Attentive
“the ability to watch and listen carefully”
You know in that movie “Airplane” in which Lloyd Bridges’ character had a running gag where he would say something like “I picked a bad/wrong day/week to stop __________”…well…I picked a bad day (for me) to randomly chose today’s MotD word “attentive”. Why?
It’s election day here in the United States, and I admit, I’m having a tough time trying to focus on today’s tasks. A part of me wants to keep checking social media, the news, email, anything that will give me some form of certainty about how our elections will turn out. To make matters worse, it may not even be decided today. Oh and btw…yes, I voted…back on Oct 21 and I verified that my ballot was received.
My challenge, and probably a challenge for most of us here, is to maintain my peace. I’m having to pull out all my tools to help me. I’m reminded the a mantra: I can know peace instead of this (anxiety, fear, stress, and so on). Of course there’s deep breathing and watching videos that make me laugh. Oh, and hugging our greyhound, Faé.
In “A Course in Miracles” it offers this affirmation: “Everything is in our best interest”. How is this time of uncertainty/fear/stress in my/our best interest? Well, for one thing it gives us an EXCELLENT opportunity to practice dealing with it by embracing trust, faith, and letting go of the outcome.
The late Susan Jeffers, PhD, from her book “Feel the fear and do it anyway”, states that the biggest reason why we are fearful is because of our unsubstantiated belief that we won’t be able to handle “it”…whatever “it” is…in today’s case, it would be the fear that we won’t be able to handle it if my/our candidate loses. I say “unsubstantiated” because up until now we’ve
handled everything that has come our way…some of it hasn’t been pretty nor pain-free…and yet we’re still here.
So…how can I be attentive today? One way, and probably the best way, is to continually watch and listen to my body and my thoughts. Every time I catch myself going into the anxiety, I’ll scan my body…notice where the anxiety is and breathe into it and remind myself that I can handle it. I’m also going to work in out yard…I find physical activity helps with the stress.
Oh and one more thing I’m going to continually do today (and maybe you may be interested in doing this as well)…
I’m going to visualize Kamala Harris being inaugurated on Martin Luther King, Jr day, January 20, 2025.
How about you? Is being attentive a core value for you?
BTW…here’s what it looked like to begin with …
joyfully,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
🌟 bringing sanity to an insane world through the art of mandalas
About the 2024 Mandalas of the Day
Each day I will create and post a mandala inspired by one of 366 “value” words chosen randomly. The objective being to discover for myself which ones would best represent my core values…and by doing so, I hope it inspires you to determine your own.
Mandala of the Day 