Trace It Back

A few weeks ago we looked at what we were thinking.   Did you do the exercise?  One of the biggest hurdles to change is passive living.  We go about our day without thinking why something triggered a negative response or emotion, or not even paying attention to how we engage with the world around us.  

Taking internal inventory is necessary to moving forward.   Having a mind full of good thoughts means you first must evaluate the reality of your thought life as well as what you want your thought life to be. When we talk internal inventory, we have to often look at why we do what we do.

You will often hear people give an onion metaphor.  Each layer reveals a new layer.  Or let's mix it up and go with my own metaphor - the artichoke.  Its work to eat an artichoke but can be fun (if you like them).  As you eat the meat of each leaf, you get closer to the heart of the artichoke, which is my favorite part.  Its tender and delicious!

That is a lot like life.  As we engage in internal inventory, we discover new or deeper parts of how something affected us and why we do what we do.

I have always worked on tackling my own issues because I don't want them to rule over me, but as I do so I discover new layers.

A recent reality tv show I was watching shared about the term "parentified child." I immediately paused the show and began searching articles online and immediately had an emotional moment.  The concept behind the term, "parentified child" wasn't new to me, but I hadn't seen some new layers as they were reflected back at me in the articles I read.  In my younger years as I peeled away the artichokes leaves of my life, I had a hard time really looking at certain issues without it hurting me, but as I have tackled the pain and how I defined myself along life, I have been able to step back and look at it with more of a clinical perspective and make the adjustments needed.  This time it hit a nerve and I was full of emotions.  I had to start asking questions.  You can do this too.  

1. Start with Your Senses - How did you feel? What did you see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Taking a tour through each of your senses can aid you in a full understanding of how a past experience impacted you.  It doesn't have to be some massive trauma.  Each of us are shaped by the world we walk through and understanding that allows us to see the connections in our current reality.  Understanding gives us the tools to recorrect where we need to in our current lives.  

My husband makes biscuits and gravy for our church men's group every Friday morning.  He always saves me some, but typically, I get them cold or reheated and not fresh from the oven.  One morning I was up early and I grabbed a biscuit fresh from the oven and I was transported back to the early elementary years when I lived with my grandpa.  We lost him several years ago, and just eating that hot biscuit gave me a moment with him again.  We don't often know what sticks with us, until we encounter something similar.  Going through your senses helps us to know how we have attached to the memories or moments in our past.  

2. Examine the Take-Away - Delving into the "parentified child" opened my eyes to my helping ways.  I am a Helper on the Enneagram.  I love serving people, and I do it out of the kindness of my heart.  I realized that I can go to an unheathly place in helping, when I neglect myself or my family for the sake of helping others.  I saw for the first time its roots in this new term.  

My mom is a wonderful mom, but we hit some hard road along the way when I was a girl and even though she masterfully cared for us, she often leaned on my as the oldest for emotional support.  I saw how I had a gap as a result.  Its no judgement on my mom, honestly, if I faced all she did as a single mom, I don't think I could have done half as well as she did, but we are humans after all.  I saw my years helping support my mom and sister kept me from checking in on me and learning where those boundary lines should be.  

3. Find the Balance - If you are learning from your life and asking the Holy Spirit to guide you as you go, you will find that you have probably walked too far down one side of the road and you must find the balance.  Doing the examination isn't unspiritual and its not living in the past, instead its learning from the past so you can move forward without bitterness or baggage.  I think most of us have areas we are stuck and these kind of reflections can get us unstuck.  

So what does all of this look like for you?  I'd love to hear from you.  God is good and he is good to guide us through our issues, if we let him.  He created us and knows us best, so I find letting him guide is best.  Happy Wednesday! Join me next week (also next month) for a whole new theme. 

What Are You Telling Yourself?

There are no shortage of bullies or bad guys in our world today, but it seems that the worst person to each of us, is ourselves.

Since we are talking about mindset this month, we would be remiss if we didn't address the word/thought connection (I don't know why but writing this made me start singing the "Rainbow Connection" in my head).  Our thoughts are often fueled by what we tell ourselves, whether it be silently or out loud.  It stands to reason that if we want our thoughts to change, our words need a makeover as well.  Yes, we can say encouraging things to help keep ourselves going, but far too often, we are the ones tearing ourself down.

