Tag Archives: coping skills

You’re not alone…

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Feeling small – by Artist Jaime Zatloukal Best

sometimes

life can get you down

you can feel so small that you wonder if anyone knows you’re here

you might even wonder if anyone cares

Sad, wet and lonely puppy – Image from deliriously-angelic.blogspot

life’s burdens may weigh upon you

until you wonder how you’ll ever take another step

until you wonder if you’re cut out for this

until you doubt you’ll ever be the same

until you doubt you can ever know love, or joy or happiness again

A firefighter breaks down after the World Trade Centre collapse on September 11, 2001. Getty Images: Mario Tama

the pain of life can overwhelm you

but understand something…

you’re not alone

although sometimes it might feel like yours is the only voice

out there in the universe – close to home, or further away

there’s someone praying for you

there’s someone who cares

there’s someone holding that space of love and light and hope

there’s someone imbuing you with strength

Image from heavenawaits.wordpress.com

we are surrounded by unseen forces

angels and guides watch over us

love transcends all boundaries

Image from aloneinholyland.com

there are people we’ll never meet who wish us only good

there are hearts whose only thought

is that you be uplifted, that you know love, that you know peace

Candles lit as prayers for peace – image from prajjwal.wordpress.com

today perhaps it’s your turn to hurt

everything has its season

tomorrow might be your turn to hold that intention of love and safety for another

Image by freehugscampaign.org

we are, each of us, in this together

and together we find a way, for ourselves, for each other

today, know that I am here for you

holding that space

wishing you well

bless ♥ xx

Making Peace with Right Now while Holding a Picture of a Brighter Tomorrow

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This beautiful image from utne.com

Don’t let your current reality dictate your future possibility.  Hold true to your dreams. Miracles are entirely possible if you dispense with miserable thinking!~ Nicole Cody

The reason for today’s post comes from something seemingly ordinary. But what’s ordinary for some can be positively miraculous for others.

Bert - patiently waiting for me on the stair mountain

Yesterday I walked up the stairs carrying two laptops and a ridiculously heavy bag of books. Ordinary enough, hey? But not for someone with cardiomyopathy. For over two years I have struggled with stairs, let alone carrying a load at the same time. Stairs usually leave me breathless as my enlarged heart battles to get blood and oxygen around to all the right places with the sudden burst of physical activity.

Yesterday I got to the top of the steps, walked into my office and then thought, “Oh. My. God.”

No chest pain, no panting or racing heart – just normal old got to the top of the stairs and kept walking.

Why is this such a big deal? Well, to me it proves a very important point:

Changing your thinking can change your life.

There is no point in fighting the reality of your current situation. If you’re fat, you’re fat.  If your finances are a mess, they’re a mess. If you procrastinate, well that’s just what you’ve been doing.  Stop fighting it, making excuses for it, or pretending it isn’t happening. Accept what is.

Accepting what is, without judgement, is the first step in making positive change in your life.

The second step is letting go of your attachment to what is.

Where you are today is the result of yesterday’s thinking, yesterday’s actions, yesterday’s focus or lack of focus.

The third step is to hold a clear picture in your mind of what you DO want in your life, and find a way to summon positive emotion around that.

According to the Law of Attraction, (there’s a good definition of the Law of Attraction here) whatever you focus your attention on, is what you draw to you in your life. Resisting or fighting anything, dwelling on it, obsessing on it, worrying on it, speaking of it – all those actions keep that thing you don’t want fixed firmly on your horizon.

This quote from Abraham really sums it up:

You will notice that those who speak most of prosperity, have it. Those who speak most of health, have it. Those who speak most of sickness, have it. Those who speak most of poverty, have it. It is Law. It can be no other way… The way you feel is your point of attraction, and so, the Law of Attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you feel. When you feel lonely, you attract more loneliness. When you feel poor, you attract more poverty. When you feel sick, you attract more sickness. When you feel unhappy, you attract more unhappiness. When you feel healthy and vital and alive and prosperous—you attract more of all of those things.

— Abraham

When my doctors first gave me a diagnosis of cardiomyopathy caused by a virus which had induced a heart attack, after everything else I’ve been through, I took a day or two to come back to a place of calm after the shock of their news. I accepted what they’d told me, and I set about making peace with that.  I decided to make every day count, and that has been a lasting Blessing in my life.

