Day 231 Question 231:
What’s the best advice you have ever given yourself?
Today is Sunday. One of those days where I either spend the day lazily watching movies and enjoying the comfort of my bed or getting errands taken care of. I have done a little bit of both. I slept in this morning with wild dreams running through my brain (as usual) but when I finally decided to get up I accomplished quite a bit. I have to work at 4 so I guess it is good that I finally got out of lazy mode. :0)
On Friday I was working at the restaurant and we weren’t too terribly busy. I was talking to our sushi chef (who is from Indonesia) and I told him that I meditated twice a day. The reason I told him this is because he told me that I was always happy. I am not always happy. I do have my moments but I am at peace. My life is calm. I explained to him that my meditations allowed my mind and body to relax and to slow down. I am able to dive deeper into my consciousness and the things that used to bother me for hours and days and weeks on end would no longer stay with me. There is a great language barrier between the sushi chef and myself but as I spoke I knew he understood. He wanted to know more. I told him that a lot of inner peace comes from reminding yourself of all of the good in life. It is far too easy to insult yourself or beat yourself up for every little thing but it takes great strength to believe in your own goodness but once you do you see life so very differently. Once you start seeing and truly understanding your own beauty and your own purpose you are able to see the beauty in life. You always strive to do better and strive to help others better their lives.
Through this meditation I have learned so much about who I am as a person. The superficial things no longer seem to hold any significance in my life. The best advice I have given myself since starting this journey is to stop listening to those inner demons. Those inner demons are simply my ego trying to take control. I am not my ego. I am not a person filled with self-loathing. I gave myself the advice to accept my emotions, my feelings and my thoughts for what they are and to stop detesting myself for those things. A wide array of feelings and thoughts is the nature of the beast called life. I truly believe everything happens for a reason. I don’t know the reason and I may never know the reason but something inside of me believes there is a path for each one of us. We experience what we do to test our strength and our convictions. Unfortunately some people aren’t able to pass the test….at least they believe they aren’t able to. Finding yourself is this wonderful journey but along with it comes a lot of pain and heartache and these things are very hard to accept. For a majority of my life I was unable to accept those things. I do not like experiencing these things now but now that I realize that they are part of me and they are the lessons and tests in life that I need I accept them…these things have strengthened me in a way that I never thought possible.
It's a New Day... 
I agree: ‘Be yourself’ is the best advice you can give people. We are all here for a reason and that’s why we are different.
Just listen!
I tend to want to solve problems and so I just need to be quiet sometimes 🙂
I need to meditate more!:)
Some days all you need to do is breathe..
I love this post for all kinds of reasons. The best advice I have ever given myself is very personal. The gist is this:
Between the ages of 5 and 8, maybe even 10, my mother disappointed me in so many ways and ultimately left me and my brother with my bipolar father. I love my father and he did a fabulous job – the best he could with what he had. But I was left with this horrible feeling about my mother. How could a mother leave her daughter? I just couldn’t understand. She was never there for me when I got my period, or when I went to my school dances, or my high school prom. She was never there to discuss boy issues or friend issues – instead I was left to deal with my life while surfing the waves of my father’s bipolar disorder. I had no consistency. Some days things were okay and other days the exact same thing would happen on this day it was all wrong. I was very lost and so angry with my mother. So disappointed, frustrated and, well the list goes on and on.
Well, 20 years later, 2 years after my dad passed away suddenly, I thought I should do what I could to rekindle a relationship with my mother. I figured we hadn’t talked in years and now that so much time has gone by and I’m an adult now, maybe we could see eye to eye. Long story short she disappointed me more that she ever could when I was a kid.
The best advice I ever gave myself was that it was okay to feel that way felt about her. I originally thought that the feelings I had when I was 8 were immature and selfish and perhaps not fair to her. But 20 years later, nothing had changed – she’s exactly the same person. I saw for myself with my own eyes that those feelings I had were real and very mature and very relevant and it was absolutely okay to feel that way. I haven’t talked to my mother since and I don’t feel bad about it at all.
Meditation has helped, but I still feel a little unsure about how to meditate. How do you meditate and what can you recommend for a beginner?
I also don’t know how to meditate, I feel like I don’t know how to just stop my brain. I get into my thoughts, and its almost worse than not doing it. I know that prob doesn’t make sense but I’m being honest lol…. How do I do this correctly???? HELP.
Hi,
I say to myself, “This to will pass, just hang on and go through it!”
Ciao,
Patricia
This is the best way to approach things…one moment at a time, one day at a time and enjoy everything