Mindfulness – drjuls

21Jan

Julie LyleBalance, Beautiful Life, Mindfulness

Gazing upon the Horizon of this New Year – Reflect more, React Less

Reflection is a gift that doesn’t respond kindly to rushing. Take the whole month of January to reflect on (the last year) 2024 if you’d like. There’s no wrong. Enter gently and with care. You are not behind.
—Emily Freeman

The “to do” list for the holidays expands between Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah as a taut balloon we hope doesn’t pop before December 31st. When January 1st arrives, we let go of the string perhaps with mixed emotions; the twinkling of the holiday lights fade and the gifts of time spent with loved ones are now packaged as memories. The season floats away with a bit of melancholy frosted with relief and a filling of anticipation of what is next.

The “in between” days after Christmas and before January are encased in what I consider the “absorb-ignore zone.” Absorb the lingering scent of the Douglas fir, ignore the brittle pine needles falling like dusty confetti to the even dustier wood floor. Absorb the display of holiday greetings from smiling far away family and friends, ignore the envelopes carrying bills. Absorb the pleasure of the last shortbread cookie and the freedom to wear sweatpants, ignore the pile of limp mounds of green, red and glimpses of golf club swinging Santa and surfing reindeers on ugly Christmas sweaters needing a good wash and storage for next year…oops, this year!

Years ago, my wise neighbor gave me a suggestion for holiday cleaning preparation. Deposit stray bills, papers, envelopes and clutter in a large department store handled bag and stash it in a closet to be ignored until January. I did just that, as a Macy’s bag became an instant file cabinet and made countertop room for the charcuterie board assembly line before the holiday party. Come January 3rd, the bag, and its various unopened envelopes were now screaming “Hey, don’t ignore me!”

I attached the new calendar to my office wall and sensed this urgency with the dawn of what was now the 8th, no 10th, wait…it was already the 12th of January! I had SO much to clean, put away, catch up on. I was lagging in my self-imposed productivity, swirling in the overwhelm and anticipated fatigue, I stared at the wilting tree, dust bunnies multiplying and tired decorations asking to hibernate for the next eleven months.

As I was spinning the “Lazy Susan” of “to do” items around in my head I had created this mountain of “new year efficiency” and I was barely lacing up my hiking boots to reach the first summit. My sister witnessed my fevered laments and lovingly shared this opening quote.

I was filling these first thirty-one days of 2025 as a farmer anxiously herding chickens back into their coop! I was the racecar and each day was my track to win to speed around on…for what?

Perhaps, much like the Grinch recognized that Christmas didn’t come in packages and bows, the New Year doesn’t have to come in demanding “get to it” marching orders. Breathing deeply, reflecting on the last year to identify lessons from hundreds of moments and experiences, in essence, downshifting and gliding into this new space of this new year.

03Feb

Julie LyleBeautiful Life, Mindfulness, Personal Growth, The Journey of Life

The Potent Force of Listening

We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.
—Carl Rogers

As a graduate student, I was captured by the beautiful simplicity of Carl Roger’s humanistic psychology theory on how individuals thrive. I learned about his dynamic engagement strategies for counselors to help clients truly feel heard thereby allowing emotional pain to abate and healing to begin. Rogers presented three core conditions necessary to support clients: possess empathy, exhibit congruence and provide unconditional positive regard. Over the many years of being a therapist, these concepts have blended into a compassionate practice of focused listening and deep appreciation for others’ life experiences. As we usher in the month of chocolate, flowers and Valentine’s cards, I find it fitting to speak to what fills our hearts up…listening and being listened to.

Listening is much more than hearing someone else, it is a thoughtful focused attention to what someone is saying. Listening is providing a generous consideration of the message being delivered by another. To be a true listener is to be curious, asking questions linked to what is being said, commenting on the content, reacting with compassion and only then replying and hoping for the other to be an equally dedicated listener. Listening is speaking less and not formulating your reply while the other is still speaking. In every way, it is connecting, reinforcing a secure attachment to another by listening. Listening is the butter on the toast of attachment.

We are social beings, and I don’t mean we enjoy parties (some of us may). Social beings from a humanistic lens means we need others in order to thrive and engaged listening and empathy are ingredients for secure attachment to our caretakers and others. One of the first aspects of a client’s life I uncover is for them to answer the question “Who was under the roof when you were born?” I am asking them to describe their earliest attachments and to find out who listened to them, who made them feel understood?