My doctors also told me that after two years, there was no chance of improvement, and to expect a decline, which might be steady or fast, and that would lead to needing a transplant, or possibly, death.

If I have cardiomyopathy, then that is my current reality. After the news I mourned, grieved, got over myself and moved on. I have made choices to focus on health and on life.  I have embraced natural therapies, food as medicine, and visualisation. I live with it, and I embrace the current reality of it.  It is what it is.  Sure I have had many reminders of my health situation, such as chest pain and lack of breath, but I have not let it define me, and I have often forgotten it is even there!

Each morning in my meditation, and each night before I go to bed, I see myself as healthy, vibrant and living a full life where I can share my joy and gifts with others. Why bother with this, when my life doesn’t look like that now?  Because reality has a funny way of changing itself over time…

And yesterday my reality shifted. Today I am in a different space!

I have always believed in holding a picture of a brighter tomorrow, of embracing optimism, doing what I can, and turning the rest over to the Universe.  I expect miracles. And in expecting them, they show up in my life.

So what about you? Stop looking at your life as it is and being unhappy with that.  Accept what is.  Forgive yourself and others if that is what’s needed. And then find a place in your life where you can summon the smallest amount of gratitude, appreciation or happiness. (Don’t know how to do that? Here’s some info that will help!)

Hold a picture in your heart of a brighter tomorrow. Trust. Cherish and nurture your dreams.  Miracles happen daily. They can happen for you too! ♥ xx

Advice for strong people who aren’t coping…

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Image from vectorgraphic.com

Strong people are used to coping. They are used to leading.  They are used to taking charge.  Strong people are able to put their own hurt and exhaustion aside when others rely them, or the job needs to get done. They are not good at sharing their pain or asking for help.

You know who I mean. They front up to life each day, often with a smile on their face, and you’d never know how tough it is for them to keep doing that. The single parent juggling two jobs and an impossible ex. The husband living with a wife with severe depression. The mum whose child has an addiction issue; the oncologist who doles out bad news all day; the person with a mountain of debt and a health problem; the teacher motivating kids who come from homes where no-one cares; the manager running a department fraught with problems and no end in sight; the short-handed team trying to meet a crazy deadline; the calm poised person who turns up to work each day, but who goes home to loneliness or a horrid family or spouse.

When strong people keep coping (or appearing to cope) with life’s pain and hardships, it’s easy for others to make demands on you.  They see you standing strong, and they forget what you have been through, what you are going through, what lies ahead of you. They keep looking to you for leadership.

Image from kolorkube.com

And the truth is, most strong people can keep on functioning, even when they feel dead inside, completely broken, and in the deepest despair.

Strong people were built to cope, and when you aren’t coping (even though no-one may know that), it is vital that you get some time out, find some support, or make some decisions that help you move back to your natural state of strength.

When you are a strong and capable person, you shine brightly.  That’s why people turn to you, follow you, ask for your advice. And often when people are leaning on you for strength, they want and need you to be who you always portray yourself as, who you’ve always been for them.  Even if you are affected by the same issue, it’s likely they won’t see how exacting this toll has been on you.

Image from photostock.com

Sometimes, it’s because you hide it so well.

Sometimes it’s because people don’t even realise that you might hurt, that you might need help yourself.

Sometimes it’s because needy people, in their own world of hurt, have no idea that you might be suffering too.

So, my strong friend – look after you. Withdraw if you must, regroup, find your feet. Close the door to others if there is nothing left within you to give. Little birds must sometime fly, no matter how reluctant they may be to leave your nest.

Often some time for self-nurture or a break away from the stress is all you’ll need before you are refreshed and ready to carry on.

Image from freedigitalphotos.net

But you might need greater support, a counsellor, a change of scenery, an ending…

If you do, then seek that support or change. Life is too short and precious to live it on your knees.

Do what gives you relief. Value yourself as much as you value the wants and needs of others.
I hope you find strong arms to support you.  Sometimes that’s family – or friends can often be that support where family fail to measure up.

