​With the warmer days and clear blue skies of Spring, our minds are tempted to wander off into daydreams.  We dream about new challenges and exotic destinations.  We envision ourselves doing something new and exciting or finding a place to relax and enjoy the weather. Day-dreaming is a natural part of the Spring experience.   The season invites us to become lost in the newness of life.  Is daydreaming a useless distraction or a healthy diversion?
 
I suppose it depends.  If our daydreaming allows us to avoid taking care of our needs, then it is a distraction.  But if it gives us room to celebrate the season and reap a greater sense of vitality, then it is a healthy diversion.
 
When I was a child, Springtime was a great adventure.  Richard and I would venture out and explore the woods behind the neighborhood or the creek at the bottom of the hill.  These places filled a 10-year old’s heart with wonder.  They offered challenging possibilities for adventure.  They might have the perfect site for a fort or mysteries that no other 10-year old had ever seen.  After being cooped up all winter, Springtime meant freedom, exploration, and discovery.
 
We can find those same experiences in our daydreams.  We can escape our daily routine and become Walter Mitty on safari or Peter Pan flying through Neverland.  We can explore the unasked questions that have lingered like gum stuck to our shoe.  We can discover that our world is far more interesting than either our to do list, bank account, or personal inventory has ever revealed.   Daydreaming allows us to celebrate life with freedom, exploration, and discovery.
 
As long as it is not a distraction, let us celebrate Spring by allowing the daydreams to carry us away, if only for a short trip into wonder.
 
“I try to maintain a healthy dose of daydreaming to remain sane.”  ~Florence Welch
 

​Let the Paradoxes out to play – Let those conflicting and seemingly opposite situations and circumstances both be true.  Allow the light and darkness of life to swirl together until a rainbow of new insights and ideas fill our mind.
 
Allow Your Mind to Wander – Let them stray from the path we walk every day.  What is behind that “tree” we generally ignore?  Pretend the limits of reason do not apply and explore the “why knots” in our lives.
 
Let New Connections Form – Let go of the image of life being a jigsaw puzzle and allow it to be more like a Lego set.  Let the pieces come together is new and imaginative ways.  Some things actually do fit together in ways we never imagined.
 
Learn the lessons the day dream has to teach us about ourselves and then return home.  What do your daydreams suggest about your needs and desires?  How do they suggest that you change the way you live “in the world”?
 
While daydreaming is an important part of the Springtime experience, be sure and come home to your life.  There are three other seasons, and each has a gift for us as long as we show up to receive it.

The Power of Daydreaming
 
The Lost Art of Daydreaming
 
Deliberate Daydreaming
 

​Teary eyes… 
      Cold chills… 
           Sleepless nights… 
                Trembling hands… 
 
We all have moments like these.  Sometimes we know why and sometimes they come out of nowhere and overwhelm us.  Such moments can accompany painful memories as they surface in our lives.   
 
Memory is a primary function of the mind.  Along with reason and language, memory allows us to learn and grow in understanding.  Remembering consists of three parts.  The first is the actual storage about which we know very little other than each memory appears to be scattered throughout the brain.  The second is to maintain a memory.  The third is recall, to be able to piece together a stored memory and bring it to consciousness.  We all have a wealth of memories.   Some are more immediately available for recall than others.
 
We maintain memories by paying attention to them.  We may keep them alive by being constantly reminded of them.  We may not even be aware that we are keeping them alive.  Thus, we may have an unacknowledged memory ready for recall with the simplest trigger. This means that painful or disturbing memories can easily surface from any part of the memory.  A remembered aroma, or image can cause the brain to begin reassembling the memory in part or as a whole.  A word or phrase can also initiate the recall process.  An unanticipated emotion can cause the mind to begin reassembling a distant memory.  The more often this occurs the more easily the memory is available for recall.
 
The mind allows us to learn and grow in understanding through the gift of memory.  However, as any gift, it must be cared for and nurtured if it is to offer us it’s fruit.

​How do we care for our painful memories?  The self-care during times of painful remembering requires that we allow ourselves to learn from the memory.  Explore the reason for the memory’s frequent return by allowing it to lead you to a new place of understanding.
 
In a safe place, allow the memory to surface.  Journaling the memory can assist in holding on to it without constantly recalling the more painful parts of it.
 
Look for themes in the memory.  They will likely point you to surprising experiences, situations and ideas that you had long since resolved.
 
