For some people, it’s the unknown that stresses them out. For others, it’s the known - or what they think they know based on past experiences. Some people start feeling stressed out when they see a certain person or arrive at a certain location. Some of us pretend that nothing bothers us, even though everyone else can plainly see that we’re wound tighter than a spring.
Do you know what kind of stress you have? Does it matter? Well, as with most things, it depends. Knowing the source of your stress can help you choose the best tool to manage it, and over time learn how to reduce it. In-the-moment techniques like deep breathing, a brisk walk, or using a meditation app are always effective for managing stress throughout the day, but if you’re interested in digging a little deeper and being proactive about stress, consider which categories best describes your stress, and check out these tips for responding. Avoidable Stress Has anyone ever told you to get out of your own way? It might be because they see you making life more complicated than it needs to be, either through procrastination, poor time management, or inefficient patterns. I remember being in the drive-through at a fast food restaurant, staring at the menu and frantically trying to choose something healthy, feeling stress mount as my family grew impatient and the line of cars behind us got longer. The stress I was feeling could have been avoided if I had simply made myself a sandwich instead of relying on fast food. I realized that, and now I don’t leave for road trips without some snacks for myself. Sometimes more creative thinking is needed. Break down the situation you are in and identify precisely what is stressing you out. In my scenario, it was feeling rushed and having limited options. Naming those feelings helped me choose the right solution. To address avoidable stress, pay attention to the patterns of your day when you are agitated, and instead of just expressing it, make a note about whether you can do anything to change the scenario in the future. The trick here is to focus on what you can do, not what needs to be done by someone else! We’ll talk about that later. Second-hand Stress Imagine sitting in your office or your home and someone coming into the room with a big bucket and saying, “I have a bunch of stress in here, do you want some?” and then they just dump it all on the floor. This is second-hand stress: the stress that has nothing to do with us but comes into our space. This may be the friend who wants to tell you all about her family drama, or a co-worker who bursts into your office with an emergency that they want to vent about. Resist the temptation to roll around in that stress. Step back and give people room to be grumpy, dramatic, or angry without taking their stress on to yourself. Just recognizing that you are in the midst of second-hand stress will make this easier to do. Underlying Stress It can be hard at times to pinpoint what is causing feelings of stress. When stress becomes the new normal, it may be from an underlying cause that is unrelated to the situation you’re in at the moment. Financial stress, troubled relationships, feeling unheard or unappreciated, or feeling resentful can make it difficult to enjoy the good times of life because they keep stress at a constant hum. There are times when the guidance of a professional is needed to be able to resolve underlying stress. None of us are expected to get through life alone, especially the tough spots! Unavoidable Stress Family strain, medical diagnoses, deaths of loved ones, things that are not our fault but we still have to deal with...it happens to all of us. This is when to call in those tried-and-true resilience tools like deep breathing, yoga practice, meditation, and exercise. We all experience stress in our lives that can’t be avoided; thankfully, we also have the tools that help us cope. When stress bubbles up, put it in its place. Then, choose the best response and enjoy a quicker path to smooth sailing.
0 Comments
On the second day of second grade, my younger son told me from the back seat of the car about his day. He told me about who he played with on the playground, which parts of his lunch he didn’t like, and that he asked a friend if he would be joining cub scouts this year.
