YOU Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For

What are you waiting for?  Are you waiting for your spouse to stop being so critical or help out more?  Are you waiting for your kids to start being more respectful? Are you waiting for someone to invite you over and reach out to you?  Are you waiting for a job offer to come back?  Are you waiting to lose weight?  Are you waiting for someone to change the curriculum at school or someone to who shares your value system to run for political office?  Most of us are waiting for something.  Whatever you’re waiting for, I have great news.

YOU are the one you’ve been waiting for!

It’s easy to feel that we are at the mercy of others for things to change.  I want to remind you that YOU have tremendous power to change your relationships just by changing YOU and the way you think about them and by being brave to take action.   Here are examples of two women I admire, who chose to BE the change they were waiting for:

Change Yourself Instead of Trying to Change Others

First, several years ago a woman shared with me once that she was very embarrassed by the way her husband acted in social situations.  He was awkward and seemed to say things that only he found funny.  For many years she bit her lip but inwardly felt humiliated.  Sometimes she even tried to ‘clean things up’ for him socially.  Ultimately she realized her embarrassment about social situations was eroding her own relationship with him.

She decided that she wanted to be proud to be with him, no matter how he acted.  So, when he was awkward and made his jokes SHE decided to be the one who laughed.  She began to wonder what HE found so funny about his jokes.  Over time she began to seem more humor in them and she even found enjoyment in watching him enjoy himself.  She sincerely began to enjoy being with him more in social situations, and she found herself falling back in love with her husband.  Interestingly others relaxed and seemed to enjoy her husband’s jokes more as well. That was a nice bonus, but by then it didn’t matter as much because she sincerely enjoyed him regardless.  SHE was the one she’d been waiting for.

Change Your Environment Instead of Complaining About It

The second example is even more recent.  In 2016 around the time of the US Presidential election, Sharleen Mullins Glenn was feeling frustrated and concerned about the corruption and self-interest she saw on the political stage.  She kept wishing something would change, and that someone would do something about it.  Finally, she prayed to know what SHE could do.  The answer that came was to start, “Mormon Women for Ethical Government;” an on-line community of women who are concerned about ethical values in US governance and policy.  They are non-partisan advocates for honor, decency and accountability in politics. In just a short time it has grown to over 6,000 members and has representation all of the US and even the world.  They have been able to write press releases, hold rallies, talk to legislators and advocate for policy changes.    She chose to BE the one who she was waiting for.

Change Your Perspective

The first time we lived in China I was shocked at how people behaved in public places.  Trying to get on an elevator felt like a Herculean event, especially with young children.  The minute the doors opened, people began pushing and shoving and elbowing their way to the front.  There was no respect for lines or who was waiting first. It was survival of the fittest and whoever was the biggest bully won!  It felt rude and disrespectful to me.  One time I will never forget was trying to get off the plan after 24 hours of traveling alone with 3 young children; an anxious 5 year old, a busy toddler and a new baby.  I had survived the flight and was trying to get my luggage from the overhead compartment while helping a crying newborn in my front pack and trying to keep my toddler from running off.  Before the plane had even stopped.  People were up in the isles shoving each other to get off the plane.  When I tried to stand up people knocked me over and my daughter got shoved up against the seat.  Not one person stopped to let me get out.  We had to wait until every person got off the plane.  This might be fine if it is simply a short trip.  But his was my every day.  I could not understand it and it began to affect my experience living in China.

While we were living there I read the book, Wild Swans, which details the true story of 3 generations of women from a woman who was a concubine, to her daughter who was part of the cultural revolution, to her daughter who became a modern, educated woman and immigrated to the US.  Through it I learned much of the recent history of China over the last century.  Not just the facts and dates–but the emotional toll it took on people.  For example, I read about when the government asked many of the big thinkers for criticisms telling them they would be rewarded for improving the country.  Then, he punished them by imprisoning them, relegating them to rural labor or forcing them to leave the country.  Others were forced to give names of family members that the government would punish in return for sparing their own jobs.  These are just a few examples, but I began to see how a culture of self preservation had prospered here.  I understood how people could push each other down getting to the elevator or off the plane. They knew that to survive they must depend on themselves.  They knew that trusting others might be dangerous.  While I don’t espouse this type of social pattern, understanding it from a different perspective helped me feel less frustrated when I was in those types of situations.  Increasing my information on the subject helped change my perspective about it, and I felt less frustrated.  I was the change I’d been waiting for.  They weren’t going to change any time soon.  See All Things Brave and Beautiful for more perspectives on changing the way you see things.

Be the One You’re Waiting For

What are you waiting for?

Whatever change you’ve been waiting for, YOU can make it happen.  Change yourself instead of waiting for others to change.  Change your environment instead of waiting for others to do it.  If you don’t know how, ask God and get moving.  The world needs you.   Your friends and family need you.  YOU need you.  Stop waiting, and be the one who makes it happen.  You’ll be so glad you did.

God Loves Broken Things: Accepting Our Brokenness

Most of us feel broken in some way–we feel unworthy or unappealing or less lovable because we less than our own ideal in some way.  For some it is being overweight, or not having the financial means to have the home or clothes they’d love.  For some it might be feeling like they just can’t stay on top of their home, they yell at their children, they can’t perform to the extent they’d like at work, or are doubting their faith.  More substantial struggles like losing someone we love, divorce, infertility, abuse, trauma, or having a significant health challenge can all be things that can cause us to question our own wholeness.  Ironically it is our brokenness that allows us to come to true wholeness.  God loves broken things–it is what allows him to heal us.

