Interesting thing about Mondays: they come back every week. No matter how much you wish or even try to meditate them away, after Sunday comes Monday. Even though I do think our responses to “the Mondays” can give us some great insight into our inner selves, this quote is about a slightly different kind of recurrence. Once your mindfulness practice becomes more regular, you might start to notice some patterns in your life. “That type of person again,” or “Here we go, I’m in this kind of situation again.” It’s tempting to think it’s just due to experience, and that you’ve seen it all before, and of course to a certain extent that’s how you recognize it. However, there’s also a chance that you had a hand in creating the recurrence. We all have thought and behavior patterns we may not even recognize that re-create situations repeatedly for us. Mindfulness can help us to identify them and, if we want to, to think or act intentionally where before we had simply let the pattern do the work. It puts you back in the driver’s seat, where you can decide if maybe it’s time to change things up a bit, and get that pattern swirling in another direction.
Have an intentional week!
Photo credit: Mike Birdy