But his friend didn’t answer, so he asked again. But this time, he said, he used his level three voice. Now, teachers may already know this trick, but I learned that, for second graders at least, level one voice is being quiet, level two is using your inside voice, level three is an outside voice, and level four is a voice you should only use in an emergency. He also demonstrated level five, which you can probably imagine for yourself. Sometimes it seems like life has volumes like that, too, doesn’t it? The last week of summer break feels like everything is at level three (or four!) with all of the scurrying around and getting things ready. Then, once everyone is back in their classrooms, life can feel like level one, nice and quiet, at least for a little while. When I think about these levels, I imagine a volume dial like you might see on a radio or an old television set. Click it clockwise one notch, and it gets louder. Click it again, louder still. Keep clicking, and eventually someone is going to holler from another room to ask you to please turn it down. It got too loud. In my life, I have a series of dials like this. There is a dial for exercise, a dial for healthy eating, a dial for sleep, a dial for socializing. I find I am constantly adjusting them to keep the level of noise in my life to one that I like. Imagine being in a classroom of second graders who are all talking at level two. Even with everyone using their inside voices, it’s likely to be difficult to hear things clearly. Some of them need to dial it back a little. If all of the children were talking at level three, it would be total chaos. Nothing could get done until someone stepped in and asked everyone to work at a lower level. And by “ask” I mean in the way that a second grade teacher would ask, not how it usually happens at my house, which is easily a level four! The approach we take to caring for ourselves has levels as well. There have been times in my life when I was trying to do everything at level three - 100% effort on every single thing. You can probably guess how that went. Life was way too loud, and while I was really busy, not much got done very well. There are also times when we are working at level one, and nothing is happening at all. The volume of effort is too low for any progress to be made. You can probably see by now where I am going with this. As your coach, I wonder if there are areas of your life and well-being that need to have the volume turned up or down, and which combination is the right level for you to feel your best. It’s tempting to jump into healthy goals at level three, doing all of the things all at once. We sign up for the new transformative diet program, buy all of the special foods, and for a week or two follow it religiously. But then, enthusiasm begins to wane as we find we are spending all of our time learning a new way of eating and cooking that it drowns out everything else. It can be fun at first to begin an exercise program at level three, gung-ho with new classes and workouts, only to be so exhausted by the end of the first week that we drive through for fast food or pick up something convenient to eat instead of cooking a healthy meal at home. Has this happened to you? It happens to all of us. It’s why most new year resolutions don’t make it to February: we are trying to live life with all of our dials turned up way too high. At what level are the important areas of your life? What do they need to be tuned to this week? It changes, you know. There are some times when meal planning and nutrition needs a lot of your attention, and that needs to be at a level three. That’s a good time to dial back some other areas to a one or two, so you can continue to do your best work. Healthy living is about balance - a balance of effort, pace, and progress. Adjust where necessary this week, and enjoy the hum of a balanced life. It was a Friday evening, and my friend came into the restaurant as if she was blown in by a hurricane. She collapsed into her chair, dropped her phone into the overflowing bag on the seat next to her, and grabbed a menu. “Finally, Friday! It’s my cheat meal, so I can eat whatever I want!” And she proceeded to order something that felt indulgent, scandalous, and satisfying. As she ate her reward for being good all week, I thought about the pendulum she was on, swinging from closely monitoring her nutrition and meals to eating whatever she desired in whatever amount she desired. I wondered if she was enjoying the ride or hanging on for dear life. I’ve done both, as I suspect you have as well.
As a wellness coach, I hear a lot of stories of being “good” during the week and “bad” on the weekends. It wasn’t long ago that my weekends felt like that, too. I was eternally ticked off that I seemed to always be taking three steps forward and two steps back. Weekends are a notoriously difficult time to be healthy and stick to a routine. The whole essence of the weekend begs for something different, a break from the norm. But if you are working hard on making progress on changing your health risks, consistency over the weekend can be the element that takes things to the next level. Over time, I have created some strategies to get over the weekend hurdle and come out the other end feeling much, much better. First, Decide What You Want. Yes, you get to choose! When you look forward you’re your weekend, how do you want to feel at the end? Energized? Relaxed? Rejuvenated? Prepared? Put some adjectives on your mood for Sunday night. Then, consider what needs to happen on Friday and Saturday in order for you to feel that way on Sunday. Also, consider what needs to not happen. You know what I’m talking about. Adjust the Dial. Once you know your desired outcome, it’s time to look at the big picture and determine how realistic that outcome is based on you are willing to do or not do to achieve it. I often hear of goals to not drink as much beer on the weekends. A goal of drinking no beer is not usually realistic, but a goal of drinking less beer is. Be honest with yourself about what that means for you, and adjust the dial to something that feels like you’re making progress without swinging the pendulum over too far. Do a Gut Check. Any good wellness coach is going to challenge you to go deep. Why is this outcome important to you? Why do you want to change your weekends? What are you missing out on if you don’t change? What will you gain if you do work hard for change this time? This is important, because when the going gets tough, you’ll need a reason that really pulls at you. Clear the Obstacles. Make it easy to achieve your goal by removing the obstacles in your way. If your goal is to maintain good nutrition, keep as many meals the same as during the week as possible, and log them in advance in a calorie tracker like MyFitnessPal. This gives you an opportunity to see potential slip points and correct for them ahead of time. Other tips:
I caught myself being obnoxious last week when I pulled out my phone to take a picture of my salad before I dug into it for lunch.
