“Just let go let His love wrap around you; And hold you close; Get lost in the surrender; Breathe it in until your heart breaks; Then exhale”
~ “Exhale” by Plumb
Every year we have an annual health assessment at work, and every year without fail I get the same feedback. Blood work- exceptional; daily habits (drinking smoking, not punching people, etc.)- exceptional; sleep habits…. AT RISK!! You may remember me mentioning in a previous post consulting with a sleep coach on how to improve my sleep patterns. Well here is the biggest opportunity I have with sleep… I don’t do it!! Ding ding ding I think we found the problem, but why? Why don’t I sleep? What’s keeping me from my soft comfy beautiful bed at home or the always fresh bouncy hotel mattresses??? My mind!!
How many times do you find yourself just screaming at yourself STOP THINKING!!! SHUT IT DOWN!! I do this on a second by second basis. My mind is constantly thinking of the next thing, and the worst is when I have a self-induced moment of anxiety where I feel like I just have to keep going, and I can’t stop to eat or… breathe… it’s at that moment that I usually look up and… EXHALE. I have stressed myself out so much that I forgot to breathe…
This is during my waking moments, but at night, I find I stress sleep, so compound my stress from the day to my sleep at night, and the whole breathing thing becomes even more of a struggle. I wake myself up in the middle of the night to breathe! That’s not a healthy way to live, so what’s the solution? How do I continuously break this daily cycle of not breathing and holding on to every single stressor and every single moment??
In order to embrace each moment we have to live in each moment then release each moment to embrace the next one. The crazy thing about “each moment” is there are good and bad ones, and the bad ones are what I inadvertently tend to dwell on. When you dwell, you hold on to that moment and don’t make room for what’s coming next. The key is to remember that it’s ok to not be ok… but it’s not ok to let that negativity define your moment. It is ok to stop for 30 seconds to…. EXHALE, release that moment, and make room for the next. Take a page from my constantly growing book of things learned… just breathe… you’ll find you can actually live in the moment instead of being stressed by the moment.