If you did the exercise a few weeks ago, you may have been surprised by the thoughts you had.  How much of it was negative self-talk?

This year my son's school has had the theme, "Speak Life.''  (Psalm 19:14 (NIV) - "May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.")  He came home the first week of school excited to show me a video on YouTube.  He brought up the video for TobyMac's "Speak Life"  - and was so excited to show me how speaking good words helped us to be better people and help others.

The truth is, we are motivated by life giving words.  I'm sure this next sentence is repeat for me, but it needs to be said.  If we were the kind of friends to others that we are to ourselves, we would need new friends.

1. Ask yourself - If my best friend were in the same situation I were, what would I say to them?  We far too often give ourselves permission to belittle ourselves, when we would never speak to someone else in the same way.  So start by speaking to yourself, the way you would speak to a good friend.

2. Focus on your strengths - When your tempted to bully yourself and start a hyper focus fest on the ways in which you suck, take a moment to write down your strengths - the best things about you and begin to look at that.

If I've learned one thing from reading books from authors like Dr. Caroline Leaf or Carol Dweck its that the more you think something, the stronger that thought becomes and the strong thoughts are the "go-to" thoughts as we navigate in life.  So instead of focusing our thoughts on the negative, flip the script and focus on the best things.

If you don't know what your strengths are - gather your friends and ask them.  Take notes if you have to, but leave that time, knowing your best qualities.  Change the filter - you are awesome!

3. Praise God for You and Your Life - A thankful heart prepares the way for God.  Praising him and thanking him has amazing power to open our hearts to receive from God.  God created us, he knows us and honoring him and connecting with him only enhances how we live.

Go into your day with a beautiful view of you.  Next week we will get into the why, which I think is the last remaining piece in this topic discussion, so come on back! See you Wednesday!

Don't Should On Me

"Should" is a powerful word.  When one says, they "should" have done something, it is laced with regret, and when someone else says you "should" have, its often a form of judgement, leading to guilt.

When I was a girl, my mom was a part of a counseling program, that I got to participate in on occasion.  Several of the lessons that I learned in those sessions, have stayed with me through the years.  It was in one of those groups that I first came to understand the concept of triangulation, a term that helped me look for land mines in relationships later in life.

A mantra that birthed through those groups and became known to my own family was, "Don't Should On Me," as a reminder not to add judgement or regret to our lives. 

How many times a day do we "should" on ourselves?  Adding that kind of pressure whether its being said or the concept is taking over our thought life, is not healthy.  

Living in regrets and judgments doesn't boost our self-esteem, it doesn't boost performance, and it doesn't send our lives into a positive trajectory.  Honestly, it does the opposite. 

Yes, we all need to strive to be the best us possible, but in that aim, there is no room for perfection.  That process includes failure, something we can celebrate, because it means we are trying.  We aim up, with the knowledge that there is training and bumps along the way. 

American culture doesn't often leave room for hard work and the time it takes to meet goals.  We want it now and if it takes too long, we will find the short cut, but that isn't a benefit to us as humans. 

In 1953 Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay succeeded in climbing Mount Everest.  Even with the increase in success in recent years, of the 7.7 billion people on earth, only 800 attempt the task each year.  Out of all of those people (I used a calculator its 52,800 people) only 4,000 have succeeded as Hillary and Norgay in the years since.  Again with the aid of a calculator, I figure that means 48,800 of the people who attempted, failed - that is 92.4% of people failed.  

Those aren't good odds, that doesn't include the fact that its expensive, its time consuming, and its hard work.  So why do it? The experience, even failing, I'd imagine for those who attempt, is an amazing journey.  They learn about themselves, they challenge themselves and they become better people.  Its an endurance, long game experience.    

Life, like climbing Mount Everest, is a long game and we all need to pace ourselves, give some grace and continue along the way.  We march on learning and growing without the confines of a word like "should" because its worth it in the end.  