Broken

I saw my husband’s elbow brush the edge of my favorite Talavera plate hanging on our bedroom wall, but it crashed to the floor before a warning escaped my throat.  The bright ceramic colors were strewn across the floor—some large, others tiny fragments. There were too many pieces—it seemed impossible to put back together. The plate was gone.  My husband felt terrible. We scooped it up and the pile of shards sat on my desk for several days. I kept looking at it. I considered tossing it. I noticed the empty plate holder; the room seemed a little duller without it.  And the days went on. One day, I pulled out the ceramic glue and tried to piece back together some of the larger pieces but there were cracks and chipped fragments. I left it for a while to think about if I even wanted it anymore, it just wasn’t the same.

There is something about us that doesn’t like broken things, we resist them.  Things that are broken seem less useful, unworthy and less appealing. Why is that?  Breaking is a powerful metaphor. People break, relationships break. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.  When we feel broken, the natural response is to ignore it, to fix it, or to hide it.

Resisting Brokenness

When my mother called me to tell me she had been diagnosed with stage four Ovarian Cancer, her first words to me were, “We’re not cancer people.”  She refused to be broken. She underwent surgery, chemo, remission, lots of natural healing methods and chemo again. In the in-between she undulated between gut wrenching sickness, longing to live to finish raising her family.

Of course, she did what any of us would do—fight to stay alive.  With her characteristic optimism and quest for knowledge, she was constantly on the lookout for new healing protocols.  We loved her for it, and cheered her on.  Her work and discipline was inspiring, I believe trying new things gave her hope too. She would often tell us her tremendous hope that a particular method would be successful.

We rode the waves of hope and disappointment as she tried various methods.  While I unfairly depended on her for her reassurance, there was always an underlying anxiety.  I was never quite sure how she really felt or what would happen “if” the new idea or protocol didn’t pan out.

As her health declined, her search for healing became all consuming.  This was understandable and certainly what any of us might be inclined to do.  It took most of the day each day to scan the internet for new alternative healing methods, to make all fresh foods and do a variety of protocols with exercise, heat etc. It was a time of grasping at anything to try to get more time.  

We wanted her around for more time–but I confess that selfishly at times I longed for her to stop trying to get more time, and admit she might not have much time left.  I wished she would use the little time she had left to focus more on spending time with me and with her family and friends. That was the time we knew we DID have.  I remember changing our flight plans to be with her at Thanksgiving right after her diagnosis and she insisted we not come—saying “This is a marathon, not a sprint.”  When I tried to record some of her stories about her life, she resisted. It felt to her like admitting defeat.  This was absolutely understandable, and I would probably do the same thing in her shoes.  However it was interesting to be on the opposite side.  As much as we wanted her to keep trying things to keep living, sometimes resisting the cancer meant separating herself from spending time with her loved ones and writing down her experiences.

There were times she did accept her cancer and let us be part of her world.  A few of my favorite were when she took us wig shopping with her and we all tried on ridiculous wigs and giggled at how silly we looked.  One time she got wigs for every member of our family and we all did a photo shoot together.  She let me come with her to get a hair cut when she knew her hair was about to fall out, and let me cry with her as she had to cut off the hair cut she had recently grown out.  She let me make her mashed up sweet potatoes to help her nausea during chemo–there was something sweet about getting to serve my mother who had always served me.  Another thing I loved was to hear her insights from the amazing things she was learning.  She read a stack of cancer books taller than she was.  She was overflowing with interesting perspectives on faith, healing, nutrition, health and so many other things.

Certainly learning how to deal with a terminal illness was a learning experience for all of us.   Perhaps the most difficult was when she wouldn’t tell us what was happening with her health.  I believe she did this to protect us–so that we would not feel the depth of worry and heartbreak she had to feel.  I love her for this.  However, ironically the more it was unspoken, the more anxiety I felt.  When I would call on a bad day, she usually wouldn’t answer the phone. It was often several days of silence until she’d come to a better place and then she’d tell me how low she was and how much better she was now.  In the interum I worried, and wondered what was happening. I hated not being able to love her and listen to her when she felt most broken. She seemed to only be able to be broken in hindsight—it was too vulnerable to be broken in the moment.  Having never been through this but having watched her, I can imagine there were days she simply couldn’t talk.  She felt too sick or was too emotionally low to share.  This was a new and terrifying journey.  She was doing the best she could and the best she knew how.   Still, I wonder how it could have been sometimes if I could have accompanied her more on the difficult paths of her journey–particularly in the earlier phases of her cancer.

Breaking

She did break.  Not all at once, but slowly.   

The summer before she passed away, she had a paradigm shift.  She had asked a fellow cancer survivor for her book list on cancer cures at a yoga class one day.  Her friend refused; she lovingly put her arm around my mother and spoke words that echoed through her heart. “You are in a frantic frenzy. You need to stand still and let God.”

