The Adult Coloring Book Craze

A few months ago I was doing a lead at a local AA meeting when an interesting girl walked up to me after I was finished and told me she had been able to pay attention for the entire time I spoke. She then showed me a book, said it was an adult coloring one, and explained it was normally what kept her attention deficit disorder at bay during most meetings. While I was grateful for her compliment and gave that credit to my Higher Power, I was actually more interested in talking about the book she had just showed me, which was titled “Color Me Calm, 100 Coloring Templates for Meditation and Relaxation.”

She explained that somehow coloring helped her to focus, as well as keep her relatively still for long periods of time. At first, I couldn’t imagine how something as simple as coloring could do that, but then I thought about the complex puzzles I do from time to time and how that achieves the very same thing for me. I asked to look through her book, saw how it wasn’t just basic pictures, and it began to make sense. There were intricate mandalas, waterscapes, wooded scenes, geometric patterns, and much more spread throughout the book, each having very precise areas to color. As I drove home from the meeting after that, I remembered my childhood coloring days when I would take crayons and try to stay within the borders of whatever picture I was working on, even ones that should have been extremely simple, except they never were for me. Usually I just got frustrated and smeared the entire page with a big mess of colored scribbles. After recollecting those not so pleasant memories of my earliest attempts at being an artist, I put the entire adult coloring book thing behind me, that was until I got on the phone with my sister a day or so later.

When I asked what she was up to during my call to her, she said she was working on a picture in her adult coloring book and all I could say was, “Really?” She wasn’t kidding and told me it was truly helping her in the same ways it had helped that girl from the meeting I did my lead at. It was then I knew I didn’t need a third reminder to come my way, as that regularly seems to be what happens when my Higher Power wants me to pursue something that would help me on my spiritual journey. Within a day or so after that phone call, I ordered that Color Me Calm book, two sets of artists colored stencils, and a manual sharpener. And wouldn’t you know, once I received it and began doing some of my own coloring again after decades of not doing so, I actually found great joy and peace in it.

While I can’t really say I understand why coloring helps me these days rather than aggravate me like it always used to, I’m just grateful I’ve found yet another way to slow down, meditate, and relax in a world that often seems so darn filled with too much hustle and bustle. And now it seems as if everyone else is finding this out as well, because everyone I end up talking to about this says they too are getting into the adult coloring book craze.

So if you happen to be someone who’s trying to find a way to create a little more peace in your life, I suggest trying this route, as you may soon discover just like I and so many others already have, how it can come from something as simple as coloring…

IMG_1352
Just one of own colorings… 🙂

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Daily Reflection

“Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.” (David G. Allen)

Having patience with things is probably the biggest test most of us face quite consistently throughout life. It’s something that seems to be tested on many of our days, usually in a wide variety of ways. It happens when we’re on the road sitting in traffic, it happens when we are in a line at a store, it happens when we put our name on a list at a restaurant, it happens we’re looking for a job, it happens when we see others not acting in ways we think they should be, and so on and so forth. And all too often it also seems that having patience in these situations doesn’t always translate into it working out in the way we want. Over the past few years, my own patience has been tested in dealing with my health, as it feels like it’s been an exceptionally long time that I’ve had to endure a lot of physical, mental, and emotional pain. But even more prevalent has been the harsh reality that the more I’ve worked on becoming healthier and done my best to remain patient with the process, the more it feels like my health has grown even worse. And the truth is I always thought I would slowly start feeling better the more I worked on myself. But could it truly be that the darkest of all this was left for the very end, meaning the worst has come just before the dawn of me having that far healthier-feeling life? I’m choosing to believe this is so and while this may not be the way I envisioned I’d get better over time, looking at it in this light has definitely helped to much more calmly accept today’s quote. That maybe having patience really does mean that sometimes things happen in a different order than the one we had in mind…

I pray I accept that having patience doesn’t always mean things will work out in the order I had in mind, but that eventually it will indeed work out for my greatest, highest good.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Finding Thanks In A Difficult Thanksgiving

I didn’t feel like I had the best Thanksgiving this year due to the ongoing sufferings I continue to deal with in regards to my current state of health. With that being said, I found myself thinking quite negatively about it until I realized that I needed to take a closer look and find a little thanks in it, because it’s always there, usually just beyond the ego’s perception of things. So here are five of those things I truly have to be thankful for, from this year’s Thanksgiving.

First and foremost, I most definitely had an abundance of food present throughout the entire day, which is something not to be taken lightly given the amount of people presently dealing with starvation on our planet.

Secondly, I had a loved one, my partner Chris, to spend the entire day with, whereas I know of so many people who had to spend the day completely alone given they had no family and no significant other to enjoy it with.

Thirdly, I spent it completely clean and sober from not just alcohol and drugs, but also from all of my former addictions. It truly is a miracle to go through any day, especially a holiday, free from every one of my past toxic outlets and behaviors.

Fourthly, I had a number of phone calls and text messages this year wishing me the best of day, which is in stark contrast to so many years in my past where I heard from next to no one.

And fifthly, although I perceived my health to be relatively poor from where I wanted it to be on this year’s Thanksgiving, I know there were vast numbers of people who suffered far worse with their health on that day. In my case, I was still able to get out of bed and leave the house on my own accord, had all my senses and normal bodily functions working, kept most of my sanity intact, and I did this all free from medication. I’m sure there were many who probably weren’t able to say the same.

Thus, looking at the day now, I had a far better Thanksgiving than my ego wanted me to believe I had, which is precisely why I must continue to do small exercises such as this, as each help me to find thankfulness in life, especially on a day which has that very word in it.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson