Setbacks and Learning Opportunities

Over the past couple weeks, the struggle to remember all I'd been learning and accomplishing has challenged me. I didn't take the time to remember and choose to handle the stressful situations that arose, with purposeful thought and prayer. But I am getting back on track. I have worked hard on surrending to God, acknowledging that I felt deserted and vulnerable through the trials, and to realize that I need to prepare for major stressors. I will do this by immediately turning to God and reaffirming my faith that He will take care of me; then, I will reach out to loved ones who can share perspectives that I may not see in the moment. The setback ended up being longer than I could've imagined and it was shocking to feel such progress slip backwards; but I had had such a wonderful taste of energy, hope, joy and freedom, that I am spending all my energy on God's word, praying, choosing to do positive, re-affirming activities, and continuing to read through and really understand my coaching books. What a difference in my entire spirit and being whe I choose to engage in growth and learning and loving.

These past seveal days, I have reallized how improtant it is to show love to everyone I encounter and to love those I am around, instead of wishing I could be near family or long time friends who are far away. By looking to love those around me, I also increase my ability to love more deeply and I give those around me the opportunity to feel love, which makes them feel good too. Even when my first inclination has been to be annoyed about something, I stop (in theory-every time:) and remind myself that loving the person first will help me deal with them in a respectful way, and gives God the power to judge instead of me. I can pray on the issue that troubles me and then let God guide the direction towards a resolution.

This has worked positively with someone in my neighborhood who I have been judgmental of in the past for things I considered stealing and lying. By focusing on loving him for him, flaws and all, I can more clearly see the good intentions he does have and let God work within him to convert some of the dishonesty I see from him. We have a much better relationship and I can see this continuing in the future.

Their is another neighbor whom I had shied away from in the recent past because I didn't agree with how I felt he was handling a situation that involves all his neighbors and I also didn't feel like we had much in common. But just accepting and loving people for who they are is more important than my judgment is. The whole "log in the eye" bible quotation comes to mind as I work on removing judgements. When I chose to accept and love him for who he is, I started to see him as someone who is struggling with having a satifying life. He has had some challenges this past year and he is coping in his way, just as I have coped in a destructive way with my struggles. Wow, my high-horse just threw me off!

I have also made a conscious decision to slow down my days as much as I can to include time for impromptu chats with neighbors, lunches or dinners with friends, and phone calls. This past week, many opportunities arose because I had the time for them and they all turned out to be such positive experiences. It's amazing when you take the time to show people that they are important to you, what a difference it makes in the relationship you have with them! In the past, I struggled with knowing that I needed to show people this because I could not see why it would matter to them that I valued them (and this is because I didn't value myself enough to see that).

So, when I take the time to remember to turn to God first, and also to respond with love towards people as my first emotion, outcomes will always be better than if I choose a different approach!

Stumbling Through Merky Waters

The past couple of weeks have been a challenge toward the positive strides I have been making in my life. I had been so motivated and excited about what I'd been accomplishing, that when a really stressful day occurred, I wasn't prepared for it and it's made me question what I've really learned, and what I need to re-evaluate and improve upon in order to handle setbacks and serious stress better.

So far, all the tasks I've been doing have been to create more positive energy and time for good things in my life. This included finally getting new floors. Because I'd been so positive about everything so far, I was unprepared for the alarming mistakes and damage the installation guys caused. I was handling them fairly well and just addressing each thing as diplomatically as possible. However, the installers had to redo two areas on a Friday when I had to leave town. My neighbor took care of letting them in and locking up after them (in addition to resolving a major problem he found while he was there-Thank God for good neighbors!) So, they finished the floors on Friday night and my neighbor locked up after them. I could not wait to see them (however, I had become apprehensive about the quality because of some things I already experienced with them.)

