How Much of A Perfectionist Are You?

Meditation Monk

All over the world people are struggling with stress: work stress, family stress, life stress. And this is exacerbated for people suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression etc. It’s easy to say relax, unwind. Not so easy to do.

As I worked with clients, both through hypnosis and coaching, I realised that people needed something to take away with them. Something for when I wasn’t around.  Something they could do when they wanted to relax, unwind, de-stress. Something that wasn’t alcohol or pills.

I had started using colouring with a few younger clients, all male, who didn’t want to talk directly about how they felt. So I created mandalas and gave them coloured pencils. This turned out to be an excellent way to get them to open up while taking the focus off them.

From there, I started using colouring pages with other clients. Soon, grown adults could be seen marching out my door, clutching colouring sheets and pencils!

My clients are not traditional colourers, although to be fair, who is? The men in particular are not fans of paisley patterns or cute little animals.  As one said, it’s hard enough walking around in public carrying a colouring book or going into a shop and buying one without actually sitting down and colouring something like a kid.  So I made blocked patterns for them, designs taken from a section of a mandala and extrapolated.

Here is an image of a work in progress from one of my clients, taken from https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/cooldoodledesigns :

Sitting down with paper and colouring pencils or pens allows us to spend time on ourselves, relaxing, focusing only on the image in front of us. We can feel the stress slipping away as we switch off our phones, TV, landline, laptop, tablet, whatever electronic device we would otherwise be using, and just contemplate that picture. What colours to use? Which pens or pencils? For the perfectionists amongst us, starting with colouring sheets or pages is a great idea, because we can download and print off/photocopy multiple times so if we decide, two colours in, that we don’t like it, we can start again with a fresh page. Once we’ve developed a style, or gained more practice, we can move on to a book. This is the way I work with my perfectionist clients, who otherwise would never start, or stress themselves out further trying to create the perfect image before they even put pencil to paper.

So if you are a perfectionist, try starting small, map out what you want the end result to look like, and then set off on your journey.  Remembering, it’s perfect as you go, not perfect as you go!

The Quick and Easy Way to Reduce Stress and Anxiety Using only Paper and Pencil

Meditation Monk

Well here we are in a new year, already well under way and we’re back into the swing of things. How did that happen!  It’s like we get to go round again every year, but hopefully learning different lessons each time.

Now I don’t know about you, but I love the idea that there are patterns within patterns, and I use the concept when working with clients: Here we have a mandala, you can see the shape. Put it under a kaleidoscope and suddenly there are dozens, hundreds of different patterns we didn’t notice before. Unseen to the naked eye, yet there when we are able to see them. I use this as a metaphor for the lives we think we have, versus the lives that are available for us to have. Powerful stuff!

Then when we’ve looked at some different patterns, we do some colouring: maybe some shading, maybe pastel colours.  And we can do it while listening to meditation music too.

I have worked with people who feel overwhelmed just looking at a whole page of colouring.  This can be a characteristic of perfectionism. There is no need to colour everything at once. In fact, I advocate spending only half an hour a day colouring. Half an hour is a perfect time to just spend on yourself, by yourself, for yourself. Give it a try and see.

Colouring can be a quick and easy way to destress, unwind, relax, be more creative and just generally have fun. For those who like to be sociable, try group colouring sessions. Invite your friends over and each take the same page but use different colours. Or share a page, with each person using one colour on a particular part of the image. Like book club for people who don’t want to spend time reading a whole book.

So jump onboard the colouring craze, get yourself some sheets, pages or even a book. There are so many on the market at the moment, get something that appeals to you: paisley patterns, gardens, forests, oceans, animals, blocked patterns… or try one of my Crop Circle Pattern books from https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/cooldoodledesigns

Give it a go and bring a little more calm, a little more relaxation, into your life.

Are you stressed about things that you feel are beyond your control?

Meditation Monk

Often, in our busy lives, we feel that everything is getting faster and faster. We’re running just to keep up with ourselves and nothing really seems to get done.

We know that life can be seen as a string of experiences, but nowadays it can seem like we have way too many experiences in one day!

What can we do to just stop and breathe, relax and simply experience where we are?

Stepping out of life for just a few minutes can help. Finding a quiet space, sitting still, breathing deeply for a few moments can all slow the carousel of life and allow us to take stock of what has been going on around us.

A simple thing we can do is write down in the morning what our intention is for the day ahead. What do we want to achieve?  What do we want to have experienced by the end of the day when we get back in to bed?  Where can we fit that achievement or experience in during our busy day?  Will we agree to give ourselves that moment, when the time comes?

Only we can make time for ourselves.  And when we do, one of the things we can consider is what is actually beyond our control?  And then release that, because we cannot fix what is beyond our control so stressing about it achieves no useful purpose. But focusing on what we CAN control, like setting aside time for ourselves to relax and breathe deeply, can help us immensely.

Don’t Learn to Meditate

Meditation Monk

Lots of people believe in the advantages of meditation but have a good deal of difficulty actually learning how to meditate.

It is important to understand that there’s a difference between meditation and concentration. The biggest problem with meditation for a good deal of people is that they aren’t used to sitting still for periods of time without lots of distraction. For instance, how many people can just sit quietly without feeling the need to put on the television?  Background noise, company, whatever we want to call it. We are so used to noise all around us that we often don’t feel comfortable with silence.

When we are willing to sit with silence, even for short periods of time, when we are willing to accept the ‘discomfort’ of not having noise around us, we feel like we can begin to learn how to meditate.

Meditation is often describe as simply the process of putting our full attention, our concentration, on whatever object we have chosen. If we’ve struggled with mantra meditations or breathing meditation techniques or a mindfulness bell recording then we may feel nothing can  help us to focus our attention in the current moment and reach a state of mental stillness.

Using brainwave entrainment (which is listening to sound frequencies for less than 10 minutes a day every day) means we don’t have to stop what else we’re doing, we don’t have to focus our attention in the current moment and we don’t have to actually ‘meditate’ or ‘learn’ to meditate.  We simply listen to the recording and train our brain to create the waves we need in order to move into the experience we want to have. Simple!

Concept Meditation

Meditation Monk

Have you considered concept meditation (for example, focusing on the idea of impermanence or increased creativity)?

Here at MeditationMonk we like concept meditation. Listening to sound frequencies for 6 or 7 minutes to change brainwaves will give us the result of meditating on a particular concept without us having to spend a great deal of time and focus on the particular way we want to feel.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that if we want to feel creative, or focused, we can listen to a meditation that contains a low Beta tone for helping to promote focus and a high Alpha tone to reduce frustration and increase creative flow.

After listening to these sounds for 6 or 7 minutes, our brains start to copy the frequencies they hear and create waves at the same frequency. We thus move into this state easily, without sitting still and focusing on creativity.

If we wanted to promote healing, we might use a combined Alpha and Theta session for a stress free meditation session which will aid the immune system. Or a sub-Delta frequency that supports healthy blood pressure by soothing the Amygdala and Hypothalamus.

We are always interested in creating new meditations so if there’s anything you’d like us to create or you want to listen to, let us know.