This Christian mindfulness exercise at the end of the workweek to clear your head and your heart. Working, either in a paid or unpaid role, puts most of us on the front line for dealing with people. Unfortunately, we meet our fair share of people who are rude, hypercritical, negative or toxic in any of a dozen other ways. Sometimes, the drip, drip, drip of this kind of behavior can get to us.
This exercise gives us the opportunity to bring those emotions to the Lord and to forgive. Here’s how:
- Shut your office door or find another place where you can have privacy for 10 minutes or so.
- Take some deep breaths.
- Allow your feelings … anger, disgust, sadness … to come into focus. Go before the Lord with these feelings. God already knows how you feel. So bring them to Him.
- Ask God to help you to forgive all the actions that have upset you.
- Quietly see the faces of each person who has troubled you this week. Ask God to help you see each one as wounded. Think about how their behavior has to do with their own issues, rather than with you.
- Ask God to show you how you may be helping that person to heal. Or just pray for their healing.
- Ponder whether you contributed to any of these problems. Do you need to apologize to someone? Do you need to change the way you relate to someone?
- Thank God for the opportunity to do your work. Ask Him to be with you for the rest of the day.