Meg Lewis, an amazing entrepreneur, designer, consultant and all-around-amazing human — recently published a wonderful post on dealing with personal mental health in public:
Excited to share my all-time favorite thing to do on the subway, or other public transportation. It’s also one of the best empathy exercises I’ve thought of and really helps to remind me to feel the moments of love and pain we all go through. It’s a really great way to remember how much we all deserve happy, whole, peaceful lives. If you’re not a public transportation rider, I’d recommend this exercise in any public area (coffee shops and airports are great!).
She goes on to describe her 4-step meditation process in full here. It's absolutely brilliant — thoughtful and effective. From time to time, when life gets you down, or your anxiety is throttling your life-force, you're forced to just wait it out in agony. These sorts of episodes always happen at the worse times too don't they? Right before a meeting, on your commute to work, in a busy store, or a crowded subway car.
They're frustrating to deal with to say the least. While public meditation can be a difficult discipline to master, it seems Meg has discovered a great meditation technique that has certainly helped me, and I hope it helps you too. Bonus, it will help you empathize with those around you, and it feels like we need that more than ever.
Sidenote: Meg hosts branding and logo design workshops, and I think they're totally worth the coin. Check them out here.