This meditation experience so far has been going fairly well for me. I am starting to realize what effect it is having on myself and the people around me. For myself, I am starting to notice a decrease in anxiety. Almost every morning I wake up and start to feel this hot bubble of anxiety slowly start to fill up in my chest that is worried about what will happen in the day. "Will something happen to me during class that will throw me off? Am I prepared for the test coming up tomorrow? What about the ACTs next weekend?? I haven't prepared for it well at all!" Small thoughts like these can become a bing problem throughout my day as I isolate myself to sort out these annoying thoughts and calm myself down and can effect my relationships with other people to the point where I have to act fake to let them know I'm not scared.
As the days go on as I meditate at night, I see that I am becoming more mindful of what is around me and what I am experiencing. Like on Thursday, I was able to enjoy my lunch more than usual. The hot peppers in my sandwich had a satisfying crunch which released the juices on my tongue and the warm toasted bread complimented that by absorbing the meats flavor and pepper juices. My corn chips (yes Mr. Russell it was me with the corn chip breath) felt more crunchy and salty in my mouth, almost like I my taste buds were hyper sensitive in that moment. As I looked around at the other students during lunch, I could see that they were either looking at their phones, maintaining a staring contest with nothing in front of them, or yapping away with their friends. I took a moment to survey the room and felt quite different; more intrigued with what everyone was doing at that moment. After school, a friend of mine noticed that I seemed more quite and "sad" than usual and people around her were agreeing to it. This is what bothers me the most. When people assume I am upset or angry at something just because I have a very relaxed face but they don't know that. They are used to me acting goofy and spontaneous to make them smile and think "you're so silly." I didn't feel like I had to do that at all today. In fact, I felt more happy than normal with even the smallest moments and even during the most irritating ones.
As I went home, my focus was solely on working on my biology lab and ACT and nothing got in the way of that and I could feel myself losing myself in what I am working on and experiencing every click the keyboard makes and the small feelings of frustration when the graphs wouldn't turn out right. It felt very good to me that I felt like I was in control of the moment and I could stop being frustrated at things not going my way because in reality I am in control of what I do now, so it has some effect on the future.
Well, it should not bother you if people cannot sense your emotions. It should be more important that you have found peace, even if only for a moment, Corn-chip Breath! ;-)
ReplyDeleteI think I can usually tell the difference between your calm and your anxious by looking at your face. It is common for people's face to create "microexpressions" that give away their emotional states.