I woke up early Christmas morning. I would like to say it was the excitement of the holiday. In reality, I just have a hard time sleeping past 4 these days. That said, I decided to make the most of the quiet house before the Christmas morning extravaganza.
I spent a little time sitting in my parents quiet living room with the presents all around. Like many of us who are tied to social media, I figured it was a perfect time to scroll through Instagram. I enjoyed seeing the posts of my friends and family that reflected the happiness of Christmas Eve. My hope for everyone is that these were the moments they were able to fully participate in.
I may have been on vacation, but I was thinking about the Mindfulness skills we teach in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) groups. DBT teaches us that we can be present in the moment at different levels of awareness: observe, describe and participate.
In teaching these skills, I often refer to listening to music while I drive.
Sometimes I have the music on very quietly in the background. I am observing it, but my focus is elsewhere. Then there are times when I turn the music loudly enough that I can hear all the words. At that volume, I find I can easily alternate from focusing in on the lyrics (describing them) and describing some other part of my driving experience such as the pretty surroundings, or the traffic. My favorite times are when a good song comes on and I crank up the volume. I fully participate in the music. I am singing along and dancing and fully participating in my love of the song.
I find the ability to move between these levels of mindfulness incredibly helpful.
As I scrolled through the happy pictures, I was hoping everyone was able to fully participate in the holiday moments they captured. As I said in my “Hallmark Holidays” post, it is unlikely that the holiday consists exclusively of those picture-perfect moments. Fully participating in them is what allows them to overshadow the less-perfect moments.
Unfortunately, I am sure everyone experienced those more stressful moments also. They probably opted against posting them on Instagram! I hope they were able to simply “observe” those moments without fully participating in the stress they can bring. I try to let those moments drift to the background.
At any given time, we can make a choice. Though let me assure you it is far easier said than done. We can choose which moments we want to fully participate in and which ones we need to observe more distantly. When we need to just observe something that is distressing us, we can fully participate in something else around us.
One of my favorite things to fully participate in is the joy when I know I delivered a gift that really made someone happy. On the other hand, I try to just “observe” the process of cleaning up the piles of discarded wrapping paper!
