Month: May 2024

Sometimes money problems are not really about the money. If we could just focus on our money obstacles, we’d all be just fine!

“I just need to get my act together” and “I just need to make more money” are things I hear frequently from financial coaching clients who are dealing with feeling stuck, out of options, out of time, and have a scarcity mindset.

Decisions made in this mindset are rarely good for us in the long-term. And those decisions, in turn, just generate more crises, less choices, and more scarcity. Any time we try to intervene to somehow magically force ourselves to “make the right choices” we end up right back where we started!

The Answer Is Resilience

So what’s to be done? We build resilience! Resilience counteracts that sense of scarcity and crisis. Sadly, we’ve been given very few tools and strategies on how to grow our own resilience, and that’s an important skill to master.

I’ve developed a bunch of tools over the years, but I’ll just share a quick one with you.

Scarcity mindset lies to us, telling us that we don’t have enough, right? Never enough time, never enough bandwidth, never enough money, etc. I ask a pretty simple question in these times:

“Is this temporary, or am I going to live the rest of my life this way?”

This question is deceptively simple… our brains in scarcity and crisis (even a little crisis) tell us we’re always going to feel the way we feel right now. We get the sense that this hardship will last forever. This question gently pushes back on that lie while changing our perspective on things ever so slightly. That slight perspective change can give us the distance it takes to make even slightly better choices WITHOUT judging or shaming ourselves.

Shaming Yourself Is Not a Good Strategy

The underlying problem is that many of us are using self-judgment, pressure, and shame to try to make “good” choices. For many of us, this is the ONLY tool we’ve ever been given to make wise choices, so of course it’s the only one we use. The end result is that everything we do appears to be a failure, thus proving to ourselves over and over again that we deserve to have low opinions of ourselves, and that we cannot be trusted.

Which brings me back full circle to resilience. There is no difference between trusting yourself and being resilient.

Even if we can see the patterns in our behavior, understand where they came from, and understand that we may have never had anything else modeled for us, without the appropriate skills AND mindset to seek out or create new strategies and tools for ourselves, we are destined to repeat the “mistakes” we’ve seen others around us make. It’s hard not to feel stuck.

Change Your Perspective

Just like the little question above, anyone can use another question to reorient their perspective and have the courage to start or carry on looking for other ways to make choices. I’ll warn you though, this question requires you to use a little humor. Here it is:

“Has anyone in the history of all mankind who is dumber than me, with fewer resources than I have figured something like this out?”

-or-

“Has anyone in the history of all mankind who is dumber than me, with fewer resources than I have survived something like this?”

The answer, resoundingly, is YES!

This little reset can be like a breath of fresh air for the first time in a long time. With that little breath, and a little perspective change, anyone in any situation gets the benefit of being able to recenter and look around for other options and better options that they might not have seen when they are stuck down in crisis, scarcity, or self-judgment.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you feel stuck in your life situation? What’s causing this mindset? Have you been shaming yourself for years, thinking you’re not good enough to deal with your crises?

Photo: @TracyTutor

Originally posted at: Tracy Tutor’s Brown Striped Shirt Dress

May is mental health awareness month, which brings us to talk about stigma, percentages of untreated mental illness, and interventions to help. With one in five people in the United States alone having an untreated mental illness, a lot of people are hurting. Compounding this is the 27% of individuals who find themselves cut off from their families.

The natural support system for humans is to belong to a family unit, and this system has failed millions of people. What can ordinary people do about this? What if we started by leaning into a not-so-revolutionary thought? Start with what you can do.

Read a book. This article discusses the book Whole Brain Living, The Anatomy of Choice, and The Four Characters That Drive Our Life by Jill Bolte Taylor.

It Started with a Book Recommendation

If you’ve read any of my articles here or on my blog, you know I am passionate about helping individuals who struggle with estrangement. Recently, my therapist suggested the book Whole Brain Living. My usual book de jour is on family dynamics, trauma, and estrangement. Standing on the New York Times Bestseller list for 63 weeks, Jill Bolte Taylor’s exquisite work of art will surprise you. As you might imagine, a therapist reads a lot about how to heal people. This book is more than healing; it is about revolutionizing our lives.

