside looking in.
This is a more action-based blog post so we will end here.