Surely someone in the restaurant noticed, rolled their eyes, and muttered something about our self-absorbed culture and obsession with documenting our lives. That’s fine, because I know something they might not: snapping pictures of the healthy things we do each day actually makes the world better. Yes, the entire world! That is why I encourage my clients to take a picture each day of something they do that promotes health and well-being in their lives. In a healthy living group that I run online, we have adopted this habit as our challenge for the month of June. Each day folks post pictures of treadmill screens, sneakers on pavement, healthy meals, yoga mats, morning coffee, and more. But I have to be honest and confess that suggesting this exercise is somewhat self-serving, because seeing the healthy things that other people inspires me to do something healthy, too. So I do, and I share it, and someone else is inspired. It’s a whole thing. And, it’s proven. In its simplest form, positive psychology research shows us that happiness is the catalyst for success, not the result. When coupled with optimism, happiness fuels success. You can read more about it in, “The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work,” by Shawn Achor, one of the designers and teachers of Harvard’s famous happiness course. We also know that sometimes we have to create our own happiness, and we can do that by intentionally looking for the good in life and simply acknowledging the productive things we do each day. Even the little things count, like drinking more water, going for a ten-minute walk after work, turning our phones off when we’re with other people, and ordering the steamed vegetables instead of the french fries. Notice those things. And take a picture. When you do, you’ll trigger a chain reaction of goodness. First, you will have the benefit of having done the healthy thing. Ding! Then, you will see evidence of having done it when you see the photo, which fuels a sense of pride and increases confidence that you can do more good stuff later. Ding ding! If you take the next step and share it with someone else, you further ingrain the habit as part of your lifestyle and personal identity. Ding ding ding! Three benefits in one healthy action - that’s a bargain! While you’re basking in the glow of your healthy habits, an inventory of examples is being created in the background. Scroll through your photo roll once in a while for a highlight reel of how you’ve spent your time. You’ll see the evidence of a healthy life being lived by someone: you! The best part is the impact that your actions have on others. How often have you been inspired by a photo, quote, or meme posted by a friend? Guess what? You are that for someone else, too. Your positive actions have an effect on your friends and family, paying it forward in a powerful way. Author and pastor Mark Batterson is famous for saying, “show me your habits and I will show you your future.” It’s a great reminder of the observation that is often attributed to Aristotle but is actually a paraphrase of Aristotle written by Will Durant in his book, The Story of Philosophy, that, “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” I propose one more step: show yourself your healthy habits. Look at them when they happen, after they happen, and on the days when you convince yourself that they don’t happen. Especially on those days! Look them in the eye and give them a fist bump of appreciation. And let the naysayers roll the eyes and mutter about how we’ve become a society obsessed with ourselves. You bet we have. Let’s use it for something good. “If you see the red barn, you went too far.”