Which of these themes are most alive for you?  Which themes have the most energy for you?  They are likely to be the most relevant.
 
Let the memory suggest a way through your present circumstance or situation.  Before you follow through, however, talk with a trusted friend.  They will likely be able to see more clearly than you.
 
I want to reiterate; these self-care suggestions are intended only for mildly troubling memories.  For memories that greatly disturb your life or that become much more disturbing as you remember them, please see a trained professional to assist you in processing them.
 
The mind is a powerful part of our human spirit.  Take care of it.  It holds the wisdom you need to become the person you want to be.
 

How Memory Works
 
Recalling Painful Memories
 
Dealing with Painful Memories

​When was the last time you spent any time in the magical land of IF?  This is a place that sits on the border between today and tomorrow, reality and imagination.  It is both and neither, betwixt and between, unpredictable and yet offers an illusion of control.  The land of IF is a great place to visit from time to time.  It is where dreams are born and creativity flourishes.  It is a place where planning and hoping take root.  But IF a terrible place to live!
 
There is an old Yiddish proverb that says, “We plan, and God laughs.”   Planning is not reality.  It is life on the edge of reality where the unknowns outweigh the knowns.  But, in planning, we strive to account for all these unknowns and create contingency plans by asking “What IF?”  Once we believe we have identified all the “What IF’s” we believe that we do not simply have
a plan, but THE plan.  In doing so we have just taken up residency in the land of IF and have become entangled up in overthinking.
 
We can avoid this overthinking by stepping back from the borderlands of IF.  In the land of reality we are able to see that unknowns still exist like fog banks on the horizon.  We are no longer tied up in contingency plans that may have eased our anxiety.  Without overthinking we are out in the open and able to respond to surprises without the anxiety of plans gone awry.  Rather than trying to implement some complicated work-around that was dreamed up before the unknowns were reality, we can now dance with the surprise.  In doing so we find our way through the fog without adding to it!
 
We avoid overthinking when we accept that there will be surprises and make them part of the journey!

​Reframing generally means that we change the context or setting of the idea or experience.   We avoid overthinking when we acknowledge the unknowns and reframe them as opportunities rather than obstacles.
 
As you acknowledge that your plans will likely be interrupted by the unexpected, be prepared:
 

• To experience humor in the surprise.
• To have an adventure in the unexpected.
• To discover new paths and resources.
• To see yourselves with new eyes, capable and resourceful.

 
Allow yourself to find Joy in the journey by anticipating the gift of surprise whether your journey is a road trip, a vacation, a new project, or a personal goal.  Enjoy the ride!
 
“Life is what happens to you while you are busy making plans.”  John Lennon

We Plan and God Laughs
 
How To Stop Overplanning
 
How to Enjoy the Journey

​One of the most popular activities for family holiday gatherings is sharing stories.  We share old stories that grow and evolve over the years.  We share new stories of significant events from the past year.  We also hear and incorporate new stories from our family members lives.  This storytelling becomes part of our understanding of who we are as a family and as individual members of it.  They become our oral history that we pass on to new members of the family and use to remember those who are no longer with us.  Storytelling is an essential part of family life.
 
However, these stories can be sources of pain.  They can bring past hurts to life.  A story, told and retold, can re-trap us into being the person we were when we were young.  If we were shy and unsure of ourselves as a teenager, any stories that highlighted those traits can lead us to lapse back into them around family members.  These stories may lead us to doubt ourselves and cause genuine emotional pain.
 
Therefore, it is important that we keep these stories and family histories in perspective.  Those that help us move forward in our capacity for love and trust, joy and hope should be cherished and renewed.  Those that decrease our capacity for love and trust, joy and hope should be set aside as an old book that no longer speaks to our life.  Not all stories are valid or helpful.  By keeping each in proper perspective we can participate in family gatherings and celebrate the oral history of our “tribe.”

​These stories can re-member our lives, bringing us back together after a year of being drawn and stretched by life.   They can remind us of who we are beyond this particular moment and lead us to continue forward with all that we are.
 
Questions for Re-membering

1. Is this story hurtful or helpful?
2. Does this story offer us insight into something we never saw in ourselves?
3. Does this story stir up old, negative ideas about ourselves or our family that have already been addressed in our lives?
4. Does this story open up our way forward or close the door on our future?
5. Would leaving this story behind strengthen our family ties?
6. Is this story meaningful in accurately reflecting who I am and the way I understand my family?