So give up the fake expectations and the distorted mirrors you've picked up along the way and be you.  Fight not only for the best version of you possible, but fight for the journey too! The Bible is full of commands but there is a reason love is number one.  

Jesus wants a relationship with us, where we are.  He wants to walk with us in the journey and guide us in the way we should go.  He loves us.  I think we'd all be better to take a page from his playbook and love ourselves a little more with patience and grace.  Stop the "should" fest and get up and go each day from where you are.   

What are YOU Thinking?

Have you ever paid attention to everything you think about in a given day?  Today, I offer you one simple exercise.

Take note for one hour (I would suggest at different times) each day for a week about the thoughts that went through your head.  You don't have to share them with others, but it might be helpful to check out any patterns you have.

What do you think about?

How do you think about or think through life situations? 

Did you have a negative or positive thought process to life as it happened? 

Were you surprised by how much you thought about certain things?

If you were to put them in categories, how many thought categories do you have?

What were the thoughts you didn't like? 

What were the thoughts you loved? 

What else stuck out to you in this exercise?  

Most of us want to change, yet few of us actually do anything about it, and I believe its because we aren't willing to do the internal inventory and discover where we truly are in life.  

Taking inventory of your thoughts, helps you to see where you are.  When you decide what you want from life, then retraining your thought life can help you to get there.  If you want to know more about this, then go grab a book by Dr. Caroline Leaf.  

As you take inventory above, I would also ask the question: 

What thoughts do I want in my brain?  

If you didn't like the way you thought about life or yourself or you found yourself stuck in a negative mental cycle, what would you want to replace it with?  

This month on mindset, really is important because how we think about our life is one of the most important building blocks for changing words and actions.  There is so much out of our control, but if we focus solely on that, we can miss what we do have control over.  That is where our time and thoughts should be spent.  

I'd love to hear how this went for you! Happy Wednesday! 

Mindset Matters

You can thank Dr. Caroline Leaf for our theme this month, because I've been reading her book and watching videos of her talks and I felt inspired to focus this month on Mindset.  Our mindset in life is so important. The mind is where life starts, yet so often we trip mindlessly through life, unaware of what we are thinking.

The New Kings James version of Psalm 23:7 says, "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." Other versions say a man thinks first the cost.  Regardless of the version, the focus in on our thoughts.  What we do and say comes from what we think.

2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV) tells us, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

Bad thoughts lead to self-doubt, depression, anxiety (and the list goes on).  Letting them run free can lead us down a bad path.  Thoughts are important!  If I didn't already know that in life, Dr. Caroline Leaf has hit that point home with true precision backed by her work in the field of cognitive neurology.

So here it is, here is what I've learned from her.  If you want things to change in your life, you start with your thoughts and it takes 3, 21 day cycles of intentional thought (7-16 minutes a day) to create a thought strong enough to make its way into our conscious mind and life.  It is work!  But its worth it!!!!! 

I asked God, what thought I should first work on.  I suspected it would be my anger.  I am over losing my temper, but I was wrong.  God told me it was my motherhood that needs to be addressed first.  That's ironic for May and Mother's Day, right?! As I thought about it I realized, how off track I was.  I get annoyed at my kids when they disrupt what I am doing.  I get agitated when they aren't moving as quickly as I need them to be when we have to get going.  Those things are understandable because well motherhood is hard, and trust me, I have NO JUDGEMENT for all you moms out there.  I get it! I just realized I was looking at it wrong.  

A month ago I was sitting in an ER with my baby on tubes worried I was going to lose my little girl, if that isn't a wake up call, I'm not sure what is.  These kids in my home are a gift, and unless we are talking about my 33 year old, special needs step daughter, who gets older but lives the same life every day and every year, my kids will grow up quickly and be gone before I know it.  Eighteen years in the scheme of life are quick. I will spend more time at home without kids than I will with kids.  They spend more time out of my home than in it, and I want to maximize those years.  

I can't live in some perfectionistic mindset with my kids because I have and will screw up when it comes to being a mom, but I can cherish the moments I have with them, and that is my focus in this process.  

