Love Yourself First: The beauty of choosing… Prioritizing the chaos this December.

We are at the beginning of December, within the eight weeks of holidays and all the chaos that goes during this time.  For me this week brings up all the parts of planning that took me years to address and learn to master.  AND, it is also this week every year that brings up the lists that can eventually tip me over. 

We all have routines in place for work, school (if we still have kids in school), house, food and all the day-to-day management issues.  Once the winter sets in, especially for us in the northern states, we have the addition of snow and ice, putting on snow tires, shoveling, added to what we normally manage.   When we add the holidays and all the additional perceived requirements, we have double stacked stress load on top of a busy schedule.

I was looking at what these additional holiday stressors can be for many of us. Whether we are celebrating Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, or Christmas, or all, there are gifts, shipping, meals, decorations, parties, school events, and kids out for vacation, all taking place in the first 25 days of the month… whew!

How can we step back from all these activities and expectations and learn how to take on only what we want or need during the holidays?  I have been scaling down for the last 15 years and discovered this really great tool that helps to identify what really needs to be done, what are the stressors, and how to prioritize what you really want to do.  It is in creating the options of choice into this busy time of the year that you can truly free yourself and begin to enjoy this time of year.   When you can step back and take a breath and take a look at what is in front of you, you can make decisions based on what role you want to play this December, and then choose this role with growing mastery.

This great tool is called a Brain Dump.  Here it is… Create a 15–30 minute space of uninterrupted time.  Get yourself a pile of clean blank paper and a pen or pencil you like, and a nice cup of tea, because you want to relax into this.  If you are concerned about time, set a timer for 30 minutes so you know there is an end in sight.

Next, take a few deep breaths and ask you brain to allow you to capture all the details that it is holding for you…. All the details.  Tell your brain you are going to dump all the minutia of to do’s, schedules, ideas, and concerns all on these pieces of papers.  This is really important: partner with your brain and let it know it can open the hatch and let it all go, and you will capture it. 

Now, start writing down all the details for the month of December you hold in your head.  It is key to let go of trying to categorize or sort anything, just write it all down as it comes up.  Let your mind wander and capture everything.  My list always jumps around between ideas for gifts, grocery lists, phone calls, RSVP’s, reservations and confirmations, pet food…. It sort of freaked me out the first couple of times, and then I started having a sense of humor and seeing just what I was actually holding onto.

Do this till you cannot find another thing to write down.  Till you feel completely empty and satisfied that you have captured absolutely everything.   Then put the pen down and put the piles of paper together.  Put the papers in a safe place and leave them alone for an hour or up to a day.  Take a moment to thank your brain and your body for letting go of all this valuable information.  When you do this, you can actually feel your body relaxing and your heart opening.  

Later, come back to the brain dump item at a time and put the information into categories, like a grocery list, or a list of phone calls to make, or what needs to be done by what date.  Once you have all the information captured into one place, now you get to take another deep breath and using the tool of the snapshot from last week, take a look at the balance of time at home, time out with friends, costs, calendar conflicts, and all of it, and with the clarity and freedom from carrying all this in your head, you now get to look at it objectively and decide what YOU really want to do.  Prioritize what really works for you, for you and your partner, you and your kids, and you and your finances.  Period.

With this space and objectivity you get to decide what role you want to play this year, what kind of person you want to be.  You get to decide on what level of frenzy you actually want to participate in, and what you can let go.

It is in our freedom to make choices that we get to create something different, something more heart centered and in line with what opens us up, with what allows space for something new to happen.  It is in our choices that we create opportunities.   So get out there and create, and have fun with it!

Next week we're going to address the ways to focus on wants, needs, and giving over the holidays. Look for this on Sunday evening, December 7th.

Denise

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Love Yourself First: Shifting In When Life is Chaotic on the Outside

Week 1:  Shifting In When Life is Chaotic on the Outside

Welcome to the first blog of seven aimed at bringing some awareness on how to put yourself first during this holiday season. Basically, from Halloween through New Years, we are constantly being invited, reminded, and inundated with our American culture about how to celebrate a series of holidays all crammed into 8 weeks.  It can bring out the stress in us, tension in our relationships, and become financially draining!  This blog will hopefully provide some insights on how you can step back, choose who you want to be, and how you would like to participate in this time of year. 