For example, like many of my clients, coaching or therapy, I struggle with emotional reactivity. I call it my inclination to insert my foot in my mouth almost whenever I am with my daughter-in-law. When this happens, the worry portion of my psyche gets scared that I might have gone too far this time. In a few seconds, I am anxious, and my heart is beating faster all because I reacted, instead of doing what Jill Bolte Taylor calls going for a “brain huddle.”

Throughout the book, we learn how each of the four parts of the brain participates in how we operate as humans. Brain huddles are another way to describe being mindful. It is a genius way to teach us anatomically genius wannabees what is happening between our two ears. Not only this, but we feel empowered to respond better so we can continue to connect with those we love.

More to the point, Bolte Taylor’s journey began in 1996, when, at the age of 37, she had a stroke as a Harvard neuroanatomist and lost her ability to understand language and speak. It took her years to regain the capacity to speak, walk, and function and finally write a book, My Stroke of Insight. Her TED talk of the same name catapulted “Ted Talks” and her career into the atmosphere of grand recognition, with this being the first talk to go viral.

In fact, after her TED Talk, the notoriety brought about inquiries from individuals seeking assistance with stroke experiences and questions about how individuals can find the peace that Bolte Taylor so eloquently describes in her breakthrough talk. Bolte Taylor said, “You have the power to choose moment by moment who and how you want to be in the world.” That being the case, like the scores of writers asking Bolte Taylor, “How do we find this peace?” begs an answer.

Finding Peace

To tell the truth, finding peace has been a significant lifetime quest with pages and pages of some of the best self-help books. Maybe you’ve also been on this book journey with Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly and Atlas of the Heart or enjoyed The Four Agreements by Miguel Luis. What about The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle? Who still needs to read Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning? Which books have been instrumental in moving you along in your insight? Whole Brain Living has been my latest read, with the biggest bang for my audible buck.

More to the point, therapy and coaching are meaningful professions in which I get to meet extraordinary people who, in essence, are on a journey of finding inner peace. I listen to their distress and suggest strategies to help them feel better. Mostly, we land on relationships, how a parent, an adult child, an in-law, a sibling, or a coworker triggers a reaction. Often, these reactions are noticeable and unappreciated.

We talk about the parasympathetic nervous system, How The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, and the impact of trauma and how it affects us in the here and now. It is a learning journey and experimenting with strategies to gain peace through less reactivity and daily tools.

Four Areas in Our Brain

I was joyfully beside myself when I found Whole Brain Living. While there are naysayers who are skeptical of her somewhat nonscientific approach, Taylor’s method of describing the four areas of the brain with associating characters brought to life material I had been focused on with my clients for years. Therapists call it mindfulness and cognitive behavior therapy, which is a means to pay attention without judgment on how we think so we can reframe thoughts to be productive instead of damaging. Bolte Taylor’s book guides us through how the four areas of the brain participate in who we are and how we think.

Specifically, Whole Brain Living describes four distinct groups of brain cells as four characters that define us: Character One, representing left thinking; Character Two, representing left emotion; Character Three, representing right emotion; and Character Four, representing right thinking. Imagine having a workable strategy to address thoughts, feelings, and actions so that we are not ruled by automatic and potentially problematic responses. Bolte Taylor explains that every thought, feeling, or action we have relies on the activity of brain cells. Moreover, each character exhibits specific skills, experiences particular emotions, and generates distinctive thoughts.

For this reason, Bolte Taylor’s story and empowering read guides us to know who our four characters are and how they show up for us in everyday and chaotic interactions. The Brain Huddle is how we can take charge of our impulsive reactions and choose how we want to act during stressful situations.

Response vs. Reaction

Typical talk or cognitive behavioral therapy can help someone gain this insight into being empowered to respond rather than react. It requires skills taught and applied and a determination to stay focused on mental well-being. However, Whole Brain Living weaves a colorful design and a lovely personal story to show hope in improving our thoughts and actions. It is a win-win supplement to self-help books, workshops, and therapy alone.

On the other hand, some boomers were all about social change in the 60s and 70s and now are still entrenched in traits such as optimism, hard work, teamwork, and ambition. We are still saying we need to be the change the world needs to see. Navigating generational changes and challenging world events requires unquestionable modeling as never before.

Working with dysfunctional families and having personal experience has impressed upon me the necessity of “taking the higher road” in our relationships. Interactions with family can be the most challenging work of our lives. For many, the work is to manage carefully the tension between the distress in our lives and how we process our emotions. In essence, we learn how to move forward even amid intense challenges. My program, Embracing Renewal after estrangements helps family members take the higher road for their well-being.

