Integral Assessment

The Universal Loving Kindness exercise had me repeat several sentences for 10 minutes. I found this long, tedious, and it did not hold my attention well at all.

The Integral Assessment had me take a look at the four aspects of my life- psychospiritual, biological, interpersonal, or worldly- and determine which area is the least developed and how can I improve upon this area.

I discovered that I do not enjoy the tediousness of the first exercise and that the psychospiritual aspect of my life is the least focused on. As a Christian, I have a hard time with this one and so I have decided to just refer to it as my spiritual side. I spend a lot of time on the other three but have neglected my spiritual life a lot lately. Some ways I can improve is to spend time daily, even if it's only 10-15 minutes, reading my Bible and praying. Once this becomes a daily habit, it should become easier to spend even more time on it.

Calm Abiding

During the Loving Kindness exercise, I found myself thinking a lot about who might be suffering and in what ways. This, to me, was not relaxing or something that I could easily focus on. I am a very compassionate person and am frequently having conversations with friends who are going through a rough time. I feel that staying in contact, both on the phone and in person, is a much more beneficial way for me to be of help to them. However, the Calm Abiding exercise was actually very relaxing while being very difficult to maintain. Honestly I just think that my life has so much going on right now that I am not able to fully appreciate these exercises. I know we are all busy but I travel for my job, my best friend just got married and I’m trying to keep up on my classes. I’m not doing a very good job right now but hope to do better very soon!

I believe that if you are spiritually healthy, this will have a huge impact on your mental health. Knowing what you believe and why you believe it gives you a peace that you may not be able to explain to those who don’t. Ideally I believe that if you are spiritually and mentally healthy then you should also be physically healthy. However, this is not something that I’ve witnessed to be accurate all the time. I know many people who are spiritual rocks and have a great outlook on life but struggle with their weight or other health issues. It would seem that maintaining all three would be a challenge too great for a lot of wonderful people.

Mental Workouts

The concept of a mental workout is much the same as a physical workout. The more effort and time you put into it, the greater the results. Like an athlete who is training for an event, they must work towards that goal every single day until the event. Exercising the brain is the same. We must continue to push ourselves to remember, to calculate and to control our thoughts and actions. This is a daily practice that gets easier with time and can have significant events. For example, those who only expect negative results are only going to receive negative results and will completely miss anything positive. But those who are expecting to succeed will even see the successes in the failure. Research has indicated that those who give themselves daily mental workouts tend to be healthier, happier and live longer. On top of that, they tend to attract others who think like they do, or at least want to, and this contributes to their mental well being. Surround yourself with positive thoughts and people and you aren't able to stay negative for too long! For me, I think a mental workout involving taking a few minutes each day to sort through things I perceive to be problems and then work through how best to handle them would help me to stay focused, not panic about upcoming deadlines, and just overall accomplish more. This would greatly help my mental well being and would help me to take control of the random thoughts that are constantly flying through my head.

Loving Kindness Excercise

For this exercise I found it difficult to stay focused because the ocean waves in the background kept making me very sleepy. I also struggled at the part where I was to visualize a loved one who was suffering. To my knowledge, those I love are not suffering in a tangible way. Everyone has their struggles but aren't necessarily struggling. I spent too much time thinking about people I know and love on this part and ended up missing some things. I can definitely see the benefit of choosing to love other people. Love is what makes us survive and keep going. I would recommend this exercise to those who are looking to find that side of themselves and are wanting to change. However, God is love and it is only through Him that we can truly love those who are unlovable, those we do not like and/or have done us wrong. Because of my belief in God and faith, I have a hard time with a lot of these visualization, DYI techniques that try to work around the works He does in us and thus put all the weight on our shoulders to "fix" ourselves. But I do try to find a balance in moving in the right direction and taking total credit for who we become.

Well-Being

I've never really given much thought to rating my personal well-being, outside of the obvious feelings of stress or general sense of health. If I had to rate my level of physical well-being, I would say that it's at a 6 or a 7. I like to be active and everyone feels better when they are eating healthy. I'm just not as consistent as I would like to be with either. I can improve this rating by running 3-4 days/week and buying more fruits and vegetables to snack on, rather than delicious Cheez-Its. ;) Psychologically I would say I'm at a 7. I am pretty content with my life and don't feel overly stressed right now. However, I know that I could improve my state of mind by staying more focused and not procrastinating. This creates stress in my job and with my schoolwork when I fall behind. Spiritually, I guess I would have to say, again, that I'm at a 7. I know exactly what I believe and why I believe it. I know that I am going to Heaven when I die, so I am not afraid of that (as long as it doesn't hurt too much). I take comfort in the knowledge that God is in control no matter how bad things get and that He hasn't forgotten where I am. My life is not just going wherever the wind blows, He has a purpose for it. The one area I would set out to improve upon is my time spent reading my Bible and in prayer. Because without time spent, you cannot have a solid relationship with anyone, God included.

In regards to the relaxation recording, The Crime of the Century, I'll be honest in saying that I had a hard time focusing on all of the colors for the entire time. However, I do enjoy the calming effects that it had on me. I wouldn't say that I felt grounded, safe, or more self confident, but I was able to completely relax to the point of dozing off. And I have to echo several of my classmates and ask why it was called 'The Crime of the Century'?