 
Re-member your story and the story of your family by using the Holiday Gatherings as a time to wrestle with the hurtful stories and to find joy and comfort in the cherished memories.

How to Handle Family Gatherings
 
Dealing with Difficult Family Members
 
Celebrating Family Stories

​As I prepare for retirement in a couple of months, I have received a lot good advice from friends who have already made this transition.  One of my friends warned, “Don’t make lists!”  Another advised against saying “Yes” to anything until I have my feet on the ground.  But the best advice I have received is “Don’t let short-term worries make long-term decisions.”
 
As we move through the seasons of life we are tempted to allow our immediate situation to shape decisions that will stretch far into the next season.  It would be like selling our Summer Clothes in June because we need the money and can get a good price for them and then having to wear Winter clothes through the rest of the Summer season. 
 
For us, context is everything!  We look at our lives in the context of the moment.  We take into account our feelings, our circumstances, our perceptions, and our environment. Seasonal changes bring changes to all of these factors.  By making a winter context decision that will affect the way we will live in the Summer may not be in our best interests.
 
Our mind has a great capacity to remember and look ahead based on past experiences.  It can take into account any anticipated changes in seasons.  Of course, such anticipations are not 100%.  We can be fooled when the expected does not occur.  Therefore, the mind must not only look ahead to the changes of seasons, it also has to allow for bad decisions based on the information we had at the time we made the decision. 
 
Self-care of the mind during times of change in our lives demand that we hold to our future with a rather loose grip. Sometimes we will be fooled.  However, we cannot let short term circumstances determine long-term outcomes.  And when you do, accept the result and move on.

​Decision-making demands that we use our critical thinking skills.  Unfortunately, most of us have not spent much time thinking about thinking.  We assume that if we weigh the options in our head and pick the best choice, then we have thought-out our decision. 
 
But thinking includes a vast array of mental exercises that help us see the problem, frame the question, locate the best sources for information, gather information to answer the question, come up with a tentative solution, try it out in our head, examine the consequences, reframe the question or answer, and then make our decision.  When we have to add the changing seasons to our decisions, most of us would rather crawl back in bed and let someone else figure it out.  (Which, by the way, is a perfectly legitimate strategy if you have someone to make the decision and you are willing to live with their choice.)
 
Our tip for dealing with the mind during times when the changing seasons is called adaptive thinking.
 
Watch Your Assumptions – Do not assume that what worked before will work again.  Do not assume that you understand the problem without stepping back and looking again.  Do not assume that you have a crystal ball for the future. 
 
Allow Time to Inform your Thinking – Unless you have developed a deep capacity for intuition, allow time to shape your thinking.  A great idea in the dark of night can appear to be utter foolishness with the light of day.  The old advice “Sleep on it” holds true.
 
Listen to Others Who Have Walked your Path – Allow others to scout the future for you by sharing their experiences and discoveries.  Adapt your thinking to the terrain they describe. 
 
Select Thinking Skills that are Appropriate to the Situation – Not all thinking skills are useful in every situation.  I do not have room to go into detail.  I encourage you to read the links below and identify your skills and select those that will help you as you face a decision that will reach beyond your immediate moment.
 
Critical thinking when adapted to your present circumstances can allow you to face the future with some sense of assurance.  However, allow yourself the opportunity to be wrong and to learn from your mistakes.  As your life changes, you will be better able to care for a mind that will be better equipped to see and understand the new day that will dawn with the next sunrise.
 

Five Types of Thinking Skills
 
Adaptive Thinking
 
10 Ways to Improve Your Thinking

​We are meaning makers.  We are most comfortable when we are able to find meaning in our lives so that our lives to make sense.
 
Victor Frankl was an Austrian Neurologist and Psychiatrist who was interned in Dachau during WWII.  He lost his Mother and Brother in Auschwitz and his Wife in Bergen-Belsen.  A keen observer of humanity, Frankl noticed that people responded to life in the Prison camps differently.  Some gave up while others did their best to survive.  From his own experience, he found that people who could answer the “why” of their lives found a way to survive.  Those whose lives were empty of meaning did not survive.  Many died of emptiness and despair.
 
