The sky is rumbling again.

Long, quaking echos of thunder emerge from the storm that’s beginning to water my garden.

My daughter and I are cozy inside, listening to Still Corners while she drives around her little Flintstones-esque car.

The earth is already saturated from last night’s downpour, but not so much that it prevented us from heading out onto one of the park’s gravel-lined trails for an early afternoon hike a few hours ago.

The crunch of the ground beneath my feet made my heart start to come alive the second that my shoes hit the stones.

The feel of sweat dripping inside of my tank top and catching on my upper lip instantly woke up my soul.

Exercise really does help me get rid of my monkey mind, of my perpetually moving brain.

I guess some people would call my mental style ADHD, and that’s fine with me. I don’t mind labels—I just don’t let myself be contained by them either.

I look up from where I sit typing now, with the rain and the music providing a steady, thumping backdrop, and I observe my little girl rolling around in her Cozy Coup, looking for the best way to get over the hurdle of gliding from the wood floor and onto the white-tiled hallway.

This morning I felt like garbage.

I woke up and my eyes were literally as red as my small lady’s plastic car. (That supermoon has taken a toll on our household sleep.)

My typical morning coffee didn’t do the trick, and neither did my bath.

Nothing, including getting out of the house for some crack-of-dawn errands, seemed to lighten my heavy spirits and awaken my downtrodden body—until I stole 30 minutes to work out.

My husband’s a cyclist; he rides a single-speed up seriously steep hills, like the bad-ass athlete that he’s always been, since well before I met him at age 14.

I slightly pathetically begged him to take our daughter for me while he finished up his own pre-work routine. (It wasn’t yet 8 am—I told you we’ve been lacking in the sleep department.)

I dashed downstairs to our workout area—free weights, an awesome Spinning bike that was my Valentine’s Day present years ago (diamonds are over-rated) and my beloved Nordic Track, circa 1980-whatever.

Still wearing my dress, I tore off my short-sleeve cardigan and threw on my tennis shoes. I cranked up Incubus on my iPod (I admit to getting stuck on tunes from my youth; listening to the same album repeatedly for a week or a month before moving onto something else)—and I took off (well, kind of, I was stationary, I’m aware).

The music pounded and so did my beating heart.

I unwisely hadn’t made as much time this past week to move my body as I normally do, having had several appointments and being hampered also by this recurrent soggy weather.

I watched the sky grow clearer through the large picture window in front of me as I rhythmically moved my feet along those stationary wooden skis—and I turned the music up louder.

I watched the clock, so as not to make my husband late. (He would almost assuredly rather slightly delay his departure than stop me from making myself feel better.)

The sky opened up and so did my mind—my own mental clutter and debris being swept away, my dress now sticky. (Don’t worry, I changed.)

A little while later, after switching clothes, spending time with friends and having lunch, my little girl and I decided to get out onto our gorgeous local trails before the rain made its now familiar appearance once again (that crunchy hike on the gravelly trail I mentioned before).

She sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at the top of her lungs as I happily pushed her in her stroller, up and down the hilly terrain, listening to her perfectly pitched song and watching her cute hands move in motions that matched her words—and I got deliciously sweaty all over again.

I felt the pebble-littered trail beneath my rubber soles and heard the birds singing along with my tender child, as my thankful eyes drank in the lush greens and emotionally stabilizing tans and greys of the trees and rocks that surrounded me.

Later still, when the rain began to beat my windshield, I saw the steady motion of my wiper blades and listened all over again to my daughter’s singing—this time a tricky medley of Twinkle Twinkle and the Itsy Bitsy Spider—and I can’t help but wonder why we make things so hard on ourselves sometimes.

We watch our brains whirl and go and they don’t seem to wait for us to catch up.

We get irritated with the other people that make up our world. (To be fair, some are more challenging than others.)

We don’t pay full attention to what we’re doing—and multi-tasking is a myth. (I’m guilty even now—handing my daughter a snack while finishing up my thoughts here with you.)

