Mindfulness

I have spoken on many occasions about being the youngest in my family who love to debate. Most of my life I sat there listening as I watched the adults and my older cousins provide evidence, commentary, questions and grapple with complex issues. I watched and took it in as I saw some people get frustrated and others enjoy the frustration they were causing. I also saw how even as the political conversation got heated it was quickly reconciled and no one, at least, seemed to take it all that personally. No one doubted the intentions and good will of the other despite having contrasting views on complex political issues. As I grew more confident I brought my own opinions to the table. Especially after 9/11 and the beginnings of the Iraq War. It impacted my generation and there were people I knew who were talking about joining the military. I became obsessed, because I was worried. I scoured sources and did research as I tried to figure out my own political identity. I found that I was ...

The need for control was a conversation piece with my friends and I over the weekend. My mind has been thinking about it more and more since then, because I was intrigued by the idea that I was given more percentage points for a need for control than my other friends. Most people perceive me as a rather even-keel individual who only has a handful of things she would die on the hill for. So it sparked a curiosity in me to explore it a little more.  I think, all of us, have a need for control out of pure survival. Even zen buddhism lies in the principal that we have mastered our emotions and regulated ourselves so much that we are able to overcome desire or need. This takes a level of self-control that is hard to accomplish let alone maintain. So we all have areas of healthy control and unhealthy control.  There are a few areas where the need to control tends to manifest.  Control OVER others  Control OVER themselves  Control OVER their environment....

The truth is that no matter how much we grow as human-beings we can easily get derailed by the reminders of our past vulnerabilities.  Restless Energy  I have written extensively about my experiences at school. The feeling of being judged by teachers, peers, and systems. Some of those judgements came from a toxic self-image perceiving others as judgmental  and some of it was legit judgement. These feelings led me to feel like I needed to prove something to the people around me. In my youth, this feeling was portrayed by a demeanor of wanting to seem like I was over-confident and did not care about the things that the people around me cared about. As a young adult, it manifested in obsessive perfectionism about grades. Even today as thirty-something sometimes I get a case of imposter syndrome. This irrational fear that I am pretending really well and eventually people are going to figure out that I am just a resource kid who really does not deserve the things that I h...