But I have found over time, as have many of my own dear friends, that there are times when we walk alone except for God.  And that is how we find that strength within that helps us understand that we really can deal with anything life throws at us, no matter how awful or frightening or abhorrent, and that no matter how we might not like it, we can and do deal with it the best we know how, which is always all we are ever asked to do.

As a strong person you’re a bright light in the world for so many gloomy and frightened souls, so many stuck or lonely or directionless beings.  It is your choice to be that bright light, but it is also your calling – you can’t help but be who you are.  When you are the teacher, when you are the Colonel, the Queen, the leader, when you are the one at the front of the class, everyone else looks to you.  They don’t see you as a person any more, they see you as Teacher, Healer, Captain, Wise Woman, Father, Madam Muse.  And you ARE all those things.

But you’re also the person they won’t or can’t acknowledge.  The person who is tired and frightened and battle weary.  They need to see you strong because seeing you strong gives them faith and hope that their own lives will be okay somehow.  When you are championing them, you are helping them to know that there is a light within themselves.  You give them hope to believe in themselves.  It is only after, when they have found their own light within that they will be able to acknowledge your darkness, and your humanity.

Image from freedigitalphotos.net

I know you have the strength to get through this too. It’s okay if you need to pull back for a while. Resting and healing will help you to keep shining one day when you’re ready to be that thing again.

It’s a tough act, being a responsible grown up amongst so many who are still finding their feet.  I’m sending all love your way, and including you in my prayers and meditations. ♥

Working with Crystal Grids – Day Four

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Crystals have their own energetic field, just as humans do, and one of the great things about crystals is that you can also use them to create geometric shapes within which you can create an energetic room or field big enough to exert energy and influence over a wider space.  This technique is known as gridding.

Today I’m going to show you the basics of creating simple grids at home.

 How a Crystal Grid Works

Crystals each have their own particular vibration, and an electromagnetic or auric field around them.  All living things also have a unique vibration, and auric as well as etheric fields (This is just the energy field emitted by a living thing).  When a crystal is introduced to a human’s auric field, there is a shift of vibrational energy.  The crystal may be able to accept and transmute the lower or negative vibrations within that person’s auric field, allowing that person to move to a clearer or higher vibration.

Crystal energy can be used to restore order to a chaotic vibrational field, or to increase vibrational level, which helps to move you to a more positive and lighter energy.  Crystals may impart a vibration particular to that type of stone which can help, heal or impart particular vibrational qualities and strengths. Gridding with crystals involves amplifying the vibration of a crystal by using it in conjunction with others.  This is a bit like turning up the volume on your radio, while adding additional radio towers to strengthen the frequency.

Gridding Basics

Gridding involves using a number of similar or complimentary crystals, placed in a configuration.  The most common shape is a square or oblong, but triangles and circles are also common.  Circles are fun to make, and I often make one during equinoxes or full moons. It recharges my stones and when I sit in it, it recharges me!

The grid below, which was made in my backyard for an eclipse, was big enough for several people to lie within.  It was a great place for a nap and I couldn’t keep my dogs out of it!

More intricate grid shapes involve using a larger number of crystals.  A generator crystal can be used in the center of the configuration to amplify the energy of the outer crystals, and to strengthen the vibration.

I have made grids to go in the foundations of houses, and one of my favourite configurations is a Fibonacci Spiral. But that is a fairly complex process, and today I promised I would keep things simple.

A grid of crystals can be placed near you in a room where you work or rest.  However, for maximum effect it is best if you can actually sit or lie within the grid itself.  Common ways to place a grid are to lay the stones out around a chair, bed, meditation space or desk.  You can also grid a room by placing crystals in the room corners, or grid your house by placing crystals at the extreme corners of that house.  (You may need more than four to cover every corner).

Another effective technique is to grid the perimeter of your house, placing the crystals along your fence line.  Larger, more robust crystals are often best for this, and they will be self cleansing and generating.  However, do not judge the energy level of the crystal by size alone!  Some of the most powerful stones can often be no bigger than a pebble.

