Putting off fun… why you should prioritize quieting busy thoughts
Do you have a hard time trying to meditate? Does your mind constantly wander around when you try to sit and listen to a guided meditation? Maybe you pin countless techniques, bought books, followed numerous social media accounts and still, don’t seem to have control over guiding your thoughts. What if I told coloring can help you? Sound a little flaky right? I know it can be difficult finding time to do creative stuff. If you have huge to-do lists consisting of several jobs, several kids and an endless line of tasks, you probably scoffed out loud at the idea. Well, if positive affirmations on Instagram did the trick, I doubt you would have ended up here reading this article. Before you disengage, just take a minute to recall being a young child. Remember how you felt when you got a brand new coloring book. Or even better; remember feeling excited when your teacher put down a big bin of crayons and copies of coloring sheets? How about coloring for hours on end while watching cartoons? I know I’m not the only one who spent hours blissfully doodling and using art to pass the time.
Awesome. Wtf does any of this have to do with controlling your thoughts? Everything actually. Our society puts busyness on a pedestal without any care that our well-being is about to go off a precipice. Coloring sheets are a process. You have to pay attention. Your mind has to focus on what you’re looking at. The same design can take you minutes or hours to finish. Coloring can give your mind time to passively step back from the constant chatter of ‘shoulds’ you feel take precedent. Our society is constantly pseudo busy. Our culture is completely obsessed with the concept of SHOULD. You SHOULD have X amount in savings. You SHOULD have a car that’s only X years old. You SHOULD be working three jobs if you don’t have X. Hustle, hustle, hustle. Grind yourself into the ground for pennies until you die. Opening and closing the same five apps on your phone over and over again is not a way to relax. It’s a way to mindlessly check out. Frankly, I don’t blame you. Less than two minutes watching the news makes me want to do the same. Heaven forbid we actually take a break from the gloom filled babble. It feels wholly irresponsible. It feels like we don’t care, when nothing could be farther from the truth. You care… we care. We care a lot. We care about everything from an economy we can’t control to politicians that don’t fit our beliefs, to what that one person from high school would think if they caught us after an exhausting day in the middle of grocery shopping. That’s a lot to care about.
Maybe it’s time to start from the source. You. Caring about yourself needs to be a priority. You can’t pour from an empty cup as the old adage goes. Self-care is becoming a staple in our culture. The average American spends about $2,000 on ‘treating themselves’. Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Meanwhile yoga and mindfulness are becoming the new go-to solutions for everything. No surprise since the majority of Americans don’t have decent healthcare. With all of these things seemingly out of our control, it’s no wonder meditation is becoming the new cure all. Even to those with GREAT healthcare. Meditation is basically free. However, with everything listed above, it’s easy to understand why we struggle to settle our minds long enough for 10 minutes of f**king peace? It’s not an accident. It’s a paradigm. Maybe you have a huge stack of coloring books on your shelf already for just this reason. Perhaps they’re all empty because of the notion of perfection. ‘I just spent $10 on a coloring book when my student loan payment is late’…. so you let it sit on the shelf. Perhaps you can’t justify the new markers that were WAY out of your budget. Or maybe, you just love the designs so much you can’t bring yourself to choose what color scheme you want. It’s amazing the excuses we use to put off simple pleasures.
I know how you feel. I started coloring in my own designs because I couldn’t bring myself to ‘ruin’ another expensive coloring book. Then I saw people selling digital coloring sheets online and was smacked with the utter brilliance of the concept. Nothing was final. All I had to do was find access to a printer and all the pressure was off. If I messed up because my dog bumped into me, it was no longer a huge deal. In fact, that very thing reordered my priorities on perfectionism. Perfect is the most justified excuse to procrastinate. All you have to do is watch the news for ten minutes to learn that:
1. NO ONE & NOTHING IS PERFECT
2. TIME IS PROMISED TO NO ONE.
So. If you were looking for an excuse, if you were searching for permission… I’m giving it to you right now. Go type in your email and get your free coloring sheet from me. Use a plain pencil or pen if you don’t have anything colorful to start with. All you have to lose is ten minutes you would’ve spent reopening the same apps you don’t remember scrolling through. That’s a tiny price to pay should you find a new outlet to help calm your mind…
Best wishes,
Erika Blue
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© Erika Blue 2019