Have you ever gotten directions from someone who includes signals that you messed up and need to correct the course? “If your soup is too salty, add a potato.” Learning from the experience of others can help us correct mistakes with solutions that someone else has already tested. “It’s all fun and games until your jeans don’t fit.” Oh yeah. Been there! Party time is over. Life is a constant cycle of learning new things and, if we’re smart, adjusting our behavior as we do. In fact, I often encourage my clients to, “do the best you can until you know better, and then do better.” But this week I wondered how often we pay attention to the signs that things are going well, instead of looking for signals that they are not. It happened in a conversation with someone who enjoys endurance running but has a habit of being so enthusiastic that she over-trains and either gets injured or experiences burnout. We discussed her life being like a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other, and she said she wants to keep her pendulum closer to the center. As we discussed how she could do that, I asked how she knows she is letting her pendulum swing too much. “I don’t sleep well even when I am tired,” she replied. “I don’t look forward to my runs, and I wake up starving in the morning like I didn’t eat enough the night before.” Then we switched gears, and I asked the other side of the question: how do you know when you are doing things well? That was trickier for her to answer. The signs that life is in balance are quiet, calm, and subtle, so we don’t notice them as much as the loud, frantic, obvious signs of imbalance. I wonder if we could rewrite those pieces of advice so they are proactive instead of reactive. “If you see the red barn, you are almost to where you will turn left.” Staying on track with health goals requires a bit of multi-tasking. You need to know where you are going, where you are, and what is coming up all at the same time so you don’t miss your turn. Apply this to your life by knowing what daily activities you need to thrive. For one client, when she does at least fifteen minutes of yoga or walking each day and drinks her water, she knows she is on her healthy path. The first sign of progress is that it’s been a long time since you’ve made a u-turn. “Follow the recipe, and season to taste.” Popular culture would have us believe otherwise, but there is not really anything new to healthy living. Eat lots of vegetables, drink water, exercise daily, and chill out. There is a recipe to healthy, balanced living, and it only really gets messed up when we think we know better and start adding in our own ingredients. The second sign of progress is that results are pretty predictable, and that happens when we follow life’s recipe and season to taste, rather than improvising and then having to correct it later. For my clients, that often means reducing the medications they take or not needing to add new ones because their lifestyle has improved. What a great signal of progress! “It’s all fun and games until your jeans don’t fit.” I know, I know….swinging on the pendulum is fun sometimes. Some of life’s best discoveries are found when we throw away the map and just go. If we always follow the recipe, we will never invent new ones. All of that is true. But. Let those exceptions apply to your creative outlets, cultural perceptions, political debates, social interactions, and other ways that you live. Definitely break the rules of conventional thinking! But keep your body intact. Signs of healthy, balanced living are all around us. Are you paying attention? Notice them this week, and enjoy a new pace. It’s funny sometimes how the universe sends us messages.
As I drove through town last week, minding my own business and going about my errands, I noticed the lyrics from a song playing on the radio permeating my thoughts and getting my attention. “You can't always get what you want You can't always get what you want You can't always get what you want But if you try sometimes you might find You get what you need” It was fitting because I’d been talking to folks about the obstacles they were encountering that were keeping them from what they wanted. In most cases, what they wanted was more control over their time so they could enjoy the benefits of exercise, healthy eating, and meditation for stress relief. But there was so much in the way —driving to the gym, prep time for healthy meals, and work responsibilities — and it seemed like there wasn’t enough time for it all. Part of my work as a certified wellness coach is helping people figure out how to navigate around those kinds obstacles so they can get to the good stuff, so I had been wondering what could be done to get them out of the way. Later that day I was having a snack, and part of my snack was my daily habit of four olives, each one stuffed with a clove of garlic. (No, my husband has not mentioned that I smell like garlic. Everyone asks me that.) As I ate my garlic olives, I remembered how they became part of my day. You see, I used to make a juice of carrots, oranges, lemon juice, and garlic cloves when I felt sick. I had done a bit of research and became convinced that raw garlic would boost my immune system so I drank it often during cold and flu season. But one time, I was out of carrots, and I didn’t have enough oranges, and I didn’t want to go to the store. Knowing that the garlic was the most potent and helpful ingredient of the juice, a lightbulb went off over my head. I skipped the carrots, oranges, and lemon juice and went straight for the jar of garlic-stuffed olives in the fridge. I didn’t necessarily get what I wanted, but I got what I needed. And then I smiled, because I had the answer to my clients’ problems about not having time for the healthy habits that seemed so complicated. If they could specifically identify the most beneficial element of the habit, the good stuff, they could probably just go straight to that part and skip all of the obstacles completely. The benefit of yoga can be captured with deep breathing, a guided meditation, and 15 minutes of quiet. It might not be what you want — an expert instructor guiding you through a class —but on days when you can’t get what you want, you can get what you need. The benefit of healthy eating is almost always in the vegetables and water that comes along with a meal. A healthy meal doesn’t need to be sustainably-farmed local organic super foods cooked for maximum nutrient absorption. You can get what you need from that meal — vegetables and water — pretty darn quick at any grocery store. A walk or jog in your neighborhood is just as valuable as a class at a fitness center. On the days when you can’t get what you want, get what you need. Just get that heart rate up and get the good stuff, and then get back to your other responsibilities a lot faster. The obstacles we see between us and what we need and want are not fixed, and in many cases they are not even real. This week, pay attention to when you get to the part of your healthy habits that you needed, and explore how the next time you can skip the obstacles and go straight to the reward. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you can get what you need. A few years ago, I overheard my son and a friend talking about an interaction they had with someone at school who was argumentative.
