Progress Report 04/19/2024

Thoughts on Meditations:

  1. Meditation 1: Finding Time for Joy (12 min. meditation)

    The house has been a bit noisy lately as we've just started fostering a dog. I did this meditation in my car at the grocery store for some quiet. It was a little fun, giving me reminders to times in teh recent past that put a smile on my face. My remembrance was a couple weeks back at my mother's birthday dinner where my sister said something that made us both laugh until we couldn't breathe. It also asked me to explore my surroundings more as if they were new. I found new textures in my car and then explored the grocery store I always go to as if it were new, noticing various things. I was having a bit of a low-motivation, dopamine-zapped brain kind of day, and this helped me snap out of it. It helped me have a more productive afternoon. I much prefer (like this one) meditations that ask me to close my eyes and focus on my breathing.

  2. Meditation 2: Managing Anxious Moments (8 min. meditation)

    I was having a bit of information overload at work here on my trip. Fortunately my hotel is a 3 1/2 minute WALK away from my desk. I walked over for the quietness and being able to do the meditation by myself. It was nice to center myself again with the breathing and I was able to come back to work with my head in a better place and better able to focus on the relevant tasks at hand.

  3. Meditation 3: Prioritize Your Joy (16 min. meditation)

    Honestly this one wasn't quite as useful for me. As you can see above, I am happy to do the meditations that have me close my eyes and focus on breathing. Doing it for 16 minutes was the longest I have gone, and I did lose focus plenty, but it was a nice exercise for me. This meditation focused a lot on positive affirmation, which is a method that I can respect, but honestly does nothing for me. I already know that I am capable and deserving of happiness, but the reason I'm not experiencing it as much as I should is more of a discipline issue rather than whether or not I deserve it. One thing that did stick out to me was that the leader mentioned oweing to life the feeling of happiness, as if you were honoring life. I think this is a great point and rather than thinking of engaging more in happy activities being something I could do, I should view it more like something I should do!

  4. Other Notes:

SMART Goals Worksheet PDF

Hope you can zoom in!!!: SMART Goals

Note: I did find this a little difficult to put together since I'm making goals based around developing habits. But I think what I put together isn't so bad. I didn't end up using the second page, and did a little bit of action-planning within the document.