I was due to get home from my trip Monday evening. Monday at work, a medical crisis arose to where I was assisting a doctor on board with a potential heart attack victim. We cared for him for about an hour, using the Automatic External Defibrillator and monitoring his vitals continuously. When they did not improve, we diverted to get him immediately to a hospital. We felt relieved that he was in a better environment to treat him. Meanwhile, we were stranded there because we'd used so many of our on board oxygen bottles that we could not depart without getting new ones. This whole thing took 4-5 hours and the customers were very unhappy. When we finally left for Houston again, the adrenaline rush had dissipated from the emergency and I was low on energy, both physically and mentally. So I was grateful to get to Houston.

However, when I was driving home, I hit a traffic jam. This was unusual because of the late hour in the day and no traffic updates reported anything unusual on this freeway. This would have been fine, but today my car was acting strange and it scared me! When I braked, the back end of the car swayed to the right, then to the left and I felt like I didn't have any control of it. Also, when I tried to go above 45 mph, it just chugged slowly up, 1 mph at a time. I was becoming alarmed as I realized it was indeed going to keep doing this the whole drive home. I got in the right hand lane and putted along slowly the 57 miles to home, planning a strategy for getting it repaired on my one day off the next day, and trying not to stress about the cost.

I was grateful to get home safely, and still looking forward to seeing the finished floors. I opened the door quickly and stepped inside. I was perplexed when the first thing I saw was a big puddle under a chair which was sitting in the middle of the living room. Where could liquid come from? Walking toward it, I was tuning out the continuous meowing of the cats which had been homed on the balcony during this renovation and pondered the source of the puddle. Could the installers have spilled something and not seen it? Could they have purposefully poured water on the floor, angry that they had to come back to redo some things? Kneeling and lowering my nose to the floor, the worst smell known to this nose smacked me and sent a surge of momentary confusion through me. It was cat urine! How can this be? My cats are locked outside. I ran to the cat door. Yep, it was still blocked by a heavy chest, and still locked. I see one cat outside. Where's the other? Now I hear two meowing- wait, one is coming from inside! I sprinted through the condo and found Zeke terrified and crouched under the bed. Why is he scared? Because he'd been let it and locked in without food, water or a litter box since Friday- it was now Monday night! I was unprepared for the anger I felt toward the installers and when I could not get rid of the urine smell with my own cleaning, I had a meltdown. I could not muster any positive emotion. The cats remained stressed and continued to meow incessantly. I had hours worth of work to do to put furniture back and clean all the dust that was everywhere and in the back of my mind I kept thinking about the early car appointment I had in the morning. Not only did I not know if my floors would have to be replaced where the unine had sat for 3 days, but I knew my chair was ruined, and I'd also found two dents in my refrigerator door. It was too much for me and my attitude took a dive. It's as though everything I'd learned in the past couple months just floated out of my head, never to return. Over the course of the next week, I didn't even have the desire to continue to learn and coach myself. It's been a struggle to get back on track. I try to think about why this might be so hard. A couple things come to mind:

It was easy to be positive when things were going my way. But what I really needed to learn was how to remain positive when the cards are stacked against me. One or two things that are a challenge, I could have handled in a positive way, but the overwhelming stress of each of the three events that day, taxed my ability to cope.

What I am disappointed about most, is that I just didn't turn it all over to God right away. I let my faith in Him slip as my primary coping skill and I proved to myself that I cannot handle life (good or bad) without Him. I know He was communicating with me that day, asking me to rely on Him and to be humble and realize He is who carries me through life. I'd been proud of what I'd accomplished and didn't recognize every instance of success was His.

I woke up Tuesday with more acknowledgement of God and more calm that He would help me cope with my situations. How did He help me? By removing the major problem my car had had the day before. Literally, there was no evidence of ANY trouble! The mechanic and I both took it out on the highway and we could not re-create the problem. They even removed all 4 wheels to see if there was something we missed. They found nothing! God is amazing!

He also helped me clearly and concisely speak to the Floor Store manager and we are on our way to getting a resolution to the several problems that arose.

I am happy with some things since then; however, I feel as though I have taken a huge step backward and am struggling to feel the confidence I had been feeling before. That day was such a blow to my outlook and what I thought I'd been accomplishing, that I now feel a degree of apprehension about my successes. I have started reading and learning from my coaching books again- so let's see where I go from here!

The Make-Up run in Ontario.