Additional Gridding Uses

Grids can be used to aid sleep, healing and mental alertness.  They can be used to help with Meditation and for connecting with Higher Self, Guides, and Past Lives.  Grids can assist with creativity, abundance and manifesting and maximizing your natural talents.  They can provide protection and wisdom.

You can use grids to help your garden grow, to vitalize herbs, fruits and vegetables.  Pets often benefit from a grid placed in their sleeping area.  Grids can be discretely placed to encourage harmony, healing or honesty within a situation.  They can also be used to absorb the negativity of others without this energy being passed to you.  People who have experienced problems with psychic attack can often be greatly assisted in this way.  In fact, whatever the natural vibrational properties of the crystal, they will be passed to you.

A Rose Quartz Grid has greatly enhanced my strawberries and tomatoes!

To Build Your Own Crystal Grid:

We are going to work with the most basic shape – a square whose corners are anchored by a crystal. So you will need four crystals to build your grid, and you may like to select a fifth one to hold as you sit in the centre. Use this grid to raise your vibration, and enhance your own energy field. (This is also great done around your bed for helping heal you while you sleep!)

This exercise is based on the principles of sacred geometry.  It will facilitate health, healing, clarity and connection.Set your intent by offering up a prayer or energetic intention that this exercise be for your Highest Good.Set up your Crystal Grid, using the four  crystals, by laying them out in a square.Visualise a pyramid of White Light extending up from the crystals, and one extending down into the floor, creating an energetic three dimensional diamond shape. It should look like this:

Sit, lie or stand inside this Light Grid.

Bring Light in through your Crown Chakra.  Use your intuition as to what colour Light to use.

Flood your body with Light.  On every inhale, draw Light into your body. On every exhale, see wispy grey energy leaving your body via your lungs or Base Chakra, and being drained through the bottom of the Pyramid.

Continue until your body feels light and calm.

Enhance this meditation by holding crystals whose characteristics or properties you wish to assimilate into your energetic field.  Women hold the crystal with hands cupped left on the bottom and right on top, palm upwards.  Men reverse this position, so that the left hand is on top and right underneath.

You may also like to use one of my Guided Meditations from the past three days. Links here, here and here. Then simply rest and relax in this delicious energy, until you feel restored.

Image from fanpop.com

Recharging your Grid

Crystals need to be cleaned and re-energised from time to time, unless they are outside, planted in or on the earth, where they will be self charging.  With practice you will know when your crystals need attention because you will feel their energy decreasing.  There are many ways to cleanse and recharge your crystals.  If you are using your crystals regularly, take care of them and cleanse them often.

Dealing with Psychic Anxiety

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Over the years I have come to recognise a certain set of feelings, to which I have given the name ‘Psychic Anxiety’. It’s a very unpleasant sensation that can last from an hour to a couple of days, and it is one of the least fantastic aspects of being spiritually and energetically sensitive.

Oh, don’t get me wrong.  It’s not unbearable, and in fact I have worse feelings related to psychic work at times, especially if it involves violent crimes and dead people.

The biggest problem with psychic anxiety is this unshakable feeling of dread and unease, that sensation of icy chills and ‘something crawling over your grave’ as my Nana calls it.

People who are psychic, or sensitive, generally feel the highs and lows of life more acutely. I like this diagram below, because for me it represents the differences between me and someone who is less sensitive.

Image from http://www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk

Most people live in the middle of the red and green lines, and can go to the high or low of those fields, but may seldom do so. They also usually have a greater physical resilience, a robustness to them.

Energetically sensitive people are represented by the blue line.  We feel and react to energies both above and below those regular red and green bands, although we may also live somewhere in the middle of our band of felt frequencies most of the time. Sensitive people are just that – sensitive – and without the robustness of some other folk. We may act with great robustness for a while, while we are needed or need to get things done, but that sort of energetic output is always at a price.  And sometimes that price is high.

The blessing of sensitivity is that we can feel, see, connect with and know some wonderful and amazing things. It is easy for us to tap into creative flow, to feel love and gratitude, to notice things around us and with the emotions of people around us, and to get high on life…

The difficulty is that sometimes it connects us into those low energies, and this is a painful experience on a soul level, tough emotionally and sometimes physically hard as well.

