Defenses

~don’t answer immediately…

In that moment ask yourself “what do I need to do right now?” Answer and defend myself? Nod my head and say nothing? or offer “that won’t work for me” or maybe “hmmmm….” 

or someone is expecting you to defend yourself on the spot

Often there isn’t alot we need to do in the moment… you’re offering a response that is often satisfying in the moment to your friend and buys you time to change the subject.

The Perfect Plan

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Funny thing about our best intentions, they don’t always turn out as we had hoped.

 We make all sorts of plans.  We may carefully plan out every detail, orchestrating it “perfectly”. We make plans for our careers, for having a family, saving for a house, taking a vacation. Plans are good… they give us direction, help us to form a path, set a course.  They can even motivate us to bring our ideas into form.

Often we expect that our plan will unfold exactly as we envisioned.  Sometimes we hold fast to those ideas. We get upset, disappointed, even depressed when things don’t go our way; when our plan goes awry. We expect that our end goal should turn out exactly the way we had pictured it.

Usually, that isn’t the way life goes. There are obstacles along the path. The road we travel twists and bends. Sometimes our journey is steep. We grow weary making the climb. We feel like giving up. Maybe we do give up.  

Do not despair. The bumps along the way are what make the journey interesting and colorful. Those obstacles are what make our diligent effort, works of art. They help to mold our vision to a form that we could never have imagined and yet the results,oh so much more exquisite than our plan ever was!

The next time your well laid plan feels that it is unraveling, take a slow, deep breath. Ease up, slow down. Know… trust, that your plan is coming together in just the right way and just the right timing.  You do not have to effort so. Step back, look at the bigger picture, allow your life to unfold.

Exploring your dreams

Exploring your dream the next day or even later in the week can help you to understand what your dream is telling you about yourself, your life, and can aid in the choices or decisions you make.

Questions to ask yourself as you work with your dream…

* When did I have the dream and what was going on in my life at the time?          ~Dreams often come in response to our current life situations.

* What stands out to me in the dream~ what catches my attention, what seems most interesting in the dream or what do I want to know more about? (i.e. what characters,images, and feelings?)

* What significance (meaning) do I attach to those things that stand out to me?

* What feelings do I recall experiencing during the dream? What feeling(s) was I aware of upon waking?

Include your answers, beneath the details of the dream you have recorded previously in your dream journal. As you deepen your exploration of the dream over time, this information will be a good baseline to jump off from.

Dream Work

To begin a dream practice, it is helpful to record the dreams you have. Expecting yourself to remember your dreams after you go about your day… even when it’s been a particularly vivid dream that you are sure you’ll remember… is a tall order.

Getting Started~

To get started on your practice, here are some basic ideas regarding beginning a practice in dream exploration.

Setting the stage:

1. Your desire to learn more about your dreams is a good place to begin. It is a“call” to explore more about yourself and ignites your dream world.

2. Set a goal (intention).Your goal can be simple, such as, “I want to remember my dreams upon waking”.  By forming your intention it stimulates your psyche (the place where dreams come from).  In essence, you communicate with that part of you that dreams, that you are receptive to more information about your dreams and how they can help. This simple attention to your dreams aids with your ability to remember more dreams.

3. Record your dreams as soon as possible upon waking.

A simple spiral notebook @ your bedside is an essential tool. Upon waking you will want to write down as many details of a dream as possible. It usually works best if you record the details before you move from your bed. Most dreamers find that as soon as they get out of bed the dream pieces begin to fade. Even dreams that we are sure we will remember because they are so vivid have a tendency to slip away as we move about. It isn’t unusual to go back to sleep and vow to remember the dream upon waking, “because it’s so clear”. Our efforts often meet disastrous results. Think of the information that surfaces in your dreams as a gift … once it surfaces, it’s best to harvest, lest it slip back into the recesses of your unconscious. It may resurface again in the future but why wait for it to return; it’s available now, enjoy it!

4. Review your dreams upon waking or soon after. This helps to keep the dream fresh and aids in remembering more of the details.  If you don’t get to them right away… review them as soon as you can. Your recall will improve the more you practice.

Drop everything! I found as I continued to explore my dreams that insights often came to me unexpectedly @ all times of the day and night. I needed to get into the habit of going directly from my bed, or shower, or meditation, to a sheet of paper or the computer to put my “aha’s” down or I would forget the insights I had. Get into the mindset that you will drop everything to write down your aha moments. Attending to your nighttime dreams provides you with a larger understanding of yourself and can be used as a guide to living your life!

Dreams

Your night time dreams are a treasure trove that can reveal keys to solving everyday problems, obtaining a deeper understanding of yourself, and even unlocking your hidden potential.

