The One Thing You Must Do For Yourself Now

Spend time WITH yourself not just BY yourself. 

There is a difference. BY yourself means doing things on your own; independently. WITH yourself would mean that you are actually WITH yourself. You are getting to know yourself and understanding yourself. 

How do you spend time WITH yourself and not just BY yourself? 

Image by Alexander Belyaev from Pixabay 

One way is by practicing mindful sitting. 

I think most of us are “busy bees” we like to keep busy and tire ourselves out until we are exhausted and ready for a glass of wine, or beer, or simply ready to go to bed. We keep ourselves busy to distract our thoughts and avoid our feelings. If we have nothing to physically do then we distract ourselves by turning on the tv, pulling out our phone and log into social media or watch cute animal videos to make us feel good (in my case orangutan videos).

What about sitting or walking with yourself? A lot of people have a difficult time with this. (I’m still struggling a bit with this. I’ve been practicing mindful sitting every morning for the past month, and I still find it a little difficult- though not always. I only do it for 15 minutes and that seems to be about as far as I can go.)

We have an unceasing amount of thoughts that are being shot into our minds constantly in a never ending stream it seems (I know I am being pretty redundant there). Have you been aware of that? I mean really aware?

We all know that we have thoughts, but have you ever really paid attention to them? What about paid attention to them without identifying with them? (That's my final goal)

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that when we practice mindful sitting we can pay attention. We can be aware of what feelings stir in us when we are having whatever thoughts we are having at that moment. Then we can look deeper to understand where these feelings and thoughts are coming from. We will be better able to understand ourselves and why we do the things we do or react the way we react and be compassionate towards ourselves-- less critical. We can take care of this and love ourselves even more and maybe even change the way we do things or react. Knowing why we do what we do helps us be more compassionate, loving, and peaceful, not only towards ourselves but to others as well.

If you haven’t read The Art of Living by Thich Nhat Hanh, I truly recommend it.

We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. And that is what the world needs most.

-From The Art of Living by Thich Nhat Hanh 

Have you spent any time with yourself lately?