Break or Be Broken?

                                                             Image by skeeze from Pixabay 

There is no question that the stress levels are very high these days. There are so many uncertainties, so much chaos, fear, pain, grief, etc. So it is imperative that we take special care of our mental and physical health.

Accumulated stress can break you. You can become overwhelmed, depressed, physically ill, and feeling out of control. You can lose your sense of direction, hope, even your faith.

We can't let that happen. The troubling times are not over. We need stamina to make it through the months ahead. But if you are broken, you won't make it.

So, let's all take a break! Taking a break means "interrupting activity briefly." Take some control by consciously setting aside time to simply stop. Temporarily stop attending to those things that create your stress.

Maybe you need a few hours less on social media. Or maybe you can stop watching the news every evening. Or you can meditate on beauty or nature or joy. Give your mind a break from the stimuli that keep the chaos churning in your brain.

Try reading a novel for pleasure or watch a funny movie or something that takes your focus away from your own life. Or start taking walks on a regular basis, without your cell phone!

Find something that takes you away for a few minutes, at least. And you'll be better prepared for re-entering the fray.

Take a break. Don't get broken. 

It's Just Too Much

                                                     Image by Małgorzata Tomczak from Pixabay 

These days it is just too much to handle. My brain feels like it might explode. So many conflicting thoughts. So much conflict. And with the fireworks, I feel like it is an actual war zone.

The quarantine fatigue, the crisis fatigue, and political fatigue pile up. At the end of the day I'm wiped out. Am I the only one? 

I'm sure that for me it is magnified by my sense of helplessness, because of my age and physical limitations, to participate in the causes I believe in. Makes it harder. And all the family challenges we've had lately take a toll on emotional energy.

I often play games on the computer as a way to escape it all. I also crochet and watch mindless television in the evenings when I'm too tired to do anything else. I communicate with family and friends, I'm still quarantining, you see. 

And sometimes writing this blog is a way for me to let off a little steam. I don't know who, or if anyone, reads it. But writing itself helps. Sometimes I focus on the issues and sometimes I focus on special topics. Either way I am focusing on something beyond myself.

I hope you are staying safe: keeping social distance, wearing a mask, washing your hands. The virus is not a trivial thing. If you read last week's blog you know why I am sure of that.

Care about others enough to wear that mask when you are around other people than those you live with. Stay home as much as you can. We have to stop the virus from spreading and killing more and more people. If we don't, we kill our country. 

Yep. Plain and simple, that is the outcome of our not paying attention to the science, of not caring for each other enough to stop the spread.

So respect and care about each other. Make this a better world with just those small things to do. We are in this together. Do your part.


Questions:

What is it like for you these days to live in the midst of all this? 

What are you doing to stay sane? How do you deal with the emotional fatigue?

I'd like to write about what others are curious about. Any suggestions?

Too Overwhelmed to Write

                                                              Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

I'm sorry I don't have a decent blog post this week. I'm just too overwhelmed to write with any sense. There is just too much stress.

Of course there is the pandemic and I've be quaranteened since March. Starts to get to me at times. But I'm coping. 

Then I learned about a month ago that my older daughter is diagnosed with terminal cancer and is undergoing powerful chemo every three weeks. She lives in another country.

Then two weeks ago we learned that my 98 year-old mother-in-law is positive for Covid 19 and is in a Covid unit in her senior housing facility. It is three hours away. 

But, in either my daughter or mother-in-law case we can't be there.

Then we watched a police officer murder a black man on video. While we are encouraged by the Black Lives Matter movement's demonstrations growing around the world, and we hope that things will change as a result, it is still disturbing to see the violence that sometimes blows up in the midst of them.

For my 78-year-old spirit, it has just piled up the stress and is just too much. So, I'm begging out of blogging this week.

Stay safe.

If Not You, Who?

Who can take care of you? Who can make you feel better, physically or mentally when you are stressed? 

Oh, You! You know what?

We have stress all around us - and even inside us. And it can be very damaging over time. You can save yourself from that by learning personal self-care techniques and use them every day.

TED Talk by Susannah Winters

Try it. Stay well. Love yourself enough to take care of yourself.

It's Up to You

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

I confess that I hadn't done a blog post for this day until last night. I'd been wondering what to write. I watched an episode of Father Brown on PBS. It was built around a radio show called "It's Up to You". That got me to thinking.