I have noticed some interesting issues about the holidays over the last few years.  They start earlier and earlier in the fall and keep escalating and telling us what we need to do to “rock” and outshine others this holiday.  In my work with parents, I am struck by a couple of key observations with my clients. 

First, we are struggling with codependence as a culture.   I define codependence as a reliance on what is outside of us: the external.  Think about it, we have learned to watch and scan the world out there, and react to it, copy it, or push away from it.  We watch for signs of what to do, when to plan, what to buy, what we need, and how we see ourselves.  The problem is, when we can only see ourselves in the external, we can be pulled and pushed in all the directions of others.  We can be swayed by others…. by our partners, our children, our co-workers, and by the media all too easily when we are reliant on these needs for our own sense of self.

The second observation is the way the holiday season is taking our reliance on the outside and moving us around like pawns on a chessboard.  We often are moved into places we may not want to be, or spending time with people, or spending money we do not really have or want to spend.  The holidays bring up an escalation of expectations, triggers and stressors that become one really yucky hot bed of emotions.  And we endure them, with a smile on our face, and wait it all out till after the New Years.

Do you feel this way?  Do you find yourself committing to more of these events and gatherings than you can realistically handle?  Is this based on obligations?  Or out of guilt?  Are you happy and excited with these reunions of family and friends yet at the end of the holidays, do you find you spent more than you wanted and wore yourself out? 

I have a quick exercise for you to consider.  It will only take a moment.   As you sit there reading this, settle in and get comfortable.  Relax your shoulders and your neck.  Put your feet on the ground and get yourself into a nice, rested space.

Ready?  Here we go….  Today is Sunday, November 23^rd, and there are 4 days till 
Thanksgiving. ….. only four days. 

Repeat to yourself: “Today is Sunday, November 23^rd, and there are 4 days till Thanksgiving. ….. only four days. “

Now stop.  Think about those four days ahead and then freeze.  Take a deep breath in and hold all you can of what you see and feel, then let it go as you exhale. 

Sit in this moment.

When you are ready, write down how you feel.  Can you identify any areas in your body that tightened up?  Where is this in your body?  Are there other places?

What images came into your head?  When you see these images, are they connected to any feelings in your body?  What memories, emotions and/or feelings arise?

Now that you have captured that snapshot: thank it and let it go. It has served you.

Give yourself a couple of these moments of breathe through out the week to create and grab an internal check in. You have created a way to stop the external and move inside. 

You have created a way to put yourself first.

This is a quick and easy way to do an internal check in when you are going into a week as packed full of memories, pains, joys, anticipations, and challenges as this one usually is.  If you can give yourself a couple of these little moments along the way to create and grab an internal check in, you will have a very valuable tool of information for what you can choose to do next.  You have created a way to stop the external and move inside.  You have created a way to put yourself first.

This is the last weekend before we all start the countdown to Thanksgiving.  Some of us will be alone, some of us will be working, many of us will be with family and friends.  Whatever it is you have planned, remember yourself in each day.  Take the time to open the door of your own feelings and let them guide you forward, so you can do the best you can with this holiday and celebration.

I will continue to take a deeper look at each week as we move towards the end of 2014 and offer some awareness and tools for you as you go along.  Next week we are going to explore how to prioritize the massive amounts of time and responsibilities ahead in the month of December, while honoring you and how you can support yourself.

Be well.  Love yourself first, so you can let that love spill onto others.

Denise

p.s.  Take this exercise with you over the next week and use it when you feel the need to stop and move inside for a moment.

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What do we do when our child is in a therapeutic program?

The life of a parent is often full of surprises and challenges.  One of our biggest challenges is how to reach out and get the support we need when our relationships, children, and family dynamics require us to shift and approach life differently.  This need goes up exponentially when you have an unhappy teen in the house tipping each of you into reaction much of the time.   Many of us have had to make difficult personal and financial choices to place our unhappy teen into a therapeutic program so they can get the support they need.  Although this is a stressful situation, there are also some of the hidden jewels and opportunities for us as parents in this process.

