Spontaneity - Schedule Some Now

“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, 
you'll probably never do  much of anything.”   ~ Win Borden

Recently my life became all about my schedule.  Any blank spot on my iCal existed only to be filled - with work, dinner, a movie, a haircut, an appointment at the Apple Store to learn how to better use my iCal. I reveled in the idea that by organizing my time with rules and schedules, I was making myself more productive. My system was ingenious - it even had a color code for Happy Health Terrie Time, during which I was supposed to relax before moving on to the next scheduled item.

My system seemed to be working - until I noticed how often I was saying, “I’m so busy.”   Talking with people who weren’t on the schedule seemed overwhelming, so I stopped answering the phone and began to ignore emails. I grew so tired that workouts began to drop off my schedule - which I justified by telling myself that if I didn’t have a session with my trainer exercising wasn’t actually on the calendar anyway.

Then I began to hear a little voice in my head, offering the same gentle reminder I so often give to my clients. “Listen to your body.  What is it telling you?” As soon as I tuned in, it was obvious that I had been ignoring a message for quite some time. My mounting fatigue was practically an SOS call from my distressed body, whose demands I had pushed aside whenever they didn’t fit into my schedule. 

I started blocking off whole days - color coded of course - with the word Nothing. The beauty of the Days of Nothing was that they left me the freedom to choose what I wanted to do, right in that moment. I would relax if I wanted to relax, work if I wanted to work, go to the movies if that was what struck my fancy. Most importantly, I would be doing what I had decided to do right then, not a week or even an hour before. What I needed was spontaneity.

Interestingly enough, rather than leaving me with more work piled up, the Days of Nothing increased my productivity. Having removed the idea that I should be doing any particular thing - cleaning or visiting family or balancing my check book - I was filled with the energy of choice and freedom.  My fatigue lifted.

I found that even on the Days of Nothing I would often choose to complete some task I had been putting off, rendering spontaneous what had previously felt like a chore. Knowing the benefit that spontaneity provides, I now constantly look for opportunities to choose what’s important in the moment. As a result, I find that I am more relaxed, energetic, and enthusiastic, no matter what I am doing.  

Sometimes we can be so conscientious about doing what we think is good for us that we move too far in one direction, over-scheduling ourselves to the point that we leave no time or space for our bodies to tell us what we ought to be doing. Here are a few small ways to release your grip on rules and routines and allow your body’s expressed needs to be your guide.

Your Sleep Patterns

I recently posted an article on my facebook page which discusses some new ideas about sleep patterns. It turns out that eight hours in a row may not really be how the body wants to rest, at least not everyone’s body.  How many times have you found yourself up in the middle of the night, worried more about the fact that you aren’t asleep than about anything else in particular? My belief is if you are tired, you will sleep.  If you don’t feel tired, then be awake.  If you weren’t busy being worried about being up in the middle of the night, and trying to sleep, what else could you do?  There may be a rhythm that works better for you.

How Much Water You Drink

It’s practically ‘law’ to drink 8 glasses of water a day.  Why?  How can everyone possibly require the same daily intake of liquids?  Personally, I think it’s pretty hard on your kidneys to drink that much every day.  Try drinking just when you are thirsty.  If you are active, or if you are outside on a hot day, you will naturally want to drink more.  Your body knows what to do.  It knows how much water you need moment by moment.

How You Exercise

Do you repeat the same workout every time you go to the gym, regardless of how you are feeling that day? Check to see if your body is calling for something.  Is it begging to be stretched out on your heavy lifting day?  Maybe you are feeling particularly strong and would like to reschedule cardio in favor of weights. Or perhaps you are about to get sick, and a nap would serve you far better than a workout.

All I’m suggesting is, listen!  Rules are great, and they should serve you, not oppress you. Stick to the schedule most of the time, but make sure you build in the opportunity to ask, “What do I want to do today?” and the time to act on the answer. 

Self Care - What's That?

There’s an old joke that goes like this:

A woman prays every day to win the lottery.  Day after day, she prays, “God please let me win the lottery”.  Finally, one day, god calls down to the woman and says, “Lady, can you help me out and buy a ticket?”

As someone people come to for care, I ask, can you help me out?

Many of my clients come to me because they are in physical or emotional pain.  Very often I can help, but help is the key word.  I really can’t do it all.  Your life is your responsibility, and caring for yourself is vital if you want to be well. A wonderful team that you trust to give advice and care can help to keep you healthy.  But ultimately you must be in charge of your own health, which may require making changes in your life. If you need rest, you have to be the one who sleeps more.  If you need more enjoyment, you are the one who must take the time to have more fun.  

If you are not taking good care of yourself, there will be a limit to how much anyone else can do for you - whether your surgeon, your therapist, or your chiropractor.

