Overwhelm Is A Verb

Recently I felt REALLY overwhelmed. My to-do list was two pages long single spaced with double columns. I didn’t even know where to start. So I didn’t. This is the problem with overwhelm. It keeps us stuck doing nothing.

I want to invite you to think about overwhelm differently—think about overwhelm as a verb. We “overwhelm” (v.) when we choose to spend time thinking about and worrying about what we have to do, complaining that it’s hard, we don’t have time, or we shouldn’t have to do it. Overwhelm is a choice and we can choose not to overwhelm (v.)

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How to Stop Worrying About Missing Out

Choices can be agonizing–mainly because we worry about missing out on something. This fear plagues us in many decisions we make, from the most mundane decisions to significant life choices. When we have this fear we limit our joy, no matter what choice we end up making.  There’s a simple way to stop worrying about missing out and find more joy in whatever we choose: remember that “life is long.”

The Agony of Choices

This summer my girls saved up their allowance to do a little shopping.  Because we live abroad, it is a particularly exciting prospect to go to the toy section of Target when we visit home.  The girls had wide eyes as they wandered through the aisles of bright colors and possibilities. My older girls made their selections quickly and were ready to go.

My 6-year-old, however, agonized over what to buy.  She picked up several toys, games, and dolls, and carefully studied each box.  She came to me almost in tears, unable to decide which one to buy.  She wanted all of them, but she didn’t have enough money, and she worried she might never be able to come back. Considering we don’t come to Target often, there was some legitimacy in her concern.  However, her fear of missing out on something paralyzed her and she couldn’t make a decision.

There was a part of my “mother-heart” that wanted to loan her a little money so she could get them all, but I stopped myself.  I knew this was an opportunity to learn an essential life lesson.

As human beings we constantly worry about missing out; we want to have everything, be everything, and do everything now.  Our brains tell us that if we don’t do, or have, or be everything now—we won’t be able to do, have, or be it later.  We paralyze ourselves by the fear of missing out on something.

I gave my daughter a hug and admired her selections but I did not offer her a loan.  What I did offer her was a thought that my friend Laurel Ulrich, taught me many years ago.

Life is Long

I became friends with Laurel while I lived in Boston.  Laurel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who wrote the book, “A Midwives Tale.”  She is a renowned professor at Harvard.  She had also raised 5 children and stayed at home with them for much of their lives.  At the time, I felt a lot of angst about trying to balance my role as a mother and professional pursuits. One day, I asked Laurel how she balanced her professional contributions, motherhood, and selfhood.  Her answer was…

“Life is long.”

I admit, at first I was a little disappointed.  I had hoped she would have some magic formula that would help me balance everything I wanted to do at the same time. Instead, this seemed like sort of a trite answer you would find on a meme.  But Laurel explained that we often think we have to do everything at once.  Life has seasons, she said, and what we focus on can change as we move through these seasons.  She emphasized that she didn’t accomplished everything all at once.  She loved being home with her children for a season, and as they got older she studied for her Ph.D., which she didn’t get until she was 42.  She won the Pulitzer Prize at 53 and became a professor at Harvard at 57.  She still teaches at 80, and she continues to enjoy mothering her adult children.

Don’t Handicap Your Joy Now

The more I thought about her advice, “life is long,” the more I liked it.  My fear that I was missing out if I didn’t do everything NOW, was preventing me from feeling joy in either mothering or my professional life.  Previously, when I was home with my kids, I would wonder what I could be doing as I compared myself to colleagues and all the amazing things they were accomplishing.  As I reminded myself that there would be enough time and opportunity to pursue both of my deep desires—to be a fully present mother and to contribute professionally—I began to relax and enjoy the time with my children more.

Likewise when I did do nutrition presentations or consultations I felt less guilty as I remembered I would get to mother my children throughout their life, not just until they left the house.  I also reminded myself that my professional pursuits would help me be a better mother to them by helping me be more balanced.  That allowed me to enjoy my work and be more effective since I spent less brain space worrying.

Attitude Matters More Than the % of Time Spent

Over the years I’ve done a variety of combinations of full-time mothering and other pursuits.  Sometimes my fear of missing out creeps up on me. But I continue to remind myself that “life Is long.”

There isn’t any one “right” way to balance all the desires and demands on us.  Women find a myriad of ways to navigate them with beautiful results—as well as messy ones!  Different women, different situations, different stages of family and motherhood may shift the balance we choose.  However feeling it all needs to happen now can create angst and rob us of the joy we are seeking in either pursuit.

Ultimately, our attitude is more important than the percentage of time we spend in any particular pursuit.  Knowing life is long can help us be satisfied now.  Joy in the now means exponentially more fulfillment in anything we do.

The Word “Eventually” Can Be Powerful

I didn’t bore my daughter with all this in the Target aisle, but I did share the essence of the wisdom Laurel Ulrich shared with me many years ago. “You don’t have enough money to get them all now,” I said, “but you’ll have other chances to come back.  As you earn more money, we can come again to the store, or even look online.  If you really want all of these toys, you can earn them eventually.  Just choose the one you would like to get most now.”

This seemed to be a relief to her.  It allowed her to make a selection without so much angst of feeling like she was missing out.

When you start to feel like you are missing out and you notice it is diminishing your joy, remember…life is long.

