Taylor Swift -- Why Ya Gotta Be So Mean?

It's the beginning of a new work week and I'm going to be singing this Taylor Swift song to myself all day long.  There's something about this song that helps to keep me chugging along.  Instead of getting worked up and reacting to situations I can't do anything about, I'm going to be humming this song to myself and staying mentally cool, calm and collected.

At least that's the plan for now!  So Monday, bring it on and let's get goin':

Sleepy Time

I love the scent of lavender.  At the farmer's market near my office, a lavender farmer is one of the vendors and it is heavenly to smell the soaps, creams and oils he sells.  I knew you could cook with  lavender but I didn't know that it had secret sleeping powers.  Browsing around in one of my health books, I came upon some information that might help those of you who are struggling with getting a good night's sleep.

Grief can put your sleeping patterns into a netherworld of having an exhausted body but a restless mind that just won't slow down.  During this time, rest is elusive and you just want to sleep, sleep sleep.   Just when you need a restful sleep, you can't seem to get it.  Unfortunately, sleep deprivation produces a sharp decrease in seratonin levels, a key buffer against depression.

Maybe lavender can help.  Lavender is amazing because it is an herb with natural calming properties.  Some of you may already know this but I am just discovering that besides lavender's wonderful scent, it has long been used as a folk remedy to help people fall asleep  Researchers have found that lavender lengthens total sleep time, increases deep sleep and helps people feel refreshed. 

According to Dr. Alan Hirsch, neurological director at the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, lavender oil is a safe and effective remedy for insomnia sufferers.  Dr. Hirsch suggests the following:

               --place several drops of essential oil of lavender on a cloth and leave it on your nighstand, or fill an electric diffuser with oil to disperse fragrance throughout the room;

               --grow your own lavender and keep a basket of flowers at your bedside;

               --make an herbal pillow filled with fresh lavender leaves and refresh the leaves every three weeks;

               --massage lavender drops on your temples to soothe headaches or migraines.

Relaxation is the key to sleeping well all the way through the night, not just an hour ot two.  Perhaps the scent of lavender can help you close your eyes and take you there.

In this fast-paced, 24/7, non-stop world that we live in, we all deserve a restful night of sleep.

Step By Step

Time just slip slides away. 

You are trying to recover from a loss or a trauma and time seems to slip slide all over the place.  I feel this is when life needs to slow down a bit and be experienced in smaller increments.  Thinking about the future as one huge pulsing package of pain that will always feel bad is just too much and makes it too hard to go on.

Instead, try breaking it down.  Your days can be a series of steps that you set and you follow.  In other words, you set the pace of what you feel you can handle.  As in Step One: I will get out of bed today.  Step two: I will put my feet on the floor and make myself walk away from the bed.  Step Three:  I will eat nutritious food for breakfast instead of pizza or a cookie.  I felt like that a lot after my husband died and I had to constantly talk to myself about what to do next.

I find that breaking time down into small increments works when you are stressed to the max or trying to work through a particularly sad time in your life.  If you set it up right for yourself you can psyche yourself up to bear 10 minutes, then a half hour and sometimes an hour. 

And with each passing block of time, you realize that you got through it, you were temporarily able to think about something else and maybe, possibly, you can do it again, and then you can go about doing it.  Suddenly you find you have almost gotten through one day.

I remember trying to learn to accept my loss.  Your mind plays tricks on you and the passage of time doesn't seem quite right.  There were always those moments -- when you first wake up, when you are on the telephone, when you are working -- that you forget for a few minutes exactly what your reality is.  But-t-t-t-t then it comes back and knocks you in the tummy.

There's a hole in your life and there's no getting around it.  Ignoring it only makes your situation worse.  You can tamp it down as much as you want but it's still there.  Sitting in the back of your memory like a bomb tick tick ticking away, waiting to explode.  It's so much better when you take it, grab it and own it.  Why not  embrace it and absorb it and move right through it?  You can do it!  Put one foot in front of the other and keep going; keep moving forward.

Now congratulate yourself!

Small Things

My small thing today is to take good thoughts, good vibes, good prayers and anything else that's good and mix it with lots and lots of "great love" and send it directly to a very special woman who is going into surgery. 

