Forging A New Path

Our bodies can teach us so much.

For the past few months I’ve been experiencing some bothersome pain in my hip that radiates down to my knee. Nightime is the worst, the pain often waking me up in the middle of the night. It isn’t excruciating, but noticeable enough to interrupt an otherwise good night of sleep, and make itself known throughout the day. I have been wondering if I’ll just have to learn to live with it.

Enter Dr. Erica Figge.

Erica is a dear friend who also just happens to be a world-class athlete, strength and conditioning coach, and chiropractor. This morning as we caught up over a virtual cup of coffee I was lamenting about this low-grade but constant pain. “Tell me more” she said.

Before long we were both down on our yoga mats, practicing a movement that might alleviate the pain. Mine has a typical pain referral pattern, and the longer I allow it to go on, the deeper the pain-message pathway in my brain. Thankfully, it is possible to create a new pathway by engaging my body in a way meant to address the source of the pain. The possibility of an uninterrupted night of sleep and a more pain-free experience was all the incentive I needed to commit to getting down on my yoga mat several times a day and see what my body, brain, and I could accomplish together.

What is true of the body is true of the heart and soul. The longer we live with the pain of past injuries and wounds, the more deeply etched those painful message pathways in our brain become. Unaddressed, we grow so accustomed to the pain that we begin to believe we have no choice but to live with it. Today, my body, along with the help of a good and knowledgeable friend, reminded me that we don’t. We are blessed with a brain that can rewire itself. It is willing to develop new, better, and more life affirming pathways, if we are willing to take the time, put in the work, and engage good help.

During this current life-altering time, we have been forced to come face-to-face with ourselves and those we share life with. Old injuries are more evident. We’ve nowhere to run, and it becomes increasingly hard to hide from what hurts. The pain of one injury can begin to refer far beyond the source, inflicting further harm to ourselves and those around us.

In the strange ways in which only struggle and hardship can, this time of being held captive offers us a chance to take ourselves and our own hurts on. Once this time of isolation and quarantine is over there will be more to distract us from ourselves, and the inner work that is ours to do could easily get lost in the shuffle of life on the other side.

The longer we wait the harder it becomes to overcome our old stories of pain and suffering.

But.

If we are willing to take the time, put in the work, and engage good help, our brains are ready and willing to create new pathways. Ones that lead to lives of greater authenticity, wholeness, and wellbeing.

Let’s get to work.

(Note: If you live in California and are ready to take the next step in your health and wellness journey, contact Figge Chiropractic)

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Drinking Our Own Kool-Aid

According to some research, over 80% of our thoughts are negative, and most of those thoughts are on a continuous loop, returning to us again and again. The problem with our negative thoughts and stories is that we believe them, and the more we listen to these habitual stories, the more familiar, and in an odd way, comforting, they can become.

They are our stories, and we are sticking to them.

But.

Do we have to?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: No, but it’s hard work giving them up.

If you’re like me, you are familiar with the stories that hold you captive, and recognizing them is our first step to letting them go. We need to cut ourselves a little slack if it takes some time to develop new ones, and we might need some professional help along the way. If so, let’s get it. It will be some of the best money we’ve ever spent.

Believing our stories that have been with us for God-knows-how-long is a little like drinking our own Kool-Aid. We don’t stop to consider that there might be better ways to quench our inner thirst.

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Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels

Get Moving

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” ~ Richard Rohr

“You probably aren’t going to be able to think yourself out of this one Molly.”

Good words offered to me by a good friend during a recent conversation as I sat out on my front porch in the waning light in Washington, while he was on the other end of the phone in the waning light of southern California.

It is easy for me to get too involved with my own feelings for my own good, not to mention the good of everyone around me. I try and think my way to the other side of whatever it is, and, there is a time for sitting with our emotions in order to understand what they are telling us. But then it’s time to get moving, whether we feel like it or not, which, for the record, we probably won’t.

I’m not talking about running away from our emotions. They are, as the 13th century Persian poet, Rumi, reminds us in his poem, The Guesthouse, “…sent to us as a guide from beyond”. However, we all know that any guest can overstay their welcome.