Be Confident You Can Do It All…Eventually

What do you worry you are missing out on? Do you struggle to find the balance between personal or professional development and mothering?

Write a list of all the things you desire to be and do.  It is possible to do many of the things you’d love to do, but maybe not all at once.  Not doing it now, doesn’t mean you are missing out.  What would be most worthwhile to pursue NOW, and what could be some things to pursue eventually?

Stop Saying “Should”

The word “should” seems innocent–even motivating but a closer look reveals that it leaves a trail of damage.  It highlights inadequacies, robs us of motivation, and leaves us stuck in anxiety, disappointment and frustration.  Removing the word “should” from your lexicon can make a big impact in how you feel about yourself and others.

“Should” is Everywhere

I used to say the word “should” all the time.  “I should have gotten up earlier this morning.”  “I should have been more patient with my kids.”  “I should have started dinner earlier.”

I even used “should” when I thought about others.  “My kids should listen the first time!”  “People shouldn’t cut me off in traffic.”  “They should make this website easier to navigate.”

Sometimes I used it to describe situation around me.  “This shouldn’t be so hard.”  “This meeting should be shorter.”

I also used to feel discouraged, overwhelmed and anxious a lot of the day.

“Should” Seems Responsible

At first glance, the word “should” seems like a benign or even a helpful word.  It seems like it’s helping us notice how things need to be different.  By recognizing how things should be, it’s almost as if we feel we’ve compensated for the fact that they aren’t that way.  It makes us feel more decent and more responsible.

However, as I’ve become more aware of my internal dialogue.  I’ve realized that the word “should” is quite insidious.  It leaves a trail of devastating damage behind.   Should doesn’t help me do or become more.  It has the opposite effect.

The Problem with “Should”

The word “should” causes me to notice all that I am NOT doing and all that I have NOT become.  It accentuates others’ faults and weaknesses, and highlights the less than ideal in circumstances around me.   Because we feel that we and things around us are inadequate, it can decrease our motivation and leave us feeling anxious and frustrated.  You can’t beat yourself up into being better.  You can’t beat others into being better either–“shoulding” others strains relationships because it feels like criticism.  It doesn’t mean we stop making requests of others or ourselves, it just means we don’t keep flogging ourselves with the expectation that it “should” be different.

What to Say Instead of “Should”

Here are some alternatives to the word “should” when you notice it creeping into your own internal dialogue.

Focus on the Benefit

I feel _____________ when I ___________.

Instead of saying “I should have changed out of my yoga pants before I picked my kids up at the bus stop.”  Say, “I feel so much more confident when I take the time to get ready before my kids get home from school.”   This helps you focus on the end result which motivating instead of on the action you didn’t do, which is discouraging.

State What You Value

It’s important to me to ________________.

It’s easy to say “I should be on time to church.”  Instead say, “It’s important to me to be on time for church.”  It’s much more motivating to be on time when it’s couched in terms of what you value instead of what you “should” do.

Change the “sh” to “w” or “c”

I could _______________.
Just substituting “would” or “could” instead of “should” can make a big difference.  It makes our requests much more pleasant and loving.

“It would make our home so much more pleasant if you could hang your backpack up when you get home.”  Consider the difference between that and this.  “You should hang your backpack up when you get home so our house doesn’t look trashed.”

Get Curious

I wonder why I am/they are  ________________.

Using should takes us out of the present—it makes us think of something that didn’t happen in the past, or something that needs to happen in the future.  Most of these thoughts come with stress and other negative emotions. Bringing our attention back to the present can help us abate some of this negativity.

Instead of thinking, “I shouldn’t have yelled at my kids.”  Think, “I’m feeling really irritated right now.  I wonder why I’m feeling irritated?”

Getting curious about what you’re thinking and feeling has a powerful impact on helping us become more of who we want to be instead of just reacting to things around us.

Stop saying “should”

Getting rid of “should” can be so freeing.  I’ve been working on this for a long time and I’m still working on it.  My shoulds everyday are a lot fewer than they used to be.  As a result I feel a lot more confidence, and I feel a lot less frustration with others.

Shoulds are a fixture in our lexicon.  It takes some practice, and some patience but the payout in personal peace and motivation is big.  Saying less shoulds to ourselves allows us to focus on what we ARE doing, and what we WANT to be doing instead of what we’re not doing.  Removing “should” for others can give space in relationships allows people to feel loved as they are; this enables deeper connections.  Eliminating “should” thoughts about circumstances lets us accept the things we cannot change and move forward instead of staying stuck in wishing things were different.

How many times a day do you say “should?”

Try observing when you use “should” and how it affects you.
Try substituting a different thought when you notice yourself saying “should.”

The Eclipse of Happiness: My Depression Story

As the stresses and struggles of life accumulated I found that they began to eclipse the joy and happiness I had always enjoyed.  I lived for a long time in a fog of disillusionment, discouragement and disconnection with people I loved.  This is my story about depression and the process of finally finding light again.   My journey is personal and in some ways vulnerable, but I lived in darkness for so long I want to share hope that there is a way to feel happiness again; hang on.  This is my story.  At the end I give some helpful steps that set me on a course for healing.

