December daze #25

How will you be vulnerable?

The soft white underbelly, the flaw in the armor, the Achilles' heel -- weaknesses are what make us the most human, the most beautiful. 

Next year, how will you tend to your vulnerabilities? How will you build them a shelter from the storm? How will you put them through physical therapy? How will you find a way to make them work to your advantage?  

And I thought the #23 was getting personal!

I tend to take things far too personally and feel in many and often the oddest situations that I have been abandoned. The obvious solution is therapy!

I plan to use my art journaling and other creative outlets as a means to get my self talk into a much better place and to stop being so introspective without losing my reflective capacities. One way to do this is to pause before I respond to things
There is one little habit I’ve learned that has changed everything else in my life.

The pause. An explanation from Zen Habits.net blog....



When we fail, it’s because we act on urges without thinking, without realizing it. We have the urge to eat junk, and we do it. We have the urge to check email instead of writing a chapter of our book, and so we open our inbox. We have an urge to smoke, to drink, to do drugs, to chew our nails, to play a Facebook game, to procrastinate, to skip a workout, to eat more fries, to criticize, to act in jealousy or anger, to be rude … and we act on that urge.
What if instead we learned to pause after each urge? What if we stopped, looked at that urge, paid close attention to what it feels like inside our bodies, but didn’t act?
The urge would no longer control us. We would be able to make conscious choices that might be healthier for us, help us be happier.
If we can pause, we create space. Space to breathe, to think, to be without acting.
The pause is the answer to so many of our problems. Such a small thing, and so powerful.
To develop the pause, notice your next urge. Is it an urge to go check something online? Or eat something you know isn’t healthy for you? Pay attention to the urge, learn as much as you can about it. If you act on it after the pause, that’s OK. Just notice it, and pause, and pay attention.
Do it again for the next urge, and the next. You will get good at it with practice, and you’ll have lots of opportunities to practice.
The urges won’t go away, but your ability to pause will get stronger. And when you have the pause, you have everything.
Leo Babauta Zen Habits.... breathe