Usually if I get a psychic message or connection out of the blue (in other words I’m not consciously inviting or controlling it) it feels like this – a big bang on an otherwise normal day:

Uniform sine wave excitation graphic from opensees.berkeley.edu

I get a sudden flood of images, sounds, sensations, feelings, knowledge – all flooding me with a great intensity.  It’s momentary, it passes; although the information will remain, the emotions and energetic kick dissipate quickly.

Psychic anxiety is different.  It’s like an unseen hand rachets up the control knob.  I can’t turn the emotions and energetic kick down or off, but I am also given no information. All I have is the feeling, sometimes so strong that it wipes me out in the same way a severe migraine might. Like an old TV with no image on the screen, cranking out a discordant sound that makes you want to cover your ears or run away screaming.

I know that certain things affect me.  When there are polar shifts I end up flat and exhausted, a little depressed, and often with big hormonal swings.  When there are solar flares I feel restless, unable to sleep, irritable and wound up tight.

But this, this is different.  And I’m grateful it doesn’t happen too often. It’s always tied into great disaster, injustice, cruelty, suffering, death. It’s either building up to happen, or happening as I feel it.

In the days to come the news may let me know what it was all about.  That’s how it was for September 11, the Bali bombing, the tsanamis in 2004 and again last year in Japan.

Sometimes I find out years later – a massacre in Kosovo, in Iraq, in Rwanda…

Sometimes I never find out at all.

So I ride it out.  I keep myself away from crowds.  I swim in the ocean.  I sit under trees, walk in the rain, spend time in the gracious and calming company of my cows.

When I feel stronger I meditate.  I pray.  I light candles. I flood the world with love.  It’s all that I can do. A tiny flicker of light in what can seem like a sea of darkness. But I do it anyway and hope that somehow it helps.

A Cup of Tea and Comfort…

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Living and working as a psychic can be quite draining, although I love what I do. It’s not dissimilar to any other ‘caring’ profession, where you are totally focused on the needs of others, in a way that leaves little time for yourself.

I’ve learned that the best way to avoid burnout for me is to work for a few intense days in a row and then have a complete break from clients for a time. And one of the ways I often celebrate finishing my work week is with a visit to Queenies Teahouse, at Nundah Village in Brisbane.

It’s the perfect place for nurture and soul food. From the moment you push open the door with its tinkling bell you can feel yourself begin to unwind. Smiling staff greet you and usher you to crisp linen’d tables, and soon you’ll find yourself cradling a small tasting cup of one of their delightful teas as you peruse the menu.

A visit to Queenies is like a step back in time, where the worries of the world stop at the front door.  In the background the gentle strains of music your grandmother might have listened to – all the old jazz and blues greats, and the sounds of yesteryear – soothe and unfrazzle your senses.  Gorgeous smells waft from the kitchen.

This is no coffee shop with its clatter and noise, laptops and mobile phones. Here you find friends chatting, generations of families catching up over a pot of tea, and individuals having a moment’s respite from their daily madness – a sort of ‘tea and tasties’ meditation for one.

The teas are sublime and there are so many to choose from. There are two full menu pages devoted to the tea selection, with the sorts of descriptions usually reserved for wine lists.

The herbal tea and green tea varieties are as extensive as the black teas, and they always arrive at your table perfectly brewed, or refreshingly iced.

And have I mentioned the food…

Everything is made fresh in the Queenies kitchen – examples include the daintiest of ribbon sandwiches, creamy risotto, savoury mince (that is right up there with my late grandmother’s), exquisite cakes, coconut ice, and of course cupcakes and scones to die for…

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday a friend and I enjoyed ribbon sandwiches and a pot of Creme Brulee Tea, followed by something sweet.

For me, the most moist and delicious gluten-free orange and almond cake, with its own little shotglass of orange syrup and a perfect ball of chocolate ganache of swooning quality…

For my friend, the baked cheesecake with its spicy gingernut biscuit crust and heavenly berry topping…

The menu has all the traditional high tea favourites, and is also vegetarian and gluten-free friendly. And there are lovely treats to take home –  a sachet or two of your favourite tea, a pretty teapot or tea-towel, or perhaps a tiny tea set for the small people in your life.