Sunny Delight

As a young child, my mom used to call me her “sunny-delight.”  I grew up as an all-American girl in the suburbs of Chicago; my mom took me puddle jumping after it rained, and my Dad taught me to ride a two-wheeler without training

wheels. My family had a gaggle of girls and a boy at the end that my mom used to call the cherry on top.  We used to sit on the stairs and brush and style each other’s hair and exchange notes in little “mail boxes” on each other’s bedroom doors.  This was also a time when I began to recognize what God’s love felt like, and developed a deep conviction of his care and involvement in our lives.

My teen and college years in Colorado and Utah were also filled with sunshine and hope.  My mother used to tell me I was like her little hummel on the fireplace: pockets spread wide and filling them with new experiences.   I ran cross country, traveled to Africa to teach hygiene to children, sang in a Pentacostal gospel choir, and graduated with a degree in Fitness and Wellness Management from BYU.

As a young professional, my eyes were wide with idealism.  I helped create a wellness clinic for a sports medicine doctor, worked in the NICU of Primary

Children’s Hospital and ran the statewide wellness program for the American Heart Association.  Best of all, I fell in love and married a bow tie wearing diplomat.  Life was perfect.

 

Sunshine Begins to Dim

Sometimes even the sun goes dark.  The recent eclipse in the United States was a fascinating example of this.  A warm sunny day changed to a dark cold one in just a matter of minutes as the moon eclipsed the sun.  It’s light never never actually changed, but it was  covered up and no one could feel the light and warmth it characteristically gave off.
Over time, despite the abun

dant blessings in our life—the sunshine in my life began to be eclipsed.  We moved frequently for work and graduate school. The frequent moving and isolation from family took a toll.  I began to feel less bright and happy, and more tired and irritable.    Problems seemed bigger and answers seemed more significant and weighty.  I cried a lot.

Sometimes I would create “harry problems”, as my husband called them, that had no good solution and then I’d analyze and over analyze and swirl myself downward into misery. No matter what solution I found—nothing felt right.   I had a difficult time making simple decisions like what to do with my free time.  I ruminated on conversations with friends and worried about things I’d said or didn’t say.  All of this mental drama weighed me down.

It was confusing.  I had wonderful days too, and every time I thought about my life it seemed so amazing; nothing seemed wrong per-se.  Of course I had stresses, but it didn’t seem like more than anyone else had.  I tried harder to count my blessings, and focus on the positive. I kept telling myself I SHOULD be happy. I need to try harder.

Borrowing Light

I remember calling my mother one day and pouring out my heartache; I was sitting on a park bench in Boston sobbing.  She gently mentioned she thought I might have some depression. She had suffered from depression, and she must have recognized it in me.  She was a hero to me.  In a time when depression was hardly well known and certainly not widely understood or normalized, she discovered and identified that she was not coping well.  She sought treatment with medication and counseling, and was able to largely heal through these and through the atonement.

As the realization began to settle in that I might have “depression,” I resisted it. My brain found plenty of evidence to show how I had lots of happy days, I was fine, and how I had lots of normal excuses to account for how I was doing.  However as I began to look at who I had become and how I felt and interacted compared to who I had been and how I had felt and interacted most of my life, it became clear that something was not healthy.

Recognizing that I was at a vulnerable place, my mother took a plane to Boston and spent a week with me.  I will forever be thankful to her for that tremendous gift of her love and nurturing through a critical juncture in my life.  The first thing she did was have me take a depression and anxiety evaluation.  She explained that this would help me determine if I was indeed depressed or anxious or both—and how severe.  While it might not be a perfect measurement, it would give me a decent idea if I should pursue treatment and help in that direction.   My scores were severe in both depression and anxiety.

I was shocked.  I didn’t feel like the embodiment of what I had pictured someone with severe depression like.  Accepting this label took a lot of humility, but it was also freeing to know that there was a reason for my feelings and behavior beyond my own character flaws!  Knowing there was a diagnosis also gave me hope that there could be treatment.  My mother’s example was a huge inspiration to me.

My mother suggested I begin some medication–even temporarily that might help me get to a place I could think more clearly and change some of my patterns.  I wasn’t anxious to put things in my body that I didn’t absolutely need.  I thought counseling would be a better first step.  I had 5-6 visits with one therapist and found that I was more of a mess after going, and there didn’t seem to be much help or hope on the horizon working with him. I tried two other therapists thinking maybe it was just not the right personality match, but ended up feeling a bit disenchanted with counseling in general.

I began reading a book called, The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns. David Burns was a pioneer in the field of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a highly successful therapist and a professor at Stanford.  He wrote the first lay handbook for patients about how to begin to recognize some of our unhealthy thinking patterns—and learn how to untwist them.  I was fascinated as I read with some of the distorted filters and inaccurate thinking patterns I recognized in myself.  Becoming aware of my own distorted thinking was helpful.  I seemed to get to a better coping spot but I certainly wasn’t thriving.  I wasn’t really sure what else to do.  So, I just kept limping along emotionally the best I knew how. All this time, I don’t think most people around me knew anything was wrong.  To people not close to me, I looked like the essence of happiness.

Darkness Growing

Soon we found that we were expecting our first daughter.  We were thrilled!  We prepared a place for her and welcomed her with great excitement.  I had always looked forward to motherhood, but I often found myself stressed about doing things “right.”  I worried about nipple confusion, sleep training, and tummy time.  I tried to read all the books and exhausted myself trying to be the “perfect mom.”

My baby did not sleep well and I was exhausted.  After 9 months of sleep deprivation and with hormones ebbing and flowing, I slipped into a deeper depression.  I remember stomping to the baby’s room, angry she was up again. I would feed her, only to be awakened again a few hours later.  I was a zombie during the day.   My brain kept telling me I should be happy.  But I felt numb, and miserable.  I remember watching friends with their babies.  They seemed to find joy in their little movements and progress.  I felt like day and night were one long exercise in endurance.  I continued to slog through every day and night—what else could I do?   Slowly the sunshine and happiness I had experienced much of my life was largely darkened.

I was a ball of negativity.  I frequently complained about all the “hard” things in my life whenever I was with my husband or friends or family.  I’m sure I was miserable to be with.  Frankly I didn’t even enjoy being with myself.  I remember my husband coming home from work and saying he wished we could enjoy having fun together in the evenings instead of debriefing on all the hard things and slogging through the tasks of life.   I knew he was right.  I wanted to have fun as a family too–honestly I didn’t know how.   l remember one night we made a desperate attempt to “enjoy” family time.  We sat in the family room and rolled a ball around with the baby.  It felt so awkward.

My threshold for frustration or aberration was very low.  I was frustrated with anything that made my life even a little harder—having to change an extra diaper, hitting traffic, picking my husband up from work.    I didn’t feel like myself, and I knew it.  I knew I probably still had some depression, but a also assumed most new mothers felt this way.

Life kept happening.  Over the next 10 years, we moved many times—sometimes internationally.  While this was exciting, it was challenging to be away from family and adjust to new cultures.  See Mental Gardening.  We had 4 daughters; each of which was such a blessing.  However, with hormone fluctuations, lack of sleep and some colicky babies I ended up with some post-partum depression after each of them. Some of my children struggled with anxiety and other health issues. See  All Things Brave and Beautiful: Finding Peace in Difficulty.  My mother struggled with Ovarian Cancer and passed away.  See Hope Is The Thing: Getting Through  Grief.  My Dad remarried and we got a new step-family.   we were glad my Dad could have a new companion, but it took time to adjust to a new “normal.”  Meanwhile there was dinner, diapers, kid’s homework, church responsibilities, exercising

and additionally, the stresses of living internationally—bleaching all our produce, foreign languages and culture, living far from family, and constant change.  Many of these things were wonderful but most were challenging too.  During this time I ebbed and flowed in my emotional health, was never really healthy.

Eclipse of Light

As the stress piled up, I got lower and lower emotionally.  My burdens felt too heavy– I began to feel like a victim of life.   There were good moments, there were good days.   However, those became much fewer and farther between.  In the midst of my pain, I blamed my circumstances, I blamed the people around me, I blamed myself.  The blame began to sabotage my relationships, my self-respect, and snuffed out any last sparks of joy I felt.  Slowly I felt the last rays of sun in my life go dark.  For me it was just about a total eclipse.

One of the worst parts was that in the midst of my emotional heaviness, it was much more difficult to feel God’s love.  I couldn’t feel the spirit directing me very well, and without the nourishing help of God, I often felt particularly alone and in darkness.

As my life went dark,  I felt trapped.  I felt like I would always feel this way.  It felt hopeless.  I felt like nothing I did really helped much.  Everything felt heavy and hardI felt numb.  I felt resentful and angry a lot of the time. I endured because I had to, but didn’t feel much joy.  And, to add insult to injury I was discouraged because I wasn’t showing up as the mother, wife, friend, daughter and sister I wanted to be.  That added more layers of sadness and depression.

Even simple tasks felt overwhelming.  Opening the curtains in the morning felt too hard.  I remember taking my kids to ride bicycles in the back yard felt so monumental.  We lived in an apartment building, and getting in and out of the elevator and going through 2 sets of glass doors felt too hard.  I would dread and avoid anything that might be hard or add more load to my already heavy one.  Decisions were difficult.  I couldn’t think clearly.  My head was clouded with worry about what others thought.  I replayed conversations over and over in my mind worrying about what I should have said or not said.

Night after night my husband listened to the awfulness of the day and all the hard things.  He was a saint.  Looking back, I realize I wanted someone to understand how much pain I felt and how heavy it was to carry.  He listened and validated and tried to help.  But even he had his limits.  I remember him gently saying one night—I’d love to talk about something besides just how hard everything is sometimes.  I constantly felt resentful that no one seemed to understand.  It was beginning to affect every aspect of my life—my health, my sleep, my marriage, my mothering, my friendships, my extended family relationships and my day to day functioning.  Even with all this, I think most people just thought I was sort of a negative person.  I don’t think most people outside my close circle of friends and family would have known the suffering I was experiencing every day.  I knew I needed to do something.

Dumping the Darkness

Finally, out of desperation I tried the only thing I knew to do—I called a therapist again.  This time I found an amazing therapist.  For almost a year I talked to her every week and word vomited everything that was “hard” and that made me feel anxious and discouraged.  She listened, and helped me identify the things causing the most pain.  She empathized and helped me extract so many emotions that had been shoved inside for such a long time.  Verbalizing and recognizing my pain allowed me to externalize them…to get them to a place that I could look at them, evaluate them, and even let go, change or mourn them instead of being controlled by them.  This was essential.  I couldn’t deal with them when they were inside floating around under my consciousness.