His work highlights the role that meaning has in our lives.  The well-lived life has a purpose, a reason to get out of bed each morning.   We may get out of bed to feed and care for our family.  We may have a career or professional life to pursue.  We may find meaning and purpose in being a craftsman or artist.  We may rise to make our parents proud, or serve God, or build a better mousetrap.  These are not simply goals, they are life-long callings that help us piece together a lifetime.
 
Meaning allows us to tie our story together.  It helps us make sense out of the flotsam and jetsam of living.  It makes crammed calendars, sleepless nights, or endless meetings bearable.  If we can answer the “Why” question we are able to relax and enjoy the journey.
 
When we lose meaning in our lives, we become disconnected from our mind, the seat of memory and reasoning.    Each of us has moments when the “why” doesn’t exist.  Have you ever tried to put together a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle without a picture?  The pieces are all there but we do not know how they fit together.  We may have a general idea (a mountain scene) but beyond that, we are lost in the pieces scattered before us.  We may become filled with frustration and confusion.  Memory and reasoning are impaired.
 
Meaninglessness makes pain more distressing.  A meaningless struggle is more difficult to fight.  A meaningless task takes more energy to complete.  Meaninglessness can lead us to give up and slip beneath the waves because there is no point in treading water any longer.
 
The disconnect between ourselves and our mind caused by meaninglessness can be reversed.  The key is in re-discovering meaning for our lives. We can do so by finding the picture that will help us put the puzzle back together.  That picture is the mental image of who we are, our purpose for living.

​This exercise is best done with a journal, but you can also do it as a purely mental exercise. 
 
Take a few minutes to relax.  Take a few deep breaths and perhaps a glass of wine. 
 
Write your own eulogy.  Be sure and include where you are from, your family, your education, and significant experiences.  Then include your accomplishments as well as your hopes and dreams and how they might have changed over the years.  A list of people and experiences for whom you are grateful may be included next.  Finally, close the eulogy with statements that describe how you want to be remembered by your family, your friends, your co-workers, and your community.
 
Set this aside for a couple of days and then come back to it from time to time.   Make changes as they feel appropriate.  In doing so, you will keep the “picture” of yourself on the table as you piece together a life with meaning and purpose.

Victor Frankl
 
When Life Feels Meaningless…
 
The Power of a Life Story

Tiger riding is a bit of an art form for many.  Like rodeo trick riders, some have so mastered crisis management and multi-tasking that they can do it while tiptoeing on the edge of chaos.  They have learned how to “fly by the seat of their pants.”
 
This phrase comes from the early days of airplanes when the instrumentation was minimal or non-existent.  An experienced pilot learned to read their plane through the seat of their pants.  For example, when a plane is making a mid-air turn, the plane may either “slip” or “skid” into the turn.  If the inside wing is too low the pilot may slip down in the seat.  If the wing is too high the pilot may skid up in the seat.  During a proper turn the pilot feels secure in the seat.  Therefore, the pilot adjusts the ailerons based what “the seat of their pants” tells them.
 
When we are able to ride a tiger by the “seat of our pants” we can rely on intuition and experience rather than our usual discernment/decision-making skills.  But it is nearly impossible to use intuition and experience when we are consumed by anxiety and stress.
 
When riding the tiger, we can reduce the anxiety by taking responsibility for our ride.  We do so by “choosing the ride” rather than feeling we are being forced into it. We change the character of the ride from something we have to do into something we want to do.  We feel a greater sense of control over our life.  This happens when we ask and answer the simple question, “Does this Tiger need to be ridden now?”  If we answer “yes” we can relax into the ride.  If we answer “no” we can give yourself permission to get off the Tiger.  Either way, we have made the choice.

​First, we need to clear our mind of all the assumptions that may be getting in the way of our choosing.  Most Tiger rides occur because we assume that some great catastrophe will occur if we do climb on.  We are afraid and that fear has filtered out any positive possible outcomes.  This is called catastrophizing.  All we can see are negative results if we get off the Tiger, so we hang on and simply try to not fall off.  So, the first step in “flying by the seat of your pants” is to set aside this assumption of catastrophic results. 
 
Second, ask yourself “What Will You Gain from this Ride?”  Often times, we feel anxious because we are trying to hit a homerun when all we need is a bunt.  Catastrophes forecast failure on an epic scale.  Our mind will give a more balanced view.  What will we gain from this ride?  Are we trying to protect the whole company from bankruptcy or simply trying to save this one account?  Are we trying to prevent a catastrophe or simply trying to achieve a smaller, achievable, and necessary objective?  As you ask this, you may even find that most of the stuff you are dealing with on the back of that Tiger is not even necessary? 
 
