If you just try one of these skills once a day for three weeks, your brain will grow whole new circuitry of courage and positivity.
You may even emerge from the Trump/GOP negativity down the road and feel you became a much happier, stronger, more heart-centered person because of it.
This is heart warrior training. It's how a lightworker personality type becomes a heart warrior.
You are a sensitive empathic person. These times have been brutal for you. But there is a way to become stronger without putting your head in the sand. You could be come more heart and soul-centered than ever.
This is boot camp. It works the same as exercise, in that at first you have to force yourself to do it once a day. But soon, your body (actually it's your brain) wires up the new habit and you find yourself wanting to do it every day. You change from the inside out.
So first understand how the brain works. It grows new circuitry, depending on what you expose it to. Like a vacuum cleaner, the brain sucks up whatever you feed it and then it wires it and feeds it back to you. So feed it positivity. Not pink clouding, but positive attitude. Feed it courage too.
Here are three skills to get you started. Choose one and try it for a week:
1. Gratitude. (If you like gratitude, check out our previous topic on Gratitude that has lots of content).
When you feel grateful, you feel blessed. You feel lucky. You feel happy. You can't be depressed or stressed and grateful at the same time.
So, think of five things you are grateful for each day. Do it right now! Write them down or tell them to someone or say them aloud. Do it! Make it something different each day. Then begin to notice if your brain starts feeding you, without your even trying, thoughts of things you are grateful for.
Second check out this heart-arrestingly beautiful 5 minute video on gratitude. In it the filmmaker Louis Schwarzberg and the narrator, a monk named Brother David, take you through one whole day of gratitude. You will travel around the world and meet wonderful people in the process. This is a big happiness booster.
Third, try throwing gratitude at the things you are worried about. When the GOP confirmed Kavanaugh, I was grateful that the hearings and the outrageous confirmation made the #MeToo movement much deeper, more widespread and stronger than ever. It did.
So try five new things each day for 21 days. See what happens to your mind.
2. Find meaning in your situation.
Exercise: Try finding a silver lining in a situation that upsets you. Then continue doing this once a day for different situations for three weeks.
When people are able to make meaning out of a situation, no matter how traumatic the event, research shows that they begin to rise from it, and even thrive from it.
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl developed a field called logotherapy (meaning therapy). You might want to read his short book Man's Search for Meaning about his four years as a prisoner in Auschwitz during WWII. He found that if we can find meaning in our situation, we can actually thrive rather than be crushed by trauma. He was right.
Comedian Dave Chapelle used this practice when he found meaning in the murder of Emmett Till.
Exercise: Think of a situation you've been through that has been very difficult. Maybe it's personal or maybe it's this political situation. Now see if you can find a silver lining in it. See if you can find meaning in it. This doesn't mean that we are saying the situation happened for a reason. That would be taking the concept of meaning therapy too far and could end out blaming the victim. No. I'm just asking you to find a silver lining in the situation. How could that situation be seen in the context of something meaningful and even wonderful?
After the war was over Frankl used to tell his audiences that they were the reason he survived. He would tell them that he survived the unsurvivable conditions of Auschwitz so he could teach audiences about the importance of finding meaning in that situation.
3. Mindfulness
Mindfulness is being present with yourself.
It's being wholly alive at any given moment.
When you are mindful, you are in the here and now. Take a breath. Go ahead and do it right now. Then breathe again and feel that blessed air going into your body and flowing through you like a blessing. Feel your toes. Notice your tushy pressing against whatever you are seated on. Breathe some more. Okay you are here now. Finally you are one with your Self if just for a moment. The more you can stay with your Self in this way, the more peaceful and whole (and healthy) you will be. Try just one minute of mindful breathing twice a day.
Check out this free app Insight Timer to set up meditations every day. My favorite is a falling asleep guided meditation by Jennifer called Yoga Nidra for Sleep. There are thousands of guided meditations on the app, and music if you just want music, and a timer that rings a bell. Another app for your desktop is Stillness Buddy that can interrupt your time on the computer and ask you if you'd like to take a meditation break. You set the timing. If you click, yes, then it freezes your screen and plays music while you meditate.
Do you have skills you use to get through?
I will post some other skills later. You can post some too.
If you have a practice you are using to get through these times, share them here as well for the rest of us.
These are things I've learned to do and practice (albeit on and off) and they help me so much. I am married (currently divorcing) to a man with Borderline Personality Disorder. Mine and my daughters' lives were so chaotic and unstable until I left. Throughout though, I relied on a 5 year gratitude journal; now my 5 year old and I write in it together every night. The fact that I can look back and see what was going on and what I was grateful for helps- it also helped because I started documenting his abuse and when I need a reminder of what I chose to put behind me, or how far I've come it's there. Whenever the drama got bad I would remind myself this was a test or a message from the universe- what am I supposed to learn, it always helped me know that it was about leaving him and gave me strength. Finally, I have 2 sweet little girls who have known their dad's scary behavior. When I'm with them, I'm 100% with them in the moment, it brings so much to the parenting experience which is always work but goes so fast. I'm also a teacher and I try to focus on those relationships I'm building with students- I know too, that their lives are sometimes traumatic and making a connection or being seen, heard and liked can be really powerful.
Jeanne, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!
