Sunday Journal Prompt

“Mind your mind.”

– Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

 

 

My picky eaters can’t stand the smell when I cook fish for myself. I thought that my making it when they weren’t home would help, but they insisted that the kitchen still smelled “fishy” when they walked in hours later. However, they didn’t notice it if I simultaneously burned a vanilla candle or baked apples—edging out the fish odor with something else. 

For years, outside of writing and working, I rarely sat still without external input—reading, watching, scrolling—and thus found meditation stressful. Although I tried to relax and not think of anything, my mind focused on my to-do list and problems to solve. Minutes felt like hours. 

Meditation is easier when I edge out those thoughts with other thoughts, like burning a candle or baking apples to mute the fish odor. I silently count five breaths in and five breaths out while envisioning light flowing in and out of my body for twenty minutes each morning. Boring, right? At first, yes. But the repetition calms me, something I’d experienced as a child when I recited prayers before bed or watched surfers catch wave after wave. The counting and imagery anchor me, giving my mind something to do, keeping me connected to my body and focused on the moment, reducing the number of times my mind drifts off to the past or anticipates the future. Now my twenty-minute meditation window flies by, providing me with a heightened sense of calm and alertness with which to tackle that to-do list and solve those problems.

What positive practice can help edge out the negative? How can you incorporate it into your life this week?

 

 

 

Sunday Journal Prompt

 “Each time we reflect, we’re changing our soul a little bit. It helps us move more toward the direction of the good inclination.”

– Dr. Greg Marcus, author of The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar

 

 

In his book about Mussar, a thousand-year-old Hebrew spiritual practice, Dr. Greg Marcus advocates for engaging in daily acts of kindness and end-of-day journaling. The Hebrew word for loving kindness, “chesed,” is the idea is that the whole world is built on acts of loving kindness, Marcus shares. And journaling helps us reflect on opportunities to practice generosity.

 

In a One You Feed podcast interview, Marcus describes a scenario in which a student who was taking an online final exam in a library asked to borrow his power cord since her laptop’s battery was dying. Even though he was leaving, he agreed to loan her his power cord and pick it up later. He saw the student’s request as an opportunity to make someone’s day—and bailing people out helps make the world a better place.

 

Referring to Mussar journaling, Marcus says that at the end of the day, the goal is to focus on whether or not we did everything we could. One way to do that is to ask ourselves questions: Where was I challenged? Did I meet the challenge? Over time, as he shares, this practice helps us take gradual steps toward balance.

  

 

What’s an act of kindness in which you’ve engaged? How can you stay alert to such opportunities in the future?

 

 

 

  

Sunday Journal Prompt

“What good shall I do this day?”

- Benjamin Franklin

In his journal, diplomat, scientist and inventor Benjamin Franklin regularly asked himself what good he could do, his way to focus on how he could serve others and benefit society as he went about his daily routine. In the evenings, he returned to his journal to reflect on this question: “What good have I done today?” Making plans and taking stock on a regular basis helps us continue to stay connected to what’s important to us.

It’s said that, when Franklin had a decision to make, he took a sheet of paper, drew a line down the middle, then wrote the “pros” and the “cons” of the situation. As many of us have experienced, something about seeing the components of a decision on paper helped him figure it out. Dr. Sheppard Kominars, author of Write for Life: Healing Body, Mind, and Spirit Through Journal Writing, shares that seeing a situation on paper moves it to a different dimension of our brain—from rumination to the problem-solving portion.

What good shall you do this day?

 

Sunday Journal Prompt

“The obstacles in our path are the path.”

 – Rolf Gates, Meditations on the Mat

 

As yoga teacher and author Rolf Gates observes, the roadblocks we encounter in life are part of our journey. Often they’re a key part of it. How many times have we not gotten what we wanted when we wanted it, whether that be a relationship to go the way we want, an academic or business opportunity to pan out how we hope it will, or a clean bill of health for someone we love? 

While I’ve needed to take time to grieve over heartbreaks like these, it helps me to consider that hindrances and sorrows contribute to the person I am becoming. Knowing that they are part of my journey doesn’t make them any easier, but it helps me to accept them and view them as integral to my path. 

 

 

What obstacles have you encountered? What arises when you consider reframing them as part of your journey?