She is a quiet fighter and I admire the way she has handled her journey so much!!

xo

p.s.  Thanks Silver Pen for having the perfect thought!

Letting Go

Longer, warmer days are making me yearn for a simpler life.

Lighter clothes and lighter food are definitely the way to go.  There's something about the change in season that makes you want to lighten your material load here on earth and get about de-cluttering your nest.  This past weekend I was cleaning the house and I started pulling stuff out of my closet and making piles of "keep," "donate" or "give away."   

Getting  rid of things you never use or wear feels so great!  But de-cluttering isn't just about your material things.  You can de-clutter your thoughts or your attitude.  What a concept!  Here's a story I found on mariashriver.com that got me going into throw away mode and I thought you might like it too:

April 16, 2012
www.mariashriver.com
Tips for Transformation

An Easy Way to Achieve Peace of Mind

By Barry Dennis

Whether I'm working with a Hollywood celebrity, consulting with a spiritual leader, or speaking to congregants at Celebration Church in Portland, Oregon, I always encounter the same question: How does one achieve peace of mind?

I believe I am getting closer to the answer, and it begins with getting rid of excess "stuff" in one's life -- whether it's material things, unfulfilling activities and people, or useless information.

If you try to only fill your life with things, people, and activities that feed your spirit, there will be a lot less junk standing between you and peace of mind. Now I travel the country motivating and inspiring people to do this.

My own journey toward peace of mind began on April 3, 1998, at 3 am. It was possibly the best day of my life. My wife performed the miraculous that day: the act of giving birth. I made a solemn promise to that 8.3-pound boy the first time I laid eyes on him. I would never parent out of anger.
And, I must say, I have done well living up to my promise. Except on one day, possibly the worst day of my life, six years later.

The first thing I remember that morning is all the shampoos. Why so many bottles? What should I use? Maybe I could use a shower gel for my hair and body! Radical. And then came the hair gels, lotions, and toothbrushes (Which one is mine?).

Upon opening my closet door, I was overcome with a full-blown episode of “apparel-yzation,” which is the act of staring, immobile, into one's bulging closet shackled by the thought “What to wear?” Which is sometimes followed by the nutty notion, “I have nothing to wear.”

The encounters with chaos continued. There were pieces of mail and other random papers on the kitchen table and counters, enough cereal boxes to open my own Kellogg's outlet store, and my boys playing with the latest version of Xbox something or other while the outdated versions lay in heaps, half in, half out of drawers.

I tried to simultaneously pick up after them and get them ready for school.

It all came to a head when I opened the door to my son's room to see before me what looked like a testing ground for nuclear weapons. I was late for an appointment, and my son had already missed the bus. He was supposed to be in his room getting ready. “CJ, where are you?” There was no reply. This time I yelled, “CJ, WHERE ARE YOU?”

A squeak came from behind his closet door, “I’m in here, Daddy.” I opened the door to find him in a sitting fetal position, overwhelmed, surrounded by refuse from the ghost of Christmas past. He explained, “I’ve been looking everywhere, but I can't find my pants.” A tear rolled down his cheek.
But I couldn’t see it. I was blind, turning green like the Incredible Hulk as I yelled, “GET UP NOW, RIGHT NOW! I'M LATE BECAUSE YOU CAN'T FIND PANTS? GIVE ME A BREAK! THIS IS RIDICULOUS.”

We drove to his school in total silence. That had never happened before. The rest of the day I felt like a lowly worm at the bottom of a compost heap. What had happened? That was not me.

A few weeks later I shared my frustration with a good friend, Dr. Harold Bloomfield. I told him about all the stuff, from the shampoos to the floor of my son's room, and how it all seemed to pile up in my mind, creating an overload that turned me into a rageaholic monster. “What is it?” I said.
His reply changed my life. “Oh” he uttered, shaking his head, “you're talking about Chotchky.”

It’s an old Yiddish term. I’ve come to understand it as anything we have in excess that intrudes, clutters, or distracts us from our soul's highest purpose. Chotchky isn't just clutter. It can also be unsupportive people, too much technology, unhealthy food, unwanted gifts, and regrettable decisions, among them. But the junk in your house is the easiest kind of Chotchky to identify.