Recently a woman who had been in pain for quite some time contacted me seeking care. I asked her, “What have you done in response to your pain?”  She began rattling off a list of practitioners she had seen - chiropractor, acupuncturist, shiatsu masseuse, medical intuitive, and several others.  I asked her what she herself had done, what changes she had made to her daily life, and she looked at me with confusion, not understanding what I meant. I went on: what kind of self-care did she do?  Did she rest? Did she meditate? Did she apply heat to the pain? Did she take a bath? Did she finally have a difficult conversation she had been putting off for years? Had she taken the time to consider the possible root cause of the pain? She didn’t have an answer.

Pain is your body’s way of letting you know that something is amiss.  Experiencing pain means that - whether on the physical, emotional, mental or spiritual level - something in your life needs to be addressed. When you feel pain, your body is saying, “Hey! Wake up!! I need something!” To figure out what that something is, you must learn to look inward. One of the best ways I have found to do that is through self-care.

Here are a few easy ways to start practicing self-care.

SLOWING DOWN

·   Try taking daily bath, in hot, sudsy water.  

·   A nap can be a great way to recharge. Rather than reaching for another cup of coffee, give yourself permission to take a short nap during the day.

·   Meditation is a great way to slow down and reconnect with yourself. Here are a few simple meditations to get you started:

1.        Conduct a three-minute body scan upon waking.  

2.        Practice early morning gratitude meditation.  Upon waking, notice 5 things you are grateful for right in this moment.  You can even write them down.

3.        Try a five-minute seated meditation in which you quietly notice your thoughts and practice letting them go. Over time, increase the length of the meditation.

4.        Yoga is a moving meditation, whether you do it at home or in a class.

SPEEDING UP

You may be in need of some physical activity to get you back in to your body. If you feel heavy or lethargic, or if your thoughts seem cloudy, consider trying the following:

·   Head outside and take a brisk walk.

·   Go for a bike ride around your neighborhood.

·   Take a dance class, or turn on music that makes you feel like moving, and just dance around the house by yourself.

THE GREAT OUTDOORS

Nature is very healing.  Even if you live in an urban place without much greenery, spending time in nature can be as simple as going to a park, or even leaning against a tree while waiting for the bus. If you live in the suburbs, find opportunities to get out of the car or the house. Walk on the grass in your bare feet. Plant a garden, large or small.

BE CREATIVE

·   Pick up a craft project you have been meaning to finish or wanting to start.

·   Learning a new skill, especially one that allows you to express your creative side, can be transformative. Try knitting or sewing, taking a pottery class, or learning a new language.

·   Or buy a can of paint and take a brush to that beige wall you’ve always thought would look great in canary yellow.

·   Cleaning, organizing, re-arranging furniture - all of these transformations of the space around you are creative acts that can bring freshness and ease into your life.  

COOKING AND EATING INTENTIONALLY

Take the time to eat healthily. If that feels too daunting, start with a few healthy changes in your diet. The act of cooking, whether for yourself or someone else, is an opportunity to slow down and savor the delight of creating great food.

You get the idea.  When you are in distress, take good care of yourself.   As a health care provider I am on your team, and you are the team leader.

Pain, Pain Go Away!

This article is about pain.  And bullying.  And how I think they are related.

I am writing this because of the ways I have heard people talk about their pain over the years.  Overall, I hear a sense that the pain being the problem at hand, the thing you need to get rid of so you may get back to the things you were doing in life.  I understand the role of pain differently.  Pain is your body’s mechanism of letting you know how your life is going.  Your signal to do more or less of something.  It’s an information relay system.  It’s brilliant when we use it properly.

Somehow people relating to their own pain reminded of a novel I read entitled Nineteen Minutes.  Author Jodi Piccoult takes us through the life of her son, who is the perpetrator of a high school mass shooting.  As it happened, I was moved by how much understanding I had for this 17 year old when he made this choice in life.  Given how many times he asked for help and how many times he was thrown back into the fire – by loving and ‘sensitive’ parents. In his mind, this was the best way he could take his ‘power’ back.  It was so compelling.

It has been quite a while since I read it, and what I remember is being taken through a story of a young boy’s [Peter Houghton] life, beginning with innocence and play, and then when school starts, he begins to get bullied, first on the bus, then more and more in school, loses his best friend, and each time he tells his mother, she can’t really hear what is happening for him.  She is doing the best she can, intends the best for him, and yet, repeatedly sends him back for more without offering new skills or ideas on how to do things differently.   She was so invested in her own story about how this all should be handled that she wasn’t able to hear his pleas!   The impact of that was devastating.