While sitting at a restaurant recently, I inadvertently found myself conducting a social being observation. I observed which friends, families or couples were exhibiting attentive consideration to others. Basically, who was listening to who? Not surprising yet saddened by what I observed. The focused attention wasn’t on one another. Kids on tablets, parents each on their phones, a couple scrolling separately, other tables seemed to be sharing chatter and laughter, yet often with someone diluting their full attention while head bobbing between eye contact and their phone perched table top. Not very much secure human attachment, only electronic.

I don’t want to age myself as a grumpy curmudgeon, I completely understand the usefulness of electronics, heck I’m using one right now to relate this message to you! We simply have to increase our skills of intentional listening which is in direct conflict with looking at a screen. I heard laughter and turned my gaze to what I guessed to be grandparents with adult family members, not a phone to be found but instead storytelling with laughter abounded.

We long for others to listen to us, to know who we are, what we believe in and why. There is a tremendous gift of love we can give to ourselves and others; to listen. Listening is a skill we each can practice every day, with every interaction. To listen to another with eye contact, thoughtful commentary and empathy, shared collaboration of ideas and respectful questions to clarify differences are all ways we can contribute to healthy connection with others.

05Jan

Julie LyleBeautiful Life, Health, Life Challenges, Mindfulness, Personal Growth, The Journey of Life, Uncategorized

Fill it up!

Like a shipwreck or a jetty, almost anything that forms a structure in the ocean, whether it is natural or artificial over time, collects life.
Sylvia A. Earle

Welcome to a New Year! Opening the calendar for 2024, there is a vast sea of days to be traveled. Flipping the crisp new pages of the “old school” planner, each day an empty vault waits to be filled with valuable treasures. Voyages ventured? Appointments met? Celebrations remembered? And with a click and scroll of the iPhone screen, an entire year appears, each pixel a date yet to be. Which poses the question; what life will you collect this year?

When meeting with clients during the month of January, our discussion often begins with the pros and cons of creating New Year’s resolutions. Setting a few goals with willful intention are useful materials to build structure. When kept specific and with short term assessment of progress, New Year’s aims can be sustainable. Yet often New Year’s resolutions morph into lofty promises that evaporate and lose form, become hard to maintain and result in disappointment or worse yet, self-shaming.

Often we switch the language up from “resolutions” which can feel finite and rigid to “intentions,” a more fluid and softer blanket to carry our hopes for change. Any way you phrase it, the New Year is a time for reflecting what will be sought, kept or archived.

As you collect life this year, consider what you’d like to gather “more of” and what you’d like to have “less of.” Each day is a container you own, to fill up with smiles, gratitude, satisfaction, laughter and health while enhancing your strength and wisdom to remove, drain your day of disappointment, anger, bitterness, fear and pain.

What we collect in our containers is up to us, for example our work, relationships, travels, learning, friendships, activity level, nutrition, spending, curiosities, interests, and more. Life most definitely comes along and drops items in our containers of unexpected or unwanted content not of our choosing for example loss of income, betrayal by loved one, accidental damage to home or self, and more. Each day is a vessel to be filled, to collect more of what brings you contentment and pour out what does not.

This is an invitation to consider stepping back as you note the expansiveness the New Year while also moving closer to examine the possibilities of each day.

21Aug

Julie LyleBalance, Gratitude, Health, Life Challenges, Mindfulness, Personal Growth, The Journey of Life

Facing Up to It

“Did you lose consciousness?” asked the ER nurse taking my blood pressure. “No, but I kind of wish I had!” was my bruised blend of sarcasm and agony.

Two hours earlier: I was relocating river rocks from one side of the backyard to the other. I started off cautiously, shoveling a few rocks into two large plastic painter buckets. Then powerlifting a bucket in each hand, I shuffled to the other side of the yard and deposited the rocks to their new location. I was a slow motion, sweaty old milk maid.

Our wheel barrel, seemingly from the 1800’s, had a flat front tire. I couldn’t help thinking we must have another garden variety wagon to transport the rock filled buckets. I searched and located a dusty low lying five wheeled circular flat dolly and I was in business. Setting the bucket on the roller’s round surface, just inches from the ground, I filled it to great excess, able to increase the quantity tenfold! I shuttled my payload to and fro, pleased with this clever system—bending at the waist, leaning forward and gripping the sides of the hefty rock filled bucket I was able to push this makeshift quarry to be dumped in its new territory.

