“Your ability to work miracles is predicated entirely on how easily and quickly you can give the collective consciousness the slip. It is your attachment to the collective unconscious, or world belief patterns, that holds you back”
Stuart Wilde
Let’s face it – the stress level of the clients we see here at Total Fitness and many others across the United States is off the charts. Here in Atlanta, we have faced drought, long lines at the gas pumps followed by high prices (provided you could even find a station that still had petroleum), a tumultuous stock market, stagnating real estate sales, home foreclosures, large numbers of people abandoning their family pets because they can’t afford to keep them, tension and dissension among even the closest friends about the fate of the upcoming presidential election, concern about loved ones on long tours of duty in the armed forces, job losses and inflation.
Here are a few suggestions I have to make your life better:
Remember who you are. You are not your body. You are not the number on your bathroom scale. You are not your net worth, job title or rank in the company pecking order. You are spirit, first and foremost. Your soul has inestimable value and is strong, blissful and capable of great fortitude.
Remember what you value. This is an assignment I give many of my clients who are depressed. Make a list of 100 things you value in life. Although some of these things may indeed have to do with financial security, you will find that many if not most of them have nothing at all to do with money. You may notice your list includes family, friends, good health, peace of mind, excellent energy, fun or spiritual growth. From that list of 100, cull your top 10 values. Then do the inner work of asking yourself if you are really living by your values. You can only be truly happy in life if you are spending the majority of your time and money on what really matters to you. As J.P. Morgan used to warn sentimental souls, “I am not on Wall Street for my health.”
Remember to connect to your Higher Power on a daily basis. I do the Source Connection daily. You can download the directions for free by following this link: 52. Source Connection Connecting to God Source helps me with my medical intuitive readings and allows me to feel grounded, centered and strong even in the face of adversity. It is part of the preparation that I do for a medical intuitive reading, so that I can be neutral and read situations impartially. Traditional methods of connection include prayer and reading scripture.
If there was ever a time to learn to meditate, this is it. Purchase our Loving Kindness Meditation CD on our webstore by following this link: https://unlimitedenergynow.com/1ShoppingCatalog/CDs.html. Take retreat from ruminating over your options and bless yourself with serenity. When you are in a state of peace and love, that is what you bring to others, many of whom may need these qualities even more than you do.
Shift from focusing on your grievances to living in gratitude. Now is a very good time to examine your relationship with yourself. When times are tough, do you go into Poor Me? Do you become the Interrogator with yourself and question yourself over every possible mistake? Do you become the Intimidator with yourself and beat yourself up? At the end of every day, I write at least one page in my journal of sentences that begin, “I am so grateful and blessed that..” Focusing on what you are actually grateful for allows you to shift to become Lucky Me. When you are grounded in the reality of what matters most, you produce feel-good neurotransmitters that lift you out of depression and allow yourself to see what’s happening from a new perspective.
Connect to spiritual family and spiritual community. Even if you are far from your mother, father, brothers and sisters, you can connect to like-minded people. My husband and I joined a spiritual group about a year ago. We get together regularly to pray, meditate and talk about the spiritual books we are reading.
Contribute to the lives of people around you. Becoming a giver makes you realize how much you have to give, allows the energy of the divine to flow through you and shifts your focus from your personal problems to making the world a better place. I experience this most clearly when I do a Reiki session with a client. Simply by allowing this gift to flow through me I am blessed myself. As you recognize that you are part of a greater whole, you begin to recognize you can’t help but receive every time you make a true contribution to the well-being of others. This may help to erase feelings of isolation, loneliness or lack of meaning.
Put your stressful energy into motion and defuse it with joyful movement. It’s a law of physics that energy can not be created or destroyed. But you can transform it. Find ways to exercise that make you truly happy. In addition to teaching yoga and qi gong and lifting weights, lately I have been walking my dogs a lot. Animals teach us to stay in the present moment. They also know how to live for you – to roll in the grass, chase a friend around the dog park or lie on the cold tile floor at the end of a walk. Putting your energy into motion is the best way to prevent overwhelming feelings of hopelessness from getting the better of you.
Join our yoga and qi gong classes. Many people know they need to learn how to handle their stress better, but they don’t know how to go about it. Although you can definitely learn from videos or DVDs, when you come to our classes, you benefit from what’s called the qi field. Simply stated, this is beneficial healing energy created by large numbers of people practicing all at one time. I have students who walk into my class with a headache and have their pain disappear even before we start practicing.
Cultivate wu wei, the concept of effortless action. This is an example I am always giving my clients: If you are watching a master at work, such as Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello, a master doesn’t stress or strain. He flows. He is not damaging his adrenal glands, creating mental/emotional turmoil for himself or anyone else or aging his body by doing his job. In fact, the more accomplished a master is, the less he or she appears to be doing. After one session with me, a new client said, “I feel 200 percent calmer than I did last week.” It all seemed so easy to her, she had no idea what I had done or how I had done it so quickly. This is an aspect of working that many people never learn. After teaching qi gong for 8 years, I understand the concept of effortless action, which implies a harmony with all that is and going with the grain rather than against it. This boils down to trust – trust in ourselves, trust that our environment will provide what we need, trust in our own internal guidance. Wu wei is also knowing when to act and when not to do anything. Back when I was plagued by adrenal problems, I had a 9 by 11 inch Day-Timer that probably weighed at least 8 pounds packed with never-ending to-do lists. Now I don’t keep a to-do list and one of my repeated New Year’s resolutions is to maintain a low level of stress. I am able to do so while helping even more people. By learning how to succeed without strain, I have healed my adrenals, gotten rid of excess belly fat, restored my natural energy levels and learned how to become even happier. Many people only know how to succeed by being over focused on one aspect of their lives, making money, and in this way they have forgotten what they were making money for. Be smart enough to figure out how to be happy.