Category Archives: Self

Sound Limiting

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Sound Limiting
Find your inner quiet this fall at home

I was reading an interesting article in the NYT, Can You Hear Yourself Think? It focuses on the idea of sound limiting, a way to limit the sounds around you so you can actually find peace and quiet in your mind during the days.

Although strict quarantine has lifted, most people are working and schooling at home this fall. There are still many limits on our time away from home and most of our time where we need to be focusing we are in noisy environments at home. The dog barks, the cat purrs, the neighbor is having construction done on their home, the kids are fighting as they school, your spouse is on a Zoom work meeting, the doorbell rings — and those are just the noises off the top of my head.

This article rightfully points out that Sound Proofing is super expensive and full of renovation costs. However, there is another idea where you can seek to limit the sounds around you. Perhaps there is a room in the house where it is designated as quiet. No noise no matter what. Noise cancelling headphones can take a lot of the noise away. Scheduling quiet hours for you and your family, designating a specific time to be quiet. Using inside voices together.

A good idea before all the madness at home begins this fall is to come up with a plan. Reflect on what made the home noisy this past spring and tackle these one at a time making a plan to reduce as much noise as possible for all members of your family. There will be noises that cannot be avoided, like the doorbell ringing, but some of this can be solved with a little planning.

Peace and quiet is often essential when it’s time to focus. Plan!

Creativity Burst: Painting

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Painting

Not sure if it is the pandemic or something else or both, but I look around and see a lot of people painting.

They are painting houses, walls, furniture, rooms, paintings, and more. People have found a color and a brush and are putting both to task freshening up their décor with a fresh coat of paint. It seems like one of the easiest and least expensive things you can do to change the mood of a room a home or a piece of furniture.

Paint it.

Also, the process calls for a creative heart. You get to choose your color. Let’s say your room was dark – now you paint it white. Hello! The whole mood of the room has changed – and vice versa too. 

Painting also often has you taking down your pictures and covering your furniture and that also often gets a creative refresh when you have to choose what goes back up on the walls. Also, you may add other decorative elements to match your new painted walls – pillows, accent rugs, and more.

And don’t think you have to get fancy. White walls are also amazing. Did you know there are warm and cool tones of white that can really change the look of your room. White is anything but boring and will also need some attention to choose how you would like your white to look.

And, if you dare, how about a deep, bold color like red or purple? How about pairing the two together? Sometimes taking a bold step with colors we choose to paint with can be a prelude to other bold steps in our lives.

If it is painting a picture, how expressive. I hear that Paint By Numbers has become fashionable once again. The idea of painting almost feels meditative. One can safely be in one’s space alone or with one’s family and undertake a creative task that is full of color and transformation. Once you are in your new rooms of color, who knows what may alight upon you.

Stay Open and Paint!

Money and Spreadsheets

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Money and Spreadsheets

Times are tough – as they always are when it’s the topic of money.  As such, financial experts and advisors tell people to create a budget and stick to it. Indeed, I hear a lot of people are tracking their money these days.  One of the best ways people do this is by creating a spreadsheet. If you set it up right, the spreadsheet will show you all the money you have going in, going out, seeking to save, and more. 

All there, in one neat place, your whole financial life can be seen and tracked. Sounds like a great idea on one hand, and, like most everything, it can also have a downside too.

Whenever I hear someone saying they are setting this up, it always sounds like a New Year’s Resolution – something to help break a bad pattern or to gain more control or to start a new leaf with money. It always seems to begin from the premise of improving one’s money circumstances. Something has gotten the person to feel that a spreadsheet will provide the solution needed to money ails.

On the surface, a spreadsheet tracking money can absolutely be something that is good and helpful in a person’s life. However, it is rarely the answer to stopping negative ways of interacting with money that reflects how we feel about ourselves. Instead, a spreadsheet can often act like a highlighter as to all that we do wrong, which can then lead into feeling bad about ourselves.

I would suggest asking yourself what is motivating you to track your money in such a concrete way? Is it to actually track your money or is it to highlight a part of yourself that you feel bad about already and this spreadsheet will serve as a tangible reminder of this “bad” part of you?

By asking yourself this question you can get a sense if tracking your money via spreadsheet is a healthy thing for you to undertake or is it just another tool to keep you tied to bad thoughts about yourself and others.

Be honest – as this may be the costliest decision of them all.

Doomscrolling

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Doomscrolling. What a clever word for something many people are doing today.