Are you bullying yourself?  Your pain, your symptoms, your emotions are your body’s only way to bring to your consciousness – to your attention that something is amiss.  Most likely, your body had been giving you signals all along, only in ways that you could not interpret, or that you ignored.  Something less than pain.  Think of it like this...your body is like little Peter Houghton saying over and over, please help me.  Yet we just tell ourselves that everything is or should be ok.  Or we take something to make those pesky symptoms go away, so we don’t feel anything at all, and then go right back to doing what has been making us sick or sad.  In this culture, feeling nothing is considered much better than feeling sad.  In other words, ignoring our own pleas.  Until our body gives us no choice but to listen...for example:  cancer, heart attacks, strokes, autoimmune diseases of all sorts, debilitating back pain.  Pain or diseases that immediately threaten our lives. 

Instead, I’m suggesting that you become more sensitive to your feelings, discover your needs, trust your body and respond accordingly.  Listen with a curiosity.  Treat your pain as an indicator that your body’s warning system is working perfectly, rather than an idea of failure.  For example:  If you eat something bad, and you get diarrhea or throw up, you may feel bad, but it would be much worse if your system didn’t have a mechanism to get the poison out.  Forcing our bodies to ‘hold it in’ would be significantly painful, and ultimately impossible.  It is with this same understanding and respect that all (or at least most of our ‘symptoms) could be treated.

In general, we are united against bullying, and would stand up for anyone who is asking for help.  This is a now famous video from Jonah Mowry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdkNn3Ei-Lg  which has brought many of us to tears. 

Please think about considering yourself, your pain, your feelings, and emotions with the same tenderness and care that you would a little child asking for help.  Please stop bullying yourself.

What Does Love Have to do With it?

It’s February and everyone’s thinking and talking about love.  I’m reading all kinds of posts and ideas about love.  Some examples are:   “First, love yourself.” and “Don’t only let love in, let your love out.”  I have also seen a workshop offered entitled “Fall in love with yourself this Season!”  While what they are offering at this workshop looks delightful, I feel concerned when I hear this language.  I’m not sure its possible.  And now, during our cultural preparation for Valentine’s Day, women (mostly) get to feel more lonely and sad, because they are not able to ‘love themselves” or find someone to “love them”.

In my view love is not a verb.  How can you ‘love’ someone?  You can’t.  You can only say and do things that you think will give someone an experience of love.  For example, I might make you a favorite dish for dinner.  I’m hoping you will have an experience of caring and love by my doing that.  I might make the bed, clean the house, go to work, rub your back when you ask.  These are the things we can do.  They are verbs, actions. 

Love is a need. Like all needs, love is an energy we get to experience.  It is not something you do or something someone does for you.  If you want to experience more love in you life, there are many ways that it can happen.  However, when you believe you must receive it from someone else (especially only 1 person) – or in some magical way give it to yourself, you are actually limiting the possibilities for getting that need met.  You are decreasing the likelihood that you will have more of it in your life.  It is not resourceful.  The thought is not helping you.

Consider this.  If I cook dinner for you because I am excited about you having an experience of love, then in that moment, I am also having the experience of love.  Love isn’t something I am giving you or getting from you.  I am giving you dinner.  The life energy being experienced, in this case love, is shared.  Always.

If I want to experience more love (which is what I am guessing people mean when they say love yourself), then I can do things that give me the experience of love.  Meaning, I can make a friend dinner, rub someone’s back, send a lovely card to someone, offer a helping hand, etc.  It is not necessary that someone do those things for me for me to have an experience of love. 

You can get into emotional trouble when you link an experience with the strategy -- how you intend to have that experience.  Said another way, thinking “I need love.” is resourceful.  Thinking “I need you to love me.” is not resourceful.  Certainly, you may like to have people in your life who care about you and do nice things for you.  It is one way that you can experience love—or ease, nurturing, compassion, etc.  It is important to know, however, that it is not the only way for you to have those experiences in your life.  If that is your belief, then it is no wonder why you cling to people, hold on, or get mad when they don’t do what you want.  You think your needs will never get met if they, in particular, won’t meet them.  

I’d like to mention another thing I notice, especially now, during Valentine’s Day.  Do you hope and pray, in (sometimes) desperate silence, that your special someone will ‘love’ you.  What is the silence all about?  I hear so many times from friends and clients, “I don’t want to have to ask them.  If they loved me they would just do it!”  Please consider asking.  Ask for specifically what you would like done that would give you an experience of love, and ask what you might say or do that so that your special someone might have more of an experience of love.  Often what we want is quite different from what they want.  That’s a good thing to know. 

How many arguments start with “You don’t love me!”  “Yes I do!”?   Since we measure if someone loves us or not by what they say and do, take responsibility for getting more of what you want in your life, be specific and ask.  Hopefully, who you ask, how you ask, and how you ‘be and have been’ will encourage compassionate giving, and the desire to contribute to each other’s lives in the ways that you both like.