Proverbs 27:17 says, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." We help each other in our encounters with one another to become better people.  We can learn to be more Christ like when we are challenged by human interaction.  That was quite the lesson when I said, "I do," thirteen years ago.  Marriage is the perfect place to understand this verse because becoming better is painful as you work in relationships, especially when you have cemented your life to another flawed human.  

Well, parenting is just another step in the process.  I want to be the best version of me possible.  I want to allow God to refine my places of pride and selfishness.  I get to practice putting someone else needs above my own.  

At the end of the day, I can get frustrated that my kids are interrupting that tv show I want to watch or  I can cherish the moment to be with them.  I understand things need to get done and we can't spend every waking hour playing with the kids, but I admit there are lots of moments when selfish me just doesn't want to do the mom stuff, I just want to be left alone. In those moments, I realize I need a mental shift. 

So here I am day 7 into my first round of 21 days, with a few months to go in replacing thoughts.  

Then I will figure out the next thought pattern I need to change and work on that for 63 days.  

Too many of us are guilty of sharing a daily encouragement with a friend or even ourselves and thinking it will inspire change, but don't be fooled, its not that simple. If it were, no one would have any issues in life.  It takes daily attention for 63 days, according to Dr. Caroline Leaf.  Let give our thoughts the respect, time and attention they need! 

What thoughts do you need to change?  Ask God to reveal your first thought.  Check out this video series if you want to learn more. (Note: I just linked video 1, but there are 3 others that you can watch after it.) Check back in next week for more on mindset!!! 

Getting Unstuck

I'm not gonna lie, I feel a bit beat up lately by life.  It just seems to be one thing after the next and its made my threshold for challenges pretty low.  Monday of last week, I was met with two smaller issues that simply sent me over the edge.

Reality is...life is hard.  It was never meant to be a Thursday night sitcom, where something dumb happens and we figure it out in 30 minutes.  We are going to always have challenges to face.  Some are harder than others.

Emotions like fear, anxiety and anger can become dominating forces that seem to wreak havoc in our daily lives.  

Dr. Caroline Leaf shares in her book, "Think, Learn, Succeed," that fear isn't a innate emotion but a learned state.  We are born into love and fear is a reaction learned from life.  She shares this from a scientific place as a neurologist, but I've seen this unfold in my life and understood its truth as I look at my journey.

I wasn't scared of what would happen to my daughter, until the day one month ago yesterday when I was riding in an ambulance to the ER. (Heck, this morning I saw an ambulance pass by with sirens howling and I started to cry just remembering that day).  In the weeks since that sudden seizure, I have been met with many fearful thoughts.  When she falls or hits her head.  When she starts coughing (what she did before the seizure).  When she looks like something just isn't right.  All of those now bring on an initial fear response.  This has illuminated the truth of Dr. Leaf's research. 

We don't think in "what if" terms until we are met with the reality of worse case scenario.  Fear is an awful beast.  It can be a blessing when it signals danger and we are able to use it to fuel wisdom and get out of a bad situation.  But fear is often misused to control us in ways that keep us emotionally and sometimes even physically paralyzed from living life.  Fear is often a disguised emotion. 

In my years in counseling, one of the biggest light bulb moments was when I realized my anger problem, really wasn't an anger problem but a fear and anxiety problem.  Anger was the beast emerging from me but it was really a signal of internal panic or even stress.  Insecurities, self-imposed pressure or anxiety of the things out of my control unleashed emotions that weren't equal with the weight of the current situation.  

I've seen how important our words are but those words first start as thoughts.  We have to be detectives in discovering who we are and why we are.  This work is important if we ever want to move forward.  I recently heard a talk by Mel Robbins, where she asks, "What is the next chapter of your life?" Introspection is the key to moving forward.  So many things in the physical world, translate well into our spirit/soul world.  Take organizing for example. I don't care who you watch or who your organization Yoda is because they all start at the same place: 

Take it all out.  

If you are going to organize your closet, you first have to get all the clothes and stuff out, then you can determine what you need to keep and get rid of, and then based on what is left decide the right way to organize it.  

The same is true for our thoughts and feelings.  You have to bring them out of cobb webbs and hiding and find out what is there.  Then and only then can you look at what needs to be there and what needs to be replaced.  

