Worry Less

 

There's no way to cure worry. But we can learn to get better at recognizing it,

 and gently guide ourselves back to what matters.

- Elisha Goldstein

The brain often tricks us by amplifying the woe and minimizing the joy. Worry exists in the human condition even though it has no utility. 

We worry to anticipate and avoid potential situations and to keep us safe. Worrying ramps up our nervous system. Yet we go into an imbalance that leads to more frustration.

Feelings of fear arouse anxiety when we worry. We need to acknowledge the fear and call it out. If we resist, it persists. We need to let it be as it is. Allow it.

Ask questions of worry.

What does this feeling require right now?  Is it an animal that needs care and safety? How will it discover a sense of security?

Deepen awareness. Think of love or a kindness to shift the feeling. This lessens negative thinking.

Take a break from jousting with worry. Rather than change the way you think, change your relationship to your thoughts. 

Learn to watch your thoughts, rather than engage with them.

When a negative thought distracts, stop the runaway train. Notice sights, sounds, scents, a taste of air. Engage with a feeling.

Stay with what’s going on in the moment. Find words of admiration to discover the rightness of things. 

Observe nature with all your senses.

Create your own metaphor for struggle. Consider your greatest accomplishment and how you achieved it. Recall it in detail.

Avoid always thinking in fix-it mode.

Sing La La La and launch into a favorite melody.

Keep a journal for positive ideas and gratitude comments and write in it just before bed.

Use humor to design a defense.

Feel less reactive to the worried mind. Turn the volume down. Feel spacious, with ease and joy.

Jump into Children's Literature

 

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only. 

with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." 

-The Fox from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Considered the first children's book, A Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744), by John Newberry,  contains rhymes for each letter of the alphabet. The book came with a ball for a boy and a pincushion for a girl. Popular in England, the book was republished in America in 1762. Newberry believed play could indirectly educate children. Considered the father of children's literature, a yearly award exists in his name.

Recall a favorite children's book. What would its content and meaning have for you now?

Children's literature has the ability to connect with people, no matter what their age.They remind adults of ways to play, that you don't know everything, and you can return to your true self.

Search for a copy of a children's book you loved reading. You will find reminders of how effortless life can roll if you remain true to yourself, share kindness and love, and enjoy an escape into child-like wonder.

Take a copy into the garden.

 Climb a tree and read.

A Few Suggestions to Jump Into:

The Little Prince, The Velveteen Rabbit, Mice on Horseback, Bridge to Terabitha, A Wrinkle in time, Harry Potter.

Consider reading aloud, Keeping up with Teddy Robinson. Enjoy the humor and how each day reveals an adventure.

While reading the book you loved as a child, find its elementary message and feel transported back to simpler times filled with hope and wonder.

Power Up Positivity

How do we maintain balance in a world that presses us with what’s broken, what’s dreadful, and what’s wrong?

It takes patience, perspective and perseverance to sort out the news and waltz beyond worry.

Take time to skip looking at the catastrophe network or reading headlines for a day.

Push away from the computer. Leave your cell phone. Find hearts in shadows.

Go out in the morning and sing. 

Immerse yourself in nature.

Take a walk and replace negative thoughts and frustrations with the scents and colors that pass along the way.

Ask questions. What does a peregrine or bee do when faced with an obstacle?

Listen for different sounds.

Find laughter's hiding places.

Observe shapes and textures.

Imagine clouds with anxiety. Will the release of rain help?

Marvel at the ways the sea rants in ripples.

Distractions move the mind back to the present moment.

Rocks let the sea and sky pass over, under, around, and through.

Let nature’s wisdom seep into your thoughts and actions.

   See smiles in petals.

        Breathe in the majesty.

 Find Power in Positivity.

Tips for Resilience

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo  Emerson

In Time magazine's, "The Science of Bouncing Back," Mandy Oaklander explores strategies for resilience. Oaklander reveals that while traumatic stressors can have a devastating impact on our health, “countless smaller stresses take a toll” on our bodies.

Resilience is defined as "the capacity to adapt successfully to challenges." The small things rather than the larger issues of life can bring us down. One resilience researcher feels the way we cope with little stressors strongly predicts how we’ll do when big stressors hit. 



Coping results in the small choices we make, rather than our personality traits.

Oaklander presents “Expert Tips for Resilience” as 10 ways to train brains and bodies to cope and bounce back. 

1.   Tap into your core (unshakable) beliefs.

2.   Use each stressor as an opportunity to learn.

3.   Do what you can to remain positive.

4.   Learn from a resilient mentor or coach.

5.   Don’t run away—confront those things that scare you.

6.   Look for and reach out to your support network in   difficult times.

7.   Keep your brain active and learn new things as often as you can.

8.   Exercise regularly.

9.   Live in the present—don’t dwell in the past.

10.  What trait, characteristic, skill or talent makes you the strong person you are? Own it and give yourself credit for this strength.

Ask yourself questions about your level of resilience. 




How do choices help you fit into the points above? Which cause the most challenge?




Do you have a resilience plan for the coming week?

The Vitality of Trees

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.  - Hermann Hesse

I have always felt a tree connection. Growing up with gingkoes, magnolias, pines, oaks, and a variety of fruit trees, I sought solace among them. An affinity grew. When I wanted to run away, the olive trees hosted my safe departure. Under their protection, I studied French verbs. I hugged my trees, climbed branch upon branch to revel in the perceptions, gained from the top's view. Once I fell out of a magnolia on my head. Gravity did it, not the tree.

A study by the University of Exeter's medical school has found that individuals living in polluted urban areas have fewer admissions to the hospital with asthma when lots of trees populate their neighborhood.