Courage and Confidence

I am writing today on courage and confidence, two of several positive emotions that you can create within yourself to change or better the course of your life.

In the book Your Destiny Switch, author Peggy McColl says that when you commit to a path towards a goal, courage gives you the means to make it happen. Often faith in yourself and/or a higher power will go hand in hand with how courageous you can be.

I have witnessed this courageousness and the doors that have been opened because of that courage, and the justice that is going to be the end result. My sister has her master's degree in counseling and was placed in an intership at a girls home for teens where she was to be supervised in counseling young ladies, as well as observe her internship supervisor counsel the clients. A short time into the internship, she witnessed her supervisor being unethical, was asked herself to be unethical, and then witnessed behavior that was clearly abusive to the clients. She immediately contacted her professor, without hestitation because her goal was to stop the abuse of the young ladies. Now, by doing this, she had to contend with possible negative consequences for her actions. Namely, to anger her supervisor and thus get a fail for the internship; have an air of tension on site for the remaining 5 months of the internship; have the college she's attending frown upon her for causing trouble for them. These are all very real risks, but because of her courage to do the right thing and see justice for these young ladies, it was a definite and clear decision for her.

The road was not easy once the report was made, however, it has proved the right course of action. First of all because her professor became an ally and helped her with guidance on how to proceed with the report, and this action led to her being able to find a new internship site, while her supervisor at the current site is now under investigation and the clients shall no doubt benefit from this. Not only this, but doors have opened for her that were unexpected: an internship site that she was particularly interested in before contacted her with an opening for an intern the week before found out that she could leave her current internship. So once that news was delivered to her, she was able to re-interview with this place and both she and the new site are very excited about the potential working relationship they may have. It just is proof to me that by using positive emotions, it draws postive things to you in an otherwise precarious situation.

I just want to spend a moment on the positive emotion of confidence. The author of this book states in a study on success, that the top 10 percent of those who achieved their maximum goal at work all had one thing in common: Confidence. They were described as "exuding confidence, so they get results." She states that "confidence will lift you up no matter what the challenge, helping you access all your personal resources. By feeling faith in yourself, you'll be aware of your many gifts and be able to use them to make your situation better."

In going back to my sister's situation at the current internship site, she had a final evaluation with her supervisor and the clinical director. Because she had assessed her current supervisor's inability to act professionally, and to give accurate feedback without letting her emotions guide her, my sister had that confidence of knowledge with her at that meeting. As she knew would happen, the evaluation was very inaccurate and frought with false information. But because she had the knowledge and confidence in her ability to assess her supervisor's dysfunction, she did not let the meeting lead to one where she felt compelled to continuously defend herself. The confidence she exuded did have an impact on her supervisor who seemed genuinely suprised that she didn't want to discuss what she was being told. My sister had the confidence that she would be heard by her professor, her school and in her written documentation to those who could make rational evaluations. I think this meeting ended up being very successful because my sister left a meeting that was intended to make her feel bad, feeling fine with what had gone on and was able to let go of it and enjoy the rest of her day. Again, another great example of what positive emotions can do for your pysche and how good things seem to be attracted to the positive emotions. I can't wait to hear what is next for her!

You Control Your Destiny Switch

Although I am working through all the exercises and tools from the book Coach Yourself to Success, I am currently reading a book called Your Destiny Switch by Peggy McColl and have been thinking a great deal about what she is saying. So I'm adding some of what I'm learning and thinking about as it does coincide with some principles from Coach Yourself to Success as well.

The author's premise is that you are the controller of your destiny because you are the controller of the emotions you want to feel. Learning how to create the emotions you desire to feel will give you a sense of internal power which will lead to growth and fulfillment. There are 4 constants in going down the path of achieving your destiny: 1) Managing negative emotions is the key that allows you to move toward your destiny 2)Knowledge, a deep understanding, and practical application all have to be utilized together to achieve your goal 3) Negative emotions are often destructive to the achievement of goals 4) "To have it all, you must be willing to give it all up". The author says that "if you feel deserving of it, you can create it". In a nutshell, the author is saying that our emotions are so powerful that they shape our destinies, and that we can control the degree of positive to negative emotions.

