15 Tips to Calm Your Mind

16th Dec 20193rd Jan 2020 | pocketdreams24

We all have days, situations, moods and sometimes nothing specific at all, that cause us to worry. And at times, it can be quite difficult to climb back out of that black hole.

Whatever it is, I promise you, you will be okay.

In the meantime, here are a few pieces of advice that I’ve accumulated over the years that have helped me and that hopefully can help you too on days when your brain needs a little hug.

1- Close your eyes or take a soft focus and take deep, steadying breaths.

Concentrate on the way each breath feels as your chest, stomach and back expand and relax.

Count your number of inhales and exhales.

It often appeases my mind to imagine my inhalations as one colour, spreading all the way from my core down to the tips of my fingers and toes, farther and brighter with each inhale; and my exhalations as a different colour, shrinking and dimming as my body expels them.

2- Visualize a place that makes you feel calm and safe, it does not need to be real.

For example, I love to swim, it is when I feel the most free. So my calm place is me floating on warm, crystal blue waters, carried weightlessly high above white sands and sparkly shells, maybe even with a few harmless stingrays soaring around me, gazing up into a baby blue sky, finding shapes in the clouds.

And I remind myself that this place exists within me. And I am safe.

Find yours.

3- Imagine the worst case scenario for whatever situation you are facing and then picture yourself getting through it fine. This makes you realize that even if the thing you are dreading most happens, you will be okay.

4- For every negative thought, counteract it with a positive one.

This seems simple enough, but it must be used consciously and consistently to have a positive effect.

For example: “This is going to suck. – It might actually be fun.” Or, “I am so nervous. – But I am also so brave!”

5- Tell yourself that regardless of what happens, you have taken care of yourself and got yourself this far in Life and so you can rely on yourself no matter what ! You are smart, strong and courageous.

Believe it.

6- Don’t apologize. You have every right to feel the way you are feeling and you are feeling this way for a reason. Don’t feel guilty.

How would you speak to your best friend if they were feeling this way ? Try speaking to yourself in a similar fashion.

7- If you can, listen to uplifting, inspirational music. (I personally love “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman.)

8- Take baby steps.

Think of the next immediate thing you need to do and only focus on that. Once that is complete, think of the next thing and give that one thing all of your attention and energy.

And keep going, step by step.

When you break things down into smaller components, they don’t seem quite as daunting.

For example: “All I need to do right now is eat breakfast. Now I just need to go to my car. Now I need to simply drive down this street, now this street and this street. Now I need to park. Now all I do is walk through these doors. Now I introduce myself and listen.”

These are all simple tasks that we know we are capable of achieving.

9- You are not a victim.

Remember that this is your Life and you are in control of your decisions. Always make decisions that will lead you toward the best version of yourself.

If you chose to do this, it was for a reason and if you decide that it is not what is best for you, then you can always change your decision.

10- ACCEPT how you feel, don’t push it away. Feel what you need to feel, maybe even try to pinpoint where you feel it in your body and make a conscious effort to relax the muscles around that area.

Again, breathe.

Know that it is a feeling and feelings are temporary.

11- Talk about it.

It’s okay to say that you are feeling nervous, everyone has felt this way at some point or another and it will help those surrounding you to understand your feelings and behaviour and allow them to possibly help.

Honest communication is always better for both sides, as it relieves you from something that has been weighing you down and it opens a gateway for others to offer reassurances and/or advice; rather than leaving you to deal with unsaid and more often that not, untrue worries of what others are thinking.

12- Trust yourself.

You know how much you believe in the people you love ? That is how much they believe in you. That is how much all the tiny atoms in your body believe in you and take care of you and love you every day.

Remember that thing a few weeks, months, years ago that you didn’t think you could do ?

Well you did it.

And you can do this too.

13- Go outside if you can. Go for a walk. Listen to the sounds around you. Look up at the sky.

14- The sun will rise again tomorrow.

Something my Dad told me when I used to get nervous about literally everything.

No matter the worst possible outcome of whatever situation you’re worrying about, you have not set off an apocalyptic catastrophe. (Unless you’re a superhero dealing with bigger problems than most of us. If so, please let me know if you read my blog because that will make me feel very cool.) The world will keep spinning. The sun will rise again. And you will be dazzled by an infinite amount of new opportunities each and every day.

So even if this doesn’t work out, something else will.

15- Practice gratitude.

Thinking of things that you are grateful for is a wonderful way to remember what an amazing life you live and how very lucky you are. It often puts things into perspective, making you realize that you don’t need to worry this much. Regardless of how this interview goes, the people that love you will still and always will love you. No matter if this date sucks, you will still have eyes that can read books and see colours and watch your favourite movies. Even if you have a difficult first day at your new job, you will still have these lovely legs that can take you different places every day. And stars to gaze at and animals to love and songs to sing.

Even if things don’t go exactly as you have planned in that marvellous mind of yours, this world is still pretty great.

And you can make new plans tomorrow.

And with each one that doesn’t go quite the way you expect it to, it will get a little easier to enjoy this unpredictable ride.

Why don’t you try listing 3 things right now that you are grateful for, and see how you feel.

Goddess

28th Nov 2019 | pocketdreams24

I have been very drawn to the word Goddess lately.

The word, the idea, the way that so many different people have their own individual perception of it.

I’ve seen artists’ depictions of glistening women with flowing hair and sparkling dresses.