Published in the journal, Environment International, the study looked into the impact of urban greenery on asthma. The study viewed more than 650,000 serious asthma attacks over a 15 year period.

It suggests that respiratory health improves by the expansion of tree cover in polluted urban neighborhoods.  

Trees never leave us. They transform and provide gifts to everyone who uses a desk, cabinets, and wooden toys. We feel protected within the structure of buildings that include wood. 

Even during their winter months, trees hold nests for the birds' next season. 

Jacques Goldstyn wrote, Bertolt, about a boy whose best friend is an oak tree named Bertolt. Daily refuge in his tree provides real and metaphorical ways to observe the world. Bertolt gives caring and solace through his structure; host to the boy's imaginative adventures. 

In spring, when Bertolt's leaves shine, animals make homes in its nooks and branches, the boy observes everyday happenings around and below him. Each year he says goodbye to Bertolt for the winter season.  

After the last frost when other trees begin to bloom, the boy notices Bertolt's branches remain bare.  When he realizes his tree has died, he honors his friend's life and generosity, revealing to readers the mutuality of this true friendship.  

The book features the imagination and ways we nurture ourselves in becoming who we are. It also reveals mortality and loss, sorrow and acceptance.

Hug a tree and climb one today to experience its vitality.

What's in a Name

  

Word play in titles and names fascinates. Oldies like "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,"  "Steel Magnolias" and  "Atlas Shrugged" led their audiences into discovery.

How boring to name streets - Main, Broadway or with numbers. Creative combinations would delight everyone. License plates provide opportunities to combine numbers and letters to amuse those driving behind. 

When it comes to roses, you can name a rose for someone special with a price starting at $4,000 and going to $15,000 or more.

J. Benjamin Williams and Associates, breeders of many of the world's prize-winning roses, offer new and unusual roses for exclusive introduction to the nursery industry. They will provide a rose in color and habit of growth, all based around your personal preferences.

Williams started hybridizing roses in the 1950s. He wanted novel roses, especially striped ones. He developed a series named after the Dutch master painters.

A Tangerine's Dream

Rose names include famous people and creative titles like Knockout or Midas touch. You could hand-pollinate your own roses, collect the seeds and grow them to develop distinct colors, shapes, and growing patterns. It might take ten years but you name them.

 Tongue in Cheek?

I found a few orchids to name.

Smiley Purple Beards

Mr. Brown Mustache

                                                                             Magenta Hat with Teeth

My favorite - Clown Dancer

Play and rename streets in your neighborhood. 

Think up titles for plants and flowers. 

 Bounce a variety of words for their sounds and textures.

Locate Surprises in Positivity

 

If you feel cranky, take a moment to look around.

Read to enrich your energy:

    Illuminate facial scrub

       Flourish Organic

            Positively Radiant

                  Ultra Gentle

Search for Words of the Day

Go for a chuckle.

  Just wriggle in a flight of fancy.

      Let spontaneity spark.

Up your game.

Find positivity in surprise places.

Abandon the Dreary

 

"I gladly abandon dreary tasks, rational scruples, reactive undertakings 

imposed by the world." 

  - Roland Barthes

Barthes said he would do the above, "for the sake of love." Even though he knew it might cause him to act like a lunatic sit freed up tremendous energy."

What if you take time off from the ordinary? 

Launch from daily tasks. Search for an amusement, an adventure, or creative idea that might stimulate your imagination.  

Use boundless vigor and act like a lunatic to accomplish the goal.

Abandon the dreary
    Alter your rhythm
         Free up energy
                  

Take a chance
       Make a change.

Abandon the dreary.

Take a Walku

 

Haiku is an unrhymed Japanese poem recording the essence of a moment keenly perceived, in which nature links to human nature. It usually consists of 17 jion (Japanese symbol-sounds) arranged in a 5-7-5 pattern.

Examples: https://poets.org/glossary/haiku

Thinking in the rhythm of Haiku provides exercise for the mind. If you combine this concept with a walk in a natural setting, you will discover a Walku.

Study the Haiku form before you go, take a few with you. You do not have to follow it exactly in your three lines. Keep your senses open.

Take a walk for 30 minutes. Stop occasionally and write three lines. Look up and around and write three lines. Notice connections. See how many series of three line observations you can write in the time limit. 

Here's a day's Walku:

Shadows move on rocks

Tree sounds its branches upward

Fingers to tempt sky

 

Black crow interjects

Sunlight dances on stone paths

Scent of hope in breeze

 

Clouds hang on mountain 

Eager to chase each other

Sun catches my pen

 

The fence teases me

Slide under, or crawl over

Lavender beckons

 

Look up! Way, way up

Watch cloud form to toy with sky

Teach gulls to giggle

 

Anytime you need a break from work, writing or yourself, take a Walku.  You will return refreshed.

Turn off your computer and go for your Walku now.

Find the Light

 

"You return to that earlier time armed with the present and no matter how dark that world was, you do not leave it unlit. You take your adult self with you. 

It's not to be a reliving but a rewitnessing." 

- from Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

Ondaatje wrote, "The lost sequence in life, they say, is the thing. we always search out."

He felt we need to deal with the layered grief of the world as well as its pleasure.

In what ways does the past inform the present?

Do you wish to remove the ink of the past that blends with you?

Which learning process moves beyond the should. would or could haves?

Explore incidents you need to repeat in story mode.

Find a way to replace situations. Where will you reweave or cut strings?

Discover possibilities not considered before.

Where could you place the past into the present to re-witness it? 

Will you keep or revise to?

Use your imagination to. find the light.