So much of what we experience in our lives is up to us. Maybe not the event itself, but how we feel about it when we experience it, and how we continue to keep it in our memory and recall the feelings when we think about it.

There is a TV add that says "Christmas is what you make it." They were hoping to sell you something that was intended to make your Christmas memorable. But is isn't the thing that matters. It is how you perceive it. 

That is an important message for me. I have trouble with the days leading up to the holiday. I really dislike the rush to get lots done by a certain day/time. I get overwhelmed and exhausted to the point that I'm unwell, and not liking Christmas at all!

And - it is up to Me! I do that to myself! I make decisions to do this and that to get ready for guests and celebrations. I think I should make everything right and good. I should get just the right gift for everyone. I should get the house spotless and festively decorated. I should get cards in the mail soon enough for them to arrive before Christmas. I should fix meals for guests that they will love. And on and on. 

That is called "shoulding on myself." That is my choice. I can't blame anyone but myself. And since I've been disabled it weighs even more heavily, because everything is even harder for me to do. It wears me out sooner. It makes me ill.

Of course, preparation for a holiday isn't the only decision that are up to me [you]. Everything we do is a decision, everything - thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and actions.. And it is helpful that we acknowledge that. for that is our personal power.

And when we are aware of our personal power we can use it to make our lives better, more honest, more accountable. It can keep us grounded in reality. 

I know most of us think we have no control of our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and reactions. But we really do. We can change our thoughts, which determine our feelings. We can change our beliefs when we learn more. And our reactions are a product of all of the above.

When I worked with inmates in the prisons, one of the things I taught was just that, the personal power to experience life as it comes and as we choose it. I gave the example of two inmates who get visits on visiting day from their spouse. Both learn that their spouse is pregnant. One inmate is overjoyed. It's his first child and was excited about becoming a father. The second inmate was stunned and angry. He'd wanted children too. 

What was the difference? The first inmate had only been incarcerated for a couple of months. The second inmate had been incarcerated for more than a year.  There was no way he was the father of the child.

Now the inmates would say that of course the second inmate would be angry. His wife was pregnant by another man. But what if he'd been wanting to be a father so much and loved his wife so much that he was willing to be the father of a child that was the result of a one-night -stand. He loved his wife enough to forgiver her and to celebrate a future with her and the child.

It is up to you what you think, feel, and believe. And it is up to you how you respond.

And it is up to me to slow down and stop worrying about having everything just so.

What about you? What do you need to change in the moment? Are you willing to consider that you have this personal power? Are you willing to confront situations where you might want to change what you think, feel or believe in order to have a better life and a more peaceful holiday? Or any day, for that matter. 

The next time you find yourself getting upset, stressed, anxious, etc., try using your personal power to have a better outcome.

What Are YOU waiting for?

Have you ever thought about how much of your life is spent waiting?

Waiting: noun; the act of staying in one place while expecting something to occur.

"According to a Timex survey, Americans wait on average of 20 minutes a day for the bus or train, 32 minutes whenever they visit a doctor and 28 minutes waiting in security lines whenever they travel. Americans wait 21 minutes for a significant other to get ready to go out. 

 Most Americans spend 13 hours annually waiting on hold for customer service, reports Time. The average American commuter spends 38 hours each year waiting in traffic, according to the Atlantic. Big city commuters average more than 50 hours waiting in traffic annually. Americans annually spend 37 billion hours waiting in line, according to the New York Times." [https://www.reference.com/science]

Wow. That's a lot of time waiting. So, what kind of waiter are you? Do you get anxious and frustrated? Pace? Get angry, even enraged? Do you clench your fists or your jaw? Does your body get tight, tense? 

Lots of us do. And it adds to our stress and leaves us vulnerable to overload with more stimuli.

What do you wait for? Beyond those kinds of waiting noted in the quotation above, what else do you wait for? I was thinking of this as I waited for a phone call I was expecting. I thought of other times I find myself waiting. I wait for doctor feedback from my lab tests. I wait in line shopping. I wait for someone to pull out of a parking space close to the place I'm going. [I often am not up to walking far.]  I wait for water to boil, food to cook, laundry to finish in the washer and dryer. I wait for the postal carrier. 

I wait for ideas to come. All too often I wait to remember the right word. I wait for the office to warm up in the winter. I wait for purchases to be shipped and delivered to my house. I wait for vacation or for my birthday. I wait for family visits. I wait for websites to open, programs to load.