I listened to them discuss how frustrating it was when they could not end the debate, and smiled when I heard my son’s friend say matter-of-factly, “we just have to let go of the rope!” In his mind, engaging with the other student was like picking up a rope for a battle of tug-of-war. But he knew he didn’t have to play that game. He could stop pulling, drop the rope, and opt out of that stressful situation. I don’t know whether he learned that somewhere or came up with it on his own, but I was impressed and I hope that pragmatic, resilient perspective sticks with him into adulthood. Sometimes life feels like a tug of war, doesn’t it? With us in the middle being yanked from side to side as competing priorities try to gain our undivided attention, it can often seem like we never get to choose where our energy goes. Other times we are on one side of the rope, trying to pull experiences and achievements towards us. And of course, the harder we pull, the more invested we become, and the more determined we are to win the prize of having won. In fact, we spend so much time pulling on that rope, pulling experiences and achievements over the obstacles, over the rugged surface of resistance, through whatever gets thrown in our way to distract us from our course, that eventually we wonder why it has to be so hard. We think it shouldn’t be this hard. This week, I invite you to consider what you may be pulling on – or what is pulling you – and whether it is worth hanging on to. How do we choose what to pull? Some things are worth pulling into your life. When you are facing a health crisis, a scary diagnosis, or other urgent need to change your habits, it’s worth your energy to start pulling. Change is hard, and we are set in our ways. In this case, pulling may mean challenging yourself to choose a bag of apples at the grocery store and not get the caramel dip to accompany them. That is not easy to do! Pulling may mean not having a glass of wine when everyone else is. Difficult, but worth the effort when the payoff can change the trajectory of your life. As a wellness coach, I want change to be a natural process that happens when we are ready. In reality, there are times when we have to force change, and pull hard to get to a safer place. How do we know when to let go? Everyone loves a fighter! Cheering for someone who beats the odds and overcomes a challenge is inspirational, and being the person who inspires in that way is appealing to a lot of us (*ahem* me). But while some health goals are admirable and would be a great achievement, they come at the wrong time in our lives for the amount of energy they require. I learned this lesson personally when I tried to simultaneously run a wellness consulting business, care for a newborn, train for a marathon, and continue juggling all of the balls I already had in the air. The decision to let go was made for me when I began having physical signs of stress and, as a health professional, read the writing on the wall. I had to press pause on some of my business goals until I could devote more energy to them. I changed my running goals to something that gave me the challenge of training without the exhaustion of a marathon. I let go, so I could hang on to what was more urgent. Here are signs that it is time to let go of the rope: when you are feeling like it shouldn’t be this hard, and that you’re working really, really hard for results that are elusive at best, it’s time to let go. When you become resentful about working so much harder than others and not enjoying the process, it’s time to let go. When you realize you have been working on the same goal for a very long time and have not seen a change that warrants the energy you have invested, it is time to let go. When you begin to dread the time when you need to turn attention to the goal at hand and have to talk yourself into it most days, it is time to let go. Letting go doesn’t always feel like a responsible option, and sometimes it is just not possible. We can’t just let go of our responsibilities as parents, at work, or to loved ones who depend on us. We can let go of extracurricular activities we that we have chosen to take on, other people’s priorities that we have obligated ourselves to, and really great ideas that are more likely to thrive at a time when there is less competition for your attention. How do we deal with how it feels to let go? I’m sure you have heard this before: if you love something, set it free; what comes back is meant to be. There will be times when letting go is an indulgent relief, like deciding to not reach your goal weight but be happy five pounds heavier. There will be times when letting go feels like giving up, like when you have to say goodbye to someone who is a toxic influence in your life despite your best efforts to be friends. Mourn that feeling of loss, and remind yourself of what you gain as a result. If it is helpful, keep a journal where you can record the benefits you experience as a result of not pulling on that rope anymore. Look around and enjoy the life that you were missing when you were focused on the rope. One of my biggest fears as a wellness coach is that my clients will become impatient with the slow rate of lasting change, and it is tempting to let them grab a rope and pull because I want them to feel the triumph and thrill of accomplishing a challenge. I love cheering for the underdog, too! But the real reward comes in knowing when to let go, feeling confident that it will free you up to enjoy the life you were meant to have. Imagine that two neighbors decide that they each want to build identical houses on their properties. They call a contractor to come and advise them, and as the contractor begins to explain the process of building the houses, one of the friends interrupts. “Oh no, I don’t want you to use nails on my house,” he says.
