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Resilience of The Human Spirit

May 13, 2013 Read 17 comments and add your own

How do they do that?

resilience of the human spirit

Having worked with so many people who have undergone unspeakable trauma, I’ve heard stories of amazing survival skills. It is surprising what we can endure and survive. I think many of us agree that we can’t imagine what it was like to be kept as prisoners in a house for 10, or almost 10, years. We let our minds go there for just a moment, it becomes overwhelming and we skirt away.
We know that so many people who have walked this earth endured horror beyond our worst dreams and within that space, figured out how to live the unlivable. Survive 17 days in a crumbled factory. Survive a concentration camp. Emerge whole and full of light after being sexually, emotionally, or physically abused. Keep alive during combat.

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Finding Balance In A Turbulent World

December 17, 2012 Read 30 comments and add your own

finding balance is a turbulent world

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore

 

Finding balance this week may be tricky with all the activity going on. Still tons of people reading and writing about the tragedy in Connecticut, some people stressing over making the holidays special, and many more just trying to survive them after a difficult year of loss or tribulation.

What helps one person make sense of awful, may not be what another needs to hear. In a recent chakras workshop, the presenter told a story about a guru who told one student one thing and the next student the opposite. A third student had overheard both and asked the teacher why he was inconsistent. The teacher said that he taught what each student needed. “One was too far right, and I had to tell him to go left. The other was too far left and I had to tell him to go right in order to be balanced.”

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Defending Anger, Angrily: “I Am Not Angry!”

September 20, 2012 Read 16 comments and add your own

Today I am pleased to have a guest post by Galen Pearl of 10 Steps to FInding Your Happy Place and Staying There. I have been reading her blog for close to a year and have appreciated her honesty and compassion for herself and others. Her pearls of wisdom are never short of luster. Today she is talking about feelings…

“Feelings, whoa whoa whoa, feelings….” 

Feelings, Roger Whittaker

I Am Not Angry!

Galen Pearl 10 Steps to finding your happy place and staying thereYears ago, I was a very uptight person. I didn’t see myself that way. I saw myself as being in control, of myself and of, well, everything else. I never got upset, never cried, never asked for help or let anyone see if I was struggling. Of course, I never struggled. Thinking back, I never really laughed, either, not a deep belly laugh.

I had a friend who was short on tact, but always told the truth as she saw it. She observed that I was an angry person, very angry. “Seething with rage” is how she described it, along with “barely contained,” and “always on the brink of exploding.”

How did I respond to her assessment? “I am not angry!” Continue Reading →

Don’t Jump Ahead of Yourself, Just Be

July 12, 2012 Read 36 comments and add your own

let go of guilt, just allow yourself to be, just beDid you ever feel overwhelmed about being ahead of yourself? Worried that you might not get better, that you can’t figure out how to love yourself, that you can’t see what others see, that it is just not accessible to you?  Did you ever worry that you did not know what to do to make yourself feel better, which direction to go, and how to get there? All the while desperate to go, but hopeless that you’ll be unable to? Scared that you are not skilled enough to handle it, frustrated that you always mess up so why bother trying?  Then, feel an all encompassing failure at this lack of achievement?

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Harry to Dumbledore: Has this been happening in my head?

April 12, 2012 Read 15 comments and add your own

Reposting this old article for my new readers! The movie was on my mind as I referred to Harry Potter in my Anxiety Schmanxiety Blog yesterday.

“‘Tell me one last thing,’ said Harry. ‘Is this real? Or has this been happening in my head?’

Is this real or has it been happening inside my head?

Dumbledore beamed at him and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry’s ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.

‘Of course it is happening inside your head Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?’” Continue Reading →

Entitlement and Work Ethic: Anxious Kids Need Skills in Doing Hard Things Part II

March 22, 2012 Read 30 comments and add your own

Being a parent today is no walk in the park. Especially with anxious kids.

We are up against commercialism. Every advertisement on TV, billboards, radio, in movies, webpages, (on practically every surface we see) touts the message that we deserve things, just because we are us.  Continue Reading →

Noticing What is Precious: Exploration of “Absent but Implicit”

February 6, 2012 Read 13 comments and add your own

Absent But Implicit treeThe following is a excerpt from my new e-Book Exploring Michael White’s Concept of the “Absent But Implicit”: A Line of Inquiry That Turns Complaints Upside Down. 

In the context of everyday conversations, it is all too common to hear expressions of complaint, pain, frustration, worry, and/or anger.  In our culture, we are quick to point out what we don’t want and what we don’t like.  These expressions, and the thoughts that go with them, plague our lives, infiltrating our minds and our bodies, making us feel lonely, helpless, scorned, despairing, and even physically sick. Continue Reading →

MLK: Addressing Your Anger

January 15, 2012 Read 26 comments and add your own

Martin Luther King Jr. Addressing angerAddressing Anger is the 5th on the list of 10 things to do in 2012. (I skipped “4. Understanding Impermanence” but I’ll get to it soon.)

A teacher was telling me the story of her student who, when learning about Martin Luther King Jr., asked her, “Even after all of the things that happened to him, why is he always smiling?” Continue Reading →

Scared=Sacred: Today, find me on Capricious Yogi

January 5, 2012 Add your comment

Today I write about the relationship between being scared and what is sacred. They are intertwined indeed!

Thanks Rachel Wallmuller for inviting me to your awesome blog Capricious Yogi!

Here’s the beginning…

“In those times when I am surrounded by fear, my mind is backwards, inside out and upside down. I look outside myself for light because the clouds inside me block my view. All I see is darkness and fret and vulnerability in there. I feel scared down to the core of my being- a dread that is so materialized that I can feel it coursing through my blood. Panic right into the core of my being.”

Read Scared=Sacred on Capricious Yogi

 

More Tips and Tactics of Letting Go

December 9, 2011 Read 5 comments and add your own

Need more help letting go?

I had lots of feedback (online and offline) from the post Let It Go, Let It Go, Let It Goooo. I, as usual, have more thoughts not the subject. (Can’t keep me quiet.) Speaking is like letting go for me:)

Some of you might have missed the comment thread so I wanted to take this opportunity to respond in this post:
Rich G says:

Letting go is not something that we “do”. Not in regard to the deep, emotionally connected, heart engaged sorts of things that we may be holding onto. Yes, we can stop gripping it tightly and possessively, that is an active choice we can make, and an experience we can learn to breathe into. But the deeper letting go, the deeper releasing – that happens of its own accord and

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