How To Get Your Daily Dose Of Awe

On my travels one day, I saw a skunk. Not one dead by the side of the road. Not one scurrying in the dark. It was a medium sized guy ambling across a campus road just after dawn. There were no other cars or people, so I had the opportunity to stop and watch. It had a clean and shiny coat. It didn’t seem to have a care in the word, pausing to sniff, then moving on. Also sharing this space with me were some squirrels, deer and geese.

It's hard to describe what I felt. Wonder. Peace. Community. Part of a larger world that included all these other beings. It all adds up to awe.

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Need Some Hope in the New Year?

Anne Lamott provides nuggets of hope for most of life’s most persistent worries.Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, by Anne Lamott, is a truly enjoyable read, or listen, which is how I experienced it. With her wry humor, wit and references to so many things that matter, it is fun and inspiring. Whether on dieting, sobriety, friendship or family, Lamott’s hopeful view shines through. There’s nothing Pollyannaish about her take on life—it comes across as sincere and authentic.

I may be prejudiced since she talks about issues I too have spoken of, but not nearly as eloquently or delightfully as she does.

A few examples so you can decide whether it’s worth the investment—or just borrow it from your local library:

1.  Chapter 4 is just one sentence which simply says:

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

You can see what I’ve had to say about self-care which includes unplugging here.

2. In Chapter 5, “Don't Let Them Get You to Hate. Them,” she relates wisdom from her pastor:

When my pastor calls the most difficult, annoying people in her life her grace-builders, I want to jump out the window. I am so not there yet, but I understand what she’s talking about. 

3. Chapter 6 is about writing and in one of my favs, she says:

If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.

And so Karma goes.

4. Chapter 11 is all about food, dieting and the like. Of course I would love the anecdote in which she mentioned to her therapist she was going on a diet and the therapist says cheerfully:

Oh, that’s great honey, how much weight are you hoping to gain?

Lamott goes on to say:

No one talks to me that way. I got rid of her sorry ass. Well okay, maybe not then. It was10 years later.

Got to love a woman who can take the cold, hard truth from her shrink.

Happy New Year!

The Quest to Mindfully Engage with the Moment

Learning to let go of each moment in order to be fully present in this moment is key to mindfulness.

 Being present in the moment is a mindfulness essential. Unless you've willfully ignored 15 years of health and wellness articles, you know that research shows that mindfulness meditation improves health and wellbeing in a variety of ways (e.g., it reduces anxiety, depression and blood pressure). The jury is in: Cultivating mindfulness makes a lot of sense.

To be in this moment, you must release all those moments that came before. This idea of letting go of each moment before the present moment, which, by the way, is now past, is one of those persnickety meditation conundrums.

How do you let go of those moments? While it's easy to let go of a neutral moment, perhaps a thought about what you want to have for dinner, you must also let go of positive moments. That's not to say that you should not savor your successes—you absolutely must. But not when you're trying to focus on the present. Wins are a lot easier to release.

The most challenging to release are those moments with a negative tone. Maybe it's a memory of why you chose one path instead of another, or something as small as why you said one thing instead of another. Our mistakes, missteps and other misses tend to be very sticky. We seem to have a paradoxical need to hang onto them.

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Coping with Anxiety is Not One Size Fits All

Whether your anxiety predates the pandemic or not, the solution is unique to you.

Photo by Tom Fisk from Pexels

During the pandemic I learned I am an ambivert. It was the A.Word.A.Day, word of the day one day and it fits. Neither introvert nor extravert, ambiverts, according Anu Garg, have qualities of both.

It brings to mind something I’ve been pondering during this pandemic—the notion that one size does not fit all, whether in clothing or people. Be it those one-size-fits-all running hats, how introverted you are, how you cope with your anxiety or how you grieve a loss, we are all different and we need and want different things.

