Mindfulness

Often, we can find ourselves thinking too much about the past or thinking too far ahead. I’m first to admit it. I am one of those who can sit and over analyze different situations. I often catch myself thinking about how well things went or how I could change the outcome of a situation for future run- ins. The over analyzing process is called rumination, in other words kind of staying in a specific thought. Researchers say that we should spend 10% thinking about past, 80% thinking about the present and 10% thinking about the future. Truth of the matter is, that’s not our reality right.

The best way to capture present moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing." Being mindful is understanding the process and patterns also known as behaviors and emotions. Paying attention in the present moment and observing how you react to things in that moment; this would be an example of Dialectical Behavior Theory.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy per the APA (American Psychological Association) Dictionary of Psychology is defined as "a flexible, stage-based therapy that combines principles of behavior therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, and mindfulness. Dialectical behavior therapy concurrently promotes acceptance and change, especially with difficult-to-treat patients." By practicing mindfulness, we also must keep in mind the importance of cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions as described by many different individuals in the field is a representation of inner connections between our behaviors and how they affect our feelings and our thoughts. Sometimes we can be on autopilot and we can become frustrated with things in life. So, what gets in the way of things? We want to be right, we don’t want to make the effort to do something and we tend to confuse short term and long-term goals.

As women often we want things to go a certain way, right? We want things to be perfect, we struggle with perfectionism. One thing that I have learned recently is that by allowing yourself to be in control, but accepting the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect person. Accepting the journey of learning it's all about trial and error. Of this, one take away would be that every emotion has an action, we can change the emotion by changing the emotion action and always keep in mind that every decision we make is a decision within its self.

Yvonne 

xoxo