This week we were challenged to 5 minutes a day in mindfulness practice and I really have been trying to exercise that more and challenge myself. I think it has definitely improved my thinking about things. Meditating and things like mindfulness practice have definitely helped me in thinking more outside the box. I tend to find myself stressing over little things and I’ve always struggled with severe anxiety/depression and taking that time to sit back and just calmly think about what’s truly going on and find where I am most anxious and working through those has helped alleviate some of that stress. When I did dance, that was more my form of “mindfulness practice” I guess you could say. We did lots of improv with different pieces and the lyrical ones were always my favorite. It was a way that I could think and really express how I was feeling and then I would take that song and listen to it later and really think about why I felt that way. It was different, but it was a cool way to express my thoughts while also taking out that stress. 

This week, we talked more in depth about what a paradigm was and after thinking more about it further, growing up, my whole paradigm of mental health was a mess. I have always struggled with anxiety and depression but growing up, it wasn’t talked about. My dad didn’t believe in mental illnesses and thought my anxiety and my mental health problems were fake. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t want to self-diagnose or go to a doctor because growing up, I was told it was fake. Your paradigms as a kid up until you grow up really are dictated by those who are raising you until you can fully understand and do the research yourself. It wasn’t until way later that I realized that this was a real thing and could be huge if not properly taken care of so mental health has been a big topic in my world recently. 

During the discussion this week, I was on the yes side, but I was indifferent about it. Yes, I do think finding new ways to help the earth would be great. It was talked about in our article about the environmental improvement being made as we go on being in the shape of an inverted U, while another scientist argued that it would look like an S shape. How I look at it is we are looking for ways to help save our planet, but ultimately in the future, other scientists are looking at data and can say another list of issues we may have future wise based on a simple solution now. It’s hard to dictate what it would look like years from now.