Tag Archives: Waking Up Course

Taking Inventory

May 8, 2019 By in Happiness Tags: , , Leave a comment

I just watched Lavendaire. She’s really cute. She’s living a life I think a lot of people of her generation dream of: YouTube star. She dispenses wisdom, and makes that wisdom look trendy and cool. Her wisdom is legit, though. This is not a diss. 

Today she was talking about 5 habits that you must cultivate if you want to be happy. 

1. Don’t blame other people for your problems.

2. Read.

3. Daily Gratitude.

4. Meditate.

5. Don’t take yourself so seriously.

It made me pause and take inventory.

1. I don’t blame anyone for my problems. At least not anymore. I used to when I was younger, but I don’t anymore. Forgiveness has a much higher ROI.

2. Reading. Reading has taken a hit lately because I’m resisting picking up anything new because I think I should be reading The Bros K, so I wind up reading nothing. That has to stop. Emily recommended Where the Crawdads Sing. I usually don’t like any kind of story where crawdads are involved, but I’ve been hearing chatter about this one. The nature writing is supposed to be gorgeous. And it’s set in North Carolina and I have family there, so I think I’ll pick that up today and give up, formally, on The Bros K. 

3. Gratitude. I’ve gotten out of the habit of sending notes. I want to start that up again. In today’s mail there was a clipping and a postcard from Zee. I feel so loved by and connected to her because of this lovely habit she has of mailing things. 

And I cannot lie: I also love how weirdly anachronistic a letter looks sitting amidst all the bills on the dining room table. Almost as out of place as a Starbucks cup in a Game of Thrones scene.

4. Meditate. I’ve been skipping a lot of days lately and I can’t figure out why. I absolutely love the Waking Up Course with Sam Harris. Why am I not fitting it in? It’s only 10 minutes. 

Begin again, Kath. Today.

5. Don’t take self seriously. I need to remember this as I embark on this video adventure. I need to mess around and have fun and accept that my first video will suck, but my 50th one will be a lot better.

In other news:

Today is Day 48 of The Ultimate Yogi. I’m going strong. Feeling strong. I don’t know if this hour-a-day+ thing is sustainable forever, but it does lay a solid habit foundation.  My feeling is that a 20 minutes-a-day practice, done consistently, with maybe one longer practice thrown in every week for kicks, is a more do-able-for-life thing.

Spring has sprung. Tulips are ruling everyone’s garden at the moment. Stellabella was deeply involved in them at MU the other day. But I can’t tell if it was the tulips, or the fresh mulch she loved more. Happy Spring!

Struggling With Consistency

January 9, 2019 By in projects, Streaks Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

I can’t seem to get any traction going. I can’t seem to get consistency on my big rocks. 

My scorecard this week: 

Writing 7/7, 

Meditation 5/7, 

Yoga 3/7. 

I blogged last week, so Blog 1/1 

The writing is the easiest. The blogging is the hardest, but since the blogging is only once a week, I managed, at least for the first week, to gut it out.

I credit Nanowrimo for getting me in shape to write 1K a Day. After having to hit that 1667 word-a-day benchmark every day in November, a thousand words a day is puh. 

As for the meditation, even though I haven’t been consistent, I really like the new meditation app I’ve been using. It’s Sam Harris’s Waking Up Course. There are daily, ten-minute guided meditations.  And even though they are talkier than I would normally be able to tolerate, I find, at this stage in my meditation practice, I kinda welcome his intellectual guidance. Having spent decades on the cushion doing zazen, and other techniques, and not quite understanding what the hell I was  doing, Sam’s guidance is causing some of the the mist to dissipate. 

My greatest resistance is to my 30 minute daily personal yoga practice.

Is it that I just don’t want to confront how inflexible I’ve become? How physically weak? 

Could be. 

I haven’t come up with a good time-slot for it, either, and that is a stumbling block. Plus, I have this thing about changing my clothes. I hate changing clothes. It takes everything I have to get out of my pajamas into day clothes. And then when it’s time to teach,  I resist getting out of day clothes into yoga clothes. It’s a ridiculous struggle. 

I was talking to a fellow yoga teacher friend and she practices first thing, in her pajamas.  But I don’t like yoga first thing. I like yoga, like third thing, after writing, and meditation. But then the puppy needs a walk, and then the day often derails.

The solution would be to take a regular yoga class. Plop down a lot of money and commit. I’m an Obliger. I need accountability. But there is no regular class or teacher around here. Mine are the regular classes. I am the teacher. 

This needs to be figured out.