My head is simply too small for those alleged one-size-fits-all hats. I am, as I mentioned, neither intro- nor extravert—it depends on the situation and my mood. I like to run to reduce anxiety, a passion not everyone can relate to for coping. I grieve quietly, privately, unobtrusively, and can still feel the pain years later as it if were yesterday, clearly not a mode of grieving that works for everyone.

Back to the pandemic, some of my clients and friends have been more anxious during the past year. Some previously quite anxious are, oddly, less anxious—the true introverts, I suspect. They do not mind working remotely, the absence of dinners out with friends or not having parties to attend.

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Bring Your COVID-19 Coping Skills Forward Into The New Year

 

There’s considerable research in psychology to suggest that after a trauma we can come back stronger than before. We can become more resilient. Tragedy can trigger the development of new coping skills.

This is the case with the coronavirus pandemic.

Now is the time to notice any positive habits you've developed and decide to keep them moving into 2021. No one expects the virus to vanish on January 1^st, but we're edging closer, so deciding on your intentions post-virus can help you maintain those healthy routines.

Here are some examples:

People are exercising and getting outside more. A combination of not having much to do and wanting to get out of the house yielded a huge crop of new walkers, runners and cyclists. Like seesaw dieters, it could be a situation where once things return to their new normal, the newly fit ditch their new habits. This need not be the case. Once you have established the habit, you simply need to recognize that, as life changes, you may have to tweak the schedule or location. Remember, the habit change made you feel better. In the future, with no pandemic, it is still likely to make you feel better.

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How To Keep Calm And Carry On Despite COVID-19 Concerns

One of the (many) atypical things about COVID-19, is that the people helping you cope are experiencing and coping with the same thing, at the same time. Whatever your profession, you’re probably also a parent, partner, adult child or friend, and, as we try to help others through this pandemic, we are also trying to help ourselves.

Even as we recognize that everyone has their own specific large and small crises, we can still have a great deal of understanding and empathy, by virtue of being in the same boat.

Whether you have to separate your child from their grandparents, be mindful of your, or someone else’s, compromised immune system, or console your high school grad who will be missing experiences they’ve anticipated for years, there’s still a lot of common ground.

There are some things we must all figure out in order to cope.

How do we manage (a lot of) unstructured time?

Due to a meeting cancelled at the eleventh hour, I had an entire day completely free.

Normally a dream for a busy person, it felt a little more like a nightmare because of the circumstances. It wasn’t like I decided to take a little staycation. It was last minute, so I didn’t have a plan. It was out of my control. Routine was lacking. Hence, it felt more like a worry than a wow.

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Why It’s Healthy To Feel Your Negative Emotions

We call it toxic positivity because sometimes experiencing negative emotions can be healthy. My take:

“'Toxic positivity"keeps you from embracing the discomfort of negative emotions. But consider that you must welcome the fear, pain, and anxiety of a challenge to run your first marathon, return to school after a hiatus, go on your first meditation retreat, or try your first post-break-up date. Allowing the negative feelings in opens you up to new, enriching experiences. Pursue something a little scary — this is the true road to happiness."

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3 Simple Hacks To Help You Lose Weight, Get Fit And Maintain A Healthy Lifestyle

Is your freezer filled with meals from that expensive diet you abandoned a year ago? Maybe you saw the perfect piece of exercise equipment in an infomercial, spent a small fortune, and now it languishes in your spare room. Perhaps it’s the fitness tracker that tells you what you no longer want to know about your sleep, diet and exercise.

Those items are wonderful if you use them as part of your bigger plan to get and stay healthy in mind, body and spirit.

It’s not the diet or equipment that gets you to your fitness goals, it’s the determination and intention to be in it for the long-haul. That, and a few simple things to keep in mind to avoid the fads and the flops:

1.      Beware of fads. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Consider the claims made about that Clear Quartz in your water bottle. Read more here...

Life Coach Notes, Summer 2019

Click here to see my Summer, 2019 Newsletter, with my recent articles about health and wellness, relationships and making meaningful changes in your life. Read it here.