“Have patience with all things, but first of all for yourself.”- Saint Francis de Sales
Patience. Silence. Waiting. Are you ready to give your full attention to yourself?
To make any sort of internal shift, you must begin to cultivate a relationship with patience. Finding patience for yourself, the deep aspects of your heart, is vital to self discovery. It is important to remember big changes are never done overnight.
Allowing moments to be spent in stillness is how we cultivate patience.
In the stillness, the ultimate unfolding of love and kindness can be found. Finding moments to move slowly throughout your day can bring you into connection with yourself. I’m talking about the internal movement of our emotions. Finding the space that can be in complete freak out mode yet we look completely normal on the outside. It is the internal landscape which can feel chaotic, heart racing, stomach is in knots and the feeling we will explode. This is the space to find stillness. This is the place to find patience with yourself.
Begin considering moving as nature moves. She is in her own rhythm, she lives in cycles. There are times for the rapid movements and times for the slow ones. I invite you to explore the areas where you can slow down.
In stillness, your awareness and senses are heightened.
There is an oracle deck I use for my daily intentions called “Earth Magic” by Steven D. Farmer. In this deck, I often pull the Lake card which represents Stillness. So whenever I feel the rush of chaos begin to wash over me, I take a breath and envision sitting next to a lake at dawn before the buzz of the day. I can find that still place in my inner landscape, my inner world. The complete calm of a sleeping lake.
Making friends with stillness also develops your listening skills.
Not outside listening, but the internal listening. The deep listening to the voice that is constantly whispering to you. You know the one. It is the quiet one. Often first to talk but second to be heard. It is the voice that comes from your gut. It is intuition. Intuition is your greatest superpower. It’s your internal tour guide into the unknowns of your human experience. I invite you to get curious about your intuition as you practice stillness.
Ways to make friends with stillness:
Sit
Try sitting with yourself for 10 minutes everyday for one week in silence. No technology. No distractions.
- What comes up for you during this time?
- How uncomfortable do you get?
Find your breath
When you find yourself in a long line at the store or waiting in traffic and you begin to feel impatience or upset, notice the feelings that you are experiencing in that moment. Then use your breath to slow down. Find the inhale then the space between the exhale and then the feel the exhale. Breath is a grounding force. It is always there.
Use your words
A writing practice can be very helpful with all the mind chatter that we create. Putting the chatter on paper is very therapeutic because it gets it out of the whirlpool of the mind. Use your hands to write the chatter down. Let it out of your body through your hand holding a pen and moving the pen along the page. Get away from the screens for this and use old school pen and paper!
Nature walk
Take a walk in nature. Get out of the people word and connect with the plant and animal world. This can be sitting in a park on the grass, going to the base of the mountain, walking along the coast. Find a place that has some wild nature energy and connect with it. Close your eyes and smile.
Explore the pace of your internal landscape. Get curious about how slow you can get.