One of the problems most face is that we don’t understand the language of dreams.

There are many dream books written that explore what your dreams can mean, in general. But a deeper study of your dreams and personal dream language will help you to unlock meaning that is specifically for you.

In this way you can explore your dreams as an adventurer. A rich tapestry unfolds before you like an intricate map, directing you in deeper ways, enhancing your ability to cope on a daily basis and to shape your future .

You have only to listen, inwardly and learn to understand your very personal dream language.

Complacency

Complacency (and when things are going well for us)~ offers a resting place for rejuvenating our spirit but I’ve found the most significant changes come from our pain.

Getting necessary support or being with our emotional pain in stillness and quiet often moves us forward into our new beginnings in life.

Our deepest personal growth emerges in the crucible of attending with compassion and consciousness to our emotional depths.

Saying No

It’s hard to say no.  If you’re like me… you were raised to be “nice” to most everyone.  It was the polite thing to do… people would like you better if you were easy to get along with… you wouldn’t “rock the boat”… and above all saying “yes” put a smile on every-one’s face. We liked that. It meant people approved of us.   No one told us… people may take advantage of us… they often wouldn’t return the favor… we’d be “yes men/women”… we’d feel burnt out!

It’s hard to say no ‘cuz friends might get mad @ us.  Family members may turn their backs on us. In some cases, we may lose those people we like/love.

It can feel scary to consider doing it differently. It would mean we’d have to risk those benefits we believe we gain from “pleasing” or “being nice”.  Those benefits often give us the false sense that we aren’t alone; we have friends.

If we take a closer look though… people get mad @ us or feel hurt all the time anyway… even when we think we’ve done all we can to make them happy! Our well intentioned pleasing can end up making us feel bad or as if we can’t do anything right. We may end up feeling resentful.

It can feel challenging to change our habits.  It can feel frightening or uncomfortable.  We ‘re all afraid to face the possibility we may end up alone.

If we accept the challenge and stop @ least some of our “yes man/woman” behavior, we often see that those we try to please are not really good friends anyway. Good friends will try to work things out with us. They may get mad or upset with us but, in the long run, a good friend will meet us half way, ask us what’s going on. We’ll get the opportunity to negotiate the relationship so that it’s equal, @ least most of the time, for both parties.

Are you up to the challenge?

Self Love

So, we talked about doing something nice for yourself today… putting yourself @ the top of “your list” of people we show our love to.

Are you working on your list? Hope so!

Do something nice for yourself today! Not sure what? Here are a couple of suggestions:

*take a nice long, hot shower (or bath)

*a leisurely walk in the crisp, morning air

*go ice skating (great way to meet a new friend!)

*go snow shoeing (never done it?… give it a whirl!)

*catch snow flakes on your tongue~ let yourself laugh

*make a batch of cookies~ using all of your senses to enjoy the auroma, sounds  and tastes of the event.

*watch part or all of the super bowl today… don’t like football? Watch it for the commercials or tune in for the half-time entertainment!

*dance in your own living space~ put some music on and move without giving it a second thought~ let go of self-consciousness.

*go see Avatar~ great flick! or stay in, make popcorn and rent a movie.

*Do something new~ ANYTHING! ~ try something you’ve been wanting to do… break out of your old pattern.

*** What do you enjoy doing? Feel free to join the blog with your ideas!

Love

February~ the month of Love… self love, that is! Don’t despair if you are without a mate. Start with taking an inventory of your own life. Before worrying about what others think of you, ask yourself , “How do I feel about myself? Do I love who I am? Do I like who I am? If the answer is no… not really… then start there!

You love others best when you love yourself first. You don’t have to always like everything about yourself… you are human… you have flaws… we all have flaws. But self love is essential. You cannot truly love another until you love yourself. This is not a self centered or egotistical attitude, it is a necessary element of being a solid person first; a person of substance; a whole person. Someone who has self confidence, self respect, and a strong self esteem has a lot to offer friends, family, and the community as a whole.

We long to be loved by others… and to be in love.  But, we forget that we need to be @ the top of the list. Loving yourself… feeling good about who you are, inside and out… carrying yourself in a way that reflects healthy self esteem radiates a natural attractiveness to others. It states “I feel good about me and I think I have something to offer you/others”.

So how to start? Like I said… take an inventory. Make 2 lists…side-by-side. Title one: things I like/love about myself and the other things I’d like to improve/change.  Make a list of 5 bullet points under each heading that reflect your responses.