The video brought tears to my eyes, burn the good kind of tears. The gratitude for good people, beauty, and people with heart all over the world and here on this site. Just a lovely post.
Jaidy, blessings to you and your daughters as you walk this path with your daughter. Journaling is one of my favorites things to do. When hard times and hard work filled my days to exhaustion, gratitude journaling filled up my spirit, strengthened my fortitude and courage, and gave me such an outlet for reflecting on the gifts of even the most challenging things.
And oh, how I love,love, love that you share the healing gratitudes with your precious daughter's. . You are walking the heart warriors path together.
Love Love Love
Jaidy, your daughters are so lucky to have this training early. What a wonderful mother you are.
Michele, I can tell that you’ve had this training for many years. Your posts are deeply steeped in gratitude and you feel so robust and vibrant because of it
My mother in law was a positive person. When she died suddenly earlier this year at 93, we just couldn’t believe she was gone.
Her positivity had made her larger than life. I’ve seen many older people pass over. I accepted and understood that the time had come. But when she passed it was hard for a while to come to terms with it. She simply was so strong and vibrant. That is what positivity does for people.
"This is heart warrior training. It's how a lightworker personality type becomes a heart warrior."
This is the second thing I have picked up on with you today Jeanne. I just wrote for my 2nd day of gratitude (Thankful November journal) how I am inspired by my friends who are lightworkers because they change their communities through love. Then I read your post here.
I don't think it is a coincidence.
Thank you Jeanne for sharing these exercises with us. I knew of them in a different context, but I never really looked at them with a spiritual side of it. Of all days to be reminded, today was the best one.
Jaidy, what you are going through is the result of very courageous decisions you made. Your daughters will thank you for this later. I will pray for you. Like Michele, I think it is wonderful how you go through the exercise of gratitude with your daughter. Another wonderful gift you are giving her.
I've been through therapy a few times. One of the things I was taught to help myself through negative reactions was keeping a cognitive journal. You know: "what is the situation, how you reacted, what you thought and how you felt, etc. It is a very worthwhile exercise, or so I was told.
Actually it works for most people. But I always got stuck at describing the situation and how I felt about it. The more I tried to work through a situation using the cognitive steps, the more these reflections became ruminations! Not helpful at all. But something good came of it.
I have a sense of humour that helps me to not take myself seriously. It helped for a while. Then I discovered a latent talent: drawing. When combined with my sense of humour, drawing helps me work through those difficult situations. As I do my drawings, I work through the harmful thoughts, my feelings become more empowering. I figure out what to do and feel good about myself for making a beautiful drawing or I get to laugh at the stick people I drew.
This topic is reminding me of going back to basics, taking better care of myself, of allowing myself to love me.
PS: An uncle of mine was an artist. He often said you find beauty is in it's imperfection. Drawing helps me see that. Taking back these good habits will help me love myself with those imperfections.
Bright Opal that's art therapy (i'm an art teacher). I'm glad you found a mode that works for you. My students do the same thing all the time without knowing it. Art is so powerful, the mandalas and the scandinavian artist someone shared the other week were inspiring. I love Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger- whose work empowered me a lot while working through my feelings about Kavanaugh and #metoo.
How I love these posts...they are just what I've needed and I will be practicing these exercises. This has been a tumultuous year for me...turmoil, loss, grief, momentous change, gratitude and moments of joy, all playing out against a backdrop of this lunatic political year with it's blatant racism, nationalism, misogyny and increasing chaos.
I've been MIA from this site for several months during a move from coast to coast. During the transition, I've found music to be a great comfort and listen to it daily. I also practice yoga, that union of body and mind achieved through movement and breathing. Yoga meditation is also transformative. Today I took a yin yoga class where you hold poses for extended periods of time. As you go deeper and deeper into the stretches, your body relaxes with each breath until you reach the final savasana and meditation. In that stillness I say a prayer of thanks and often feel the presence of my spirit guide. I am filled with peace.
I love reading about your practices and am so glad you've shared them here. We will get through this period of time and we will do it together. Thank you for inspiring me.
Oh, I am so happy you are with us Bluebelle, you and all the others gathering here.
The rain pushes and pelts us and even as we feel the heavy burdens, we strive, oh so hard, to push upwards and shed its weight, we still feel the sun's warmth and grace. That is you.
You felt it and grew upwards into it. You reached higher and higher, petal by petal opening , your blooms unfurling, until each glory led to another.
It's how we grieve, shed old skin, move into and transform anew.
We open into the love and the joy and then, so full, we overflow.
The tears are liquid sunshine in disguise . They bathe and cleanse us, remove the earthly grime from our inner shiny until the hidden smile we carry is released into purity of fullness. Hard, hard work. The shedding of mortal skin.
I am so glad you have now arrived after so many movings around and that energetically and are now just where you were needing and needed and meant to be.
We are all taking our positions now, like points on a compass or sacred monuments across the globe, holding our power, feeling the call.
We are all getting ready to push into rebirth, first individually then in larger and larger groups and someday, in unity, as one.
Yoga can position us, like acupuncture and other modalities can help us learn to direct the flows and unlock the doors through the stiffness of transition.
Oh it is so lovely. These new energies releasing now. Just like you.
You bring tears to my eyes, Michelle. Thank you for your heart poetry.