As I began to unload all of this darkness I been shrouded with—I began to feel lighter.  I began to have more space in my life for light.  The more darkness I extracted, the more space there was available for light.  It was almost as if I needed a space to place all my pain.  This therapist was that place for me.

Burgeoning of Light

After several months, my therapist recommended that I begin taking medication for depression.  She said she felt it would help me get to a healthier place where I could begin to feel and think differently.  I resisted at first.  I was feeling a bit better after getting out so much pain.   I thought I could heal without meds.

One day, I was talking to my friend.  She had experienced depression and anxiety and was telling me about someone she knew who was depressed but refused to take meds.  She said something that resonated so deeply with me at the time that I will never forget.  She said, “It is really irresponsible to herself and everyone around her NOT to take meds.” I had never thought of it that way before.  I decided I wanted to try medication.  My therapist reminded me it could be a temporary thing—and that often people who get on meds make progress more quickly.

A few weeks on meds and I was amazed.  I started feeling brighter and happier.  I noticed I didn’t snap at my children quite as quickly.  I wasn’t quite as irritated by things.  I remember being able to sit on the couch and not feel stressed that I should get up and do something “productive.”  I also started feeling the spirit again.  I remember thinking, “This is the old me!”   I had thought the old me–the one who had filled her pockets with every experience and loved the wind blowing on my face riding my banana seat bike was gone.  I wasn’t really gone.  I had just been so weighed down and sad that that I could not feel or be who I had always been.

(Medication is not the only means of healing and is not the correct route for everyone with depression.  For me it was a critical element of my healing for a time.  Looking back I regret waiting 10 years to finally try it.)

I felt like the sun peeked out again from behind the moon and shed a little light in my soul.  Hope felt so glorious—maybe I wouldn’t have to feel depressed forever!

Becoming Brighter

As the sunshine began to filter in slowly, I was able to see a little more clearly.  I didn’t feel quite so wound up inside and decisions didn’t seem to be so painful.  I wasn’t as irritated and I didn’t see things in such a negative light.  As I saw things differently, I felt happier and more calm and I showed up more positive and more loving to the people around me. Small successes built on each other and while I often fell back in the ditch, I was able to pick myself up and keep going.
I had been doing therapy for about a year and felt a lot better.  I had gotten out lots of the darkness, and there was room for more light.  However, I felt I still had a long way to go in changing the way I thought and felt and acted to stay in a better place.  I remember one day asking my counselor, “I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of the junk out, now what? What do a I do with it?  How do I change the way I think so that I don’t keep putting more junk in?  How I can stay emotionally healthy?”  I was ready and excited to move forward.  I was stunned when she said, “Well, I don’t know.  I’ve used all the tools I have to offer—I don’t really have anything else to offer you.”  I was so disappointed.

Therapy had certainly served an important purpose for me.  It helped me identify and verbalize all the junk that caused me pain, but hadn’t really helped me know what to do with it all.  Many studies actually show that patients who do extended therapy can get worse simply by ruminating over and over on their difficulties when therapists don’t have the skills or the courage to help clients move beyond them after they have sufficiently processed them.

Coasting

I wasn’t sure where to turn next.  I was feeling good-enough to function and frankly I was exhausted from a year of emotional heavy lifting.  For the next few years, I coasted emotionally.  I didn’t do much digging or healing—I just ambled along and tried to enjoy the better state of being.  On my meds, and with some of the junk out, I established some better patterns with my children and my husband—even with friends and extended family.  I enjoyed things more and could laugh and joke and find joy in life.  I began to put my own self-respect back together. Since I felt less overwhelmed, I was able to exercise, eat healthier, enjoy better friendships and contribute in my church responsibilities.  Perhaps best of all was my ability to feel God’s spirit and power in my life returned. The divine flow helped guide and craft my healing.

 

I tried a few times to get off meds, thinking I was doing better.  But every time my dose was decreased, the depression returned full force.  This told me that I hadn’t really addressed the cause of my depression yet.  In fact, I could feel my meds becoming slowly less effective.  My doctor gradually increased the meds, but I noticed side effects at the higher dosages. I gained weight.  I felt numb and not compassionate sometimes. Some of my old patterns of unhealthy thinking even started to emerge.

Choosing Light

I remember one significant moment during this time.  I was out shopping and was chatting on my cell with someone.  I was sharing all the hard things about a particular situation. As I was going on and on, the spirit brought a very specific phrase to my mind.  “Choose happiness.”  I was confused.  Who wouldn’t choose happiness?  If I could feel happy, I would—of course.  So, why would we need to choose it.  After all, it wasn’t like there was a pallet of emotions around me and I purposely selected “frustrated,” or “overwhelmed.”  Or did I?

At the same time, the spirit brought my evening conversations with my husband to mind.  Whenever I told him about the day, I focused on all the negative things that had happened. I told him how hard the kids were or how frustrating the traffic was or how awkward a conversation was with someone that day.  There were plenty of wonderful things that happened too, but because the negative things bothered me, those were what I tended to share.  The spirit gently suggested that I try focusing on the positive things that had happened during the day—and only sharing those.  Choosing happy.  It took a lot of courage and self-restraint at first to share the happy and omit the negative.  However, I began to notice that I saw my life differently when I described and focused on the positive.

