Compromised sleep

What I do when I know I won’t be falling asleep anytime soon? Simply go with it. Don’t fall asleep. It’s totally fine. Get out of bed and go do something else. It sure beats tossing and turning for at least an hour! I rather read a book instead. The quantity and quality of sleep would be the same either way. Sometimes there’s too much on my mind for it to calm down and get to slumber.

Last night was such a night. My mind was too preoccupied with the happenings of the following day (today). I knew immediately after shutting the lights that sleep was not coming quickly. So I turned the lights back on and did some work on the computer. Stuff that mainly concerns with the thing of tomorrow (today) that was simmering in my head. If my brain is so eager and anxious about it, might as well get a head start.

Again, this isn’t some tip to preserve sleep: it’s going to be compromised whether I stayed in bed or not. Some nights are just rougher than others. The coffee this morning is especially crucial now that I’ve only got about six and a half hours of shut-eye. Good news is, today is the next day! I’m now free to take action on the items I was ruminating about.

Then hopefully the sleep will come easier tonight. Nevertheless, it’s better to go with the flow of what your body is telling you then fight it. If sleep isn’t happening anytime soon, get up and go do something else. Nobody enjoys lying in bed and being wide awake for hours. Even when the bed is new and super comfortable.

View fullsize

Orange October.

The active mind

Zen buddhist philosophy preaches we should always stay in the present moment. The mind wants to wander on about way too many thoughts, and it’s imperative for you to recognize it and then detach yourself from the constantly thinking mind. Take a deep breath and feel the presence in the now. Focus the sensation onto the extremities of the body: the fingers typing on a laptop, your feet touching the cold embrace of the floor. The mind will want to fight you on this, but anytime you see it go off once again onto yet another thought string, let it go and return focus to your breathing.

This practice is particularly useful during stressful situations, or when things aren’t especially going your way. Negative thoughts of fear, anxiety, or sadness will flood the brain channels during these times, and it can be quite overwhelming if you are unable to keep attention to the present moment. The mind will draw from your pass memories, or create future scenarios in order to torture you; I think we can all attest the mind is very good at doing both when we most need it to be calm.

Being in the present is also surprisingly useful when things are going well. Surely you’ve experienced this: the night before a huge trip or big life event, it’s rather difficult to get a good night’s sleep. The mind is preoccupied with great anticipation for the positive things that’s about to happen, and it cannot wait for you to get this proper sleep first - it wants to time travel. So there you are, lying in bed wide awake, the mind full of sweet scenarios of what’s to come. Or perhaps you’re like me: anxious about those future event turning out badly.

Sometimes the mind wanderings are so strong that you just have to let it be. Resign to that fact it’s going to be active for awhile, and simply observe the thoughts as they come and go. It’s useless to waste additional energy to fight it - just observe. The mind will quiet down eventually, and you can then go to sleep.

View fullsize

The much neglected.

Dance to the heartbeat

I think I am now able to pinpoint exactly when my anxiety levels are elevated.

It’s in the frequency of heartbeat, and I’ve train myself to feel for it when my heart-rate gets elevated when it really shouldn’t be. The body is pumping additional blood in preparation for potential calamity, even though I’m merely in the simple act of getting ready to leave the house. That’s true anxiety, and it’s a problem I’m working on lately.

The increased heart-rate due to anxiety creates many stress hormones, causing the body to constantly be in a fight-or-flight mode, unable to relax. There’s lots of triggers, though for me it’s primarily the habit of thinking ahead into the future and dreading the negative scenarios or possibilities. Funny thing is, most of the time the bad outcomes I’ve created in my head never come to pass, so I suffer the consequences from being anxious without any benefit whatsoever. I’ve steeled myself for nothing.

Being ‘in the moment’ is tough, and it’s a constant practice. At least now I know how to spot when I am overly anxious: an elevated heart-rate for no tangible reason.

How do you control something as involuntary as the heart? Via something you can control: breathing. Whenever I feel a brash of anxiety hitting me, I go into deep breathing mode: going super slowly with both inhale and exhale. I’d also try to clear my mind and concentrate on the breathing alone. That will usually do the trick to get me back to base-level, though sometimes it doesn’t work, and the anxiety will continue on unabated.

It’s definitely a process.

View fullsize

All that glass and none of the magic.

Stop projecting into the future

Staying in “the present” can sometimes be very difficult.

The mind is a wonderful yet often uncontrollable thing, and when it wants to it’ll wander off on its own, down paths that you aren’t necessarily ready yet to confront. The more you try to control it, the more it slips away, as if it’s mocking you for your foolish attempts. Being able to focus on the moment and the direct task in front of you is a learned practice, because the mind puts up continual distractions, either from your pass, or the future.

I had such an episode yesterday morning: I was going about my usual morning routine when I received an email from my coworker that she will be out sick for the day. Obviously, the first mistake was checking work email during off-work hours; nevertheless, the message from my coworker took me completely away from what I was doing at that moment, and right into a rather negative chain of thought.

It’s quite selfish, too: my mind immediately went to creating scenarios where the my coworker’s absence meant an increased burden on me. Perhaps work will get super busy, and the lack of personnel meant I’ll be running around like a madman, not getting a moment to breathe. What if today was the particular kind of day that everything at work goes to hell, and I’d be the one stuck plugging the hole on the damaged dam? I’d better get mentally prepared for such scenarios.

Mind you, this was at 9 AM in the morning, and I didn’t start work until 2:30 PM. What a monumental waste it is to worry about something that isn’t yet to occur, to negatively project outwards into the future what might happen. What if things turn out to be okay? None of it is in my control until I get to work, so it’s rather futile and stupid to ponder on the possibilities and be stressed over them. There’s really no utility to it, but the mind is going to do what it is wont to do.

It takes practice to be able to snap out of such thought processes, to detach and evaluate from a macro level. Does this matter right now? If the answer is no, then I know to stop worrying and return to what I was doing. It’s hard, don’t get me wrong; I’ve a bad tendency to create worst case future scenarios for myself, and it’s a constant struggle to calm myself down, to not be so attached to outcomes that most of the time won’t even materialize.

As always, it’s a work in progress.

View fullsize

I guess anything can be a canvas; even other people’s property!

Labor Day plans

For those of us working in education, Labor Day is quite possibly the most welcomed public holiday on the calendar. The fall semester has just started, and everything is a mess, hectic, with about a millions things on the to-do list. The first few weeks of a new semester is the busiest time of the year, and Labor Day provides the perfect respite, even if only for a little while. This year the holiday arrives on the third week of classes - next Monday - and I’m beyond ready to shut off the mind for the long weekend. 

And I do mean shutting off the mind. In recent years I’ve been so caught up with productivity and being productive that I’ve essentially given up most of life’s frivolous (to me) pursuits. For example, I don’t play video games nor watch television shows anymore (Mondays are awkward when everyone’s discussing Game of Thrones). Abstaining from both have given me the time to study Korean and read a solid book/novel every two weeks. It’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong, and I’m not about to go backwards, but I think it does the mental state lots of good to schedule back some mindless fun into the mix. 

So here’s what I’m going to do all Labor Day weekend: belatedly watch all the saved automotive related videos on Youtube. 

Well, maybe not entirely: perhaps on Saturday I’ll still get in some photo-editing work. Can’t help it.