ILLUMINATIONS Blog

Read the headlines in any newspaper for the past few weeks and it’s hard not to bring up the image of Chicken Little.  The sky may not be falling but certainly the Dow Jones is!  And if your 401K isn’t enough to worry about, credit is tightening, concerns about unemployment are heightened, and it’s not clear that anyone knows what to do about it.  Will you have enough money to see you through this crisis?  Should you stop spending or go out and shop to forget your troubles?  If the economy isn’t enough to get your stomach in a knot, there’s war, hunger, a suffering environment, and an election that seems infused with hostility.  Whew!

What happens to your emotions when you hear the messages of concern and pessimisim, of doom and gloom?  What’s your response to watching others panic?  We are wired to resonate with the emotions of those around us.  As the intensity of emotions increase, we respond in kind - whether it’s “logical” to or not.  Our primitive brain decides to take over and direct our fight or flight response.  Adrenaline surges through our bodies and our heart rate increases.  We feel stress. 

Take a moment right now to pause and assess what you’re feeling.  What emotion has been prominent for you this week?  Now do a body scan.  Check your jaw; is it locked?  Are you holding your shoulders up around your ears?  Shrug them a few time to release the tension.  Find your feet on the floor.  You don’t have to do anything with them; just be aware of them.  Now find your hands.  Straighten your spine.  Take a deep inhale, filling your diaphragm, your lungs, into your shoulders and back.  Exhale!  Breathe deeply and exhale twice more; then let your breathing return to normal.  Think of one thing for which you are grateful and put a soft smile on your face.  Sit this way for one minute, feeling your breath, reflecting on your gratitude.  When you’ve completed your one-minute pause, identify one thing that you choose to do now and move to do that thing with your calm, centered presence. 

We are not more effective when we are stressed.  We are not more powerful when we are filled with panic.  We do not treat our colleagues better when we take on too much without asking for help.  We do not show love for our family when we concern ourselves with our finances at the expense of our relationships.  

We will likely find ourselves experiencing stress, fear or anger in times like these.  There’s no shame in that; it happens.  But we can notice our negative emotions, choose to take a few minutes to center ourselves, and move into a different place.  I wish you increasing calm, clarity and gratitude.

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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.  –Reinhold Niebuhr

Are you being propelled by your values, your best and highest calling?  Or somewhere along the way, did Stress take over the steering wheel.  I’m thinking of that space when you narrow your focus, keep your eyes on the next thing to be done, and move breathlessly full speed ahead, all the time aware that a myriad of other “things” are calling for your attention.  My friend described it to me just this morning.  “I woke up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, feeling almost in a panic, wondering how I was ever going to be able to get everything done.”

I’ve often described this as being on the “hamster wheel.”  We run and run and don’t seem to get any further ahead.  We don’t have a hamster among our variety of household pets but my daughter does have a gerbil.  And Elvis, the gerbil, has a hamster wheel.  As I head to bed at night, I can often hear him in a room down the hall, running and running to nowhere.  And yet Elvis has some instincts that serve him well.  He doesn’t stay on the wheel until he gets sick or drops from exhaustion.  Elvis takes plenty of time to eat and drink and sleep.  And he spends a lot of time burrowing in the soft material in the bottom of his case, appearing snuggled and cozy and calm. 

I wonder if we get off the wheel frequently enough.  Do we take the time for nourishing ourselves?  Do we find a cozy place to get away from the wheel so that when we return, we can run the race without the panic?  And if we took more time away, might it allow us to run the race more fully present to the moment? 

As we move into summer, we could decide to schedule time for real relaxation.  Then when we return to the busy-ness of our lives, we might find that we are more aware, alive and engaged, better runners for having rested.  Happy summer!