courtesy of Twilightsagafan

My history with Twilight

Being a self-proclaimed nerd and lover of fantasy, I have of course read the Twilight series. They caused quite a ripple a couple of years ago.

I read the first Twilight book in high school, before it even became popular. I found it be accident at my local bookstore and didn't know if I wanted to read it or not. So I wrote the name down and checked it out at the library. Then it became popular and exploded.

In high school, I loved these books. Now that I'm older I can't stand them. There's just so much in them that I personally can't agree with now. If I don't like them, then why am I writing a post about them?

Because they do have some great lessons in the midst of the drama, particularly about mindfulness. I believe that all books have great lessons in them but sometimes it's finding them that's the hard part. For Twilight, I learned a lot about mindfulness.

Creating space in your mind 

There's this one moment, after Bella has become a vampire, in which she is out hunting for the first time and she comes across a human. Since she is a newborn vampire, she shouldn't have any control over her thirst for blood. However, she manages to separate herself from her hunger in her mind and runs away. She creates space in her mind between her desire for blood and separates herself from it.

She separates her mind from an immediate response. At the time of reading the last book, I thought it was really cool. It turned out she had superpowers. Now, I try using it in my mind.

When you practice mindfulness, you try to live in the moment and make decisions after you've reflected on it. Reflection is huge in making mindful decisions. Sometimes, though, it's not clear what you should believe or feel or what actions you should take. Sometimes, you want to immediately respond to a situation without thinking. In these instances, I recommend creating space in your mind between your problem, your feelings, and your choices before coming back to yourself and taking action.

Separating you, your problems, feelings, choices, and actions 

Imagine that your brain is a big room that has four corners. You are in one corner, looking at the other three. Put your problem in one corner, your feelings in another, and your choices in the last one. Go around the room and ask these questions: What is the problem? What are you feeling right now? Why is it so hard for you to make these decisions? What choices do you have?

After you have gone around the room, come back to you. Always start and end with you. And ask yourself What action do I want to take? What action am I going to take?

It always helps to separate from how you immediately want to respond to a situation. Create space in your mind before reacting. Remember to stop, pause, and reflect. Go around the room.

Thank you for reading :)

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