Tag: meditation

Negate the Negativity!

by Mershon Niesner

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for a newer and richer experience. Eleanor Roosevelt

Your brain is built to be more sensitive to unpleasant news than it is to pleasant. You’ll probably remember the rebuke longer than you’ll remember the praise. Sometimes, the sadness of death will impact a person more than the feelings of joy and warmth they received from their loved one. 

This bias for negativity generally causes us to worry more than necessary, fear the worst, and focus on bad narratives for too long. When we allow this to happen, we rob ourselves of experiencing the joys around us.

Affirmation: I choose joy.

Coach request: This week, take time to be aware of your negativity. As you do, refocus your thoughts by meditating, having an attitude of gratitude, establishing a “worry time,” or writing down your negative thoughts to get them out of your head. Some negativity will hang around for a while and that’s ok. What counts is your continued effort to redirect and reprogram.

Embrace the Pause

by Mershon Niesner

When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting. Jon Kabat-Zinn, American professor

Friedrich Nietzsche referred to boredom as the “unpleasant calm that precedes creative acts.” Embrace boredom as a positive force. Think of it as the pause that makes magic happen. I claim to never be bored. That’s not to say I don’t have hours free of activity, conversation, or other stimuli. After a busy week like I just experienced, there is nothing I enjoy more than a day with nothing planned, a day to linger over a cup of tea, to read, to water plants. No time frame, no urgency, no goals. 

Routine chores like cooking or folding laundry can feel boring. However, we can reframe them as a time of meditation or the task that gives us a sense of achievement. Boredom isn’t about what you do but how you do it. It helps you rethink your relationship with the world. Embrace the blank page, the silence, the pause.

Affirmation: I embrace the pause.

Coaching request: This week, take a moment to sit with the silence, the boredom, the comma in your life. Resist the temptation to fill every moment—checking the weather, the news, Facebook. Let your mind wander and see where it takes you. Let the magic happen.