The Freedom to Change Your Mind

When I decided to revamp my website, I wanted to offer free tools that everyone could access for support whenever they needed them.

People have been asking me to record meditations for years, so that was first on my list. I love using oracle decks and I love quick, simple guidance for every moment, so I was super excited to put those together. And then I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if every week I shared some sort of helpful, healthy tip on how to be kind, and how to realistically manage stress?

Well … it turns out that was a lot harder than I thought. The meditations flowed, the self-care cards were easy and fun, but the blogs were starting to stress me out. Like, really stress me out. I was stressing about the pictures, I was stressing about the topics, I was stressing about the timing to get them put together by a certain date. And I realized that was the opposite of the point. On so many levels.

So this week I decided that instead of offering self-care blogs once a week, I will offer them twice a month. BOOM! Life changed. I feel more inspired, less stressed, and like I can breathe again.

I also realized that this concept speaks to a much deeper truth—the ability to be teachable and to learn new things. When we’re set in our ways and don’t allow our minds to be changed, we close ourselves off to new ideas, to better ways of thinking, and to other people’s perspectives. This can make for an angry, lonely, and stressed-out worldview, or commitments to ideas and behaviors that don’t serve us.

Some tips to help open and change your mind:

• Give yourself a time frame. For example, when you decide to do something different, try that change for a few weeks or months so it doesn’t feel permanent. Leave space to change your mind again if necessary.
  
  
• Talk to the people closest to you. Learn different perspectives. Look at and be interested in what others are offering.
  
  
• Check in with your heart. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and dedicate some time to meditating on the subject and asking for guidance from that deeper wisdom.
  
  
• Stretch and spend some time in nature or time being creative to uncover any hidden fears, worries, or judgments that may be getting in the way of either making a change or fully committing.

It is so important to make commitments, but if you’re like me, those commitments can be powered by pride and/or ignorance. Any forceful attempts to prove you’re perfect, you’re immune to life on life’s terms, or simply that you’re right and everyone else is wrong, result in stress, pain, and hopelessness. Life is a moment-by-moment experience, and your body is designed to go with that flow.