Finally, when you want someone you care about to feel loved, instead of saying “I love you, try saying what is happening that you love.  For a few reasons.  One, it is what is so.  ‘I love you’ is vague.  Their first thought might be, “Why do you love me?” or “Oh no, what do they want now?”  If a person had a childhood where love meant work, then saying I love you to someone may promote feelings of distress for that person, rather than comfort and warmth.  If you are specific, they may like hearing what you say, and do it again.  For example, you might say, “I am feeling so inspired and delighted right now being here with you and having this conversation.  I so enjoy and appreciate hearing your viewpoint about the events of the day and I really like being all cuddled up together while we talk.  I feel safe and calm and nurtured.”  This, I believe, anyone will understand.

And really finally, please remember how I started this article – hearing the words, “love yourself first”.  When you are doing things so that another can have an experience of love (partner, friend, family member or stranger) then you are also immersed in the living energy of love.  That’s how you can love yourself.

Where is the Focus of Your Attention?

A patient that I’ve known for many years has been coming in for the past weeks complaining about a plumbing problem in his home.  Each visit I got an update.  The cast of characters in this story are:  1.  Ed (my patient)  2. Sam (Ed’s plumber)  3.  Ralph (Ed’s handyman) and 4.  Joe (my plumber).

Here’s the story: 

Ed’s been having a plumbing issue in his building.  He called Ralph, his handyman.  Ralph’s life isn’t going to well, so the cost to working with Ralph is listening to his somewhat horrifying and ongoing stories about things.  It is uncomfortable to say the least.  Ralph’s physical health and stamina are poor at best, so Ed must do much if not most of the heavy lifting – requiring him to be present to listen to Ralph’s sad life story.  The work is slow, usually effective, and at a reasonable rate, let’s say $30.00 per hour.

The plumbing issue, Ed soon discovered, had not been fully resolved by Ralph.  Ed, however could not reach him for weeks (he later discovered) because Ralph was so depressed he could not answer his phone.  Ed was forced to call his plumber, Sam.  Sam does great work, but he is too expensive according to Ed, let’s say his rate is $75.00 per hour.  Sam came out, told Ed the problem.  Ed decided to call Ralph one more time, and as luck would have it, Ralph answered the phone.

Are you still with me?

Ralph came out, did what Sam the plumber suggested.  That did not fix the problem.  Ed reminded me how much pain he is in because when Ralph does the work, Ed must do the heavy lifting and carrying of things up and down the stairs – 4 flights.  Ed wanted to know if I knew a plumber?  Sam is just too expensive.  I really like my plumber.  He comes the day I call him, he gets the job done quickly, never needs to come back and I think what I pay him is worth the value offered.  I am excited to offer the referral.

Ed calls Joe, my plumber, and his rate is more than Sam – let’s say it’s $125.00 per hour.  Next visit in, Ed tells me this and absolutely thinks this is outrageous, with no intention to have him do the work.  He is calling his already overpriced, yet unreliable plumber and waiting to have him come back.  Remember his assessment was incorrect at the outset.  At this writing the problem is not yet solved. 

Why am I telling you this story?

In this story, Ed tracked mostly on how much money he spent as the criteria for the quality of his life.  [Ed is retired and lives quite comfortably on significant investments].  Yet he has been so upset, complaining, and still the problem remains over six weeks later.  I wonder if he tracked on that, and made a different decision (actually didn’t have a plumbing problem anymore) what impact it would have on the quality of his life during December and January.

How does this work in your own life?  Are there times in your day, or in your life, if you gave it some thought, that where you focus your attention would have an impact?  You may call it positive thinking.  I prefer the image of resourceful thinking.  Does what you are thinking about give you more or less of what you want? 

Are you giving your ‘power’ away in somewhat indiscernible ways?  Are you willing to take the time to consider that one way to have more of what you want in life is to notice it when it is happening?  We all have filters at play that affect what we can notice.  If you are able to slow life down a bit to become more conscious of what is occurring in every moment, you can take better stock of your own contribution to what is happening. 

For example, Let’s say you want more connection with your partner.  Do you really amp up the complaining (externally or internally – thinking) when your partner stays at work til 8pm?  When your partner comes home at the time you like, do you give it the same energy?  Or do you just say (to the partner or yourself) well, that’s just the way it is supposed to be? 

I’m suggesting that, if you gave what you want the same amount of mental and emotional energy, you may have more moments of having the experience you want – in this case, savoring out loud how much fun you are having together, etc.  That’s all there is to do.  Are you able to just have fun, enjoy the connection, which is what you are saying you want.

We really have very little that we can control in life.  One thing is – what we put our attention on.  Try to notice when you are getting what you want in life, and give it some attention and energy.