Misguided Urgency

This week I came across a post on Transformed Thru Travel on Misguided Urgency.  If you haven’t checked out her blog, give it a go.  She writes about travel and often reflects on how she has used the act of traveling to manage and recover from her PTSD.  I’m excited to learn more about how she does this (and draw some correlations between her life practices and yoga!) when I travel with her next month to Austin, Texas for some travel-yoga-life goodness.  In the meantime, I wanted to better acquaint myself with her blog, see what I could learn, and interpret the information she presents through my yoga-tinted lens.

Imagine my excitement when her most recent post was focused on personal development and self-inquiry (cornerstones of yoga and meditation)! Misguided Urgency is basically the act of convincing ourselves that things are important when they really aren’t.  It’s about going through our days mindlessly, on automatic pilot, only to realize that the behaviors we are engaging in are often disconnected from our core values, wants, or needs.

As we practice yoga and Mindfulness, we learn to slow ourselves down, to pay attention to our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  This allows us the opportunity to choose our reactions to barriers we face in life and increases the likelihood that we will make decisions more in-line with our personal values.  By practicing not just the physical act of meditation, but also guiding our lives according to some of the key philosophies of yoga: truthfulness, moderation, self-discipline, and self-inquiry, we are able to make choices each and every day that coincide with what is most important to us, whether it be family, work, love, gratitude, fun, or self-care.

I’m going to go ahead and share the list I made in response to Transformed Thru Travel’s post.  My yoga practice has been pretty on-point these past few months and seeing that many of the things I did “today” are directly correlated to my “someday” goals provided good reinforcement of why I need to come to my yoga mat each and every morning.

Some of the things that ended up on my lists were:

Someday

• Attend event at Vedanta Society
• Spend more time with like-minded colleagues and friends
• Travel more regularly
• Have more date nights with Hubs
• Advocate more
• Pay-it-forward more often
• Foster more connections with friends, relatives, and coworkers

Today

• Meditated
• Walked my dog
• Did laundry
• Came to work – saw clients, did paperwork, checked-in with colleagues
• Started a NAMI Walk team with colleagues & made donation
• Texted coworker about attending a lecture on Pranayama at Vedanta Society over the weekend
• Mailed check for trip to Austin, TX
• Set-up girl’s night with former roommate for this evening
• Scheduled day-date with Hubs to look at fishing boat

Overall, there is a fair amount of crossover between my “today” list and my “someday” list, although there is clearly opportunity to align my daily actions even more with my values, so I feel pretty good about where I am at today. For more information on the exercise, or to try it yourself, check out the post on Misguided Urgency.