The contractor is confused. “You don’t want any nails?” “No,” the man answers. “Nails are a pain. I don’t like them. I know other people who have built houses without nails, so I am going to skip that part.” “Are you sure?” the contractor asks. “Nails are one of my most valuable tools. Every house that I have built that has been satisfactory to my customers has included nails. Without them, you may not be happy with your house.” “I am sure,” says the man. “I don’t want to deal with nails, and I will not have them.” The contractor begins the process of building the houses for the two neighbors, and soon the man who wanted his house built without nails notices that his neighbor is already moving in. “Hey,” he says indignantly. “Why isn’t my house done yet? We started building on the same day. We have the same kind of house. But you’re moving in and I am still waiting for my house to be done. What gives?” The neighbor pauses. “Yes, we did start on the same day, but you decided you didn’t want to use nails. That’s a fine choice, but it’s going to take a lot longer for your house to be done. I used all of the tools that were available, so my house is done and I can move in now.” And he went inside and sat in his favorite chair and enjoyed his new house. In my work as a health coach, I often hear another version of this story. Many people have a weight loss goal, but as we begin to discuss the various tools and processes that go into weight loss, some of them stop me and say, “no, I don’t want to do that part.” It may be reducing empty calories from alcohol or soda, or paying attention to calories and logging them in a food journal, or eating smaller portions. Those things are a pain, and no fun, and they’ve heard about other people who have lost weight without doing those things, so they want to skip it. And that’s fine. You can certainly achieve a weight loss goal without doing the things that other people rely on for success. But soon, frustration sets in when their progress is slower than they expected. Sometimes, friends who decided to use all of the tools available to them reach their weight loss goals faster and maintain them longer, like when the man saw his neighbor moving into a new house even though they started building on the same day. We all have tools sitting around us, waiting to be used in pursuit of our goals. They usually exist because others before us have discovered that they work really well. If you’re struggling to make progress while others sail past you, it may be because they are using tools that you’ve shrugged off. That’s OK. The tools are always there, and it’s always a good time to reach into the toolbox and pick up a nail. Since the time that you woke up today until right now, when you are reading these words, your brain has had an estimated three thousand thoughts each hour. Even more now, because you’re thinking about what you just read. On average, we have about 60,000-80,000 thoughts per day!
How much thought do you give to your thoughts? I hear about them a lot in my work as a wellness coach, because thoughts are the main thing that get in the way of healthy living. I remind folks every day that they are the gatekeeper for their thoughts, and that they can choose which ones they engage with and which ones they don’t. I usually encourage them to engage with the positive ones and let the negative ones pass them by. And eventually, someone will say, “well I can’t just ignore my problems! I have to deal with reality eventually!” And, I wholeheartedly agree. Reality definitely needs to be dealt with. But your negative thoughts are not your reality. The problems your brain creates, the ones keeping you from living a vibrant and healthy life, are just passengers through the turnstile of your heart. Stay with me. Imagine that inside your heart is a turnstile, like in a subway station, and that your thoughts travel from your brain through your heart, and in order to do so they have to go through the turnstile. And most of your thoughts, the mundane ones like picking up bread from the store and remembering to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer, go through the turnstile with no problem. Click, click, click. But some don’t get through. Some of them become like an irate passenger who is not happy with things and wants to call the manager and make a big stink. These are negative thoughts, and they don’t go through. You’ll know you have one of these because you’ll feel tense, on edge, and irritated. It might say, “I’m sick of vegetables! I don’t like this!” Or, “I’m tired! I don’t want to exercise today!” It is very loud and demanding, and it wants you to stop what you are doing and deal with it. This is the part where some people decide they cannot follow through with their healthy plans: when an annoying thought throws a fit in their brain. But here’s a secret: you don’t have to deal with every single problem that crops up in the day. In fact, you can go to your imaginary turnstile, ask that irate passenger to please step to the side so the other passengers can get through, and set it aside for