Quite proud of my ingenuity, speed and efficiency until…one of the wheels caught on a slightly raised edge of cement along the racetrack, I mean garden pathway, abruptly stopping all forward motion except for the rocks, bucket and me. Gravity paired with hundreds of heavy rocks, leaning forward and my tight grip on the sides of the bucket, careened me to the unforgiving cement, face down. I am sure there is a clever scientific formula which reads…

gravity + momentum + hundreds of rocks + “I’m pretending to be a flexible, gymnastic flipping 25 year old” = @#%$& + bruised elbow, scraped knees, gravel cuts on the cheek + one very broken nose.

During the two weeks of bed rest, qualifying for the Quasimodo lookalike contest and having my ENT doctor pretend I was Rocky as he reset my nose, the post-injury mental baggage claim circulated and I watched each item with its individualized name tags; Shame – Blame – Regret as they rotated on my internal conveyor belt of self assessment. Why did this happen and how could I have been so careless and yep, unaware of the risks?

The lesson hit me right in the face…literally. I was doing too much, too fast, too many rocks in my bucket, too unaware of the possible pitfalls of a wheel getting stuck. I had not adjusted. I became too comfortable with what I thought was working and increased my load, accelerated my pace and became more invigorated with finishing than focusing on the moment. Sound familiar?

Life can get heavy and we often react quickly to manage, move and dispose of the burdens we carry. Racing around the track of life, loading more than should be pushed, we fill days up, tumbling, dulling awareness, getting scraped, bruised and perhaps broken.

This is when CHOICE is a necessary container and INTENTION a powerful vehicle. Choice means to thoughtfully assess what is the task before us, how much can we really carry and do ALL the “stones” really belong to us or could some be carried by another? Intention is the focused energy applied to the task, with consistent evaluation of how we are doing, feeling and progressing.

In reference to our late 50’s, early 60’s aging process, a friend recently spoke about making each step deliberate. Yuk. I used to simply leap saying “yes!” and not pausing to consider labor required. Each step, task and endeavor included spontaneity, speed and voila, accomplishment. Are you kidding, being deliberate seemed the counterpoint to “just do it!” Waiting for the CT scan to confirm if I had a concussion or brain bleed, well, let’s say I faced up to a few realities.

As my recovery progressed, the swelling abated, purple tinted black eyes morphed to a jaundice yellow hue and new items came into view on my baggage claim of emotions; Gratitude – Relief – Acceptance – Deliberate.

I appreciate and value my brain; there was no head injury. I cherish having a body that moves, swims, dances and hugs; the only break was my beak. I love to smile and laugh broadly; relieved all my teeth are still in their original spots. I deeply love this one deliberate, beautiful life and focus my intentions to face up to it every day.

05Feb

Julie LyleBeautiful Life, Gratitude, Mindfulness, Personal Growth, Uncategorized

Good Will Hunting

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
—Charles Dickens

Your good deeds might seem invisible, but they leave a trail that is imprinted on the hearts of others.
—Anonymous

November tapped at our door and without pausing to see if we were home, barged right in. The west coast time change early in the month brought a quick descending sunset and dinner served up earlier than usual.

Grappling with how to find meaning in the fast paced click of the clock and the flipping of calendar pages is a steady theme in therapy. There is no other spot on the calendar which demands our resources more than the holidays and our day to day footing may slide into the quicksand of rushed activities and overwhelm.

Nothing showcased this more recently in my own life than driving home on this first daylight savings evening. I glanced, slowed down and exploded to no one but the dust on my dashboard with, ”You’ve got to be kidding me!” It was a Christmas tree in the window of the corner house. My tree spotting tirade was interrupted just a half a block down the same street as there was ANOTHER front window displaying a tree brightly shining. Did I miss the neighborhood memo? It is only November 5th. Then it hit me. We are two weeks away from Thanksgiving and, take a big gulp breath, three weeks away from the start of December.

I was faced with a choice. Begrudge the lightning speed passage of time and the absurdity of putting up Christmas trees when our skeleton still sat on the porch waving “Happy Halloween” OR celebrate the good will of these two neighbors wanting to send a warm twinkling “Hello” to all passing by. With so much suffering in our world, perhaps they were encouraging others to find light rather than darkness.

Remember the 1997 film with Matt Damon and Robin Williams entitled Good Will Hunting? Matt Damon’s character was named Will Hunting and it turns out he was very good at mathematics and finding the good within a life changing friendship with a wise professor played by Robin Williams.