Third, once you have identified the reason(s) for the ride, you can now ask “Is this the time for the ride?”  The pressure to ride the Tiger rises from a sense of immediacy.  It has to be done now or else!  However, not every challenge is a crisis.  Not every need is an emergency.  Many problems need more time to sort themselves out than we are willing to allow. Therefore, it is important to ask yourself “Is this is really the time to ride this Tiger through this jungle?”  Is it possible that these things can be more effectively dealt on another day?
 
When we are operating in “crisis mode” the mind can quickly become overwhelmed with anxiety and fear.  While we cannot control our emotions, we can control the circumstances that trigger them.  By changing our mental approach to our Tiger ride from a crisis to a choice, we are able to reduce the anxiety and allow our intuition and experience to play a greater role.  We are able to relax into the ride and maybe even earn a few “style points” along the way.  Listen to the “seat of your pants,” it can help you make those turns with grace and ease.

5 Ways to Stop Catastrophizing
 
The Power of Choosing
 
Living by the Seat of your Pants

​We live a great deal of our lives in our mind.  It’s memories and language are the core of our relationships with ourselves and with others.  Unfortunately, when we find ourselves alone, our mind can experience a deep and debilitating loneliness.  Aloneness can taint our normal perceptions and understanding of our situation.  It can alter how we feel in “normal” situations.  Imagine waiting for a bus at a dark street corner in a big city.  If you are with friends you may be relaxed and even laughing.  How differently would that moment feel if you were alone?
 
The Lonely Mind aches for someone to share their experiences.  It needs someone to engage in conversation.  It wants someone to share in the exploration of ideas and experiences.  It looks for someone to help confirm its beliefs and world view.  When the loneliness extends over time, the mind yearns for someone to share and build memories.  When that extended time becomes a lifetime, the mind may simply go to sleep, losing interest in life, and falling back into the mental laziness of clichés and yielding to popular opinion.
 
It is imperative that the mind find ways to transform loneliness into solitude.
 
The Mind in Solitude is able to listen to voices from books, past relationships, imagined folks, and folks far away in time or distance.  It is able to engage these voices.  The Mind in Solitude is able to relive and renew very old memories.  This remembering confirms and supports our beliefs and world view. The Mind in Solitude is able to listen to our deeper selves and experience insights and new ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us.  The Mind in Solitude has the room to grow, expand, and develop as long as it does not fall back into itself and become lonely and lost.  Solitude enables us to maintain our place in our inner world as well as world of relationships beyond ourselves.
 
And so, the question is, “How can we transform the Lonely Mind to a Mind in Solitude?”

​Fortunately, transforming loneliness of mind can be very easy if we will simply take the time to do it.
 
Reading is the first line of defense against loneliness of mind.  Whether it is fiction or non-fiction, books or blogs, graphic novels or history books; reading helps us to engage the author in an internal dialogue.  We can get lost in a story and come to know and care about the characters and story line.  We can dance with new ideas and wrestle with challenging perspectives beyond our normal view.  Reading introduces us to and helps us to expand the world of ideas and our relationships while being alone.
 
A powerful way to re-enter the realm of memory is by spending time looking through old pictures and remembering stories about people and places.  When you are alone and beginning to feel lonely, take out your phone and start looking at the photos.  Or you can pull down that box of old family photos in your closet and start going through them.  The places and people in those pictures will evoke memories and bring alive relationships that have become buried in time.  The memories that are reawakened will confirm that these people are still very much a part of our lives.  Because they lived, we are alive!
 
A third way to transform the loneliness of mind into solitude is to spend time listening to the monkeys swinging from the many branches of our mind.  “Monkey Mind” is an old idea that says each of us have chattering voices in our heads.  These voices are like monkeys swinging from one branch to another while engaging other moneys swinging on other branches.  Don’t worry, everyone experiences this far more often than they will admit.  Listening in can actually be quite entertaining and informative.  Sit quietly and listen as our monkey mind swings from branch to branch.  What is the monkey talking about?  How often does the conversation change?  What does this chatter suggest about what is important to you?  What is preoccupying your mind at the moment?  Do not take this too seriously, but doing so does enable us to get in touch with our inner selves in a refreshing way.
 
