Clarity 1/22

Hey you, 

Going to make this more of a casual post because, well, it’s been a while and the longer I take to revise and make it more “proper,” the longer it’ll take for me to share this to the world. Maybe from this post, it will give me the momentum I need to move forward with what I have planned for this year. 

My Bangkok trip experience, particularly at the 3-day retreat I attended at Battle Conquer Gym, nourished my soul in ways that urged me to prioritize deepening my practice to stay balanced and mindful. How was I going to do this? Not sure yet, however, I knew the challenge was to carry that knowledge back to the states with me, and so it was. I recognized that what I claimed to be a priority became last on my list. So today, I changed that by joining the Mindfulness Series hosted by the Well-Being Team at Deloitte to finally take the first step, which turned out to be an intention setter for this year. 

The session began with our eyes closed to envision ourselves in a state of joy where we feel good and what that looks like. For me, it was: 

• Looking slender
• Feeling warm
• Free from any emotional burden

This exercise isn’t new to me, but it somehow hit me differently, maybe because I’m in a different stage of life. What is new to me, is the term cognitive resilience.

Cognitive resilience has been defined by Staal et al. (2008, p. 260) as the ‘capacity to overcome the negative effects of setbacks and associated stress on cognitive function or performance‘.

You could probably reword this as “fixed mindset,” but again, this moment hit differently. Nonetheless, I realized many of my shortcomings derive from a feeling of heaviness. This feeling is something I always carried everywhere I went that dragged with me. Growing up, I always seek approval or validation from others to do things or feel a certain way. I never wanted to disappoint anyone and always put others before myself. I would try to find ways to alleviate it by grounding myself through meditation, exercising more, or putting less on my plate, but the disease only went away temporarily. This emotional baggage, or whatever you call it, has been detrimental to how I carry me and show up to others.

This epiphany has given me more clarity on my path forward to living a better life. Now that I’ve brought heaviness into awareness and recognized that I invited too much negative energy (worry, guilt, doubt, acceptance, etc.) into my headspace, I can finally let it go.

Context:

Growing up, I was always physically a big human and overweight. It got to the point where I reached 180 lbs in 6th grade. The weight carried through my childhood and also impacted my mental health – my relationship with myself, my family, and others to the point where I felt so alone, unloved, and over with life. It took me a long time, probably not until I was in my 20s when I finally lost the unhealthy weight. I still fear reverting to those dark times, feeling and looking my worst. Fortunately, these last few years have been incrementally better as I moved through different stages of my life with ebb and flow. Although I haven’t felt content with how I looked compared to 2018, I’ve accepted that it was a different time of my life. 2018 was the post-breakup era where I lived my best pre-adult life. This was my last semester of college, where I studied abroad in Korea, looking slender, and toned all over, especially my abdominals. I understand it’s something I should not compare since 2018 was a year of ignorance, having no job or real responsibilities other than finishing college, but the thought of knowing I looked that way to me, felt like I could do that again in some ways. I understand that priorities inevitably changed as I entered different stages of adulting, where I dove into understanding the root causes of my trauma while finding ways to heal them.

All this to say… I’m a step closer to living life at a greater capacity. 

As I envisioned having everything I did where I dreamed to be, in order for me to feel my greatest, answers from the universe started coming all in at once, at least for this season of my life:

• Looking slim to feel resilient and agile allows me to also feel attractive and more inclined to love more
• Being in warmth keeps me at ease with my hunger cues, balanced in cortisol levels, and in the present moment. The sun makes me feel alive and motivated to do more, feel more, smile more, and focus more
• Direct your energy towards the present and near future on what matters for you, not others. (This is something I recently discovered with my therapist that I’ve been working on)

Knowing all this and putting it together brought me to come up with the word light as my theme for the this year.

In addition to taking the first step in prioritizing my practice this year, I relistened to The Secret by Rhonda Byrne to push me forward with practicing this mindset, which also inspired me to make a vision board. I started one in 2021 but never finished it, so we’ll see where this one takes me! Although the year ahead is a little unclear, I’m glad to have taken the first step to deepen my practice and map out a potential foreseeable future.

With the knowledge I’ve discovered in the past week and ongoing practice of letting go of “what if’s” for matters that don’t impact me, I already feel a lot of weight lifted off my shoulders. I saw a shaman recently and like other teachers I’ve been listening to, the act of trusting myself and the process has truly been an experience. Here’s to 2023, let’s go.