Anxiety, under diagnosed and oftentimes over-treated by “big pharma,” will never change or get better without your personal involvement. The more energy you put into a situation the more personal satisfaction you get out of your effort. To support your energy and effort, I have created a safe and encouraging blog area to help you move forward in your life.
Rather than have a drink, toke, or a snort, to try to wipe away this ruminating anxiety by adding tools to the toolbox. Although it feels as if it is eating you alive, there are healthier ways to manage your anxiety, such as journaling. Writing Your Way to Healing and Wholeness is a guided journal, I will cover effective journaling in these first few blogs to enhance this form of art as meaningful outlet for you. Like many art forms, journaling is always an evolving process and each day either you have a new canvas to start or you are adding detail, texture, and context to what you wrote yesterday.

Not all art forms are the same; therefore, not all artists are the same. Some like working with clay and others with watercolor, while some don’t care for oils, others delve deep into the richness of color. Writing is the same way for people. For some, it would be boring just to record your daily life. However, recording your daily life may make you aware of how boring life has become for you! Thus, journaling as an “art” gets your creative juices going by supplementing your life and bringing life into the objects around you. For instance, anxiety that just won’t shut up becomes quiet, goes away, or stops for microseconds. The art of writing opens a new window of opportunity to do something different with anxiety by learning to externalize the anxiety, rather than be anxiety’s hostage.

To start externalizing your anxiety, set your timer for two minutes and close your eyes, imagine your anxiety and let it take form. What does the anxiety look like? How big? How small? What is its texture? Does it have an odor? What color or colors is it?

Once you have a clearly defined your anxiety, open your eyes, set your timer for three more minutes and write down the image of your anxiety. Take your time and really use your pen as a paintbrush and describe fully your anxiety. Take a deep breath and ask the anxiety, “What message do you have for me?” Write down what anxiety says. Notice how that message makes you feel inside of your body. Where do you feel it in your body and how would you like body to respond differently next time? Given the information from your body, write for three continuous minutes by responding to anxiety’s message to you. Continue back and forth in this dialogue. You may find the timer helpful or you may be ready to let the timer go and just keep dialoguing.

Timers are helpful tools when coping with concern or worry because anxiety enjoys being an intimidator. Anxiety enjoys its own chatter. It is constantly saying things like, “you are taking too much time,” “that was a stupid message,” and “this stupid exercise is getting your nowhere.” If you are writing while using a timer then you just keep focusing and moving on. A good analogy for me is physical therapy. While doing rehab for my knee replacement, the PT handed me a timer, I learned to hold a position for thirty seconds, one minute, and so on. The timer became my friend because when it went off I could let go. Similarly, the timer is a helpful friend while doing journal exercises.

Think about journaling as a therapy that helps you live a productive and engaged lifestyle with your friends, family, and yourself. Think about coming to your journal daily for as little as six-to- ten minutes. Then every other day add a minute. Eventually, you are doing ten to twenty-minute writing exercises every other day. That is enough if you want it to be. Some of you may write hours but that is not the usual experience of journaling folks. Six through twenty minutes is enough for personal growth and reflection. As in anything, consistency is the key.

Once a week spend a few minutes re-reading what you wrote. What was your focus? Where are you stuck? Where are you making progress? Where do you want you to focus this coming next week?

You don’t need to spend every exercise working with your anxiety, but if anxiety is a big issue for you dedicate at least one day a week externalizing it and dialoguing with the anxiety.  My new book allows you to discover many exercises.  Click on the link below to get your copy today.  

Writing Your Way to Healing and Wholeness

YOUR LIFE A-Z LUMINOUS

LOOK WITHIN-THE BEAUTY IS INSIDE

LUMINOUS

Following up on the word IGNITE, be LUMINOUS.   Be a voice of clarity in the darkness of daily life.  Realize and take personal responsibility that your actions, words, and even thoughts effect other people as well as your own demeanor in the world.    When you have a negative thought your body tightens, your behavior constricts, and you adapt your body to react to the negative input the brain is receiving.  Learn to transform negative thoughts by LUMINOUS thinking.  Shine some light on the darkness allowing time to reflect about how you reached such a negative thought and then allow that reflection to act as LUMINOUS moment to transform that negativity into something positive.  There is an old Sufi story about a teacher who lost his keys.  His students found him looking for his keys beneath the streetlight. After exhausting all efforts to find the keys one student asked,  “Where did you lose your keys?”  The teacher said, “Inside the house.”  LUMINOSITY helps you get clear about what questions to ask and where to search for what is missing.  LUMINOUS thinking heightens your ability to analyze and think things throw.  Following negative and critical thoughts down a dark road will lead you into depression and despair.  Allow yourself to shine the light where the darkness appears in order to get your life on track.  The more you allow the LUMINOUS presence of the light the more clarity you will receive about most of the issues in your life.  Light is just not light.  LUMINOUS light brings clarity to the darkness. 

YOUR LIFE A-Z: DE-STRESS

ENJOY THE FLIGHT AND DE-STRESS

DE-STRESS

 I often ask my clients to tell me what they think his/her stress level is like on a scale of 1-10.  When he/she is asked to scale the question I most likely hear the answer 8-10.  If at first I ask the client to detail the stressors in his/her daily life, often I hear, “Well my life is not all that stressful.”  Asking someone to scale the amount of stress is a less invasive question, instead of what is stressing you?  We have talked about many DE-STRESSING tools already but I want to bring you back to the most important tool, which is deep breathing.  To DE-STRESS your body you must learn to relax your entire body.  This is best done with focused attention with your breath from the top of your head to the very tip of your toes.  I suggest you set the timer and begin with five minutes of focused attention breathing in and letting the belly rise and exhaling pulling the belly in against the backbone.  If you lose count just start over until the timer stops.  Learning to DE-STRESS and practicing DE-STRESSING techniques when stress levels are between 3-5 help you prepare to practice correctly when you really need to DE-STRESS.   A really good organic herbal green tea can help the cells feel massaged and restored.  Stress tears our body down at a cellular level and we must repair the body at a cellular level.  DE-STRESSING techniques need to be broad focusing on every angle of your life.  What will you need to do to bring the scale down to a 5-6?  Activate that plan. 

