For some time now I have been practicing this “thing” called mindfulness. When I first heard of it, it sounded like this complex, spiritual activity that involved lots of meditation and sitting on rocks on lotus pose at the top of a mountain by the sunset. I used to think, like many people do, that meditating was a mindLESS activity [if you allow the play on words], where you had to sit still and shut down all of your thoughts and keep your mind empty. “Like I’ll ever be able to do THAT!” was my first reaction.

I have always been a very anxious person who did not know how to properly deal with her emotions and running thoughts. If I had a problem, I would fixate on it over and over again until I could get it solved, often times without success. Sometimes, I would simply ignore the issue and hope it would go away on its own while feeling miserable for days. A lot of my anxiety, now I realize, was sourced from not acknowledging what was going on in my mind. I tend to doubt myself all the time, and, back in college, I would find myself feeling sad and hopeless day after day without ever knowing why or what to do about it. I didn’t really know how to be happy except for when my friends and/or family were around. I also had very unrealistic expectations about relationships and a sense of self strangely tied to people’s reactions to my every decision. I couldn’t be happy on my own and didn’t know how to enjoy time with myself.

At some point, I finally decided to stop being so miserable. A lot of events lead to this resolve… But I would say one break-up, one night of partying, and a bad hook-up did the trick. I won’t get into it right now. The bottom line is I decided I would do whatever it takes to make myself happy again. As I graduated from college and had no idea where to take my life next, I moved in with my older sister, who lived in a big city and started exploring different paths. I joined a musical theater class, started volunteering as a math teacher and educator, and took a graduate class in the College of Education at the local university. All the while I was also exploring why the heck I felt so dissatisfied.

Leaving the comforts of my college town made me realize it was up to me — and only me — to figure out what made me happy. A lot of my dissatisfaction, I think, stemmed from me not being able to tell what I wanted or what I needed. To be honest, until my last year of college, I had no idea that my feelings mattered… And that they had been controlling me as long as I didn’t face them for what they really were — just feelings and thoughts that come and go as they please. I didn’t know that instead of ignoring them and just waiting for them to go away, creating some space for them to stay was the best way to see them so [see what I did there?].

I finally realized my uncomfortable feelings were here for a reason, and that they must have important lessons to teach me… They wouldn’t magically go away, unless I would put in the work to learn from them. One day, between finishing college and moving to a new city, I came across a simple but very powerful book: “Little Exercise Book: How to take care of yourself“, by Anne van Stappen. This book gives you practical instructions on how to take better care of yourself, with little exercised involving coloring, writing prompts, and fill in the boxes and blanks. As cheesy as this may sound this book helped me — brace yourself for the CHEESE! — fill in the blanks of why I just couldn’t feel OK about myself. This book taught me to be present with myself by checking in with myself three times a day, which really just gets you to pay attention to your feelings and needs, whatever they are. Heck knows that in this crazy, busy world we could use such a reminder. The book also instructs you to let go of all judgment of your emotions by seeing them simply as needs.

As I stopped to check in with my mind and my body I realized that, all my life, I had been primarily focusing on the externals: my friends’ ratings of how cool I was, my success in school, my success as a leader in the church youth group, my parent’s approval… phew! What an exhausting list. I don’t mean to say that we don’t need the approval of those who matter to us. However, we still hold the power of making our own choices. And that is what I was doing — giving everyone else the power to make decisions for me when I was the only one who actually had to live with them! Unfortunately, I did not just expect people to approve of all my choices but also hoped that by approving of what I do they would also approve of me… like… as a person. And folks, you can’t expect people to make you feel good about yourself all the time because what happens when they are not around?

Back to the book, what it really teaches you, “the art of being good to yourself”, is one way to practice mindfulness. When the author tells you to question yourself three times a day about your emotional and physical needs, it is simply telling you to stay present throughout the day. As I practiced those little tips in the weeks that followed my book discovery, I noticed that, even though my problem was not instantly fixed, my perspective started to change [I know it’s a thing people say, but just bear with me!]. Every time I stopped and asked myself what I was feeling, what I was missing inside, and what I needed, I felt heard — by myself! And, sometimes, that was just enough. I also noticed I started allowing myself to feel things, without that strange commitment to try and fix them. I won’t say it is or was perfect back then, but even though it was not perfect, I started experiencing what it was like to stop blaming myself for my feelings and just accept my emotions for what they are. That, my friends, that was a good place to be.

Mindfulness also helped me explore, for the first time in 22 years, the question of “what do I want?”. Before then, I didn’t even know the question mattered. I lived the previous 22 years pursuing the best version of myself as perceived by those people who mattered most to me… I was the sweet girl, polite girl, Math nerd, top of her class, who never strayed outside the line, all for what? To be accepted and liked by everyone, because maybe if I were liked by everyone else, then maybe I would like me too [BOOOOOOM! it blew my mind too, folks]. So this is my story of how mindfulness found me. Do I recommend it? Heck, yeah. 10/10.