Often the list of things I like is harder to come up with. If need be, ask a trusted friend or relative to offer suggestions. Helpful hint: Look @ what you admire or like about a friend, teacher, etc. What we are attracted to in others is a reflection of us~ we may not recognize it in ourselves but it does reflect qualities we have the potential to develop.

Keep each list even with the other… if you have 5 things you love… come up w/ 5 things to improve~ this will help you to balance the negative with the positive. If you can only come up with 3… start there.

We can’t remove or rid ourselves of the parts of self that we don’t like but we can learn to love those parts. Try thinking of someone you like and some of the flaws in them that you are aware of. Do you judge their flaws? Probably not. We usually cut friends (and even strangers) way more slack than we cut ourselves. Try treating the part of yourself you don’t like the same way you treat your friend… be gentle… offer compassion to all parts of yourself. You will feel the difference… your self esteem will improve.

Start with the first bullet point on each list. Make small, manageable goals to work toward improvement (not perfection:) for your the first bullet point. Balance it with reviewing daily the items you recorded in the column labeled things I like about myself. When you feel ready to move to the second point, do so, but don’t overwhelm yourself by working too fast or by trying to improve everything @ once. Remember…  the tortoise won the race!

“Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.”
-Alexander Smith

Coping with Depression

It’s common to feel more depressed during the shorter, darker days of the year. We don’t go outdoors as much;  we get less fresh air and sunlight then usual and most of us exercise less. Due to weather, we may be less physically and socially active; our mind, body and spirit process these changes differently.

Symptoms of depression include:

Crying more than normal or uncontrollable crying; feeling sad, low, or depressed  more than usual;

Changes in appetite~ loss of appetite or eating more than normal; weight loss or weight gain;

 Difficulty with sleep~ having trouble falling asleep; difficulty staying asleep with problems going back to sleep; difficulty getting out of bed in the morning; early morning waking; fatigue (even when you’ve had enough sleep); lack of energy.

negative thinking; ruminating, circular thinking, obsessive thoughts.

loss of interest in things you typically enjoy;

 isolate more; quit calling people, missing work, turn down invitations we would otherwise accept, make excuses to not go out, etc.

lack of pleasure in most things; preoccupied; bored; feel “dull”; lack luster.

difficulty concentrating, paying attention or focusing.

increased anxiety; depression can be accompanied by feelings of anxiety including heart palpitations, shortness of breath, tight chest and even panic attacks.

suicidal thoughts; thoughts of self harm.

What you can you do to reduce depression?

 Increase your activity/exercise; join a local YMCA or Recreation Center class(they offer lower rates if you’re short on funds~don’t be afraid to ask); walk indoors @ the local mall; dance (in the privacy of your home or @ a club); sing(in the shower, in church, in the car); make a snow angel (or a sand castle, or a finger painting); play (at all of the above and…card games, board games, with a child, with dolls, trucks, or trains); be a child(@ heart).

***Get outdoors once a day~ even in nasty weather. Environmental studies show that exposing the backs of our hands and cheeks to 15 minutes of “daylight” (not necessarily sunlight) decreases depression! Our skin, in those areas, absorbs the ultra violet rays and  improves mood.

Increase your “people” contact; phone a friend, go out for a cup of coffee or lunch (even by yourself!), join a local support group, take up a class you have interest in, learn something new, go to the library. Google activities in your area… see what’s out there.

Don’tisolate by spending too much time on the internet or tv. Make a new friend. Play with your pet or someone elses. Get a pet.

Eating a balanced dietimproves mood. Don’t fill up (reward or punish yourself) on empty calories, ie. junk food. This backfires and will cause your blood sugars to crash~ taking your mood with it. At the same time, even if you have a low appetite, eat 3-6 small, healthy meals/day. This will improve your energy and enhance our mood.

Watch a comedy or even read a comic book! Humor improves mood and our mental health

Meditate; indoors, outdoors; see the blog posted on 12/10/09 for more suggestions.

Pray; in a church, in nature, alone or with a friend.

Journal; write about your feelings; use a simple notebook to vent what’s happening in your life; make columns~ one titled “problem” and one titled “possible solutions”~ turn your imagination loose!

Limit alcohol intake~ alcohol is a depressant, even though it may make you forget your problems or misery temporarily, it increases depression in the long run.

Seek professional help when you need it~ there are lots of ways to get help from counselors, therapists, doctors, self help groups, therapy groups, local organizations, pastors, clergy, and prescribed medication; to name just a few. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s actually a sign of strength; not weakness.

If you’re feeling desperate or think you may harm yourself, call 911 or go to a hospital emergency room immediately.

You do not have to go thru this alone; help is within your reach!