later, after you have done your other work. (And by “work” I mean eating vegetables and exercising.) Then later in the day, after you have done the things, you can go over to the waiting area to deal with the problems. But guess what? It is unlikely that you will find anyone there waiting for you. That’s because most of the thoughts we have during the day just need to click through the turnstile. Some go through easily, others yell and shout on their way through, but most of them just need to do that and they’re gone. The actual problems that we really do need to take action on will still be there at the end of the day, and you can take action and resolve it so it can also go on its way. Is there a line at your heart’s turnstile? Is there a thought that needs to step aside so the others can go through? You can still live healthfully while also having problems in life! This week, just keep the line moving. Click, click, click. There is a picture in a photo album of me, about 7 or 8 years old, standing on the back deck of my grandparents’ house, proudly holding a snake skin. I remember the day when I found it, walking in the woods with my grandmother. My grandparents lived in a suburb of Chicago, so their woods were different from the woods I knew from my home in Louisiana, and finding a snake skin made it even more exotic.
I remember her telling me that the snake shed its skin because it had outgrown it, and didn’t need it anymore. It was thin and brittle, and I put it back in the woods so it could decompose, because I didn’t trust myself with something so fragile. I’m one of those people who can’t have nice things. Fast forward to the present day, and I’m still finding snake skins. This time, though, they are pictures of boxes and garbage bags piled near my back door. Sometimes there is just one or two, sometimes more. They’re filled with shredded paper, old clothes, outgrown toys, and other things that get donated, recycled, or trashed. Like a snake, every few months I get the itch to shed my skin and streamline my patterns. I take the pictures because I like to document the positive things I do for my life, and getting this stuff out of my house feels really good. The same goes for mental “stuff.” I value efficiency and work to clear the physical and mental clutter of my life so I can spend my time in the moment. So, with the arrival of spring, it’s time to do inventory on which of my patterns are working well and which ones need to be shed. If this time of year has you wanting to do some spring cleaning of your life, some shedding of your old winter skin, here are some ways to get started. Start noticing your patterns. Sometimes we know off the bat when we have a nagging habit that needs to be discarded. Other times we are not aware of the ways we clutter up our paths until we take the time to see it. All change begins with awareness, so take some time to really notice how you go through your day and allow yourself to discover when something isn’t working anymore. Sometimes this means noticing when you hear yourself thinking, “I’ll do better tomorrow,” or “things can’t go on like this.” Those are signs that you’re done. It's OK if you don't like what you notice. You're going to change it soon. And if you don’t notice anything you want to change, then go on with your bad self. Everyone else, keep reading. Let that habit expire. Our habits and behaviors have expiration dates. Do you brush your teeth the same way you did when you were a kid? Do you still stand and talk on a telephone attached to the wall with a cord? No. We have changed our patterns and habits as the world has evolved and as we discover new and better ways to do things. When you notice that something is not working, it may have reached its expiration date and is ready to be retired. Now, that is sometimes easier said than done, because habits and patterns make us feel safe, too, even when they are not productive. It may feel silly, but if you’re having a hard time letting something retire, have a little mental retirement party for it. Thank it for its years of service, acknowledge the good things it did for you, and wish it well. Welcome the new. Sometimes the first day without that old skin feels liberating and exciting. Other times it feels weird and exposed. That’s OK. Things are allowed to be weird. To avoid the temptation to go back to your old ways, keep reminders nearby of what lies ahead. Visual reminders of your motivation for change, like a photograph, a post-it note on your computer screen, or even a temporary tattoo, can smooth the path while you get adjusted to your new routines. Keep it positive and fun — seeing a picture of the kids you want to run around with on the weekends can inspire you to not have that afternoon soda. A post-it note in your car with a keyword on it can remind you to drive to the gym or the park after work instead of home to the sofa. Spring is a time of new beginnings, and the arrival of something new means something old goes away. Shed your old skin and stretch out into a new set of habits. |
Archives
April 2024
Categories |