When we have a child acting out, with declining grades, accelerating behavior, challenging or breaking rules everywhere they can, they are indeed asking for help.  But what if it is more?  What if they are actually doing their best to throw off the thinly disguised façade of balance in the home?  What if they are doing all of this to teach us something?  Think about it.  They are desperately using their own life energy to get our attention.  More importantly, they are actually letting us know when we are inconsistent or indecisive, where we disagree with each other as co-parents, and how easily we can be split and manipulated.   They are exposing our weaknesses as parents.

For many of us, there is something in our family system that invites our kids to act out.  Our kids feel what goes on in the house.  They feel the unsaid words between us when we are not in agreement with each other.  They feel what we aren’t saying much more than what we do say.  To make it even more challenging, they feel our inner stories, the ones we can no longer see in ourselves, the unlived choices or desires of all the coulda, woulda, shoulda’s in our lives.  Our kids often feel our doubts and our fears, and they witness the struggles for power within our relationships.  It drives them crazy to witness our oblivious pretenses, and the frustration and pain they experience comes out sideways in school, with changes in lifestyle, and often very dangerous risk taking.

As a parent, when we get this, really get this, we have an opportunity to partner with our child.  We get an opportunity to co-create a different way of living, being, and interacting as a family and just as important, if not more, as a community of people under the same roof.  

We place our child into a program so they can push and shove and act out until they learn to trust that they are being seen and heard, and what they see and hear is honest and consistent.  We give them the gift of being with a group of people who can do something for them that we cannot.   Once they know they are in safe hands, they begin to loosen the grip of the battle energy they took on in the family, and they begin to unwind into a more relaxed and authentic version of themselves.  They are in a program with people who know how to be authentic and trust their gift of leading an angry adolescent into himself or herself.  I believe these staff members are the lucky ones for they get to witness the magic of a young man or young woman unfolding with every day. 

While someone else is helping your child calm down into their authentic self, you get to take the time to do the same for yourself.  Here is a real nugget for you.  Your child always knew who you truly were, inside.  They inherently see the inner you, and they chose you to guide them in this life, to lead them, to steward them into adulthood.

For us, we are left at home with an empty bedroom way earlier than we ever planned.  There is silence and the absence of drama, yes, and there is also the ache of the memory of seeing your child in the different rooms of the house, remembering the funny things they used to do, and images of our beautiful child keep popping into our head and hearts randomly throughout the days.  There is a grief that takes over that life will not be the same.  It is true, it will not.  It will not ever be the same…. and this is a good thing.

As parents, we hope we are doing a good job.  We hope we are doing a better than we probably are, and we hope no one else sees us struggle.  We struggle with many of the new roles we take on such as financial providers, organizing other people, facing lots of surprises and challenges, and adults who understand life.  Who actually understands life?  When we are really honest with ourselves, we know we really don’t understand, we just keep trying to do the best we can.  We do know there are layers and many forms of self-denial about how lost we really are.  Perhaps we are good at making money, but suck at relationships?   Maybe we bury ourselves in all our relationships so we don’t have to feel our own feelings?  Maybe we disconnect from all of the daily emotions and feelings and just keep our head down to keep up with the frantic pace of life?  Whatever it might be, our child witnesses this.   All our children witness this.

With each passing year, they witnessed you layering up and hiding your authentic self behind work, stressful responsibilities, mistakes in relationship, and the righteousness of your ego trying to hold all of life together.  They have watched you disappear in to yourself. 

So now, with the gift of time in a program, knowing our child is safe and growing, we get a chance to hit the “redo” button of our life and take a look at who we are, who we wanted to be, what we like, and what we don’t like.  We get the opportunity to get to know ourselves again.   

You have the opportunity to match your child’s courage as they take on self-exploration, vulnerability, and emotional pain.   They have to be willing every minute of every day to experience a different way of doing relationships, of facing their snarky behavior as a cover up, and being called out on their own honesty.   There is fear, pain, and such exposure, week after week, yet they learn to trust this self-discovery and know how good it feels to get to the other side of this pain.  They learn that self-discovery is the truest thing they know. 

So the answer to what do we do when our child is in program?  We step in to ourselves.  We match our child’s courage with our own courage.  We demonstrate a willingness to submit ourselves to the same courageous path our child is on.  We use this opportunity and challenge to dig deep and go after the stories, the hidden truths.  We embrace our own  personal work with courage.  We learn to step into our most authentic self.  We begin again to see ourselves with honest eyes.  And we share this journey at the same time as our child, independently, in our own way. 

