Instructions for Ourselves

I hope you all had a great weekend. As many of you know I am in the very early stages of working on a book of everyday mindfulness stories. I am imagining it as a more in-depth version of the stories I write here each week. As I continue to work on my content (and my nerve), I have been attending a writing workshop series with a published author who is also a mindfulness teacher.

Each week she offers prompts for us to use to free write for a short amount of time and then we share what we have written with a small group. I am finding it both challenging and exciting at the same time. Last week one of the prompts she offered was to write a list of instructions for ourselves. This list could include big life lessons, but also everyday reminders; it was quite open ended in order to give us freedom. It was a chance to write our own kind of instruction manual of things we want to remember each day. We had 9 minutes to write our list. Here is my essentially unedited list that I shared last week with my students in my classes. 

Instructions For Myself:

When your eyes open take a conscious breath
Then think about what you are excited for that day
Smell the coffee before you sip it
Gaze outside to notice the day
Pick something to look at as brand new each day
Smile as much as you can. Laugh unabashedly 
Eat cookies with milk
Tell jokes
Spend more time with old friends and less time looking in the mirror
Breathe deeply and pause often
Explore
Try something new each week and learn something new each day
Nurture things; plants, animals, children
And nurture yourself too
Never say I am too old for….. 
Twist more, judge less
Remember you will never get another today
Do it all again tomorrow

As I shared this list with students, I asked them to think about my instructions which were (I guess not surprisingly) quite relevant to a yoga practice and also to begin to think about their own list. Stepping back, even for just a few minutes, can offer us valuable perspective. Meditation is one way to do this and I have found this practice of free writing as another way. I have been tweaking and adding to this list throughout the week which is of course the idea. Our “instruction manuals” often need to adjust to our changing bodies, hearts, life stages and circumstances. Just as we are “works in progress”, our instruction manuals are always something we can keep adding to. 

So, I have a request of you. Take 9 minutes this week and free write your Instructions to Yourself. Don’t think about it too much, just let whatever comes to mind find its way to the paper. This list is just for you to ponder on unless you would like to share one (or multiple) instructions with me. If I receive a good number of instructions back, I will publish them in this newsletter (anonymously of course) for all of us to be inspired by. And if you don’t want to share… no worries. You will have them for yourself to build on.