Category Archives: Courage

How to Accept What Is

Acceptance2A bit of a somber note, but let’s talk freely, shall we? We are friends.

These are stressful, even traumatic times. If you still watch the news, I think you will agree. We all can feel the impact on our senses, moods and nervous system. Observing traumatic events can traumatize us. It is important to differentiate what we can control and what we cannot. That doesn’t mean we are powerless. We are resilient and there is still happiness and love in our lives.

Practicing mindfulness and compassion in our daily lives strengthens our resiliency.  Practice is the key word here because we get better at anything we practice. The brain actually changes through mindfulness and compassion practice.

Let go of doing it perfectly. Give it a try and notice the outcome – the way you feel.

4 suggestions on how to do that…

1.) Practice meditation & name your feelings.

When emotions are suppressed or ignored, they turn into bigger problems that catch our attention, such as physical pain.  There is a saying to remedy this tendency. It is “Name it to tame it.”  Not so simple. We can’t always immediately identify our feelings. But, if we stop and just sit for a moment and “be”, it will come.

You’ll notice the feeling and a name(s) will come to mind. Ah! This is what it is like to feel, for example, powerless. Once you practice naming your feelings, the feelings become like smoke alarms notifying you that you should introduce something calming into your day. You begin to see clearly how emotions affect your life.

2.) Put out the welcome matt for your emotions. 

Don’t worry. They won’t stay long. Watch them show up, stay about 30 to 90 seconds, then leave. The joke is we think they are going to stay all day long, so we don’t want to let them in!

In meditation practice, we learn to welcome all of our emotions with generosity and kindness. Imagine someone bring you a flower knocking on your front door. Welcome them, take the flower, say goodbye.

3.) You’re not the Judge.

We often pretend we are the judge of the world ourselves. Look, everyone makes mistakes.  We all remember when we spilled the milk.  A tirade of judgment doesn’t undo it. It shuts us down and makes it harder to ‘fess up. Yes, I spilled the milk.”

Taking responsibility is an act of courage but then give compassion to yourself, which breeds confidence and helps us learn how not to spill the milk next time. Likely, you would not judge your best friend as harshly for spilling milk as you do yourself. Why is that? Develop kindness and compassion for yourself.

  1. We’re all in this together.

All around the world people are feeling scared and overwhelmed. It is our human condition and isolation makes it worse. Send compassion to both yourself and others who are suffering by using your prayers and mindfulness meditation practice.

I remember my meditation teacher, Jon Kabat-Zinn, telling the class, “You don’t have to like it but you do have to do it anyway.” ‘Nuff said.

5 Ways to Embrace Change

Chrysalis Emerging 9cIt can be difficult to deal with when we go through transition or change in our lives.

One thing is dying and another thing is born. If we transition from one thing to another thing, we have to let the first thing go (whatever it is).

If we have a conflict, we let go of something in that (the issue or the person), and we embrace something else.

Here are 5 techniques we can use to support the release of the old to fully embrace the new.

1. Determine who has the problem. It may not be yours and you may not need to fix things.

The ancient Poet Rumi wrote:

“In that moment you are drunk on yourself
You lock yourself away in cloud after cloud of grief,
And, in that moment, you leap free of yourself.
The moon catches you and hugs you in its arms”

2. Relax your jaw. Are you holding back on what you want to say?

3. Journal out loud.  Write in your journal. Find a time when you are alone and say what you need to say out loud. Get it off your chest. Then write about that. If you’d like to receive my free therapeutic writing course, click here to check it out. 

4. Try Reiki (I did!).  My frozen right shoulder released. A totally unexpected outcome and an unexpected emotional release. Thank you, Nicole!

5. Walk a Labyrinth. I’ve talked about the beauty and spiritual significance of this simple ritual of walking a labyrinth. You meet others. Everyone chooses their own path and we all end up in the Center. A good reminder of changes during the lifespan.

I’m a Sucker for Anthems

IMG_3524I’m not a big sports fan, and the only baseball or football games I loved were those my grandsons played in. The national anthem was played and I noticed It roused emotions, even tears. And, I don’t even like most of the words like “bombs bursting in air.” I find it creepy.

But, the last line hits a home run, “Oh,say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave O’re the land of the free and the home of the brave?”. 

I could claim it is patriotism that moves me, but I get emotional over “God Save the Queen” as well. Of course, the music is grand, but it’s not just that. It is a reminder of all the people before us who worked to secure independence for us. I rather like being free.

There must have been days when they wanted to stay home, throw in the towel and give up. But, it seems on more days than not, they took the next step rusting in themselves and letting their faith carry them forward.

If you are working from home upstairs in a spare bedroom or on a laptop on the kitchen table—you’re unaware how the work you do will benefit others and yourself. You do it anyway, walking in faith.  If you are writing the greatest Novel ever or writing in your daily journal, do you hear the talk in your head that makes you feel anxious? Or wind up living with the Impostor syndrome?

The next time you find yourself doubting yourself whether it’s your business, your writing or something else entirely, I recommend you do this:

Find strength in a line in your own “anthem” that demonstrates to those who come after you that you had what it took to move forward in faith and trust. Walt Whitman wrote that everybody has a verse to sing in this world.

Do that and take the next step in your journey.

“Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.” 

~ Wallace Stevens

The Trap of the Familiar

Skww3mhwSfWKD1w9JNIT_fileThe trap of the familiar is our tendency to seek comfort in the known and familiar experiences we have had. It is human nature, so don’t berate yourself if you align yourself with others with whom you find familiarity and comfort.

This seemingly unconscious desire to align with what or who we already know, rather than that which feels uncertain and insecure, gives rise to an inability to see and experience the truth. We are locked into a narrower perspective and miss out on an array of possibilities in every area of life, including personal growth and expression of your creativity.

Opening ourselves up to feelings of discomfort is not easy at first, but it’s almost always worth it. We need to be ready and willing to enter into mental spaces where we are not necessarily at ease. We need to face our fear of letting go.

It would be too deterministic to believe there is some set of simple instructions or protocols that can lead us to a place of harmony. If you have a strategy or tactic or some kind of fix that you think will have a particular result, you’re coming from a place of knowing rather than not knowing. Coming from a place of not knowing is more likely to lead us to greater harmony and openness. So we begin with simply not knowing.

So, examine your ideas and beliefs and be ready to drop them. Everything we need is already in us or around us—we simply need to move past any fixed perspective.

Try this powerful exercise. 

Just for the fun of it, take a sheet of paper and draw a box, divide into four quadrants. Write these questions in each of the quadrants.

Question 1: What do I hate doing?
Question 2: What is NOT my job?
Question3: What should I stop doing?
Question 4: What are my distractions?

Be honest. Next, analyze your list and identify the #1 action step you will make to get closer to your vision of your creative self. For that you will need to free up time. Once you have delegated, eliminated, or automated all the things that are killing your time and spirit, you’ll have freed up “hidden” hours each week and brought yourself closer to expressing yourself or trying the unfamiliar.

What do you want to have in your free box? Make a life list, a bucket list, vision board, etc. and write a couple in your free box with a date by when you’d like to do this. Put it on your calendar – just for fun – to get your brain wrapped around this and you will automatically start to come up with strategies. Like magic.

If you are still pretending you are “fine”, read this article about Smiling Depression. Smiling Depression is when we’re depressed but we smile and tell everyone we’re fine. See if this is you.
https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/smiling-depression