There is an annual Good Deeds Day, about mid April (next one is April 14, 2024). What if we searched for or offered good deeds every day?
November is home to Thanksgiving. Consider also “Thankshunting?” No, not for moose or a spectacular sale item, what about hunting for good will?

Place the words “Be a Good Will Hunter” on a sticky note on your dashboard. It will remind you to keep your eyes, ears, hearts and intentions open to the images and sounds of good will. Kids laughing, strangers helping strangers, a driver waving to another to take a parking spot, someone holding the door open and greeting others.
Consider how you might share your good will. Visit a neighbor, send a thoughtful card to an old friend, chat with a stranger at the store, smile more when you are out in the world and wish someone a wonderful day.
If you haven’t volunteered recently, this is a time of year with lots of giving opportunities. Our world is in need of comfort and now is the time to match your desire to share good will with others. From food banks to beach clean ups, to collecting toys and donating to foreign aid.

13May

Julie LyleBalance, Beautiful Life, Covid-19, Gratitude, Health, Life Challenges, Mindfulness, Personal Growth, The Journey of Life

Build the nest, for the bird of hope needs a place to rest.

Build the nest, for the bird of hope needs a place to rest.

Many arriving on the therapeutic couch are weary travelers, stretched to capacity and fatigued having marched across a risky, unknown terrain for over two years. The pandemic, workplace demands from home, challenged by new dimension of effective parenting, rising costs of supplies and since February, a harrowing war in Ukraine; violence and abject suffering within each click of an iPhone. Mt. Peace and Mt. Harmony are distant summits, barely visible, climbing elevations seemingly, hopelessly out of reach.

What happens when we lose our grasp of hope’s existence? Shaking our heads and wringing our hearts, is the concept of “losing” hope synonymous with denying hope? When we deny that hope exists, our thoughts become an internal “Whack a Mole” game. With every glimmering pop of hope, we grab our hammer of despair and whack it down.

Hope: a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

Denial: the action of declaring something to be untrue.

Perhaps “Hope” thrives when we become more paced, patient with our expectations. Scale back from the quest to reach the peak of global Kumbaya (albeit a righteous aim), try on more “Hope” and wear it for awhile.

With that, an Emily Dickinson poem archived in one of my college literature brain cells, landed in my cerebral inbox.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
By Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Dare I be as bold as to challenge Emily, yet I believe “Hope” IS asking something of us. The bird of hope needs to be greeted with a warm, welcoming nest, to find shelter within our hearts, our minds, our souls. “Hope” needs to be fed by our belief in healing, wisdom, learning and striving to be courageous. “Hope” needs to be quenched with the belief we can be kinder, truer and better.

“Hope” exists when it has a nest in you.

07Nov

Julie LyleCovid-19, Mindfulness, Personal Growth, The Journey of Life

Daylight Awakens

There is an abundance of repeated messaging from clients as to how they WANT to resume the pace they kept BC (Before Covid) yet the “get up and go” muscle has atrophied during the pandemic. Like many, I reduced my hustle bustle believing I would wait it out, you know, like Elvis has left the building…when Covid has left the planet…then, I would resume my go, go, go schedule. 🙂

For over these 20 months, we adapted to reducing the multiplicity of our lives. Our “Yes” responses were slim and our “No’s” were plentiful stemming from health safety concerns, “too much of a hassle” sentiments, or a comfortable complacency of “maybe tomorrow.” As the world is waking up, we not only have to exercise a flabby “social” muscle, we also need enhancements of patience, optimism and tolerance due to resuming sitting in traffic, short staffing and long waits at restaurants, airport delays and engaging with humans who are coming out of hibernation more like growling hungry bears rather than smiling butterflies. With daylight savings and the first week of November already gobbled up, what a perfect “wake up” call to consider ways to exercise the personal interaction and outreach muscle.

Select one person you have seen little or not at all during Covid. Reach out to this person and ask them to join you in a place you would like to visit; a favorite shopping area, lunch spot, hiking trail, beach lookout, etc. Set a date and time to meet at this location and relish a wakening! As I mentioned in an earlier post, poetry is a way of freeing my mind and weaving ideas with words, here is another sampling of what poetry can capture.

A Wakening

It rolls in, a velvet dew curtain during
early morning stirrings,
eclipsing the night, a stealth invader.
It alters the climate of familiarity;
a chill to be denied, dismissed.
It stirs, an irritating nudge to complacency.