Finally, as I alluded to earlier, being alone offers us the opportunity to explore the foolish and strange ideas that come to us from time to time.  We may encounter an intriguing thought or perception in a book or a snippet of remembered conversation.  You can transform your loneliness of mind by seizing upon this bit of mental flotsam by playing “What if….” with the idea.  Or “Why do they believe that…?”  Solitude offers us the chance to explore beyond what others believe and expect of us.  It allows us the freedom to test ideas beyond the boundaries of our own “sensible” and firmly held values.  This may confirm what we already believe or offer us a glimpse of a new path.  Regardless, it will allow the lemon of loneliness to become the sweet lemonade of solitude.
 
Transform your loneliness of mind and experience the joy who you are!

The Effects of Loneliness
 
Why Read?
 
The Gift of Solitude to the Mind

​Our mind is a storehouse of memories.  These are memories of events, sights, sounds, aromas, feelings, people, and places.  They include layer upon layer of stories.  Some are readily recalled while others are lost in the depths of our identity.  They shape and re-shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.  Whenever we use 1st person, singular pronouns we are talking about the reservoir of memory within our minds.
 
For the last 500 years, we have relied on our mind for every aspect of our lives.  We believe that everything around us is knowable.  Mysteries are simply things we do not yet understand.  We “live and breathe and have our being” (to borrow a phrase from the New Testament) in our minds.  We are who we remember ourselves to be.  The world behaves as we remember it to have behaved.  When we are caught off guard or surprised, we tell ourselves that we have more to learn.  This storehouse of memories is an essential part of who we are and who we are becoming.  We will surely suffer if we do not feed our mind well.
 
The growing edge of our lives exists on the margin of experience, where our mind is caught off-guard and we are encouraged to stretch and expand who we are.  The experiences of awe and wonder, curiosity and unknowing, surprise and shock; challenge us to see things differently and appreciate the world and ourselves in a new way.  They help us to rediscover forgotten strengths and capacities.  They help us to identify our vulnerabilities and weakness.  They enable us to renew and refresh our stories and lead us to seek out new stories.  Vacations are most meaningful when we journey to these margins of experience.
 
Vacations are opportunities to renew, refresh, and expand this vast inner storehouse of memories. They may stimulate us to remember old memories that have laid dormant in the recesses of our mind.  Or, they may help us to re-remember old stories that have grown stale or no longer inform us about ourselves or those around us.  Vacations also help us to create new memories. 
 
In short, vacations give us an excellent opportunity to re-remember.  A healthy vacation will help us to reconnect with ourselves, our hopes, our past, our companions, and our world.  These reconnections happen in the re-membering of the person we have lost in the “bump and grind” of our day-to-day living.  We may rediscover our roots, get in touch with who we are, or see the future in our passions and hopes.   And all of this takes place in our memories, in the making and in the re-membering.

​Very often, even though we may take our body on a vacation, our mind stays at work.  We keep the cell phone on “just in case.”  We check our work email “just in case.”  We keep returning to our internal to-do list “just in case”.  Here are several suggestions for how you might take your mind along on your vacation.  The “justincase” is one bag that needs to be left at home before you leave.  Focus instead on the re-membering.  Here are several suggestions for taking your mind with you on vacation.
 
Go Someplace New – when you are planning a vacation, pick a place or two just because you have never been there before.  On a family vacation to Cape Cod many years ago, we decided that we needed to visit Cranberry World Headquarters.  I can honestly say that that side trip is among the most memorable trips of any vacation.  It still brings laughter and joy to our family in the re-membering of that moment.  You do not have to plan a whole vacation around someplace just because you have never been there, but a side trip or two can be very rewarding.
 
Visit with People who have known you for a long time and listen! – While it is true that you can’t go home again, it is a nice place to visit from time to time.  Listen to the stories that your parents, grandparents, childhood friends, cousins, etc. tell about your growing up.  Their remembering may not be the same as yours and they may not remember things that you believed were powerful moments in your life.  Their stories can help you see yourself in a whole new way.  It is well worth the trip down memory lane.
 
Revisit places you have lived – When in the area, make a swing by your old home or school.  On a trip through the Midwest, we made a quick detour to see the house we lived in many years ago.  We were immediately struck by the large trees that surrounded the house.  We remembered that we had planted those walnut and oaks but they were just sticks when we left.  They now provided shade for a yard that was littered with children’s toys.  We were re-memebered with our children when they were little, ourselves when we were young adults, and the friends who helped us plant those trees.
 