I began to feel stirrings that there was more healing to be done; more changes I needed to make.

Seeking Divine Light

Along my journey I came across a talk entitled, “Christ Centered Healing From Depression,” given by Carrie Wrigley.     She is a therapist who spoke at an Education Week at BYU regarding healing from Depression and Low Self Worth.

I confess at first, I was a bit skeptical. While I have deep faith, I had suffered with depression for over 10 years, and I knew first hand that praying more and serving more and painting on a smile didn’t do much to lift the shroud of darkness that covered me.

However, I also knew that God was ultimately the source of light and healing.  I recognized that God had sent many tender mercies to me in form of friends, books, ideas and help.  I suppose I thought that WAS the way he healed us.  However, there was part of me that believed his healing could do more.  I just wasn’t sure how to access his healing power.

Carrie Wrigley discusses research surrounding the effectiveness of many therapeutic methods, use of medication and her experience as a practitioner seeing patients and not seeing many change long-term and how to compelled her to search for how to really help her patients heal and change.

As she searched and studied, she discovered how to help patients access the atonement in their healing.  The atonement makes us into a new creature.  She explained that one way God helps us become a new creature is by changing the way we think.  Our thoughts create how we feel, how we feel drives how we act and how we act creates the result in our lives.  So one of the ways God helps form us into who he wants us to be is by helping us change the way we think, and the way we see things.  I was fascinated by this idea.  I began praying that God would help me learn how to change my thinking.

One day as I was on Face Book I came across an ad that said, “What if you could feel happy most of the time and overwhelmed sometimes instead of the other way around?”  I was intrigued.  I clicked on the link and discovered a life coach named, Jody Moore.  I began listening to her podcasts and finding my mind was challenged and opened in new ways

Over the course of the next year, I began to learn how to re-set my mind to think differently—and much more healthfully.  I enrolled in a life coaching program.  I learned several tools and did a lot of personal emotional work that did a complete emotional makeover on my brain.  I learned how to identify the thoughts that were driving my depression and change them.  I learned how to recognize and process difficult emotions instead of acting out on them, or suppressing them.  I learned that I spent a lot of effort avoiding emotions by eating, shopping, listening to audiobooks or watching Netflix.  I began to feel a positive momentum building.  I was feeling better, my relationships were totally different and more positive.  I was able to hand overwhelm and difficulty better.  I could be more of who I wanted to be.

God guided me through an amazing process has helped and continues to help me become a “new creature.”   I have changed so much inside I am unrecognizable to myself.  The spirit began to help put new thoughts in my mind.  I think and interact in a whole new way.  I am an up-leveled version of myself—even better than the original “old me.”  I feel joy! My life feels full of light.

Living in Sunlight

As my brain has changed, I have been able to work off my meds slowly.  This has been an important indication that finally the source of my depression is being addressed.  I don’t dwell on conversations, I don’t take forever to make decisions, I don’t feel constantly overwhelmed and wallow in self-pity.  I don’t constantly worry about being “productive.”  My relationships are deepening, my brain fog has cleared, and I feel like I show up more often like the kind of person I want to be. Instead of having a head full of overwhelm and stress, it is full of more compassion, desire to help others and mostly full of joy!

One of the things I discovered was how essential darkness is.  God made the light and the dark.  There is darkness almost 50 percent of the time on earth.  Without darkness, it would be difficult to sleep, it would get hot, there would be no natural separation of days, and  it would be tempting to keep working, or playing instead of taking a break.  We wouldn’t appreciate the light.  We must have both to understand the other.

I realized the same was true for my emotions.  God created opposition in all things;  we are meant to experience difficult emotions a large portion of the  time. The tension of opposites is what gives joy and happiness it’s meaning and it’s value.

Knowing darkness or difficult emotions are important made me less afraid of them.  Knowing how to process them and how to move past them has given me confidence that I don’t have to be controlled by difficult emotion.  Now I can accept them and let them go more often. This allows me to let go of them instead of storing the emotion and being controlled by them.  I know there is more light ahead.

Sharing My Light

Having lived in darkness for so many years and not knowing how to climb out, I feel deep compassion for people who live in the dark night of the soul—even partial darkness.  I know it is painful and heavy.  I heard someone say once that each of us bears the mark of the pain we’ve felt.  It becomes like a secret code that binds us to others who bear the same mark.  I am so deeply grateful for all of the people who have helped to uncover my light and I want to share the joy of light with anyone who may be suffering.  That is part of the reason I am writing this blog.

Over the years, many people have asked me where to even start when they feel depressed.  Each person’s journey is unique.  I would never begin to think that I could tell someone else how to heal or recover from their own individual difficulties.  I have listed the steps that have helped me in my journey; I hope they will be helpful to others in some way.  There is so much happiness where light is–and it’s possible.  If you are in a dark place, hang on.  There is light ahead.

Uncover the Light Again

1.  Trust yourself
If you notice that you don’t feel yourself, believe yourself.  Don’t just keep pushing through.  Slow down and observe yourself.  Just because you have good days doesn’t mean you aren’t depressed or anxious.

2. Take a Depression/Anxiety Test
If you have become someone you don’t recognize, and don’t like, consider taking a depression scale test.  This can give you an idea if it’s something you need to address, and how severe you may be.  Here is a Depression Test that could serve as a good starting point.

