Practicing Mindfulness
Unlearning to operate from a state of stress with the excuse that I’m multitasking has been difficult. I pride myself in being highly caffeinated, highly stressed, and well dressed. That was the mindset that I thought provided me the best and most efficient way to tunnel vision my way through residency, but later in private practice and in my real life that mindset got me nowhere. I hope you enjoy this rather cathartic post on what mindfulness means to me.
Happy Scaling!
“Yvette, I want you to work on being mindful when you go to yoga tomorrow…”
That’s what a friend told me when I was in the middle of one of my worst lupus flare-ups in 2019. I went to yoga to work out and relax a little, but beyond that I didn’t do much meditation.
Mindful.
Was being mindful about relaxing? Decluttering my mind? Or was it getting rid of stressors in my life? Was it that I wasn’t being present or wasn’t focused ? What did this even mean…
I began frantically looking into what being mindful and present really meant, and what could have made him direct this comment towards me. (I was feeling slighted, as going to yoga meant I was relaxing, right ?)
I’ll be the first to admit that I did not have the self-awareness to even understand what he saw in me that prompted him to say this. When he said this to me…I was in a job I hated, in a place I didn’t like living in, and making terrible money. I was grappling with staying in a place that I hated, but being there meant that I was surrounded by friends and family that I loved. My head was filled with a million questions that were fogging my mind and clarity. I was trying to figure out what next step to take in order to make me happy, as well as healthy.
Unlearning.
I was so used to my brain running a mile a minute. In perio residency, I had become so accustomed to the fast life and stress, I would say that I almost thrived off it, and even enjoyed it a little. I was always thinking about the next surgical case, the next class, the next reading assignment, the next presentation, the next email… I had become so good at putting blinders on and pushing forward no matter what. I pushed forward past everything. I got that DDS, I got the MS… but the “no matter what” is what’s important here. The what. What is mindfulness?
The first baby steps in practicing mindfulness came from listening.
I’m not sure that I heard what was being told to me that day when I was told by my friend to be work on being more mindful, but I definitely listened.
Being mindful and present for me and my spirit, goes hand in hand. It’s not about getting to a place in my mind, there is no target destination.
It’s about recognizing how I feel in the present moment, acknowledging how I feel and letting that feeling be. It’s about being kind to my body, being kind to myself in that moment, and in turn we are then kind to others by default and that’s one of the best feelings we can have.
Read next my tips on how I started practicing mindfulness.