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Spinning My Wheels on Facebook
Wasting time on social media is my drug of choice. If I am tired and want an escape, I scroll through my timeline. If I am anxious or obsessing about something, Facebook is my mindless escape. The thing is during the COVID-19 staying-at-home time, I am often overstressed or anxious about things. I don’t have a whole lot of time to myself and we are disconnected from family. The kids need to do school from home and Andy and I are still working. It’s a lot, so my need for a quick and easy escape is magnified. The thing is, when I crave Facebook, I am looking for fun and…
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Chasing flow
I work as an interpreter between American Sign Language and English. When I am working, my mind and body are fully engaged. My mental chatter falls away and I become fully immersed in the challenge of working between two languages. My head gets “in the zone” and it’s one of the reasons my job is so rewarding. Psychology researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls these immersive experiences “flow states.” He describes a flow state as a time of intense concentration involving both your mind and body. During these work periods, people feel an appropriate amount of challenge and they feel like the way they experience time is altered. These states of flow…
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Holiday Color
A key part of the full-color life is the enrichment from sensory experiences. When I run outside, I feel the cold air on my skin and smell my neighbor’s burning fireplace. It takes me deeper into the body. It grounds me in a sense of time and place and season. It is a trigger for me to move out of the conversation in my head and into a more mindful space. I have had a hard time developing these mindfulness triggers inside the home. Most of my mindful places and spaces are outdoors. I know what indoor sensory experiences that put me in the opposite head space. Cluttered horizontal surfaces…