And most of the time I'm a calm waiter. I use wait time to think of solutions to problems, or I list things to do, or I imagine what other people are thinking or doing. I'm a people watcher and waiting is the perfect time for that. 

Often, when I know I might be waiting, I take a book and read while I wait. And I keep recorded books in my car so I can listen when I'm driving and waiting.

I learned long ago that life is too short to make myself stressed out. I know that being frustrated and angry is the result of expectations that things "should" be a certain way, and when they aren't I don't have to stress out about it. I just check my expectations and accept that everything doesn't have to go the way I prefer. I check what values are fueling my expectations and ask myself, "How important is it? Is it worth me being so tense and stressed?" Usually the answer is no.

Expectation does not have to cause problems for me, does not have to harm my health and well-being. There are wants and there are needs. I create stress when I tell myself some thing is a need when in reality it is a want. 

How many of the things you think you need could you live without? Because needs are about survival. Wants are about thriving. Most of us have everything we need and much of what we want. Why stress over thinking we won't survive if we don't have what we want?

I guess at my age, 77 years, I get a better perspective of what one needs to survive. All else is wanting a bit more [or in many cases a lot more].

So as you celebrate the upcoming holidays, I hope you will see the difference. And I hope the New Year brings you more than survival

Peace by Piece

I'm afraid there is no magic formula to world peace. We can't wave a wand and say "Abracadabra". But we can begin it where we are. The beginning of world peace is to find your own state of peacefulness.

• Practice what gives your peace: reading a book, quiet time, engaging in creative arts, listening to calmings sounds like ocean waves or birdsong. Set aside time to nurture your peacefulness and reduce stress with whatever helps you feel more peaceful.

• Many people find meditation helpful to clear the mind and relax the body. There are many resources to help you learn to meditate. Check out videos on YouTube or contact a local organization that teaches and supports meditation. There are CDs that provide guided meditation. Find your path to peacefulness.

• Manage your stress. Identify your stressors. Much of our stress comes from us believing that something should be different than it is, even though we have no control over changing it. When that is the case we need to change what we believe. Rather than fighting the reality of your powerlessness over a situation, accept that which you cannot change and focus on changing what you can. Sounds easier than it is. Other kinds of stressors can often be less stressful when we plan to limit our access to them, like certain types of persons or events. It often helps to take five or ten minutes a day to write about your frustrations, to express your feelings in ways that do no harm. Sometimes just writing about a situation makes it clear what you can do differently to make it less stressful. Find the stress-reducers that work for you

• Participate in physical activity. This can address several areas in your life, making you more peaceful. It is good for your physical health and your mental health. It even helps you work off any emotions that seem to unsettle your peacefulness. While you are exercising, no matter what kind, focus on the exercise and let your mind clear. Work up to a place of peacefulness for you. Many people find exercises like running to be medatative.                                                                                                                                                         
• Engage in self-reflection. Look inside yourself for what you tell yourself. Identify when you are being judgemental or hard on yourself. Identify negative self-talk and conscously interrupt it. Replace it with affirmations of your courage, your strengths, your worth. A sense of peace comes from being, and liking, who you want to be.                                                                          
•  Allow and accept change. Change is often very stressful. The way you think about it can make it more or less stressful. Life is all about growing and changing and we are better off embracing change than resisting it. Cange is a learning process to a better life.Letting go of the fear of the unknown allows us to accept change. Realize that resistances causes mor turbulence in our lives. It usues more energy than acceptance.                                                                                                                                    
• Bad habits keep you from finding a healthy balance and often interfere with your self-acceptance. Break one bad habit at a time to minimize the stress that comes with creating a new and healtier habit. Keep track of your changes by writing them down. Switch out the bad for a good habit. If you don't purposly replace the old bad habit you may create yet another bad one.

Making peace in your piece of the world begins with your own peacefulness. Find what works for you and begin the peace process right where you are.

Changes

Yes, the world  is changing. And the changes come more and more quickly. 

While is can be exciting it can also be stressful. Whether the changes are for our good or not, all change creates stress. So it is little wonder that so many of us are challenged by that stress.

Let's look at the positive sides of change as one way to minimize the negative effects of stress. In the next weeks I want to look at some of the changes and how we might better deal with them.

Get ready, because change will come no matter what we do.