Most of us were attached to our phones before the pandemic and political craziness of 2020 had taken hold. Yet, now something different is happening when we reach for our phones. It’s like the Temple of Doom.

We turn it on, head to our favorite social media sites, and go down the doom tunnel. A horrific article about the politics of the day to the ever-widening death toll from the pandemic to the economic havoc and mayhem — and that’s just the start. Another critical part of the doom scroll is reading all of the comments. I often think the comments grab us into doom more than the news itself.

All of a sudden, we are reading, scrolling, getting amped up, becoming anxious and depressed all at once — and it just keeps going. Compulsively we continue the doomscroll barely able to take a breath away from all we are reading. Someone told me he finally stops when there is no new doom to read. Seven hours in he takes leave of his phone!

This article in the Washington Post lays out what doomscrolling is and how to reign it in so you aren’t relying on the doom all day long. Some ideas in the article include changing your screen color to gray, spending limited amounts of time on-line in these ways, finding places on the Internet that offer the exact opposite of doom – like cute pictures of animals.

A few more ideas – actually purchase a real newspaper and read it. So old fashioned I know. Here though you can enjoy all of the news of the day without reading the comments of doom. Further, it provides space for your own good thinking about the article. Also, you are deciding what you will read in depth, skim, and skip altogether. Online reading is much more difficult to discern which is which for you on any given article as you may not be so interested, but you do want to hear what others think about it. Taking a more solo path can keep the doom at bay.

Also, choose your time of day for a good doomscroll. One where you are awake, active, and alert and not seeking rest and relaxation. Align yourself with the most energy you have to take it in and then leave plenty of time afterwards to let it all go. At night, keep your phone outside of your bedroom. Do not mindlessly reach for it, but keep in mind and value your sleep and rest over the doomscroll. Don’t worry all of the doom will be there waiting for you tomorrow.

We are wired to latch on to the bad and then worry to the nth degree about it all. We also our communal beings — we are drawn to know what someone else is thinking and then perhaps try that stance on and see if we feel the same way or not. However, this muddies the waters of knowing our own minds and trusting how we are thinking for ourselves. Reading without adopting how others are thinking about something is creating space for your own independent thinking. More important than ever these days.

Finally, doomscrolling is a time suck. It sucks you right down into the temple of doom and doesn’t let you go to actually live your life. There is less time for you. Sometimes I read the comments on news and its just on and on fighting and fighting and I think to myself do people really have so much time to fill arguing with strangers? Everyone is always saying how busy they are — is this what people are busy with? Or is doomscrolling a way to escape life that feels miserable? Sometimes I feel like attracts like. We feel our personal lives are doomed and so we seek out external doomscrolling to match this internal feeling.

Take a break and take stock. Life is lived in reality. Put the phone down, pick up a real paper, after a little bit of time, put the paper down, and go out and embrace your life. May it be full of Joy Living — hopefully steps — even miles — away form the doom.

Needing Help and Feeling Helpless

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Needing Help and Feeling Helpless

We all need help. Yet, it’s a curious thing that needing help can often leave us feeling helpless.

Help is important as we navigate life. There is a lot to wade through, challenges to meet, deadlines to honor, things we need to know — sometimes we don’t know, sometimes we are overwhelmed by everything we have to do, sometimes the challenges seem insurmountable. In those times, it is natural to reach out for help. We are a community of people who need one another.

Why then is asking for help so often a challenge — one that can evoke shame and a deep felt sense of helplessness? I think about little babies who rely on someone else to “help” them get all of their needs met — the most basic ones of life actually. Food, sleep, change of diaper, active engagement with another. Baby looks to Mom and other caregivers for help with everything because baby is helpless to do any of these things for himself.

Now, here is an interesting question. Do you know how your caregiver treated you when you had all of those needs and had to have them by met by him or her? Often it is this early knowing of how our helpless selves’ needs were met that can clue us into how, as adults, we ask for and receive help from others. If, as babies, our parents did not do a good job at meeting our needs when we were helpless to meet them ourselves, it can often leave us with a felt sense in our implicit memory (the memories we hold before we consciously are aware of remembering) that to have our needs is to be too much to other people – needing help makes us feel helpless. Often out of this felt sense. we seek to help ourselves as we have had to all of our lives without relying on others.

Needing help leads to an uncomfortable feeling of helplessness that we seek to avoid. So, how can we need help and not feel the despair of being helpless? One, recognize that all of us need help at times. It may not be for every basic need we had as infants, but help is necessary and needed throughout our lives.