Take a class or seminar – If you cannot afford to take a vacation, take a class instead.  Find a class at a local junior college, community learning center, or library in something that interests you.  It may be a hobby like painting, photography, genealogy, scrapbooking, or woodworking.  You may want to audit a summer class on history or literature or computers.  You may take lessons in golf, or swimming, or yoga.  Find something that excites your curiosity and look around for a short course or workshop for your vacation.
 
Read a book or two – Another way to expand and renew our mind is to read a book, or two.  It can be fiction or non-fiction, a how-to or a history book.  Enter into a conversation with the author and allow yourself to travel to their world and listen to their story. 
 
Spend time with Yourself – Take some personal time to just be with yourself.  Allow yourself time to explore your memories.  You may want to pull out the family photo albums, or look back at that box or memories you have stuffed in the back of closet.  Allow yourself the opportunity to get to know that person you once were and the people who were once the center of your life.
 
Enjoy your journey by re-membering yourself into your future.

How Our Brains Make Memories
 
The Right State of Mind for Vacation
 
Going Home Again

I have a bit of a reputation for pondering.  This is a practice I started several years ago where I simply allow my mind to drift over a question or concern and then pay attention to what pops up.  Pondering allows me the time and energy to sift and sort through possibilities, conundrums, and consequences before committing to a course of action.  (BTW, I generally allow naps to break in from time to time, as well.  Pondering can be quite draining.  ;<) ) 

I started intentionally pondering when I discovered that my mind had grown too small.  The small mind mimics the binary processing of the computer program. It sees things like a computer; yes-no, either-or.  Fr. Richard Rohr calls this Dualistic Thinking which is characteristic of the small mind.  In popular usage, the small mind is characterized by rigid opinions and a narrow outlook or perspective.  The small mind is all-or-nothing thinking, categorizing and controlling the process and the outcome.  It consists of a vast array of assumptions that are like the walls of a long tube.  They keep us from seeing anything other than other end, and only a limited piece of that.

The problem is that the small mind cannot deal with the new, the unknown, or the truly grand.  It cannot embrace and be held captive by mystery.  It seeks to resolve confusion, eliminate uncertainty, and make things simple.  Being small-minded can be quite handy when we are trying to conquer new worlds, “build a better mousetrap,” or influence others to buy our product or vote for our candidate.  The only real problem with the small mind is that it pretends to be true but can never live up to being truth.  It is what Jon Stewart called “truthiness.”

The small mind can serve us well in the day-to-day world if we see it for what it is.  When it comes to the larger concerns of value and meaning in our lives, it will always disappoint us.  It cannot give us the satisfaction, joy, fulfillment, and love that we truly crave in our lives.  It will leave us wanting more and more.  It is like eating nothing but candy and suffering malnutrition as a result, and then believing that we are fine because our stomach is full.  The small mind always promises us more than it can deliver and then hides the truth from us as we become even more enslaved to it. 

If your mind has become too small, then I invite you to read on and discover the power of pondering (and naps.)

When pondering, we are essentially laying aside the tube that limits us to dualisms.  It begins by simply admitting that there may be more to a concern or question than we can know.  It is a daring to see the world on a far grander scale than we ordinarily would.

First, identify a particular question or concern that has been occupying your mind for some time.  Try and state it as simply and precisely as possible.

Then simply sit with it.  Allow it to bubble around in your mind and soul with the following assumptions.

1.     People and problems are more complicated than they seem.

2.     There are always more choices than we can name.

3.     Statements that begin with “Always” and “Never” are seldom true.

4.     It is okay if I never resolve this.

5.     I have all the time I need to ponder.

6.     If I set it aside for a time, it will come back if it is truly important. If not, it was probably not all that important.

7.     I can share my thoughts with my friends.  I can seek their opinions.  But this is my journey.

Naps are encouraged when the thoughts get locked in a repeating loop.  Rest will bring a new perspective and renewed energy.

Lastly, how do we know when we are done pondering?  We are likely never “done” but we can stop for a while when our mind and soul find agreement on the outcome.  But we are always ready to begin again when the resolution breaks down and we are faced with a new opportunity to ponder.

Good pondering!

Rohr on The Small Mind

Beyond Assumptions

Non-Dual Perception