More to the point, managing relationships to show up as our best selves with a focus on connecting with those we love feels more complicated. The world at large feels so much more stressful than ever before. In fact, depression, anxiety, drug use, and suicide are at record levels. However, our story can start with the slightest change of one person yearning to tweak their behaviors, impacting the relationships around them. Whole Brain Living is an outstanding guide that helps us change our thinking and behavior. As Norman Peale puts it, “Change your thoughts and change the world.”

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What books have you found to be most helpful in your wellness journey? What are your thoughts on taking the higher road?

A book about a death doula sounds pretty morbid. But I’m here to say that The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer is anything but. It is an uplifting read with themes and wisdom of living well abounding throughout.

Yes, there is much to say about grief and dying. And there is also much to say about what goes into living a good life.

As a Society, We Don’t Do Grief Well

We shy away from talking about death. We are uncomfortable around other’s pain and sadness and, therefore, don’t come too close to a subject that is just that. So, we need to normalize grief as not something wrong but something so right when a loved one has died. Tears of grief are an expression of love and connection. And yes, sometimes ambiguous feelings are present as well: guilt, unhealed trauma, estrangement, ambivalence; and yes, those can be quite difficult to work through.

This is part of our life cycle. We need to get better at grief and become more open around this topic so we can better support our loved ones in their time of pain. Our discomfort and our shying away from discussing death and grief only creates loneliness and more disconnect from others in pain whose need is to be listened to and understood.

Death cafes were started, and are currently all over, for just this reason: to talk about anything related to the subject of death and dying. You can hear conversations on the concrete matters of writing wills and funeral arrangements, as the more self-examined thoughts such as what goes into living a good life and coming to the end with fewer regrets.

A Perfect Life? Not at All

A well-lived life doesn’t preclude challenges, problems and difficulties. In fact, we grow from working through our issues, from disappointment and rejection, from loss and pain. Transcending our circumstances and creating meaning are our food for strengthening our character and resilience. Beauty doesn’t come from perfection but rather from brokenness from which we regrow our new whole.

When a loved one dies, we carry our grief with us forever. Their missing piece does not get filled in. Rather we grow around the emptiness, expanding our lives with renewed purpose and meaning.

Being aware of our mortality informs our life with intention. It’s like the little birdie on our shoulder, keeping us on our toes of conscious living; living into what matters to us, what we value, and we can step into ourselves with greater awareness and excitement. We take and give with fierceness and a sense of urgency, not knowing when our time is up.

Back to the Book

The Collected Regrets of Clover brings to the forefront some great questions that can guide us forward. Here are a few:

• What makes life worth living for you?
• What are some of your regrets until now?
• How can you acknowledge your regrets and move beyond and perhaps do something differently?
• How can you step out of your comfort zone to be more of who you are and experience more of your life?

The saying goes: curiosity killed the cat; but curiosity really is a life opener. It opens us up to new opportunities, moves us towards new experiences and pushes us out of our status quo. We move with interest to new things, new ideas, new people, new information, and suddenly, life becomes our oyster with oh so much to take in and on. This is where zest and vibrancy show themselves.

Says Leo to Clover: “I’ve lived the hell out of my life and now it’s time for me to take the next exit.” Or as Thoreau said and was poignantly referenced in the movie Dead Poet Society, ” I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

Are You Sucking the Marrow Out of Life?

When I was given my original horrific cancer pre-diagnosis two years ago, I lay in my hospital bed in the dark wee hours of the night, thinking through my tears of wanting more life, that I had lived my life with great intent, and that despite numerous hardships, had grown my life into a well-lived legacy. I then proceeded to make my mental lists of all I had gone through and all my wonderful riches of growth and change. (Note: A week later I was given a much better diagnosis of cancer.)

My marrow is getting a run for its money as I live now to pay forward my gift and renewal of life.

As Norman Cousins said, “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

Don’t let any of yourself die while alive. Step into your wonderful self. Work on healing the rough patches. Take pride in your self-work. This is where we transcend our circumstances and begin to feel joy from the inside out.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Are you comfortable talking about death? If not, what makes you avoid it? Can you engage in discussions around this with your loved ones? If you do let it come into your purview of thoughts, how does it affect your living?

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Originally posted at: Danielle Olivera’s Season 8 Reunion Look