Accepting Brokenness

My mother did.  She had a profound realization of her anxiety or resistance against being broken.  With tremendous courage, she made a deliberate decision to stop “fixing” and stop “hiding.”  She stopped scanning the internet for solutions. She stopped following every undulation of her blood tests. She accepted that she was sick but decided to stop panicking about healing and instead feel peace in the time she had left. She did do a few things to keep up her health, but it did not consume her.  As she relaxed and accepted her “brokenness,” she began to feel tremendous personal peace. She knew Christ was the ultimate healer.

Peace began to permeate our family as well.  Her own peace was contagious.  Knowing she was at peace, allowed me and my siblings to relax and connect with her in a new and deeper way. When we visited she cleared the calendar and chatted, laughed, shared, and sat.   She had tea parties with my daughters in the backyard, she ate more chocolate, and we laughed while we watched “I Love Lucy” re-runs together.  She called all of her children more often and took all of us and her grandchildren on a family history tour of St. George, UT that summer. She wove into our stories our grandparents’ stories. She even compiled all our family recipes for each of us–a way of acknowledging she may not be here to give them to us in the future.  These actions were so different than a year or two before. These are some of my most cherished memories of her.  After this paradigm shift, she seemed willing to share more of her difficult times as well. This allowed us to be part of her journey.  Though it was difficult sometimes to hear of her struggles, there was much less anxiety and so much love as we got to accompany her.

Just a few months later, the cancer returned and spread throughout her body.  This time she surrendered; she knew she was broken. This time it was not “fixable.”  But interestingly she continued to feel hope. It was not hope in a new protocol, a new diet, or vitamin.  It was a deeper hope—a hope in Christ. As she deliberately chose to set aside the anxiety and stop resisting, God was able to heal her spirit.   I distinctly remember a phone conversation we had in which I asked her if she thought it was her time to die.  She said she thought it may be.  She told me that while she wanted to stay and be part of my life and each of my sibling’s lives, she felt at peace that it was her time and that she was at peace with God.

Peace

I was living in China at the time, and I received an emergency call one Saturday morning that she may only have a few days to live.  I frantically boarded a plane and sobbed all the way to Colorado hoping to be able to hug her one last time and tell her I loved her.  I was privileged to get to hold her hand and be with her the last few days before she passed away.  She was in tremendous pain.    She didn’t try to resist it–she accepted it.  It was almost as if she had to labor to get out of this world, just as mother’s labor to bring children into the world.

One day my Aunt Nanny and I laid by her and asked her how she was feeling.  Her response was, “I am feeling great peace.” In her willingness to let her body break, God could finally heal her heart and give her true hope.   Her acceptance gave us all the peace and courage we would need to deal with her passing.

When she did finally pass away, we all knelt around her bed and watched her as her breathing slowed and finally stopped.  It was a sacred and beautiful experience largely because she had accepted her own brokenness.  Having her gone, meant that I felt “broken”.  For a long time I felt that it defined me in some ways, to have lost my mother.  I have had to learn how to be “broken” and beautiful in my own way.  See Hope is The Thing: Getting Through Grief.  After all, God loves broken things.  It is what allows him to heal us.

Broken and Beautiful

Brokenness isn’t something to fear, we are all broken in some way.  We have broken hearts, broken dreams, broken bodies, these are the raw material of hope. When we resist our brokenness…try to hide it, fight against it, and try to prove we are not broken–it gives our brokenness power over us.  God loves broken things. As we surrender our brokenness to him and accept our brokenness ourselves, He gives us hope and peace through his grace. He mends us. Sometimes the mending looks different than we expected. But it is always more beautiful than we anticipated.  Our brokenness is a gift.

I think I will keep my cracked Talavera plate.  It reminds me that brokenness is beautiful—it’s what spurs us to change and grow.  It is what allows God to heal us. The new wholeness is stronger and more powerful than it was in the first place, because now there is a story of pain and picking up the pieces and creating something new…something even stronger and even more beautiful.

Finding beauty in brokenness

When have you felt broken?

What if you owned your brokenness instead of resisting it?  Have you allowed others to see it?  Have you asked others for help? If you could rebuild, what would you do?

I love this new song by Calee Reed called “Broken and Beautiful.”   It expresses a similar idea.

Make Friends With Stress: How Our Beliefs About Stress Affect Us

Most people belief stress is a villain.  After all, it can increase your risk of a heart attack, it can decrease your effectiveness in a meeting or difficult conversation, and it can reduce our enjoyment of things.  However, new research suggests that it is not stress it’s self that is the villain, but how we think about stress that causes the problem.  In fact, in many cases stress could actually be beneficial.

Our Biological Stress Response

A few weeks ago, I had to teach a group of about 50 women.  Normally I really enjoy teaching, but it had been a busy week, and I had struggled with how to present the material.   As the time got closer, my heart began to pound, sweat collected on my palms and forehead, and my mind started racing. If felt stressed!

Biologically a lot happens to the body when we feel stress.  The brain (the hypothalamus) sounds the alarm system! It says, “Help, there’s emotional danger—gather the troops!” The body releases the hormones of cortisol, adrenaline and oxytocin.  When cortisol increases the blood glucose levels it stops non-essential emergency processes like digestion, growth, and the immune response. Adrenaline is also released; it increases the heart rate, blood pressure and energy.  Our bodies are incredible the way they are able to instantly gear up to meet a threat.

These responses won’t hurt us if they only occur occasionally, but if they are felt ongoing they create a host of problems.  This is why for years health professionals have told us that stress is bad for us. However, recent research has put that theory into question.

