Hello,
It’s a common human experience, much as high achievers might wish to deny it: Some days are much rougher than most as far as remaining optimistic, productive and at peace. The human condition is such that we are in constant flux with incoming stimuli and internal emotional, physical, mental, psychological and spiritual states of being. Staying in an optimal state requires focused intention and attention at times…and even then, it is still a challenge.
When I sink to any state of pessimism or any other fear based emotional state there is usually some combination of these three factors at play:
- Being out of Love and gratitude (not accepting life as it exists in the present moment)
- The running of an old script (stuck in the past)
- Worry (jumping to the future in doubt)
Last week I wrote an article on the Nine Ingredients of Love and outlined the traits and behaviors we would live if being loving was our goal. Being patient, kind, generous, humble, courteous, unselfish, good-tempered, guileless and sincere represent the whole of love. Meaning, any piece or even several parts minus any one piece would not result in love at its highest and best: We would be loving (our self, God or another being) without our whole heart, mind and body. So if any one (of these nine ingredients) is missing from your present state, getting stuck is very likely…especially if we are unaware of what is missing.
Being ‘out of love’ keeps us out of gratitude. How can you be grateful for any small or even large blessing if you are in the midst of a negative state? Gratitude is a manifestation of love and with just a glimmer or flicker of it, true and deep gratitude, that is, the flame of love can be ignited.
The running of an old script: We all have them; words and phrases that may or may not apply at present. We run scripts over and over again. Like a vinyl record album (of the “olden” days) with grooves in them, our mind/memory is grooved with habitual thoughts and emotions running over and over again with or without our permission. Even when habits change and awareness comes into play, we sometimes revert to old scripts without even thinking about it. If we’ve had a habit of responding to certain things in a particular way, for a long time, responding differently will require continued awareness.
Worry: When we worry we are agreeing to fearfully, in thought and emotion, jump into the future. When we do that we negate the present moment. We are essentially saying the present moment is not so important; it’s not really possible to impact the situation at hand or more importantly, our state of mind if we were to remain completely present. We’re saying, NOW doesn’t matter and we “really” need to mentally and emotionally dwell on our concerns for what might happen in the future. We do all of this knowing full well that nothing will be resolved or improved with worry! It is a hard habit to break. Though we may know it doesn’t help intellectually, emotionally, avoiding the impotence of worry is a huge challenge for many people.
Here are some tips for dealing with these three factors:
- Grow your gratitude muscle by beginning a gratitude journal
- Praise God you are alive
- Change your physiology – sing, dance, jog or work out
- Find something each hour to be grateful for – do this for a few days each week
- Be still, breathe deeply and be in this present moment
- Stretch that awareness to a few minutes, then increase to 5 minutes, then 10….
- Practice finding this space of presence at least twice per hour for 5 hours straight
- Follow the path of your breath through your body
- Whatever exists at present is WHAT IT IS: Practice saying “I accept what is in this moment” BEFORE going into fix-it mode for the next moment of life
- Think of a few ways things can be worse and be grateful it isn’t
- Become aware of what you repeatedly say to yourself or to others
- Assess whether those scripts work for you and replace them if they don’t
- Do a 21-day program to replace the ineffective script with more powerful self-talk
- Commit to X number of hours and/or days to NOT WORRYING
- Catch yourself when you start and become still – breathe deeply and pray and/or meditate
- Give yourself 10 minutes per day as your “approved worry time and zone.”
A final thought to ponder: Sometimes getting stuck could be a way of being still…so be careful to not be too hard on yourself. If you are constantly doing and running around with a massive work-load, “stuck” becomes a matter of being still and getting comfortable with that is crucial for your continued health and productivity.
Wishing you all the peace and love you can give,
♥~