Mindfulness: Words for a Mindful Moment with the Breath
Gratitude: TheĀ Smile File
The moments of gratitude and the smiles from the week that I want to hold on to:
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I love this quote by Elizabeth Lesser. Meditation, mindfulness ~ it’s all about discovering the peace and beauty that we already possess and are already all around us. While weeding in the garden this week, I pulled up this:
As I shared with many of you on Facebook yesterday, it just didn’t seem right to call it a weed.
Most of the time, our moments of gratitude and joy are small ~ like listening to my six-year-old daughter sing her heart out to the car radio, not caring who can hear or what she sounds like. My son asking, “Mommy?” one more time, and then searching his head for a question to ask me, to keep me in a hug just a little longer as I tuck him into bed.
Those are the moments to be mindful of. To be fully present for. To discover the peace we already possess.
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On a more mundane note, this week I realized how grateful I am for electricity! Some nasty storms came through Minnesota last weekend, and we had seventeen hours without power {which, fortunately, was a lot fewer hours than many of my friends and neighbors had to endure.} I am so grateful for air conditioning, my dishwasher, … I’ll spare you a listing of all my appliances, but you get the picture. I also discovered I have a wee bit of a social media addiction that I need to address. Beyond reminding me to be thankful for electrical power, the power outage did provide some nice family moments ~ an evening by candlelight, time away from iPhones and iPads, and a brief joyful moment with me and my children sitting in the car in the driveway {for a bit of A/C!}, belting out “Call Me Maybe.”
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My husband is an avid amateur photographer. My aunt nicknamed him the “Toddarazzi” because he is always snapping pictures of everyone at every family gathering. But I love that he captures and documents the memorable, as well as the every-day, moments of our summer. We’re being better this summer at actually developing the pictures and putting them in our summer binders, too. I am so grateful for the time he takes to edit and organize all these pictures. These pictures are my calls to mindfulness, and reminders of abundance. Here are a few of my faves so far this summer:
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What made YOU smile this week? What are YOU thankful for?
- A Mindful Approach to New Year’s Resolutions - January 13, 2020
- Just This Next Step - December 16, 2019
- WAIT: A Mindfulness Practice for Waiting in Line - December 9, 2019