Is Stress Really Bad For Us?

Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford Professor and Health Psychologist, reveals some fascinating new research about stress in recent study that tracked over 30,000 Americans for 8 years.  The study tracked the amount of stress they had, their belief about stress and how many of them died. For people who had a lot of stress, the study showed that there was a 43% increased risk of dying. Think about it…if you’re stressed, your risk goes up by almost half!  BUT that was only true for people who believed that stress was bad for their health. Those who didn’t believe stress was harmful for their health had no higher risk of dying!

What You Believe About Stress Matters

So, put simply you decrease your risk of death from stress by 43% just by changing your thought about stress.  Did you catch that? That is powerful. You can reduce your body’s risk of dying from stress by changing a sentence in your brain! Wow.

In her book “The Upside of Stress,” Kelly McGonigal explains why this change in our perception about stress can be so powerful.  One of the hormones released during stress is called Oxytocin. This hormone has several stress reducing properties. First it reduces cortisol–which we mentioned earlier stops digestion, immune response and growth.  Oxytocin also relaxes your blood vessels which lowers your blood pressure and it can decrease physical pain due to it’s anti-inflammatory properties.

Isn’t it incredible how the body compensates for its own self-causing damage?  When people believe that stress is NOT harmful, more oxytocin is released. 

Benefits of Stress

In a study done at Harvard, study participants were taught several benefits of stress.  Then, the patients were purposely stressed while under observation. When patients thought about their stress positively, their heart still beat fast, but their blood vessels stayed open.   Kelly McGonigal explains that this biological profile looks like what our bodies do when they feel joy or courage. She says, “When you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage.”

When we stress out about stress, it IS bad for our health.  However, when we choose to make friends with stress, it actually doesn’t harm us.  The best way to make friends with stress, is just by changing our thoughts about it.   

Stress Hard Wires Us For Connection

If you need more convincing, here’s one way McGonigal says stress can actually HELP us.   Again we can thank the hormone oxytocin. In addition to the other physical responses it creates, it also has emotional benefits.  Oxytocin increases your trust, empathy and your desire to connect with others. McGonigal states, “When you choose to connect with others under stress, you can create resilience.”   Connection is one of the most significant determinants of happiness. Stress actually gives us a biological nudge to connect.

Another study that tracked 1000 adults in the US, showed an increased 30% risk of death for each stressful event that occurred.  BUT it also showed that those who spent time serving friends, neighbors and people in their community had 0% increased chance of death from their stressful events.   Our biology is literally changed when we reach out under pressure.

Connecting During Stress

This week as I stood in front the group of women, I confessed that I was feeling really nervous.  Immediately I received kind looks of affirmation and smiles. Their smiles gave me the courage to calm my nerves enough to present the way I had hoped.

Stress is only harmful if we believe it is.  I love Kelly Gonigal’s summation of stress, “Stress gives us access to our hearts.  The compassionate heart finds joy and meaning in connecting with others.”

Make Friends With Stress

What are you stressed about right now?

  1. Remind yourself that stress is good.  It is your body’s way of gearing up to deal with something challenging.  Just by believing this, you will create biological courage to handle the situation with more grace and wisdom.  
  2. Use that courage to reach out and make a connection. Ask your neighbor how they’re doing. Give your husband a hug.  Smile at someone. You’ll do yourself and them a favor by creating more oxytocin.

Here’s a TED talk by Kelly McGonigal discussing this idea more in depth.  How to Make Stress Your Friend.

 

Define It: Find More Peace in Your Role as a Mom

Undefined expectations for ourselves and the roles we operate in always lead to disappointment. There is a simple solution for increasing success and satisfaction; defining exactly what it means to be a “good mom,” or a “good person,” or a good wife” etc. allows us to know what we’re shooting for.

When Dorthy set off along the yellow brick road in her sparkling red shoes and eyes wide with hope, she didn’t know much about Oz.  She just knew it was where she wanted to go because she had heard the Wizard of Oz could help.  When she arrived, it was disappointing to find he was just a man behind a curtain.  It’s easy to put up false Oz’s for ourselves without  even realizing it.

My False Oz

About 2 months after we moved into our new neighborhood in Taiwan, rumblings and mumblings started about Halloween.  We live in an old military neighborhood on a mountain overlooking the city of Taipei.  Because Halloween isn’t a “thing” in Asia—those who do know about it are curious.  Over the years our neighborhood has drawn crowds from all over the city.  Many are local Taiwanese who want an American cultural experience.

My neighbors told me, “Halloween is a BIG deal here.”  “No matter how much candy you have, “you’ll run out.”  “Everyone in the neighborhood decorates.  You should have seen what the people who lived in your house before you did!  Everyone really goes over the top.”

I was new and trying to fit in, so I started scheming and ordering on Amazon.  Our family decided to do a Wizard of Oz theme.  We all dressed up as different characters and we built a set with the Emerald City and Dorthy’s house with the legs of the wicked witch underneath.  My husband figured out how to broadcast the Wizard of Oz movies on the outside wall of the house.  It was pretty awesome.  I thought I had rocked the “Go Big!”