YOUR LIFE A-Z:ZEALOUS

FOCUS ON YOUR GOAL

ZEALOUS

What are you ZEALOUS about?  What makes you care?  What gets your adrenalin going and get up off the couch to make a difference?  I am a child of the sixties and everything mattered, the Vietnam War, racism, personal freedoms and those causes rocked the world as we knew it.  Then I noticed that in the nineties when I was teaching that it seemed to me that no one cared.  During our first war with Iraq, not one college protest made the news.  During our second war of “Shock and Awe,” young people didn’t seem to notice that for the first time in our history, we invaded another country.  But finally, a change seems to be brewing.  Alicia Keys, the thirty-three year old singer is showing a ZEALOUS spirit with her knew song, “We Are Here” Her ZEALOUS spirit is raising a voice of compassion, connection and caring.  Her ZEALOUS energy is taking political action and beginning a grass roots movement to make a difference. Let’s face it, Maya Angelou is gone and most of the activists from the sixties are dead.  It is time for a new ZEALOUS energy to take over and bring America back and make it even greater than it ever has been.  Moving the mountains of apathy and greed is going to take thousands of ZEALOTS with ZEALOUS energy that will not be stopped until change is accomplished at the very basic heart and soul of humanity in this country.  Give yourself permission to be ZEALOUS today and join a cause, any cause, with all of your heart. 

YOUR LIFE A-Z: ATTAINABLE

ONE STEP AT A TIME STILL REQUIRES YOU STICK YOUR NECK OUT

ATTAINABLE

ATTAINABLE is something that is achievable and within possibilities. Sometimes you might be keeping yourself miserable because you are a daydreamer verses someone who has realistic goals.  Goals need to be attainable.  Your goals on your list need to be examined.  For instance, if your goal is to live in Costa Rica and you live with someone who hates bugs, tropics, and humidity then you need to ask yourself if you want to break up you relationship in order to move to Costa Rica? Thus, you must ask the cost of your ATTAINING your goal physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially and if you are willing to pay it?  How many things on your goal list are realistic or just something you want to drop into your lap?  Guess what, that is not what is going to happen.  Keep your goals ATTAINABLE.  ATTAINABILITY helps you feel good about who you are and the progress you are making in your life.  For instance if you need to lose 100 pounds, best lose it ten pounds at a time.  Then you feel a sense of pride, success, and motivated to continue.  As you are placing goals on your list, ask yourself how ATTAINABLE are they and when will it be ATTAINED.   Place some easy ATTAINABLE goals throughout your list to keep you moving toward goals that are more difficult to ATTAIN.  What do you want to ATTAIN in the next thirty days?  How will you do that and what do you need to make that goal ATTAINABLE? 

YOUR LIFE A-Z: GESTALT

MANY PARTS -ONE PERSON

GESTALT

A GESTALT is more than the sum of the parts. Yesterday you focused on eight parts of your life and you may have been left with a nagging feeling, but this isn’t quite it.   You are right.  You are more than those eight threads in your tapestry you are the whole tapestry.  You are the GESTALT.  Today, as you step back and look at your tapestry you may focus on the thread of spirituality and tomorrow you may focus on the thread of family.  If either of those threads is missing, then the GESTALT of the tapestry is missing something very important. The GESTALT needs all of the parts to be complete.  No part of the GESTALT is more important or less important than the other.  All parts of the GESTALT share responsibility in the wholeness of the tapestry.  If you step back and see that the thread of health is very weak and perhaps a pale yellow rather than the bright yellow you thread you were hoping for then set out to strengthen the yellow thread of the GESTALT.  If that off sets the relationship thread then re-focus and bring it into balance.  A beautiful tapestry is the sum of all of its threads and the finished project is the GESTALT.    If you view your life as a tapestry then as artist of the tapestry you can step back and tweak the threads as you notice which thread needs more attention to make the tapestry complete. 
You are the sum of your parts (threads) not just one thread standing alone. 

YOUR LIFE A-Z:FOCUS

By Training Your FOCUS, Can You See the Elephant Napping in the Grass?

FOCUS

What does that word FOCUS really mean to you?  THE TWENTY MINUTE COACH wants you to learn to bring into FOCUS the life you want.  Sometimes it is helpful to create a vision board to help you FOCUS.  Separate your life into eight distinctive threads and name it, “My Life’s Tapestry of Eight.”  Here are the eight threads: self, health, relationship (family), career (vocation), financial health, social system, spiritual health, and recreation (hobby).  Each of these threads deserves FOCUSED attention in order to achieve a balanced and happy life.  If you don’t FOCUS on self then the rest of your FOCUSED tapestry is going to be out of sync.  FOCUS on self requires an examination of what is that I like about my life, my values, and my life’s direction?    Next is your health.  If you don’t have your health then you have nothing.  FOCUS on your health in ways that will optimize it.  How is your relationship working for you?  How many diverse threads do your relationships extend toward such as partner, children, and family of origin etc.? Continue to FOCUS on the other five threads until you have written below each of the eight separate threads.  Once you have a map of words choose eight different pictures from magazines that represent the tapestry thread and place with glue on a poster board.  Make sure that when you look at the vision board that it makes you smile and shout out a big yes inside of yourself. FOCUS on the board everyday and watch as your positive energy begins to shape-shift your life into a FOCUSED adventure.