My wonderful friend, the poet Carly-Jay Metcalfe was moved to poetry by yesterday’s outing.  You can read about it here.

In fact, I was so inspired that I am planning to book the place out and have a Sunday Function here one day soon, where we can combine Soul Food, Spirituality, Blessings and Poetry over a lovely lunch and a good cup of tea with like-minded souls. Stay tuned for details!

Sometimes Your Only Job is to Ask for Help

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Image from lingualift.com

Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem. ~ Virginia Satir

I have a friend going through a tough time right now. For her everything seems to be going wrong. There are substance abuse issues, and she thought by cleaning up and getting that out of the picture, somehow everything would be fixed.  But the addictions only masked pain, hidden traumas, and a deep inability to cope with problems from the past.

We all have our strengths, and we all have our breaking points.  What cripples me might be a walk in the park for you. Still, comparing ourselves to others never helps.

When you have gotten to a place in your life where something isn’t working, where nothing is working, where you feel backed into a corner, helpless, weak, angry, resentful, disempowered or worse – when your self esteem is through the floor and you just can’t think straight anymore…

YOUR ONLY JOB IS TO ASK FOR HELP

IF you could have fixed it, if you’d known what to do, you would have done it.  The pain you’re in is because you DON’T know how to help yourself.

That’s okay.

YOUR ONLY JOB IS TO ASK FOR HELP

There are so many wonderful people in the world who have trained specifically to help you with your problem. They may have even been in your shoes.

When you’re this far down, and you are just not coping, there is someone out there who will know what to do.  Reach out you hand.  Ask.

Whether it will be a quick fix, or something that takes time to sort out, you don’t need to know what the answer is, you only need to know that someone else will. Whatever you are going through, someone else has walked that road before you.  And one of them will have a map to get you out of there. In fact, it’s probably their calling.

One day, it might be yours.

Fall down seven times, stand up eight…

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Australian Soldier at Gallipoli WWI. Image from awm.gov.au

This post is dedicated to the members of our Defence Forces, Emergency Services and their families, past and present, and to everyone who is facing hardship, no matter it’s nature.

There is something that many people don’t know about courage. Something most people don’t know about strength, and resilience…

We usually only find these qualities in ourselves when we’re already on our knees.

There is no need for it when things are going well. When we are in flow and life is good, the gifts at our core are hidden from view.

So you won’t know you have it in you until the day you need it.

Image from thumbpress.com

Life is never all smoothing sailing.  The good times don’t prepare us for the bad.

But I promise you, when it gets hard, if you dig deep you’ll find that there is a place inside you you didn’t know was there.  A place of courage and grace and steely determination.  A place of valour and a drive to stand up and keep going, even when you don’t know how, even when you don’t know if standing back up is actually possible yet.

But you can’t win at life when you’re on your knees. You can’t win if you give up. Victory might be around the next corner.  Or the next.

The Japanese proverb, Fall down seven times, stand up eight... speaks to the heart of this.

Image by mgl23 at tumblr

You can be your own hero.

The choices you make today determine who you will be tomorrow.

Trust that it’s within you.

Pick yourself up.  Keep going.  Grow…

Image by Serena from weheartit.com

Give yourself a Free Pass

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Congratulations!  I’ve just gifted you a Free Pass.  You might want to cut this out and store it in your wallet.  You may also want to pass this one on to someone else who would benefit from it.

This is a magical ticket.  It allows you to decline a usual activity or responsibility, so that you may replace it with one of your choosing.  Used responsibly, this magical ticket has been found to have restorative properties for Body, Mind and Spirit.

I’m using my own ticket today. Although technically a day off for me, I had planned a mass of admin work; catching up on emails, phone calls and filing.  But it’s rainy and cool, and way too early.  So I’m going back to bed for a nice big sleep.  When I wake up I’ll decide how to spend the rest of my day.  So far I’m leaning towards yum cha, a movie and a good book.

PS – this ticket renews itself, so tuck it away after you’ve used it.  Just knowing it’s in your wallet is often enough to get you through a tough patch. And when you really need it, it will be there for you.  Enjoy! ♥ xx

The Broken Robot Repair Shop

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There is an alarming trend I’m seeing, of broken people wanting to be fixed so that they can keep doing the things that broke them.

