Whenever I see topics about a busy brain, they draw me in. I recently came across such an article in the New York Times. It was entitled 5 Ways to Calm Your Anxious Brain. This post, and maybe a couple more, will talk about the article.

If you want to see the whole article now, click HERE. The first topic from this article is to practice mindfulness.

Practice Mindfulness

I am constantly running off on side-tracks throughout the day. In the middle of watching a TV program, a thought suddenly burst into my mind, and dominates the space between my ears. Since I am on streaming TV, I usually hit the pause button and head back to the work area half of my living room to write a quick note or look something up on the internet. But sometimes that quick note turns into an hour activity. Now that I am living alone, there is no one to ask “What are you doing?” so that seems to happen more frequently now.

I need a way to stop this kind of stuff from engulfing my brain. 🥸 As the article mentions, most often when my brain starts racing, It is thinking about something in the past or future. To come back to the present, the article suggests that you quickly return your awareness to your breathing. This kinda reminds me of meditation and using a mantra. Until recently, I have never been attuned to that idea, it is kinda catching on to me now.

Changing the subject slightly, but with a purpose, my road trips in the past few years have been primarily on Interstate highways. I used to, almost exclusively, use State highways, but I eventually found them, for the most part, depressing. I could go on and on about this, but that would just be me being sidetracked by other thoughts. Now that I spend hours at a time on Interstate highways, I have caught myself wandering off with other thoughts, and not totally aware of my surroundings. Bluntly speaking, I need to be more mindful of where I am when I am driving.

One thing that seems to help me is the mantra “stim, stim, stim”. When I find my mind starting to wander, I am getting pretty good at forcefully saying my mantra. That brings me back around.

I am planning the next adventure to North Carolina to visit my brother, and to find historical sites, history museums and OYSTERS. 🤪 I love oysters, but I only order them when I am within 50 miles of a coastline. Part of my trip will be between Southport and Manteo NC is called “The Oyster Trail”. I hope it lives up to that moniker. This trip will total about 1600 miles, so there will be plenty of “stimming” along the way.

I suspect that some of you are wondering what my “stim” mantra is all about. It stands for

Stay In The Moment

In the next post, I will cover a couple of other suggestions from the article for calming our anxious brains.