Mindfulness in 2016

This year I was all set to make a list of goals for myself like I did last year... but the other day I woke up earlier than usual with three words running over and over again in my head.* Three words that seemed like a perfect way to sum up my aspirations for this year. Three words that somehow manage to fit into the major aspects of my life: self, home, and work. Three simple words that make an easy mantra to come back to throughout the year.

Breathe
Focus
Purge
Breathe: This is a word that I have been coming back to on a daily basis. It was my mantra last year, the source of much needed calm that I would turn to whenever I felt frustrated or upset. Breath is the essence of life; it is what keeps us alive every second of every day, it's what moves through us and stimulates our entire beings. And yet, breathing is something we rarely think about. (Which is a good thing, I mean, can you imagine having to concentrate on breathing all the time?!) When I think about my breath it reminds me to slow down, and reconsider, which is something I think we all forget to do in this fast-paced world we live in. That brings me to the next word....

Focus: I've said it before and I'll say it again, my head is constantly in the clouds. If you believe in astrology, then you can blame it on my birthday... if you're not into that stuff, well, then I don't know what to tell you. I really struggle to keep my feet on the ground sometimes. Just the other day I managed to lose my wallet a mere block from our house! (Thanks to a good samaritan I got it back within the hour though!) Of course this all happened right after I was telling Shawn about my three words...... So yes, focus is something I definitely need to work on. This may actually be the most difficult of the three for me.

Purge: The last of the trifecta, but perhaps the most important. I'm not just talking about materialistic things here, although I plan on purging a lot of those this year.... I'm also talking about negative emotions. I'm very quick to judge people, often in a negative manner. I worked on this a little bit last year, but this year it really ties in with the two other words. Any time I feel any negative energy building up, I just need to remember to breathe, focus, and purge the negativity. Hey, it sounds a little hippie-dippy, but I don't care. (I may be a bit of hippie, ok?)

It all ties together to say, my big goal for this year is to practice mindfulness. It's a concept that is a big part of my yoga practice, and I'm ready to take it off the mat and introduce it to other aspects of my life. Mindfulness is something I could really use in areas like finances (I'm terrible at budgeting!), work (trying to get a promotion, yo!), and even myself (I think I'm awesome, but I recognize that there are areas that still need some work).

I do have a few concrete goals for 2016, but I feel like they don't fit into this post. They're mostly related to blogging, sewing, yoga, and shopping.... so they're more, shall we say, hobby goals? I'll touch on those in another post.


* Shawn has been moving the furniture around in our bedroom to get it more feng shui.... apparently you're not supposed to have a lot of books in your bedroom because that's too many words and it's not conducive to sleeping. Well, I had three big books on my nightstand that day, so perhaps this is all a ruse and it's just my books playing mind tricks on me....