The day of Halloween arrived and I thought it was strange that none of the neighbors had many decorations up.  But, I figured they must be last minute people like I was.  Around 5 I started setting things up.  Still no neighbors setting up…eventually I saw a neighbor set out a table with a cloth and a pumpkin and I saw another neighbor hang an orange pennant banner that said happy Halloween.  One neighbor had a few skeletons sitting around, and another had hung out some lights, but nothing too big yet.

By the time the masses started coming around we were the only spectacle around.  The kids loved it and we had a ball, but I had to laugh at myself.  Apparently my idea of “a BIG deal” was slightly different than theirs!

Definitions Prevent Needless Discouragement

Definitions are so crucial.  I could have saved myself a lot of headache (and money) if I would have simply asked a few more questions to define exactly what “BIG deal” meant to most people.  Apparently to them it meant dressing up as an adult and sitting outside with several bags of candy and a cute Halloween tablecloth.

I find that defining things—even if it’s just for myself can reduce tons of headache and extra work.  Steven Covey says, “Disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality.”  If our expectation isn’t even realistic, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.

How to Define Your Roles

One area that seems to have a big expectation-reality gap is our roles as mothers.   I know it is for me at, at times.  I think most of us have amorphous sort of ideas about these pieced together from what we saw our mothers do, what we think others are doing or things we’ve read in parenting books.  My old definition of a good mom was a conglomerate of the compassion of Mother Theresa, the influence of Oprah, a home like Martha Stewart and hair like Jennifer Anniston.  I often measured my success by how my children acted and performed.  It’s no wonder I often felt like I was falling short.  My expectations were completely  unrealistic!

Be Realistic

If we take time to actually DEFINE what a reasonable mother would do—it gives us a more attainable goal and cuts out the disappointment gap between expectation and reality. There are many ways to do this.  One is to look around and find someone who has accomplished what you want to do or be as a mother.  Ask them how they define success and how they got there.  Another way to be more realistic about role definitions is to take your big vision goal and break it into smaller step-ladder goals.  Make sure the first step is something you know you can do!  Define success as the first goal, then move to the second one when you are consistent at being or doing the first.  Success helps build momentum a lot faster than failure.

Make Sure Your Definition of Success Doesn’t Depend on Others’ Behavior

In addition to unrealistic ideals, sometimes we set ourselves up for disappointment by including things in our definitions that we can’t control.  For example, we might include the choices our children make, or we might include the way our children treat us as part of our measurement tool for being a good mother.   What our children do cannot be an accurate measure of success, because it is something we cannot control.   (Clearly we may want to change what we’re doing if our children aren’t responding the way we hoped, but it’s important to consider children may not respond no matter what we do.)  Our definitions of success must include only things that WE can control.

Be Specific

One of the great creators of discouragement is generalities.  Words like “always,” “never,” and “everybody.”  While we know intellectually that no one is perfect, we often expect it of ourselves.  We assume that others are able to someone achieve perfection.  Our subconscious definitions of success often include things like “never yell,” and “always take time to listen,”  “everybody else takes their kids on amazing vacations during the summer,”  “always make a healthy dinner.”  While these are excellent ideas to strive for they make it hard to live up to success.  Getting specific and thinking through what we actually can and should do can help. “I will try to make a healthy home cooked dinner 2 times a week.”  Or “When I want to yell, I’m going to snap the rubber band on my wrist.”

Define success in a very specific way.  Here’s my new definition of a “good mom:

Love my children.  Teach them things I feel are important.  Model being a happy and healthy woman most of the time.

The Emerald City wasn’t all that Dorthy had dreamed it up to be; it was something she had built up in her mind as THE ultimate destination and the solution to all problems.  When she actually saw the man behind the curtain it was a bit disappointing, but it turned out it was even better!    Define what you expect of yourself.  Make sure it’s realistic, specific and only YOU control it.

Define it

What is your current definition of a good mom?

Get a piece of paper and define what it means to be a “good mom”  Is your definition realistic, specific?  Are you completely in control of the outcome or are others involved?

This works well for other roles too–define what it means to be  a “good wife” a “good employee” a “good person” a “good daughter-in-law.” etc.

Abundance

“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend… when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present— love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure— the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.”

Happy Hour: How To Feel Happier in the Midst of Overwhelm

One of the emotions I find myself avoiding most is overwhelm.  When the demand for our time or energy or money is greater than our capacity we feel overwhelmed.  I used to think this was how every mom felt most of the day–and especially at dinner time. Then I learned some amazing tools that helped me feel calmer and happier in the midst of overwhelm.

Happy Hour

It was “happy hour” at our house, 5:00 pm.  It was a far cry from the happy hour you might be imagining of colleagues gathering for a relaxing time after work.  My baby had a death grip on my leg and was whining “hold you!” while I tried to sauté garlic.  “Ugh, I should have cooked dinner this morning so it wouldn’t be so crazy tonight” I thought as I tripped over some magnetic letters strewn in front of the fridge.  “The house is trashed, my kids never clean-up” I mumbled as I took a deep breath, picked up my baby.  My older daughter looked over from the table and asked if I could help her with her math homework.  I left my cutting board full of veggies and turned off my half-sautéed garlic in the pan.  I sat down thinking, “I’ve got to try to be patient or she’ll have a melt down.”
We had only made it through a couple of problems when the baby pulled the table cloth and spilled the cup of water.  “I hate this time of day.  I don’t know if I can handle one more thing!” I thought as I stood up to get a paper towel.  Comic relief arrived just in time—a pillow case monster just the size of my middle daughter came barreling down the hallway bumping walls and people to be as scary as possible!  I hardly had time to smile before she knocked right into the chair and cut her toe.  Of course, tears and wails followed—and not from the monster.  I set the baby down to get a band aid.  I felt guilty as I thought.  “I know I should be more compassionate but hello, what did you think would happen when you walk around with a pillow case on your head!”