Yet often we don’t have a choice—we have human responsibilities that get in the way of our more primitive needs.

I did it just this week by allowing my hurried schedule, and my subsequently tired but needy body, meander myself away from my usually disciplined workout routine.

And here’s the thing—if we expend only a microscopic amount of additional time and energy paying attention to what our bodies are asking us to do (eat right, move around, and get some sleep for Godsakes), then everything else becomes easier, naturally.

So while I won’t pretend to know or even fully understand your own personal situation, I do have compassion. Because I, too, have a child who doesn’t prefer to sleep as much as I (or not really much at all, if I’m being completely honest).

I also have a life that requires my attention, money and resources—usually outside from where I’d prefer these things to be—and that’s life.

Life means having things to do that you wouldn’t necessarily place first, but life should also mean making sure that you’re fitting in some of that other good stuff along with it.

We don’t need to be weekend warriors—what a waste of an opportunity if we save everything that we desperately want to do for a rainy day inside of a bucket list of dreams.

Do something every day that you would maybe only consider appropriate for a Friday night. Try it. Just once.

You might discover a different world—a better one—that’s been waiting patiently for you all along, you’ve had only to notice it.

My daughter’s singing trails off, and the rain is really coming down now.

I’m so glad that we went for that walk outside.

Not because I’m glad that I took advantage of the sunshine—although I am—but because now I can sit back and enjoy the cleansing sounds of the driving cloudburst, since I’ve already purified myself from the inside out—and I hope I’m teaching her to do the same.

I hope I’m showing my daughter that life isn’t made of weekdays and weekends, rather it’s made of opportunities that we take or let slip by. I hope I’m showing her, too, that inside of her human form lies an eternal well of energy, one that she can tap into at anytime, if she chooses.

Possibly I’ll also help her understand that more often than not the solutions are right there in front of our faces, and that they aren’t as complicated as we think they should be.

For me, my mental chatter needed a break, so I took my body for a walk. That’s it. That’s all I needed.

Life is difficult enough,and then we have to go and make it even harder.

I look back out my big front picture window and notice a clearing sky and patches of beaming sun and I’m grateful knowing that I’ll sleep well tonight.

“If a man achieves victory over this body, who in the world can exercise power over him? He who rules himself rules over the whole world.”

~ Vinoba Bhave

 

 

Photo: David Salafia/Flickr.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

The post Exercise & Opportunity: Why You Should Throw Away Your Bucket List. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

“To stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening.”

~ Pema Chodron

There are some mornings when you wake up and you’re not really sure how you feel yet—the sky isn’t quite dark, but it’s also not yet light.

You’re awake and ready to move and make coffee, but you’re not close to alert or mentally crystal clear.

You had a mixture of strange dreams, compiled of family members’ faces you miss and subconscious hopes you didn’t even know were there until they so unexpectedly popped up into your night.

You’re excited about your afternoon plans and saying good morning to your daughter, but you can’t fully explain why you still feel a little mopey and kind of…heart-achy.

And what do you do? When you feel that your day and your mindset could potentially go in several directions? You do this:

1. You get out of bed—after lying there for a moment.

You let your possibly raw, tender or unexpressed feelings settle into your tissues and your conscious mind so that you’re able to be fully present in your life—able to deal with whatever comes up because you’re not hiding from yourself or your life—and then you get the f*ck up. You roll to your side, swing your legs over your bed and you. get. up.

2. You practice yoga.

Ideally, this is a real, physical yoga practice that involves breathing and moving through sun salutes and postures that are designed to release the aforementioned experiences from your tissues, so that you don’t carry around yesterday’s tensions and burdens. Yet here’s the secret: you can practice yoga in many different ways.

Just to name a few: ride a bike, walk on a scenic local trail, chew and taste every bite of your breakfast. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.