Second, equating needing help to being helpless is a misnomer. Often needing help is you recognizing your needs and getting them met — which is the exact opposite of being helpless. Taking action to get help is antithetical to being helpless.

Third, if this idea resonates within you or causes you anxiety, i.e. your need for help leads you to feeling helpless, it may be a good topic to bring in to your therapist to explore as this patterned thinking may have been set from your early days with how your earliest needs were or were not met. This type of therapeutic processing may help you let go of feeling that your needs, particularly for help, is something to feel ashamed of rather than applauded.

I am reminded of Dumbledore’s own advice to Harry Potter regarding help and how it is given at Hogwarts. Please remember, you deserve help.

I remember the famous Harry Potter movies and Dumbledore telling Harry about hel

Yearning for Nostalgia

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Yearning for Nostalgia

I read and interesting article about Yearning for the Past in the New York Times this past week. The gist of the article is that during times of crisis, such as the COVID pandemic we are facing, people yearn to go back to the times before this time where things were easier, simpler, and uncomplicated with the concerns of the day.

Do you find yourself yearning for the days before COVID — or even times from an earlier time in your life? The article points out people are reconnecting with their old childhood friends, dressing as they did when they were teenagers, revisiting in their minds places that are full of ease, like a favorite park.

For me, nostalgia is active at this time. It plays out in the yearning for the olden days when I traveled without a care in the world. If I needed to be in Asia the next day, the ease of buying a plane ticket, packing a bag, and boarding the plane to take me far, far away. I now marvel at how I did this with such ease and confidence. Now, I wonder if I will ever travel like this again? My travel memories delight me and hold me in good stead during this crisis. I have lived and enjoyed travel when and while I could. It makes me happy to remember and allows me to hope for it in the future once again.

The article points out that having bouts of nostalgia are neither good nor bad, but noticing what is going on for you when you think of yester years and days is more the point. What is coming up for you? Are you living in those times to avoid your sorrow and depression of these days? Or are you returning to happy memories that sustain you and give you hope as you live out your present days? Noticing is the key word when thinking about how you are using nostalgia.

The good ol’ days have always been called upon by the older generations. However, even the youngest of us can now recall the “good ol days” — i.e those days before COVID. It’s perfectly fine to remember and enjoy the memories of the past. However, being in the present and remember that one day these pandemic days will also be stories we recall to younger people who were to young to remember this time or are not even yet in the world. Yes, we most likely will even romanticize a pandemic in the future.

Take a trip down memory lane when you need to and also be present and notice what that trip is doing for you in the here and now.

That Magic Age

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That Magic Age

That magic age. What age is it for you? I recently heard someone say that 35 was their idea of that magic age where everything falls into place, there is no more issues or worries, and one can just be one’s self without any more hang ups.

Interesting! Does such an age even exist?

The older I get I don’t think there is a magic age. It feels like that each decade and the years within each offer its own lessons and magic based on what we have lived, learned, our attitude toward self, and what we anticipate as we look to the future. I often thought when I would get to a certain age then all of my problems would be over — well, those problems may have been, but new ones I have found arose at the same time.

I will say that getting older is interesting though. Even if you haven’t figured it all out, getting older seems to naturally wash away many of our hang-ups and earlier concerns of life. Age helps one to see things differently, which often makes those things that we were so worried about when we were younger fall away. Now there is some magic!

However, each age is to be cherished and relished each moment we are in that year of our lives. We will never have that year again and the “now” of what we are in is the most compelling year of all as that is what we are in – that is our present. And, truly, this is all we have at any moment. Yes, we can yearn to be a certain age, but this takes us away from where we are and learning in that year and calling it good.

May we all appreciate the year we are living in our lives. Indeed, that is the magic year!

Your Favorite Day of the Week

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What’s Your Favorite Day of the Week?

Do you have a favorite day of the week? If so, which day is it and why?

It’s a little thing to notice, but there are 52 weeks in a year and so you have 52 favorite days in any given year for you to enjoy and relish. Yet, you first have to know it is your favorite day and why so you can celebrate it with gusto.

You may think it would be a weekend day, like Saturday or Sunday, but it doesn’t have to be one of those days. After all, some people work these days, have to do errands, or any number of other things that keep the weekend days from being favorites.

Others may love the hump day or Friday — closer to the weekend perhaps?

Some may even love Monday! When I owned my own tech business, I always woke up with a spring in my step on Monday mornings — ready to go!