The baby started whining again, my older daughter reminded me she still needed help with math, and there was still the fountain of band aid tears…my overwhelm exploded.  “Everybody just calm down!  I’m just one person, I can’t help everyone at the same time.”  I yelled.    Everyone stopped.  Their eyes were big and then my shame attack hit.

The Reason We Feel Negative Emotion

For many years, this was a familiar scenario for our family—and not just at dinner time.  Overwhelm and irritation were my constant companions.  And of course, discouragement was a close cousin.  I didn’t know there was any other option; I thought everyone felt overwhelmed in demanding situations.  My feelings just seemed like the natural result of the things going on around me.  I felt exhausted and guilty a lot of the time and so frustrated I couldn’t seem to be the mom and person I wanted to be!

In the last few years, I’ve learned something very powerful.  It has changed everything.

Our thoughts create our emotions.  I can choose my thoughts.

This may seem like a simple concept, but it’s been around a long time.  Two thousand years ago Epictedus the Greek philosopher taught, “Humans are disturbed not by things but by the view they take of them.”  The Buddha taught a similar truth.  “Suffering comes from thoughts not what actually happens.”  The bible teaches us, “As a man thinketh, so is he.”

Three of the greatest teachers on earth taught this same principle.  This truth means that we have the remote control to our own feelings. We can choose what we want to feel and create it by how we choose to think.  We aren’t dependent on anything outside of us.

How to Feel Better

Let’s circle back to vignette of “happy hour” at my house as a case study about how this can help us:

  1. Notice your thoughts
    Figure out what you are thinking in a given situation.  Here’s my thought reel during this episode:
  • “Ugh, I should have cooked dinner this morning so it wouldn’t be so crazy tonight”  (Guilt)
  • “The house is trashed, my kids never clean up” (Irritation)
  • “I’ve got to try to be calm and patient during homework or my daughter will melt down.” (Overwhelm)
  • “I hate this time of day.  I don’t know if I can handle one more thing!” (Overwhelm)
  • “I know I should be more patient, but hello, what did you think would happen when you walk around with a pillow case on!”  (Guilt, Irritation)
  1. Notice your feelings  (See parenthesis above)
    Each thought we think creates a feeling.  It is this feeling that drives our actions.  So, it’s crucial to be aware of our thoughts and the feelings they create.
  2. Decide how you WANT to feel.
    We are in charge of how we feel.  So if we want to feel differently, the first step is to deliberately decide what I did want to feel at dinner time.  Clearly these thoughts weren’t serving me!  I decided what I wanted to feel was peaceful and loving and confident at this time of day.
  1. Determine a healthier thought that will create that feeling
    Knowing that events and demands would stay similar most nights (though specifics would change of course), I brainstormed thoughts that were true, but would help me feel better in the same situation.  Here are some thoughts I’ve tried and afterward you’ll see the result of the emotions they created.
  • “Whew!  There’s a lot going on, I got this.”  (Empowered)
  • I’ll do what I can, and that will be enough.” (Peaceful)
  • One of my favorites is, “This would make a hilarious email!”  (Humor)
  • A good default one for me is, “I’m so lucky to have 4 beautiful daughters”  (Grateful)
  • “I love that they are not vegging out in front of a video game or Netflix right now!  They are confidant enough to express themselves.  (Gratitude and Admiration)
  • Sometimes I compare it to a thought of a much more difficult situation.  What if I had to grow all my own food, and harvest it from scratch and sew all my kids clothes?  I’ve got it good.
  1. Write down the new thought somewhere you will see it and redirect your brain to those thoughts where the situation arises.
    Be Patient.  It can take up to 100 times of consciously re-directing your mind to a thought in order to re-create the default pathway to that thought.

Truly Happy Hour

This is powerful stuff.   If you would have told me a few years ago that 5 pm-6 pm could actually be one of the happiest hours of the day, I would not have believed it.  The practice of changing my thoughts about this time of day has changed “happy hour” into an actual “happy hour!”  It’s not rainbows and unicorns every night of course, but it’s certainly a lot more smooth.   When I supervise my brain and deliberately substitute these types of thoughts for the other ones, I feel peaceful, empowered and loving!  And, I don’t have to yell to get things done…which means I don’t feel guilty either.

We have the ability to choose our own feelings by deliberately choosing our thoughts.   In other words, happiness is a skill!  We don’t have to wait for anything around us to change in order to feel different.

Feel Happier

What’s a time you feel overwhelmed?

Stop and notice what thoughts you are having during this time. What feelings do they create?  Replace those thoughts with thoughts that create a more helpful feeling.

Hiding or Surfing: Changing Our Response to Stress

In stressful situations, our brains often go into survival mode.  We try to get through the situation with the least amount of damage possible.  Unfortunately this isn’t always the best way to approach a stressful situation. Programming how we want to handle stress ahead of time can make it much more enjoyable and much less taxing.