3. You don’t let go.

You eventually do—maybe—but you remember for dear life—and you accept that.

I cannot help that I have a memory that hangs onto exact words from a conversation from years ago or the knowledge of exactly the way I felt in a situation, but let me tell you that pretending you don’t remember does no good. This is called denial.

Instead, be open to the reality that who you are might not be who you “want” to be. Jealousy, hurt, fear—these are all emotions that are extremely uncomfortable—but it’s much worse to pretend that they don’t exist.

Learn to acknowledge, accept and name what’s going on inside of yourself and your life, even if it’s not ideal or welcome.

4. Hug and kiss.

Hug your children. Kiss your husband good-bye before work. Hug your mother. Kiss your friend on her cheek. Cuddle your dog.

In short, never forget to live the true human experience of touch—we crave it because we need it.

5. Throw away your bucket list.

Oh, bucket lists, I really don’t like these. Why? Because you should already be living every single stinkin’ day like it’s your last. Will that mean climbing Mount Everest today? Hmmm, probably not since you have a nine o’clock meeting. On the other hand, does this concept shape your every interaction?

Will you kiss your husband good-bye after he irritated you because you never know what the day will bring? Not to be negative, but it’s true. This is the real world.

Will you take a chance and ask for that raise you know that you deserve (the proper way, of course) because you’ve decided to live your life to its fullest every day, and not just on your birthday and Christmas?

Live. Every. Damn. Day. Like. It’s. Your. Last. (And throw away your bucket list, please.)

6. Open your heart.

Okay, I don’t want to get all syrupy new-agey on you, but this is true: life hurts. It stings in fact. However, if you close and harden and become crotchety and bitter as you age, then you attract these type of people and experiences right back into your life. Open up your heart, even and especially when it hurts.

You got burned in love? Try again. You got fired from your job? Apply for a better one.

The world needs more people who aren’t afraid of pain and who know that they are resilient enough to survive, thrive and move on.

Be a phoenix not a lemming.

7. You are not too old or too young.

Ageism—another one of my arch nemeses. You are not too young to have your own thoughts and ideas and you are not too old to learn new things, to change or to simply love living. If people around you are telling you otherwise, find empathy for their obviously limited view of their own capabilities and shrug off their words—and then proceed to do whatever the hell you want.

8. Eat mindfully.

Eating disorders go in many directions. If you are ignoring your body’s hunger cues and eating foods that generally make your body feel bad, you are not doing yourself a service as far as pursuing your best day.

So yesterday was a day filled with poor choices? (Or maybe your life up to now has been?) So what. I can tell you from personal experience that our bodies are more regenerative than we often think and that effective change happens when you take baby steps, not running leaps. (You know, the old tortoise and the hare story.)

I look out the window and notice that the sky is definitely a brighter shade of grey. The looming, unforecasted rain casts a heaviness that I feel in my bones. (Literally, even my once-broken bones feel this weight.) I decide to let the mysterious melancholy that I feel wash over me and through me, rather than turning away from it.

I get up to make my coffee and I look forward to feeling its smooth, velvety texture roll over my tongue.

I breathe and feel my chest expand with air.

I dreamt in black and white last night—I always do. I dream in shades of grey.

This makes me aware that life is a spectrum and not two distinct colors. I want to see each shade for what they are, because that’s living my life—that’s being authentic and this truth and clarity make each day my best.

I sit with my loneliness and my own inner shades of grey because I know that living from this place allows me to move towards the end of the spectrum that I choose.

I believe that life is a choice.

We can’t always choose our circumstances and we might learn to shape and transform our feelings and thoughts through effort, but we still have to own up to our almost primal and instinctual reactions.

So you want to live your best day? Then be you. Feel you. Live every day right where you are.

“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!” ~ Charlie Chaplin

Photo: KittyKaht/Flickr.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

The post 8 Ways to Make Every Day Your Best Without Pretending You’re Happy or Letting Go. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.