What my son and I were experiencing was the “Chotchky Effect.” Too much Chotchky can leave us stressed out, irritable, and confused. No one wants to be on the receiving end of the Chotchky Effect.
You see, I wasn't angry at my son. In fact, we are almost never angry for the reasons we think we are. There is usually something behind the anger. Often, if we’re willing to look close enough, we will recognize that “something” as some form of Chotchky.

The anger directed at my son started with an excess of shampoos and built from there. Besides, who bought him the Xbox’s, the toys, and all those clothes that overwhelmed him and me? Hmmm.

Think of your conscious mind as a sacred shelf. It can only hold so much before it starts to bend.

Everything we surround ourselves with, that we come into contact with, is placed on our sacred shelf.
One shampoo is enough. The other nine in the shower that day were Chotchky and they took up space on my sacred shelf. By the time I got to my son's room, the weight of the Chotchky Effect was taking its toll. My sacred shelf snapped.

Give yourself and the ones you love a blessed gift. Eliminate all the Chotchky in your life, one room at a time, and donate it, recycle it, or throw it away.

Doing so will lighten your load, unburden your soul, and give you peace of mind.

********
Barry Dennis is an internationally known inspirational speaker and spiritual teacher. His new book is The Chotchky Clallenge: Clear the Clutter from Your Home, Heart, and Mind…and Discover the True Treasure of Your Soul (Hay House, April 2012). Learn more at www.BarryADennis.com.

Looking For Serenity

When building emotional resilience within yourself, I find it best to start in small ways.  In the beginning, and even now, almost every day, I work on looking at what happens to me and telling myself that I cannot control what happens to me but I can control my response to it.

When you constantly struggle with something, it can be stressful because you keep doing the same action over and over again yet you keep achieving the same end result.  It feels as if you are hitting your head against a brick wall.  I usually end up asking myself  "Why isn't anything changing?   "Why isn't this working?"  I have a talk with myself and really try to see what's going on.  This is not an overnight process; at least it isn't for me.

Whether an event is good or bad, happy or traumatic, I tell myself that there is always an opportunity to step back and teach myself something about problem solving rather than looking at a problem as something that overwhelms me. Problems are not always personal threats or personal attacks. Problems are just part of life.

There are many times that I just never figure out what is going on and I just have to make peace with whatever's going on.  But other times I find when I slowly change my response to a situation -- the way I talk to someone, the tone of voice I use, my body language -- then sometimes; sometimes mind you, not all the time; small changes do come about.

And then there are times when you just have to let something be.  It is what it is.

That's when I am reminded of Reinhold Niebuhr's famous serenity prayer:

 God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Happiness Is A Choice

Dear Readers,

Today's post is a continution of yesterday's chat about life being easier to navigate when you embrace a positive attitude.  As the below story says, happiness is a choice, and you can practice it as much as you want!!

A very good friend sent me this story that was recently published in a British newspaper called The Guardian.  It gently addresses the thoughts of people who know they are at the end of their lives.  The story is timely because it gets right to the core of addressing how we live our lives verses how we wish we had lived our lives.  My friend said she found the story below to be "rather uplifting, because we might still have time to prevent some of our own regrets."  I agree!

True happiness comes from forgetting about yourself and doing something for someone else just because you want to, not because of what you're going to get in return.  You do it just because you know it makes the other person happy. 

I found this philosophy to be true even after my husband died.  Helping my son, a friend or someone at work freed up my mind and let me temporarily think about something else.  Sometimes it was a relief to get out of that heavy cloud of hurt and try to become part of something lighter. 

Focusing on the bad, the ugly and the negative, just puts you in a bad, ugly or negative frame of mind and it's hard to believe that anything constructive will come out of that.  I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did:

Top five regrets of the dying

By Susie Steiner

The Guardian

Wednesday 1 February, 2012

A nurse has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and among the top ones is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'. What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life?

A palliative nurse has recorded the top five regrets of the dying. Photograph: Montgomery Martin/Alamy

There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

What's your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?