There are 4 key positive emotions and their negative counterparts that she describes as being on a continuum. The first is Love and Hate. Second is Wonder and Emptiness. Third is Bliss and Depression. Fourth is Faith and Worry. Each of these emotions and their negatives operate as if on a dimmer switch, that you can control. When you choose to turn up the Bliss, automatically that takes away power from the Depression. The same goes for the other 3 opposites. Not only this, but as you turn up just one of the positive emotions, the other positive emotions tend to rise a bit also. And here is her key to the whole book: No one is responsible for your feelings but you-ever! And when you allow negative emotions to take over, you are actually disempowering yourself and creating a spiraling downward movement.

What she is stressing is to let yourself recognize what emotion you are feeling, acknowledge it, think about why you may be feeling that way, learn from it, and replace it with its positive counterpart. For example, if you feel a degree of real dislike toward a neighbor, she is saying that it is not beneficial to you to hold onto that dislike and that it actually inhibits your own growth. You are to recognize that you feel dislike, acknowledge why that may be, and the choose to let go of that emotion and replace it with loving feelings toward your neighbor. You may have to think about a time when you felt love in order to get that emotion to the surface in order to be able to show it to your neighbor. But this is the key to creating a life of mostly positive emotions, and destiny fulfillment.

The positive emotions actually bring you positive rewards and results.
The author talks about each emotion, both negative and positive, as having their own energy waves as based on scientific research! Therefore it really is true that what you feel, you will attract (because the energy waves are the same). So if you want to attract loving people in your life, you have to emit love yourself. If you want to attract bliss, you have to emit bliss. This may seem a challenge when you are spiraling down in a sea of negative emotions, but she says to recognize the strongest of the negative feelings and then determine what its opposite emotion is, and call up that feeling in order to replace the negative feeling. The author says "...when you do the work of creating positive emotions, you'll become a magnet, drawing in all that you desire".

Of all the emotions, love is the most powerful positive emotion and encompasses all the other positive emotions. So when you are feeling particularly negative toward someone, stop, call up the emotion of love, and direct it toward that individual. You'll be amazed at how good you feel, and how the other person responds to that positive energy.

I had a person in mind that I kept feeling angry toward. We have different approaches to situations and it leaves me feeling frustrated and powerless. So, I said a prayer to have this person cross my path so that I could change the atmosphere between us. This prayer was answered on that very day, and I chose to be loving and appreciative of this person. The interaction was very enjoyable. I have yet to see how this type of interacting will help to take care of our differences in our processes, but I will continue to choose my emotions towards him rather than letting the negative emotions control me. I expect great things from this approach. Already, it has left me feeling happier and more upbeat. I also chose to be caring toward someone else who has been particularly hard to feel that way about. I did this by listening well (one of my exercises from the other book for which I am continually improving) and giving my time. It was just amazing, the positive energy that surrounded us, and attracted others over to join us!

One of the most powerful ways I think this can be utilized is with yourself. We are all eager to believe negative things about ourselves and often dismiss positive things. As children of God, we are all created how He perfectly made us, to fulfill a specific role in the universe. We are all given challenges and lessons that by learning from them, we will be better able to help those we have been called to help. Therefore, the negative things we let ourselves believe serve no purpose but to hold us back from recognizing that we are perfect for the role He created us to fill. By focusing on our positive attributes, we can more easily move into our roles and recognize our special talents and gifts.

I have a specific negative thought that is the hardest for me to overcome. So I am practicing her method of recognizing when I am feeling negative, finding the cause and the specific emotion, and then dismissing it and replacing it with the opposite emotion and not just feeling it, but feeling like I have an abundance of that emotion. Again, it goes back to the energy that each emotion emits. Over the last several days, I do feel as though my encounters with sales people, people in public and neighbors has been friendlier and more enjoyable- A good reason not to choose to dwell in negative emotions but to rid yourself of them as quickly as possible!