“Wake up” it whispers.
Fear makes heavy the eyelids.
Pull the covers up, hit the snooze button,
lay still, play dead and make its recurrence, illicit, unwanted.

Silence instinct and there will be no bumping into walls,
or tumbling into pits.
Only inevitable wrinkles of blame and what if’s.

We papermache with history and habits;
lumpy layers of loyalty to others, flammable glue.
“Damaged” becomes the label, emotionally inked.

“Wake up” the tone demanding.
Yanking off the covers, painfully exposed, the place from which disappointment breeds.
“WAKE UP” the relentless messenger, the soul’s drill sergeant losing patience!
To linger is to submit to terminal regret.
To sit up, swing legs over the edge, reach into the thick unknown…tapping toes forward, seeking a surface to trust, to grope, breathe, and proceed into the abyss of change…this is to be alive.

02Aug

Julie LyleBalance, Life Challenges, Mindfulness, Personal Growth, The Journey of Life

Use mindfulness to create peace within

Could you risk believing that everything
will unfold just fine if you completely let go
of all concern about everything else,
and simply are here, now – if only for a moment?
—Dmitri Bilgere

As we continue through a mostly mask-free summer, I find myself wanting to make sure to not lose pandemic lessons. June and July turned out to be busy months, with graduation celebrations, reunion gatherings sorely missed for over 15 months, and seizing opportunities to reconnect. This “catch up” is a two sided coin. On the one side, happiness and homecoming relief in being able to join with friends and family in person and good health. On the other side, wow, revving up the energy when for many months, we had only a few items on our “to do” list and living in the moment availed itself more readily. Since I was a child, I enjoy this summer presumption that emotional distress dwindles down to the bottom of a beach bag and drifts away on a paddleboard to only come back to shore in September! Hah, not so. Life’s trials do not go on vacation and there are some seasons which don’t allow for much rest no matter how much we will them to. Therefore, it was during an inauspicious “moment” early morning last weekend, when inspiration seamlessly revealed itself.

As the house slumbered and I savored a wide brimmed cup of PG Tips tea as well as the very welcomed open space of first day “off” in weeks, I heard a “clickety/clack.” Realizing it was a chirping sound, I walked outside and there was a pesky wee bird, looked to be a bit bigger than a sparrow, flitting around a towering hawk perched stoically on the topmost branch of a tree in the valley behind our house. With every few flutters, this brazen feathered irritant would peck against the back side of the larger winged creature!

Initially, I was mesmerized by the audacity, persistence and sheer buggary of this small bird whose apparent goal was to get the hawk to react, in essence, to get the hawk off balance. I immediately likened this smaller bird with life’s troubles, whether they keep coming back to shove at us or just annoy our reverie; people, situations and emotions can peck at us and certainly throw us off balance. I marveled at how the hawk remained steady, never did it lunge or twitch, seemingly oblivious to the menacing company. Much like the opening quote, the hawk seemed to believe “everything will unfold just fine if you completely let go of all concern about everything else, and simply are here, now.” By slowing down my pace, in that moment, I was able to see how the hawk epitomized the concept we frequently explore in therapy; mindfulness.

As we practice being “mindful” we are focusing on the here and now, a moment at a time, accessing the depth and power of the mind to create peace within. The hawk symbolized how to remain clear of purpose by standing tall even when life pecks at you, at times relentlessly, bringing challenges we must endure and overcome.

I went to grab my camera and by the time I returned, the small bird had landed on our back fence, defeated in its assault as the unflinching steadfast calm of the hawk had won out. As I moved closer to the edge of the yard, the hawk’s wings stretched, embraced the open sky and effortlessly left its post and began to fly. I noticed the right wing had a segment indented and missing, perhaps an earlier injury, when maybe an even more menacing encounter had taken its toll. The hawk widened its radius and gathered momentum, extending its distance a bit more the next time around, soaring farther and higher. I found myself smiling at the shear, unexpected victory of mindfulness and how it is possible to maintain balance, even when life pokes at you.

Whether feeling pecked at by life’s demands with employment, finances and decisions or off balance by anxieties, hurts and fears within relationships, we could all learn a lesson from the hawk. If we react, attack and get swayed by the stressor, we will certainly lose balance. When we are impenetrable, mindful, assured and steadfast, we will certainly find our wings and soar.