3. Dump the dark  (Counseling and medication may be helpful tools to consider)
An important part of healing is getting the dark out in a place you can see it, address it and change it if needed. Shedding light on things often takes away the power of difficult things.  Counseling is an excellent way to do this as therapists can help to draw out pain points.

Sometimes meds can be helpful in getting you to a place that you can see more clearly and function better.  It’s sometimes difficult to change patterns of thinking and acting when they are deeply ingrained and the feelings causing the behavior are so raw and difficult.  They are not the right course of action for everyone however.  Remember meds can be temporary.

Both counseling and medication can be particularly helpful in high moderate to severe depression.  More mild depression may be able to be addressed differently.  Methods such as journaling or talking with a confidant can be helpful in unloading pain as well.

4. Choose to Let in the Light
Once the brain knows the pathways that lead to depression, it’s easy to fall back into old patterns.  It requires a deliberate decision to “choose happy.” The minute we  allow ourselves to take even a step into the quicksand of self pity and wo, we get sucked down. Sometimes we  unknowingly feel that there are benefits to feeling depressed or anxious and it’s hard to fully heal when we still “want” in some ways to feel this way. It may sound  strange, as no one would “choose” to feel this way, but sometimes making a list of advantages and disadvantages of depression or anxiety can help us discover our own resistance. This was helpful for me.

5.  Get Help Changing Your Brain
Once you are in a stable emotional place, it is time to begin a brain remodel.  If we continue thinking and acting the way we always have, it is likely we will relapse into depression or anxiety again.  There are many ways to learn to think differently.

Life Coaching is one fantastic source of this type of brain work.  A therapist who does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy can also be helpful.  Sometimes hospitals or colleges offer groups that discuss important principles.  Bibliotherapy can be highly effective as well.  No matter how you choose, the change will come from actually observing yourself, writing down what you observe and making changes to your thoughts.

A great book to get started with is, The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns

One of my favorite podcasts that has helped me make these types of changes is:

The Life Coach School, Brooke Castillo

6.  Share Your Light
Sharing your new found tools and hope is often the ray of hope someone else needs to know they won’t be in a dark place forever. As we reach out to share and help our own light grows.

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.

 

How To Not Fear Fear: Metabolizing Emotions

We spend a lot of our time as human beings trying to escape or ignore or change these types of feelings. Why?  Because they feel awful!  No one likes feeling fear, or feeling stressed, overwhelmed, afraid, embarrassed, or depressed.  The problem is that when we avoid negative emotions they stay around longer, get more intense and rarely address the takes up lots of brain space!  There is a better way to handle difficult emotions.

Negative Emotions Are Essential

Our brains and bodies are programmed with these feelings to move us to action.  If a truck is headed straight for us, we feel fear.  And, our fear drives us to move out of the way. If we have too many things required of us, we feel overwhelm.  This feeling drives us to eliminate the unessential.

However, in our modern world, it’s easy to feel that we SHOULD feel happy or peaceful all the time. We think if we feel something negative, we should fix it.  We have so many easy options for escape!

Avoiding Negative Emotions

When our to-do list feels too long, we can turn on Netflix and get lost in a show instead.  When dinner our is crazy, we eat a cookie on the counter to dull the overwhelm and get a hit of joy—even temporarily.  After a difficult conversation that didn’t go well, we can drown our guilt and disappointment by pushing a few buttons on Amazon and a box shows up on our door with a new pair of shoes.

Everyone has different emotions they try to avoid, and there are myriad methods of avoiding them; eating, shopping, TV, staying busy, anger, withdrawing, sleeping, alcohol, drugs, porn, gambling, working etc.  When we avoid emotions, we never process them.  They continue to cause us problems.  And, the things we do to avoid negative emotions cause us trouble sometimes too.

The Problem with Avoiding Negative Emotions

There are 3 problems with trying to escape emotions:

  1. The things we do to escape difficult emotions sometimes have negative consequences.

    Here is an example:  There was a time in my life when I felt so overwhelmed and discouraged I listened to audiobooks all the time—especially at dinner time and crazy times in the car.  It seemed like a benign enough escape.  I knew it wasn’t ideal for my family but I wasn’t sure how else to deal with the chaos without becoming a person I didn’t like. I checked out.  While it saved my kids a lot of yelling, my escape also robbed me of precious time and interactions with my kids.

  2. When we don’t deal with an emotion, it sticks around and continues to resurface

    Emotions are simply chemicals in our body. Their job is to alert us of something important and move us to action if  necessary.  If they are not allowed to complete their job, they continue to resurface. Sometimes the emotion itself rises up again and again and other times it shows up in different ways.
    It’s sort of like those windup music boxes where you turn the crank and the ballerina dances to music.  If you keep the box open, eventually she will stop.  But, if you shut the box, she stops.  However, every time the box is opened she dances and the music plays. It may take many times of opening and closing to finish the cycle.  That is how our emotions work too.
    I had a baby just a few weeks after my mother passed away.  I wanted to grieve my mother’s loss—she was a tremendous presence in my life.  However, I was busy around the clock taking care of a newborn, an emotional toddler, and a needy pre-schooler.  We were in the middle of an international move and I didn’t know how to grieve in the midst of the insanity!  So I just closed the metaphorical music box (unconsciously of course) and kept trying to survive.

