Blog Post #4

Pictured above: My Kindergarten graduation from St. Juliana’s Catholic school, and the upper quad where I practiced mindful meditation

Today in class we discussed values and character strengths. For out in-class activity we took a VIA survey that would determine our most prominent character strengths. The number one character strength I received was spirituality. I was mildly surprised by this finding. Out of the list of character strengths that were possible I would not have personally chosen spirituality as my number one. I think that if I were to assign the ranking on my own, my list would be very different. But when I received my list I feel like the rankings were very accurate, even if they were not where I would intentionally put them. I would consider myself a very spiritual person. I’ve grown up in a Catholic household. Growing up and still to this day my faith is a very important part of my life. My faith has always brought me a sense of safety and security, especially during the hard times in my life. As I’ve grown older my relationship with the church has waxed and waned, but I have always held strong to my spirituality and the sense of security it gives me. My spirituality is directly related to how I relate to the world and my thoughts on where I fit into it. Through my faith I have found that my place in the world heavily revolves around servitude, which affects many things in my life. From how I treat those around me on a day to day basis, to my professional and career goals. Almost everything I do is in servitude to those around me. 

For my strength activity I took a few minutes to practice mindful meditation. I sat in one of the chairs in the upper quad and took a few moments to focus on where I was and the state I was in. I took notice of the rising and falling of my chest with each breath. The weight of my body against the chair. The blades of grass tickling my ankle. The crisp chill of the breeze on my face, and the rustle of the leaves as the breeze ran through them. I have had a lot of heavy stuff on my mind lately and taking this moment to practice mindful meditation really helped ground me. Even though my problems and concerns were still there after I was done, I began to see them in a different perspective. Even though at this moment they seem world consuming, my problems won’t last forever and will eventually pass. This strength activity left me feeling very peaceful. Mindful meditation is something that I’ve done in one of my classes and it always really helped me focus into the moment I was in, rather than worrying about the numerous things that were causing chaos in my life. I think that this is something that would be very beneficial if I did this on a regular basis. There was a period of time where I tried to start meditating regularly, but I think this can be something I utilize when I’m particularly stressed or my mind is particularly clouded.