Have you ever woken from a dream so bad that it stayed with you for days? I had one of those last Saturday night and nearly a week later my mind keeps returning to that horrible dream. It pops back into my head several times each day and then I spend far too much time trying to determine the meaning of the dream.
Usually when I have a bad dream I can trace it back to something that sparked a feeling, an insecurity, a memory, or a fear. This nightmare, not so much. It featured a scenario that never happened and could never happen. I was so upset by it that I literally cried off and on all day Sunday. My poor husband was at a loss to help, though he tried.
Maybe I will figure it out at some point, but as disturbing as it was, I would prefer to forget it!
Winter doldrums
In other news, nothing much is going on at the moment. It’s really cold here this week, with frequent snow flurries. We are lucky that we are not in the main lake-effect snowbelt. A little village a couple of hours north of us that sits right at the east end of Lake Ontario got four feet of snow in just a few hours Wednesday. Yikes! A little snow is pretty, but that amount is too much for me.
As I shared in a previous post, January always gives me the blahs, and I tend to want to hibernate. Well, I’ve allowed myself a couple of weeks to go slow, but next week I have to jump back in with both feet as I have several big work projects.
Referring back to my need to hibernate, I do try to be somewhat productive while wrapped in my blankie. I typically try to get better at my mindfulness practice, try to meditate more, and catch up on all the reading I was planning to do last year but didn’t get around to.
This week’s book was Atomic Habits by James Clear. It was a worthwhile read. He doesn’t push a just do it method, instead he describes the difficulty in creating habits and provides a roadmap to help establish (or discard) habits you want to cultivate or ditch. His layering approach really resonated with me. In the book he writes that by adding the new habit to a series of habits you already do it helps to integrate the new habit into your routine. For example, if you get a cup of coffee and read the paper each morning, but want to start journaling, keep the journal and a pen near the coffee pot. After you get the coffee, write in the journal, THEN you can read the paper. He stresses the reward aspect – the paper is your reward for journaling.
In my case, I struggle with practicing a mindful minute each morning. For the last couple of days I have employed his layering approach and it seems to be working. Instead of throwing off the covers when the alarm rings and heading off for my morning caffeine, I have been turning off the alarm and staying under the covers for my mindfulness minute, then heading off for caffeine. I know it seems small, but I can see how this approach can make establishing habits easier in the long run. I hope to keep working on this technique and apply it to more habits.
Until next time!