Nuclear Bomb Threat

Widespread panic overwhelmed the island of Oahu, HI early on a Saturday morning when this text message appeared on cell phones.  “Ballistic missle threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter.  This is not a drill.”

Immediately people made desperate attempts to find their loved ones and to seek shelter.   One woman hid in a bathroom with her children and prayed.  Some tourists were taken to concrete bunkers.  Parents stuck on the freeway worried they might never see their children again.  Given the high tensions with North Korea, and the closer proximity of Hawaii compared to the mainland US, Hawaiian residents were already on edge.  People had been told they would have about 12 minutes after a text alert before a bomb would hit.

I was particularly interested in the opposite responses of two of our friends.  One friend called her loved ones to say good-bye, and then hid under a table.  Another friend called her loved ones to say good-bye, and then went surfing.  At first it seemed a bit cavalier to head out surfing in the face of a bomb threat.  However, as I thought more about it, the idea intrigued me.  I love the image of her riding the waves instead of running around in panic.

Thankfully the text was a mistake.  There was no bomb and no obliteration, just 38 minutes of terror.  We had just moved off the island when this incident occurred, but having lived there for the last 3 years the threat felt very real to us.   If I knew I might be obliterated, what would I do with my last minutes?  I’m not suggesting anyone should actually go surfing during a bomb threat–especially if there were children to protect or concern over the nuclear blast affecting surrounding areas but I think the idea of thinking beyond the instinctual defense is an interesting one.

Choosing How to Respond

This is an intriguing metaphor for how we respond to events that happen around us.  While I have never experienced a nuclear bomb threat, I have plenty moments in which I have to make the same kind of choice about how to respond to an overwhelming circumstance.  Sometimes my reaction feels so instinctual I have to remind myself that I do have a choice about how to think and how to respond in a given situation.

Choosing to Hide

One of these moments happened the other day when my two-year-old melted down in shrieks and tears when she saw that we were having salmon for dinner instead of pizza.  By the time she was on the floor wailing and flailing, my brain was wailing and flailing too.  It was almost like a bomb of emotions went off in my brain and it was hard to think clearly.  My immediate thought was, “This is ridiculous.”  I sighed, rolled my eyes and felt irritated. When I’m irritated I rarely show up my best.  I’m more likely to yell or respond impatiently, or try to escape the drama by eating or checking my phone.  When I yell, my child feels guilt in addition to her initial emotion of disappointment. At the end of the night I feel discouraged about my mothering.  I feel stuck– essentially trapped under a theoretical table.

Choosing to Surf

Using our metaphor of surfing instead of hiding under a table—I tried to think about what type of response would help me go “surfing” instead.  I knew that my response started with the thought I chose.  I decided to flip my thought on my head.  Instead of thinking, “This is ridiculous,” I decided to think, “This is normal.  I’m so glad she’s developing as a healthy two-year-old.  If she never had opinions or expressed them, I’d be concerned!” This thought helped me feel thankful instead of irritated.  Gratitude is an open emotion that allowed me to respond with love and kindness.  I let the tantrum run it’s course, and when it was over I was able to scoop up my girl, hug her and carry on with dinner.  No drama.  No emotional “bomb shells” all over.  I was able to “surf” even amid the threat.

Go Surfing

The next time a “bomb” of emotion goes off in your head, notice what your default thought is.  If it’s one that might trap you in more negative emotions—try thinking the opposite thought.  Notice if it helps change your feeling and your result.  Surfing is a lot more fun!

Mental Gardening: How to Grow Happiness Anywhere

They way we feel is the product of what we think.  Just as with physical gardening, we plant seeds in our minds constantly.  Sometimes we choose them, other times we don’t.  However, whether a seed flourishes depends entirely on how we care for it.  In other words the way we think about something that happens will affect how much it grows and impacts us much more than the fact that it happened.  A productive yield of happiness requires both planting and nourishing gratitude and abundance as well as weeding and pruning  dissatisfaction and lack.   As we do we’ll find we can grow happiness anywhere.

The Law of the Harvest

My Dad loved to garden, and he put all of his daughters to work planting, weeding and watering each summer.  Frankly, I thought it was hot and boring a lot of the time; I tried to avoid it whenever I could. One of the pay-offs of our hard work was the tender, rich acidic flavor of red home-grown tomatoes that we picked on summer nights and ate for dinner.

A garden’s yield is directly correlated to the effort put into it.  I remember one summer when we were fairy lazy about watering. Then, we went on a family vacation and returned to find the garden sparse and mostly dried up.  I remember my sister running into the house sobbing because it meant there would be no home-grown tomatoes that year.

The law of the harvest states that we will reap what we sow.  If we want the home-grown tomatoes, we have to plant them, water them, and weed them.

The Law of the Harvest in our Minds

Because I grew up spending Saturday mornings with my fingernails buried in the dirt weeding and watering our backyard garden plot, I find particular poignancy in this quote by Sarah Ban Breathnach about the gardens in our minds.

“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend… when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present— love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure— the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.”

This quote hung on my refrigerator for a couple of years to remind me that the law of the harvest applies to my mind.  The thoughts I think are like seeds that germinate and grow into plants of feelings and actions and eventually yield the fruit of my overall happiness and relationships and contribution in the world.  I determine my yield by the thoughts I choose, and the paradigms I tend and cultivate.