Perhaps it’s a random day like a Tuesday because that is your day off. Whichever day it is for you, name it that, and relish it. For me, my favorite has to be Sunday — yes, it is a weekend day. Usually, it is slower than Saturday, which means there is less to do and I feel completely within my rights to take a long, languishing nap on the couch on a Sunday. Sometimes there are fun events on a Sunday, sometimes there is nothing to do and that’s fine by me.

It’s also the day that I am anticipating the new week to unfold. What will it bring? I can reflect on the past week and anticipate the new with some mindfulness. Of course, the alarm rings off shortly after Sunday and it’s “just another manic Monday,” but I feel like I had a rest. I call Sunday my favorite day of the week and I enjoy.

So, which day is your favorite?

How Helplessness Serves Us

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How Helplessness Serves Us
How does helplessness serve you?

Helplessness is not something that any of us aspire to, right? To be helpless is to feel out of control, unable to make a difference, and a general feeling of being useless to improve a situation.

Not good, right? Most of us seek to feel and be helpful to ourselves and others in our community. However, sometimes we use helplessness as a defense to not have to take responsibility for ourselves and actions. We may not even be conscious of doing this, but we claim “We didn’t know,” or “We didn’t know what to do” or “I’ve never had to deal with this before,” and more.

Whenever you hear yourself or others saying these types of phrases, raising your consciousness that you have said such a thing and becoming curious about what may or may not be going on is essential. Perhaps you truly are helpless in a situation but perhaps, in order to not have to fully engage, you say these things to get distance and not have to take ownership.

All of us have taken this stance at one time or another. When we are out of our comfort zone, we often feel helpless. There is nothing wrong with the feeling. Actually, making peace with a feeling of helplessness is important. From there, instead of making excuses to gain that distance and get out from uncomfortable situations, we can move in and tolerate feelings of not knowing and how this may shake us to the core. However, it can also lead us to tolerating this state and move toward trying to figure it out so we can be helpful and feel we can do something about a situation.

With the Black Lives Matter Movement, this is a place where we may feel helpless. In feeling this, we may just close our eyes to the pain in our society, we may run away, we may try to adhere to a neutral stance, or just check out. Instead of taking these actions, feeling our helplessness and moving toward it to greater understanding can move us out of using our helplessness to keep us distant, in denial. and upholding the systems in place as they are.

Replacing helplessness with curiosity is key to openings for ourselves, our community, and to creating systems that incorporate the entire society. Next time you feel helpless instead of running away, run in and engage, open up to curiosity, and see where this may take you to a place where you can feel helpful.

Creativity Burst: A Positive List for a Negative Habit

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A Positive List for a Negative Habit

How can a positive list change any type of negative habit?

Well, it’s a creative exercise indeed to flip something we criticize ourselves for on its head and see the positive side, i.e. what may be the part of the habit we deemed as negative as something that is giving us something we are missing, longing for, and enacting that feels good.

Usually the way we interact with our bad habits and patterns is to criticize ourselves for having formed and maintained the habits. I often have found the more negative, critical talk about these habits, the more they take hold. Which is the exact opposite of what we want in our heads as we often seek to not do these very things again and again. However, what else to do, but to talk negatively to one’s self and keep up the habit of the negative behavior.

So, it may take a little effort to do this, but if you look at this idea as a creative exercise then it may not feel difficult at all. Also, it will allow for a break from the negativity toward self. In concept, the idea is simple. Take a few moments with yourself and sit down with a pen and paper in hand. From there, write at the top of the page — or wherever on the page — your bad habit or pattern.

Now, instead of thinking about all the bad you think you are for doing this habit and also how you judge the habit to be bad in and of itself — flip it! — and think about all of the good things that you get from doing this habit from the little to the big things. My guess is there is something positive that far outweighs the negative of engaging the pattern or habit that keeps it active for you.

After you see all that is positive in this negative habit, treat yourself compassionately. There are reasons that are valid that drive us to take on “bad” habits and behaviors. By allowing yourself to be compassionate and extending loving kindness may help you get more in touch with how this may be a way for you to express your anger, handle your anxiety, regulate your stress and more. No one action or thing is all bad. Opening up space to look at the positive part of whatever it is may help you tolerate the habit and it may also loosen some of the grip it has on your life.

This is a creative way to approach a bad habit or pattern. Give it a try and see what alights upon you. I hope compassion and kindness above all to yourself.