The Communication Model in Reverse

In an earlier post, I covered a model of communication that will help you deal with anybody, particularly addressing challenging individuals. To review the steps, they are 1)Inform the person your perception (i.e. Are you aware that you are yelling?) 2) Request they change their behavior, 3) Demand that they change their behavior, and 4) Leave if it continues. All this is done with a completely neutral tone of voice (and no bad facial expressions, either!).

Well, due to a communication breakdown between me and the sales lady at the flooring store, I didn't bring the right form of payment with me. I understood my role in the breakdown, and told her I would go home and get my checkbook and come back shortly thereafter. I made a 20 minute stop at my friend's house and didn't hear the phone, so there was a message waiting for me from the sales lady. She had called to tell me that I needed cash-cash, not a check. So, I became a bit perturbed because my house is in the opposite direction of my bank so that I'd have to add an additional 40 minutes to my errands just to go to the bank and get the cash and return to the store. So when I called her to let her know that it would take me a lot longer to get back to the store, the annoyance was apparent in my voice. She was kind and just apologized for the misunderstanding.

As I was driving to the bank, I realized how I was taking out my frustration on her. We were both not clear on exactly what form of payment I needed to bring, and it was not her fault that I did not answer my phone when she was kind enough to try to spare me the trip to get my checkbook.

Because I've been practicing dealing with rude or challenging communication using the 4 step model, I am more aware of communication that is troubling. And when I looked at this interaction, there was no blame on the sales lady's part, and I could clearly see that I was wrong to address her as I did. When I got to the store, I immediately told her that I owed her a big apology for addressing her so rudely on the phone when she was trying to be so helpful and kind. She accepted the apology easily and with this cleared up, we were able to finish the transaction and even to enjoy some non-related conversation.

Although the author of "Coach Yourself to Success" doesn't really address this reversal, it is amazing to me how quickly I can recognize when I am being out of line, and how much better it is to address it with whom I am communicating-- A bonus of learning this communication model! (But hopefully you won't have too many instances where you'll have to apply it to yourself!)

More Off the List of Energy Drains!

If you would have told me last year that I would spend a large part of my highly prized vacation time, working on getting my list of 60ish "energy drains" eliminated, I would have just laughed! However, I have seen the effects of just what eliminating a few from the list has done for my outlook, my energy, my desire for more from life, and my excitement about the possibilities for my life. So, I decided to see how many I could get off my list (while still having some fun here and there!)

Most of the items I have addressed while on vacation, have been home repair and improvement items- things I have a hard time taking care of when I am traveling. My thinking is, is that by getting them taken care of now will allow me to think more clearly and creatively and with more focus when I am home. I hope to gain more perspective on how I'd like to spend my time when it's not distracted by these nuisances.

So I've turned into a "handy lady" and have installed new hardware on the kitchen and bath cabinets; stained some needed touch-ups; repainted the bathroom; installed a new light fixture in the bathroom; took down the builder-grade mirror (ugh, safety glasses are really important- flying shards get pretty good velocity as evidenced by the one I got stuck in my cheek!); hung two new framed mirrors and painted a towel bar; removed the rust stain from the tub; bought a new toilet (will install tomorrow--- with help!); reorganized the under sink storage and made another trip to the good will; and most exciting of all is that I get my new floors installed on Wednesday!

I'll have to go back and review the list, but I've knocked off some biggies this vacation and am okay with spending my time this way as it will gain me more quality home time in the near future!

Tomorrow I am painting all the baseboards, trim and doors so that I won't have to do any painting when the new floors are in. I should just hire this done since it's one of those jobs that is on the "not enjoyable" list and someone else could feasibly do it. Oh well, it may be therapeutic (OK, who am I kidding- I'd rather be out doing almost anything but painting trim-- say, lounging by the pool. I guess I can do that while they are installing the floors. Hmmm, go to store, get margarita ingredients, get good fiction book, get great toenail polish and blow up my floaty... Yes, I have a great vacation day planned for Wednesday!)

I have become a firm believer in getting rid of energy sappers on the road to "Getting the Goal". I see how much I've been able to accomplish already, done repairs and improvement that I wouldn't have tried before, and am gaining better insight about myself through the process!