I love the concept that at any time, there are two mental gardens existing at the same time.  In any situation, relationship or even with our own self-image, there is always abundance and there are always things lacking.  It’s easy to feel that our external situation is the cause of our lack. However, ANY situation has abundance and lack simultaneously.  The abundance we feel is directly correlated to how diligent we are in tending the abundant thoughts and allowing the gardens of lack to shrivel up and die.

 

Mental Gardening Around the World

My husband is a diplomat, which means our family gets to move frequently to various places around the world.  When we embarked on this lifestyle I was optimistic about the many ways we could serve and the blessings it would have for our family.  I love to travel, explore new places, try new foods, and experience how different cultures do things. I hoped to broaden my children’s minds.

Tending My Garden of Lack

The reality of life abroad however, brought many challenges.   I discovered that even the smallest daily tasks were harder than I had experienced in the United States.  The water wasn’t safe, so we had to use purified water to brush our teeth and get a drink. We had to bleach all of our veggies and fruits to kill bugs and bacteria.  Finding simple items was an epic challenge; there was no Target or Office Depot like I was used to. One day I remember spending over 7 hours driving around the city looking for paper clips and came home empty handed.   The difference in time zones made it difficult to call home, and our internet was slow and cut out frequently. I can remember sometimes having to call 6 or 7 times just to make it through a short conversation with a sister.   

Driving was challenging.  Many of the streets were not marked, and not knowing the language made it difficult to ask for directions. There were times I spent hours lost and driving around with a crying baby in the car.  Traffic was oppressive–one time it took me over 3 hours of white knuckled driving to get my children to school.  They struggled with bilingual schools; they felt overwhelmed in an environment where they understood nothing.  There were no libraries, and the pollution was so bad it often prohibited going to the few rusty parks nearby. Medical care was not always optimal, and sometimes it was in a foreign language.

On difficult days, I would compare my experience there with the idealized life in America I imagined…the mini-van, the cul-de-sac, walking to elementary school, clean water, and the list goes on.  When I compared my life abroad to this, things seemed difficult and unfair. Without even realizing it, I began to tend my mental garden of scarcity. The more I noticed how much harder life was, the more I collected evidence of the challenges in my life and my resentment about our lifestyle grew.  My garden of scarcity grew and began to take over some of the real estate in my garden of abundance.

My husband and I accepted a posting in Hawaii–I did finally get a little home with a yard on a cul-de-sac.  We could brush our teeth in clean water, shop at Target and my kids could speak English in school. I could communicate easier with my extended family.  I had all the things I had dreamed about in an American life. My ideal of life on a cul-de-sac—while wonderful had just as many challenges as my life abroad.  They were just different. We lived in a small home, abundant with bugs! We had no A/C and it was oppressively hot. The schools were not as stimulating as our previous experience and everything was SO expensive.  My children still struggled, but with different things. I still felt discouraged and frustrated. And, I found I missed many of the wonderful things about our ex-pat life.

Tending Abundance

I realized it didn’t matter where I was–there would always be lack as well as abundance.  I was focusing on where I was, trying to get to the right place–thinking that the abundant garden was an actual physical place or situation–I realized it wasn’t.  The abundant garden is in our minds. We get the abundant garden by the positive thoughts we plant and nourish by intentionally focusing on. Lack will always be present as well.  But we dry out that garden as we give it less attention.  

With this shift in my understanding of abundance, I began to see my life in a new way.  The challenges didn’t evaporate, they stayed the same, but I began to notice the abundance in my life and focus on that.  I could walk to the beach! My children could go slip-and-sliding in the backyard and we could be outside year round! There were breathtaking hikes just minutes away.  We made some wonderful friends and we had lots of family come and visit. Hawaii became my garden of Eden…not because of where or what it was, but how I thought about it.

Similarly as we’ve moved abroad again, I have found a life full of abundance in our ex-pat life as well.  The difficult things of living outside of the US are still part of our life. There is still traffic, food and sanitation issues, and language barriers.  None of that has changed. At times I get frustrated by them, but I’m learning to prune those thoughts and not allow them to overtake my garden of all the abundant things I do love about our life.  When those thought arise, I just allow them to pass through, but don’t let them take root. I try to think of the inconveniences as part of the package deal that comes with so many benefits for our family.

I spend a lot more time noticing the amazing education my children are getting, nurturing relationships with other ex-pat women who have lived all over the world, and relishing our family outings on Saturdays to ruins, natural wonders and historical treasures.  I try to stop and notice things; the other day I saw a man riding a bicycle stacked high with cardboard boxes several times taller than himself riding through a developed intersection full of cars. I thought about how fascinating this life is–and how amazing it is to have a car to drive.

This mental gardening has helped my emotional garden of abundance to grow and has helped to prune back my garden of lack. It has indeed caused “the wasteland of illusion to fall away, and allow me to experience Heaven on Earth.” (Or at least moments of it. 😉

Tend Your Garden of Abundance

What area of your life do you want to improve?  

When you think about that area, what is in your emotional garden of lack?  What about your garden of abundance?  Tend the garden you want to grow.  Nourish the thoughts of abundance by thinking of them often, talking about them, writing them down.  Acknowledging the lack is fine, but dwelling on it will diminish the sense of abundance.