Your Weekly Mindful Morsel

Mindful Morsels appear every Wednesday

photo courtesy of Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

Happy sweet Wednesday, Reader 💜

If you’ve spent the last few months living in a KPop Demon Hunters-obsessed home like I have, you’re all too familiar with the impact of patterns.

In real life, our patterns can be positive, negative, or neutral, and they tend to grow deeply embedded as we wear grooves along our life paths. They show up as repetitive mental narratives, rituals we have during certain times or seasons, and habits we’ve developed for coping with stress.

Patterns are sort of like these built-in safety nets we make for ourselves — they’re familiar, predictable, and kind of grounding. But sometimes they hold us back when we hold onto them too tightly.

If there’s anything I’ve learned through my own time-management struggles and self-cultivation practices, it’s that we have to be willing to break our own unsupportive patterns in order to evolve. And this is inherently uncomfortable. Sometimes (speaking for myself), just the idea of interrupting a pattern can feel like a real live threat to my nervous system.

For example, I function really well within scheduling routines. This helps me manage my mental and energetic loads more easily, and it helps me hold myself accountable to certain things that are must do.

BUT.

Sometimes I’m too stringent with containers and allotments, and that prevents me from trying new things, taking risks, and living wider. When someone asks me to change something, sometimes I go straight to immediate panic mode. My insides freeze and it feels like my breath stops.

I have to make a definitive effort to check in with myself. What is actually happening? What are my values and priorities in the situation? Would it be more supportive to stick to the routine/pattern or to deviate and experiment?

Sometimes there are super easy answers to these questions, but sometimes we might encounter a lot of internal resistance, and ultimately, we can only figure those things out for ourselves.

The important thing is to be willing — willing to take an honest look, to hold yourself accountable, and to take action and break your own unsupportive patterns.

May we all be so brave and present to do this for ourselves, and to hold space for others as they do the same.

Sharing time and space with good energy,

Welcome to Zenful Mindings

I'm Brianne, a trauma-informed yoga & somatics facilitator, Reiki practitioner, and mindfulness advocate. I specialize in body literacy to help people reconnect with their bodies for a stronger sense of self, autonomy, and connection to natural rhythms.

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