Dr. Caroline Leaf says thoughts can be redesigned.  I love that concept.  As long as we keep going in a mindless state, passively allowing life to happen, we will be victims to the mental blocks and bad thoughts that we've allowed to grow.  

Being aware of this new fear response, helps me to redesign the thoughts and move forward with confidence.  As a Christian I believe in a God who has a plan.  It may not always make sense to me, but my God has all the power, but also is a loving God.  Love and power together are a safe zone.  It doesn't mean that everything will turn out perfect, but it does mean that I can trust him, even when it doesn't.  Keeping that fact before me each time I'm faced with my new fear, will be an immense help in finding freedom from the fear. 

Replacing thoughts is not some one and done experience.  You can't read this blog post, think - great point, and just go on in life.  No, there is work that goes into it, that work is daily and takes a while to reach the finish line.  Dr. Caroline Leaf says 63 days is the key for those dendrites to rewire and recreate a new conscious mental pathway. (Check her out - just google search and discover the many ways you can learn about all of this from her).  

Now its your turn, you have a choice. If you don't do the work and develop new habits, nothing will change. What thoughts do have running amok in your head?  Is today the day your evaluate and redesign your thought life? Just know I'm over here with you; a woman in process!

God Knows

Surrender is a crazy decision, at least it feels that way, but often its the most amazing step in life we can make.  Obviously, the key to surrender is who you are surrendering too.

I made the decision in two parts to follow Jesus.

Once as a four-year-old enrolled in a Christian preschool.  The teacher told us about Jesus and I still remember that day, thirty-six years later.  The letter of the day was I - for Itchy Ivy.  I also remember going home and telling my mom about making the decision to accept Jesus in my heart.

The second part of that decision was my freshman year of college, when I decided to surrender completely.

The years in between were filled with both learning about Christianity both from a "know your religion" perspective and testing the validity of the historical claims.  It was also filled with relational encounters with God and a lot of bumps in life's road.  The bumps led to some distrust in the God who controlled my life.

It wasn't until a basement experience of crying and journaling that I understood the whole story.   I had misinformation about God in the midst of rough road and my earlier conclusion of distrust was unfounded, though understandable.

I'm pretty sure I just condensed an hour conversation into two paragraphs so if you want to know more about what I mean, feel free to ask.

The thing is, that distrust nature lingers often when I get overwhelmed, stressed or fearful and I can try once again to do it on my own.  This week things didn't go as planned in a few ways and as what I planned changed, I once again saw, God knows.  When I make the plans then turn them into him, and let him do, I find things usually work out when its all said and done.  I'm not talking fairy tale here, we all know life is hard, but what I mean is that God sees the curve balls I don't so often when things change from what I thought I could handle, its because God was preparing me for a curve ball he knew was headed my way.

The friend that cancelled plans, left room for me to process or take care of a need that landed in my lap.  The event I was going too that now couldn't work, would have been too much with life that just happened.  That weekly sports team I felt I shouldn't sign my kid up for this season, proved wisdom in God's leading when random life unraveled and I needed down time to recover.  Or sometimes it works in the positive, as in that conference that my friends had a last-minute open spot to, was just the encouragement I needed.

God knows.

He has the proper perspective: he is both with us and above us.  God is everywhere at all times.  He is not bound my time or distance.  He is with us in the moments and that gives us his protection as well as the shared experience of deeper connection.  He can also see the past, present and future, so looking to him gives us the best shot at moving forward and making choices in life.

Its also freeing.  Its great to sit back and just take it as it comes then to feel frantic in the midst of every turn in life.  This week, I realized, its once again time to surrender.  I have been taking the reigns of life and trying to control what I have no control over. The stress of that unresolved conflict has taken its toll and its time.  Time to let go.

What about you?  Where are you in all of this?  Is it time to trust?  Is it time to surrender?  Maybe you aren't sure about Jesus as more than just some story you've heard about, much less a leader you can trust in life.  If that is you, reach out, I'd love to help you tackle those questions and point you to the resources that have answered my skepticism over the years.  Today is a new day and maybe its time for some new ways in your life.  Happy Wednesday!