I call it Broken Robot Syndrome – people so busy, so stretched, so weighed down by debt and responsibility and complexity that they are deep in fatigue, immersed in exhaustion, and no longer capable of recognising that they have become robots.

Does any of the following definition apply to you?

Definition of ROBOT (from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

  1. a : a machine that looks like a human being and performs various complex acts (as walking or talking) of a human being; also : a similar but fictional machine whose lack of capacity for human emotions is often emphasized    b : an efficient insensitive person who functions automatically
  2. : a device that automatically performs complicated often repetitive tasks
  3. : a mechanism guided by automatic controls

Lack of sleep exhausts us. Having a too-busy schedule with no down time, play time or rest time fatigues us. The combination of the two breaks us.

There are warning signs of being in that robotic place:

  • Lack of libido.  Libido is about joy of life, not just sexual drive. But the two go hand in hand.
  • Creative and original thought dries up. We struggle to be innovative and to come up with fresh ideas.  At worst we think through a fog.
  • Health decline. Vague symptoms of weariness, sleep issues, digestive issues, aches and pains that gradually build into definable illnesses and burnout.
  • Inability to make even simple decisions. Suddenly a menu with 50 choices and a need to pick something satisfying becomes an event capable of reducing you to tears because you no longer recognise what you want, let alone what you need.
  • Everything is scheduled. Everything.
  • Tired all the time, and doing the usual things – coffee, sugar, pick-me-ups, naturopath, gym, diet, counselling – make not a jot of difference.
  • Overwhelm, depression and negativity are regular companions.

So, what to do?

First of all, understand that fixing a broken robot so that they can keep functioning as a robot is really not a suitable solution for a human.

Here are some tools from the Robot Repair First Aid Kit that might work for you:

  1. Get more sleep.  Go to bed earlier.  Create days where you can have sleep-in catch ups, or lie in bed all day reading, resting and relaxing.
  2. Simplify. Cut back on your activities, responsibilities and involvements, and make sure that the kids don’t get caught up in the vicious cycle of over-achievement and over-commitment either.
  3. Get help for the things that are stressing you. When we go to bed worried and wake up worried, and are kept up nights by worry then something has to give. If your worries involve money see what you can do to cut down the debt mountain – speak to your lending organisations or the places you owe and get an easier ‘hardship’ repayment scheme. Sell something. Downsize. Simplify. Put your hand up and ask for help. Make sure that your household are all committed to the same plan.
  4. If your worries involve relationships, get some time on your own, even if this is just a cup of coffee at the local cafe. Use that time to think about where you are, how you got there, and what your next move is. Staying in a relationship that is unloving, unsupportive, or where there are serious issues can be enough to bring any sane person to their knees. Find a good counsellor to help you work through your options. If you’re a carer, find a support group.  If you already know what you need to do, then act.  Staying and not doing or saying anything, hoping for change, has seldom proved to be a winning strategy. Only action brings change.
  5. Ask yourself the big question, “Does this relationship/job/choice/decision honour me?” Maybe it’s time to change jobs, move house, stop studying, start studying, have the conversation…
  6. Know that wherever you’ve ended up, it can change.  There is a road ahead of you to lead you back to yourself and to a place of content and security.

Here are some things to help Robots turn back into humans:

  • Time with friends
  • Time alone
  • Time in nature – walking, surfing, cloud busting, playing with pets in the backyard, gardening
  • Time for yourself and your own interests
  • Sleep
  • Relaxation time with NO expectations, goals or objectives
  • Music
  • Making art
  • Good food and good company
  • Emotional connection
  • Hugs
  • Spiritual connection, meditation, prayer or other practices that help you connect to your inner wisdom and to a Higher power.
  • Movement – not going to the gym because you have to – walking in the rain because it’s fun, dancing in the lounge room in your pyjamas because you love the music, playing with the kids or the dogs in some silly run-around game that makes everybody laugh

Life is short.  Life is precious.  When you become a Robot you miss everything good. Don’t fix yourself up to keep doing the thing that broke you. Allow 2012 to be the year where you create real, lasting and positive change.  Bless xx