    Over the next few years however, when strong emotions surfaced, my grief was often right there.  Our move to a foreign country was overwhelming and difficult and I found myself sobbing nightly.  (I had moved to other countries before and been fine.  But this time I was totally lost.)  I thought it was the move itself—but looking back I see it was that grief resurfacing.  My grief resurfaced again and again as difficult things emerged in my life.  The ballerina had to play her part.

  3. It takes so much work to keep the negative emotions away we don’t have as much space in our minds for the things we really want to do!

    Recently I was trying to concentrate on something and my daughter was whistling.  It was really grating on me.  I tried to ignore it, but the harder I tried to not be bothered by it, the more intense the irritation began to be. In fact, it was requiring so much effort to “ignore” it, I hardly had any brain space left for the work I was doing.   This happens with emotions too—when we are angry at someone or irritated and we keep trying to push it down, it often consumes us even when we don’t realize it.

There is a better way to deal with emotions.

Allow Your Emotion

Most people think that if they allow their emotion they will end up doing something they don’t want to do—like yell at their kids, or eat too many cookies, or sleep until 10 in the morning. However, allowing a feeling is different than acting on it.  Allowing a feeling just means that we feel it, we notice it, we don’t avoid it.  It doesn’t mean we act on it.  In fact, allowing an emotion actually allows the emotion to dissipate, so we are less likely to re-act to it.

Emotions are just chemicals in our body.  When we feel them, they are simply moving around inside of us.  The emotion itself won’t hurt us.  This is a powerful piece of knowledge.  When you know that you can handle any emotion, you stop feeling afraid of certain emotions and you don’t have to spend as much time avoiding negative emotions.

Our bodies need food to survive.  When we eat food, the body metabolizes it–breaks it down, absorbs it and sends it out to the body for fuel.  Similarly, emotions are essential to our survival. They provide the necessary impetus to eat, live, reproduce, find purpose and even get out of bed in the morning. When our body encounters an emotion, it’s crucial to metabolize it just as it would food.  It’s important for the emotion to be allowed to run it’s course, be identified and serve as fuel for the appropriate action.

How to Metabolize an Emotion

Become an observer of yourself.  When you notice yourself feeling a negative emotion like fear, stress, anger, embarrassment, disappointment, frustration, shame etc. don’t shove it down or numb it away by distracting yourself.  Instead, close your eyes and “watch” the emotion in your body for a minute.

It seems like just when I start to chat with another adult one of my girls decides they need something.  They are often pulling on my arm or nagging, “mom, mom, mom, mom….can we go?”. My two-year old often just lays down and howls.  Even after I’ve let them know we will be leaving in 5 min. they continue to pester me.  I often feel irritated!  Here’s how I process this emotion.

  1. Name the emotion

    I say to myself “This is irritation.”

  2. Describe what it feels like.

    Imagine that you were going to describe to someone what it feels like to feel a particular emotion.  You’d describe where you felt it in the body, what the sensation was like, what color it was, if it was hot or cold etc.I say, “I’m feeling really irritated right now. I feel tension in my eyebrows, my lower jaw feels tingly, and my lungs feel a little short of air.  To me irritation is a warm emotion—I picture it as orange goop sort of slowly building up in my lungs.

  3. Allow it to hang out.

    Remember it is just a chemical in your body, it can’t hurt you!  Many people worry that if you allow emotion to hang out, it will cause you to act on it. Don’t act on it (acting is an escape too.)  Just feel it.

    I say to myself.  “This is fine.  This is just irritation.  I can just be a person who is irritated.  I’m going to calmly continue my conversation, and it’s okay if my kids fall apart for a few minutes.  I don’t have to get angry at them.  Each time I just observe my irritation and don’t act on it, it becomes less intense.”

  4. Continue to allow it until it dissipates

    Of course my brain wants to sell me all sorts of ideas. “My kids are so disrespectful.” “They know better.” “Uh, this always happens.”  The more these ideas creep in, the more irritated I feel.  I just try to go back to noticing the emotion.  At first it seems to become the most important thing in that moment!  I can hardly think of anything else.  However, the more I allow it (and refuse to act on the emotion) it gets less and less intense.  It slowly starts to go away.    Soon I’ve forgotten all about it.

  5. Allow the emotion each time it re-surfaces.

    And it will!  But each time it comes back, it will be less and less intense.

    By this time, I’m likely walking to the car since I had told my kids it would only be five minutes.  However once everyone is back in the car, my brain loves to remind me of the irritating moment we just had.  When the thoughts start again, the emotion starts again.  Back to step 1.  But each time I allow the feeling until it dissipates.

Our emotions are just chemicals in our body.  They won’t hurt us and there’s nothing to fear.  If we try to ignore them or escape them we end up with a lot more trouble than the original emotion created in the first place.  Simply acknowledging and being willing to feel the emotion, allows it to pass.  What would your life be like if you weren’t afraid of feeling any emotion?

How do you handle negative emotion in your life?

What negative feelings do you fear most?
What do you do to avoid them?

Next time you notice a negative emotion try these steps:
1.  Name the emotion
2.  Describe it
3.  Allow it to hang out
4.  Continue till it dissipates
5.  Allow the emotion to hang out each time it re-surfaces

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.”

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.