We’re still continuing with the monthly intention of Listening Calmly. As I thought about what it means to listen calmly, I knew that one of the things I can try is the opposite of what I mentioned two weeks ago. Instead of taking a walk, I can try to be still. I can try not to move, talk, react. I can try to not even make an effort to breathe. Instead, I can just be still. I can get really quiet and be in this moment. I can listen to what my body is feeling, what thoughts are coming up, what feelings are trying to take over. I can pay attention to what’s going on and I can be curious about my “reaction.”

With being still and paying attention, I will also allow my higher thinking to kick back in and instead of judging myself for feeling a certain way, I will just be with it and, hopefully, I might be able to watch it disappear.

Being still, like with calmness in general, has never been my forte. But I know it has tremendous value. I am hoping that setting it as an intent this week will help me intentionally choose to be still more.

Let’s see how it works.

The lettering I used on this page is here somewhere and I chose to use candles because somehow I always associate being still with candlelight. I love going to other people’s houses and seeing lit candles but I never really use them in my house. Maybe it’s something else I can try this week.

Listen with Intent is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.

Still continuing on the monthly intention of Listening Calmly, I decided to choose the most basic and useful of intents this week: Breathe.

If only I could learn to breathe.

Like taking a walk, taking a moment to breathe is a simple trick to get your body to pause long enough for your prefrontal cortex to come back online. And breathing is much less conspicuous. It can be done in a meeting. It can be done while on the phone or at a restaurant. It’s hard to walk away when you’re sitting at a coffee shop but it’s easy to take a moment and breathe.

I feel like if I could get better at breathing and choosing to breathe, the words that I say would be much kinder. The actions I take would be much less rushed and the mistakes I make would be much fewer.

All in all, seems like a plus-plus to me.

Like most new habits, breathing will also take time and practice (it seems silly to say that we need practice to learn to breathe since it’s something we do all the time anyway but this is more about deep breathing, or breathing at a particular time. Almost synonymous with pausing.)

So that’s the intent for this week.

I couldn’t find the lettering I used here, I will come back and link to it when I have. The sketch I used is from here. I used the image of a dandelion because it reminds me of letting out your breath to blow on it. Breathing out.

Listen with Intent is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.