Then, when we visit our child, there is the opportunity to share honest selves with honest selves. Honest journeys with honest journeys.   This is the gift.  This is the hidden jewel, for when a small family unit, just like a small community, gathers together in truth, anything is possible.  The world becomes a beautiful place of change and growth. 

You are invited to use the precious time of program to step in…. 

Enjoy the journey!

Denise

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Creating Ways to Remember Who I AM

There are times when we “forget” who we are and struggle with how to reconnect with the magical being we know ourselves to be. 

During these times of forgetting, or feeling ourselves in reaction to the world around us, it is necessary to step out of the chaos and recalibrate ourselves back into the ability to be present and respond to life.  

There are often signals happening to let us know we are neglecting to support ourselves and we have forgotten to care for our roots.  This may look like too many overcommitted days, for others it is a series of emotional overwhelms, and for others, it might be the physical communications of aching bodies or the onset of feeling a cold approaching.   In order to make deep and affective changes in our ability to remember, we need to train ourselves to do it differently.  We need to spend some time nurturing our roots so we can stretch and grow. 

I suggest the best way to do this is when we are away from the fray of work and activity.  Use these quieter times to find our point of stillness, and slowly re-introduce this calm mastery into those areas when it is most difficult to maintain or remember. 

Here is an example.   When I was younger, with three adolescent children involved in many school and after school activities, it was easy to forget how to stay centered and in my mastery.  It was imperative to find time in the day before the chaos started after work and school, to create a balanced, centered me.   Time was difficult to find in my busy schedule.   Yet, I needed time for self nurturing, which made it the easier to bend and respond to the needs of clients, family, my own scheduled events, and stay in balanced energy. 

To create time for myself, I walked.  I got up early, before the rest of the house was awake, and took the dog and myself for a long walk.  We did a 3 mile loop, down the street to the river trail.  This took me along both banks and across two bridges, and back up the steep trail to home.  I made sure there were no distractions with me, no phone, no music, no one to talk to…just me.  With each step I let go of the lists in my head and released the monkey mind, let it untangle from all the pressure of the day ahead.  The only focus was on my breath, my footsteps, the trees and sounds of the river, and the colors of the sunrise.  I took time at the first bridge to stop and breathe out all the thoughts that did not work for me, giving them to the river.  Sauntering back to the house at the end of the walk, there was fullness in my soul and I was in my body and at peace….Alive, alert, and open to what lie ahead.  I felt empowered and curious about the day.  I felt…..that was the most important part.  I felt my body and my presence in it.

I successfully created a bridge from my true self to my outer life by anchoring myself deeply and feeling the roots of my essence deep into the earth.   I taught myself with each day, with each walk, that I was here, solid, open, and ready for what was possible that day like a tree in full bloom. 

As we uncover the depth of our skills and gifts of the light and love we have inside, we will have challenges to how we hold our light open and be truly receptive to being the vehicle we know we are.  Whether it is family and kids, or work, health, or the constantly shifting energies of these times we can reach down into ourselves and coax our true self forward.  This takes intention and practice.  Here is a way to break it down into simple steps

Steps for creating consistent light.

1.       Notice when your stressors are present and where chaos resides in your day.  Is there a pattern?

2.       Identify the ways that stressors can create chaos and how it feels in your body and what your triggers might be.  Is this physical within your body, environmental, or person oriented?

3.       Notice where there are spaces of time available around these stress areas.  What times are under your control?

4.       Start small and create some free, non stress time to cultivate internal peace, confidence, and trust in your gifts.  Pay attention to what opens you up to inner peace and what relaxes you into your body.

5.       Practice the tools of creating peace and transfer these tools into the stressful times.  Transfer your peace into the chaos.

6.       Pay attention.  Notice what blocks you from transferring the peace.  Notice what calms the chaos.  Notice, adjust, build, and feel.  

7.       From this place of balance, hold steady and step further into leadership, step into your full ability of being.                                                          

As we ground in the tools that stabilize us and use them, they hold us steady.  When we are steady, we are open and receptive beings of light, shining out in all directions….like the glimmering leaves on a beautiful tree, dancing in the sunshine, spreading joy to all that encounter us.  To me, this is the essence of being a fully present being.

Shimmer on.

Denise 

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