The Daily Mind
Daily Steps To Mindful Living
If you’ve been working too hard, aiming for unrealistic goals and driving yourself to the ground, you’re a prime candidate for burnout.
Burnout isn’t about having a bad day at work, or even a bad week. It’s more pernicious, draining your energy and making you feel an exhaustion that isn’t relieved by rest.
On a more severe level, it can affect your performance at work, strain relationships and cause anxiety and depression.
[Read more…] about The Signs of Burnout and How to Recover from ItThose first few months of sobriety often stretch your understanding of what it means to put mind over matter. However, it really does get easier to distract yourself from thoughts about drinking as time goes by.
In the meantime, it helps to surround yourself with lots of compassionate support while also developing a few go-to strategies for keeping yourself distracted when the urge to drink strikes.
Use these distraction strategies to jumpstart your plan to avoid drinking while also discovering new interests that make living a sober lifestyle more enjoyable.
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[Read more…] about Thinking About Drinking? 11 Fool-Proof Distraction Strategies to Help You Stay SoberThe next time you’re planning to go on a vacation, why not take a spiritual retreat? Skip the crowd that flock to the beaches and bars and escape from the noise and clutter of your everyday life. Seek a haven where you can reclaim serenity and inner peace surrounded by silence and nature.
Spiritual retreats do not have to be faith-based. Although a lot of them are, secular or non-faith based retreats are also offered in many retreat centers where people from around the world go to. The most popular places for these centers are India, the Himalayas and Thailand. But you can find one nearer to home, in the US and Europe.
The hallmarks of a spiritual retreat are silence, stillness and detachment from the material world. You willingly go off the grid and re-center your thoughts inward to find the right path to fulfillment.
It’s time spent in contemplation in a retreat facility in a quiet setting, away from the babble and chaos that have become an inherent part of modern living. It can be a monastery or a faraway place with nature and a restful environment as your background.
A guru or mentor will guide you through your spiritual journey. You will have meditations and quiet contemplation done in solitude or with a group. Once you detach yourself from the world, you re-connect with your inner self and gain a sense of peace and calmness.
“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.” – Albert Camus
When you find a deeper meaning to your life, you’ll have renewed energy to tackle the challenges ahead of you. A spiritual retreat gives you a keen awareness of your surroundings and the people around you. By continuing the meditation, yoga and prayer practices you learned during the retreat, you will, without conscious effort, develop gratitude, compassion, empathy and kindness towards others.
Even without a budget for the facilities of a retreat center, you can do a spiritual retreat in your home. Create a space for it and allot a quiet time to eliminate distractions. There are videos on YouTube that can guide you through breathing, centering and meditating. Stick to a video that’s right for you and copy it to a disc to play offline. It’s easy to do by following the instructions here.
For those who ask, “What’s in it for me?”, a spiritual retreat gives intangible benefits that are essential to your wellbeing. Inner peace, tranquility of the soul, and the kindness and generosity to others you have developed may not be measurable in concrete units but the positive effects they bring are priceless.
A spiritual retreat is a time for introspection. In the process of examining your own thoughts and feelings, you become aware of your own shortcomings. This awareness evokes humility and a nonjudgmental outlook, raising your tolerance and compassion for others. Eventually, your noncritical approach will pave the way for an enhanced interpersonal relationship with coworkers, friends and family.
Making a living and taking care of family can overwhelm you. It’s a toxic environment that will take its toll on your physical and mental wellbeing. The demands of career and home can make you feel lost and confused about your own goals.
Go on a spiritual journey and reflect on your life’s perspectives. You may be facing challenges of broken relationships, addictions, or grave illnesses. Spiritual retreats include sessions of meditation and yoga, readings, exercise and a simple diet. A combination of these practices will help you in your personal growth and foster forgiveness, the will to overcome difficulties and acceptance of the inevitable.
Faced with a materialistic world, tragic happenings and scandalous news, you become cynical and suspicious of people’s motives. You lose your faith in humanity and the goodness in people. This cynicism comes out in your behavior and can destroy you and your relationships. By retreating from your daily life, you replenish your soul with charity and renew your faith in humankind. You are filled with renewed energy and vigor, ready to go back to the real world with a changed outlook.
Retreats are one way of getting acquainted with kindred spirits. Having gone through similar spiritual experiences, you can act as each other’s support group and share your experiences, viewpoints and philosophies. Finding people that understand you and vice versa strengthens your newfound resolve and encourages you to become a better person overall.
With the world getting smaller through technology, we are bombarded with upsetting news that challenge our sense of safety and comfort. Spiritual retreats have always been there and now more than ever, they are necessary and relevant in this modern world.
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When things get tough, sometimes you have to make a change to get back on track. A reset gives you the time and space you need to return to a healthy, successful life. Making a few simple changes might shift your perspective and help you move on from the catastrophe you experienced.
[Read more…] about Simple Changes to Reset Your Life After a CatastropheWhat is the principle of tapas? You’ve read about the niyamas, and the tapas are one of them. the Sanskrit word “tap” means “to burn,” and the word “tapas” can refer to the fire within. That said, to cultivate tapas entails practicing discipline, commitment, and courage in one’s yoga practice. Practicing tapas, however, can run deeper than that.
Here we are in this global pandemic, restricted in so many ways – from our work, travel, socializing, exercise and even in the ability to do our daily errands. It is no wonder that so many of us are stressed, felling isolated, with mental and emotional well-being at an all-time low.
We are all hoping that everything will “go back to normal”, while at the same time watching figures of infections increasing to depressing levels. The vaccine is here, but it is not available to everyone. So what is there to do in the meantime? How can we heal ourselves with so much disharmony everywhere?
[Read more…] about Healing Ourselves with Nature
