Thankful Thursday 20: Being Mindful

Welcome to the twentieth instalment of my Thankful Thursday series, Being Mindful! This week’s post has a lot to do with last week’s – I’m sensing a theme.

I have arrived – I’m posting this on Thursday! But how is it possible that it’s already week 20?! This week, I’m focusing on gratitude for learning to be mindful.

Here’s my Thankful Thursday for the week of September 21 – September 27, 2018!

Things I am thankful for over the past week:

• I decided to run this week’s 10k on Friday because I felt great after work. This relates to last week’s post about listening to my body. I usually plan to do my longer runs on the weekend for a lot of reasons. Mainly because:
  1. My half-marathon training programs always put the longest run on Sunday, as that is usually the day of the week that races fall on.
  2. I tend to have more energy on the weekends and not early in the morning before work or after a full day of work and/or school.

This week, for some reason I felt awesome on Friday and decided to do my 10k before the forecasted 75mm of rain that fell over the weekend. It went awesome – I beat my previous PB by 3 minutes! The rain ended up starting when I was at about the 5k mark, but it was gorgeous:

• I had a recording session with my client (for school, not a real client) on campus on Saturday. I’ll never get over how gorgeous it is there during the fall. Some examples:

• I got to meet my fur-niece, Luna. HOW CUTE?!??!!?!!!

• Rugby on Sunday morning was NOT RAINY and super fun. The Capilano youth women went 3-1 at the U19 level and 3-0-1 at the U16 level!

• My two classes went really well at UBC, and after Tuesday’s class, I SAW AN OWL! It was amazing.

• Over the past few days (Monday until now) it’s been gloriously sunny and feels a lot more like Vancouver’s typical September weather. After two weeks of rain, it’s fabulous.
• My school held their annual Terry Fox Run this morning, and I ran it. I was the first teacher to finished, and beat the 1k record on my running watch! I ran for my friend Stephanie, who is currently fighting brain cancer.

And finally, the theme for this week, Being Mindful!

My two profs this semester are both focusing on teaching us mindfulness. The program in general sees it as very important for counsellors in training, and I totally agree.

Mindfulness, drilled down to its most essential, is noticing without judgment, or focusing one’s awareness on the current moment with compassion.

Often practicing mindfulness is a form of meditation. You can try to notice things that are happening in your body, or just notice your thoughts without judging them. At the start of every class, we do a short mindfulness practice, and I’m really loving it. I’m going to try to do it more on my own – as a practice, it’s best to do it every day, even just for a short time.

I’m finding that thanks to this practice, I’m feeling a bit less anxious. I also think that I’m finding it easier to eat mindfully and listen to my body, especially when I’m choosing workouts.

There you have it!

So, that’s my Thankful Thursday list for this week. I hope it inspires you to make your own, and get on that gratitude train!

Peace and love,

Bee