I’ve smelled the perfume at Saje, that evoked forests, flowers and early morning mists all rolled into one.

I’ve read about the multiple Greek versions: strong, romantic, cunning, irresistible and unforgiving.

I’ve practiced the yoga pose, a gateway between the solidity of the Earth and the freedom of the Sky, bonded by our human body.

And I wondered, if I had to create my own version of a Goddess, what would it be ?

So I will attempt to make mine with words.

The Baby Goddess is filled with Wonder. She finds shapes in the clouds, leaps into every puddle, protects anthills from giant drops of rain. She has enormous dreams that change like the wind. One day she dresses up as a pirate, the next an astronaut, the day after that a mermaid and so on. Her world is full of possibilities after all. She feels emotions that are 10 feet tall, while her body barely reaches 3.

Her imagination comes to life through the stories she is read and she develops a hunger for more, longing to discover such adventures for herself.

As she grows, her focus strays.

The opinions of others weigh heavily on her and self doubt creeps in.

She loves certain people and is not loved in return. She lives through confusion, heartbreak, worry and the unforeseen.

She blossoms into a more mature Goddess, who returns her focus to her dreams. She must love herself fully, before devoting any of her energy to another. She turns her gaze inward, no longer seeking external validation.

She rediscovers her childlike wonder for the world around her. She wants to experience everything: see all the colours, taste the breeze, feel the sunshine and the rain soaking into her skin. The music she listens to resonates within her and shines down into the deepest corners of her soul. She dances wildly, spinning beneath the stars of this improbable galaxy, until she’s dizzy and breathless with delight.

She has days where she longs to be as delicately beautiful as a flower, growing so courageously in the most challenging of conditions and adding colour and joy to the lives of those around it.

Other days, she dreams of being as devastating and powerful as a hurricane, a force of nature that no one dares to try to control; or a stroke of lightning, terrifying the ones it strikes, but allowing them to survive and reevaluate the kind of mark they are choosing to leave on this world.

Every day she protects the innocent, the animals, the children, the pure of heart.

She will defend them with every ounce of herself, because everything that is good and kind and honest is what should be preserved forever.

She has struggled and been terrified of her own existence.

But every day she gets up.

Every day she tries.

She refuses to live a life based on fear.

This Goddess.

She lives inside of YOU.

My Self

3rd Nov 2019 | pocketdreams24

You used to scare me.

You would tell me to be afraid of everything.

You would tell me that I wasn’t smart enough. Not pretty enough. Not funny enough. Not talented enough. Not strong enough.

And I believed you.

Sometimes I still do.

But I started looking in the mirror and realizing that I don’t like you.

And I began to spend more time in the sun.

More time by the water.

More time painting.

More time watching sunsets.

Lighthouse

9th Dec 20181st Oct 2019 | pocketdreams24

Sometimes my emotions consume me much like a tsunami devastates a sand castle.

My brain is lost at sea.

And words build up inside me like a dam until they end up flooding out, engulfing whoever may be too close.

The wrong words.

I’m drowning in them as I watch them suck the air out of whoever they touch. Yet instead of inflating my lifeboat and going to save them, I sink deeper and deeper, clutching my deflated lifeboat to my chest.

And then it’s over, like someone pulled the plug out of the bathtub, words draining away until we’re just left gasping for oxygen.

And I walk over to the shallow end of a swimming pool and wonder why I can’t stay in there with my feet firmly planted on the bottom.

Only to realize that a sea of thoughts is not a bad thing. If I can learn to navigate the rough waters without pulling others under with me.

Some days I fail and flounder, not sure which way is up, grasping at anything and everything around me.

Other days I hand out floaties and try to help others pull themselves up into their boats.

And I must remind myself that I am my own lighthouse. And they are theirs. And we are all just trying to find our way home to ourselves through our storms.

Skocean

20th Nov 201820th Nov 2018 | pocketdreams24

When I was little, I used to imagine that the sky was actually made of water, like the ocean. And that the clouds were really the white caps of humongous cresting waves and if you looked REALLY hard you could see the movement of living beings under the calm blue surface or the depth of swirling stars beyond that.
I wondered if it was the bottom of another world, in the same way that our oceans are the bottom of ours. Are they also the sky to another dimension ? After all, their depths have never been fully explored, the same as the galaxy.
I liked to imagine myself swimming in the sky, among the clouds and floating galactic whales, to dive down as deep as I could and pop up in a new world.
I’ve always been obsessed with water, calmed by its beauty, intrigued by the fact that it contains another world of living creatures and intimidated by its vastness and power, all at once.
I would read books where the main character could travel through worlds by jumping into lakes or whirlpools, even puddles. Puddles were my favourite portal to imagine since there were so many in my real life. I would make sure to jump in all of them, wearing my bright yellow rain boots, just in case. I played computer games where the princess would lean over a pond and see a sparkle far below, that materialized into a seahorse-dragonfly hybrid, popping out of the water and urging her to follow it.
Alice in Wonderland and The Little Mermaid were especially magical movies to me (convinced I was going to be a mermaid when I grew up). Even as an adult, I still wonder when I see a rabbit or a butterfly rush past me if I should follow it.
The water soothes me and fascinates me.
It will always feel enchanting to me, a place where my overactive imagination can run wild. It keeps alive that tiny spark inside that still believes that maybe magic does exist and we just can’t see it. ∞