Sitting too long has been referred to as the new smoking, and has been linked to all kinds of health risks. The same goes for sinking into the easy chair of our emotions. The longer we sit and think about them, the harder it is to get up.

In both cases, the key to our wellbeing is to get moving.

(With gratitude to DB)

Photo: invisiblepower on pexels.com

Photo: invisiblepower on pexels.com

Word Of The Day: REPLENISHED

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

REPLENISHED

To be replenished is to be refilled, to replace what has been used up, to be restored after having exhausted our inner resources. I know what replenished feels like, and as I discovered recently, what it does not.

One night not too long ago I found myself on the closet floor in tears, being spooned by Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle who refused to leave my side. I had hit the wall. It wasn’t a choice. I had used up all I had, and there simply wasn’t any more to give.

I spent the better part of the next day napping, and woke up the following morning no longer flattened against the wall. It would have been easy to just pick up life where I’d left off, thinking that I'd refilled my tank. That I was replenished.

I wasn’t.

Functional? Yes.

Replenished? No.

About that time my husband came down with the real-meal-deal flu, and was down for the long count. Basically sequestered for a week, it was no fun for him. He felt so lousy. For me however, those days under house arrest were a gift. His time to recover became mine to be replenished. To replace what had been used up.

Yesterday I wrote about being in rhythm with our lives. Being replenished is part of that rhythm. We are meant to give ourselves away, to go out into the world and return back home, to empty out and to fill back up. I know what my replenishment essentials are, and my guess is that you do too. It would be nice if we didn’t have to find ourselves on the closet floor in tears in order to remember what they are. Although being spooned by a chocolate labradoodle is pretty pretty great.

Photo: Aaron Burden on Pexels

Photo: Aaron Burden on Pexels

Word Of The Day: ENERGIZED

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of the month. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

ENERGIZED

When I sat down to write about this word, I didn’t expect to be writing about a rabbit, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the Energizer Bunny. That cool, pink, sunglass sporting, flipflop wearing, drum beating hare is, “…According to the 2017 Madison Avenue Hall of Fame Poll, the most iconic mascot…" around. Who knew? On further thought however, it makes total sense. That smiling pink bunny just keeps going, and going, and going, no matter what. It seems to have a consistent source of energy for whatever life brings. Who wouldn’t want that?

While the bunny may run on batteries, I do not.

I need physical energy to fuel this body, the only one I have. Giving it what it needs is the least I can do to repay it all the ways in which it has loved and supported me through the last 66 years. To keep up my mojo means, at the very least, making it a priority to feed and water it well, move it often, and give it a rest for at least 7, and hopefully 8 hours a night.

I need emotional energy to live with an open heart. A heart that fuels me to love fearlessly, engage with others authentically, and encounter the truth in myself and the world around me with courage and compassion. To keep my emotional tank topped off means cultivating relationships that are life-giving, reading the work of writers that invite me over the threshold of my current emotional maturity, and a dogged determination to keep doing the inner work necessary to live into my true and best self.

I need mental energy to stay present and sharp with every passing year. If I’m to live a life of purpose and meaning to the end, the only viable choice is to continue to stretch and challenge my brain even when it tires me out. it. Especially when it tires me out, as that means I am moving into new territory just waiting to be explored. Stoking my intellectual fires comes through paying attention to what sparks my curiosity, plugging into learning communities, and finding and connecting with others who are up for the same challenge.

And.

I need spiritual energy to stay connected to my core beliefs, of which there are three. We are all created in the image of that which created us. We are all called to live authentic, wholehearted lives. We are all called to love, help, and heal the world that is within our reach. If that doesn’t require spiritual energy, I don’t know what does. Spiritual fuel comes from gathering with my faith community, steeping in spiritual wisdom wherever I find it, and daily spiritual practices that remind me that it isn’t all about me.

In order to keep going, and going, and going, means knowing, and doing, what it takes to power the life we have.

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Bringing Our Best

Years ago during some work with a colleague and now dear friend, my ears perked up when he told a room full of emerging leaders that they owed it to the people who would depend upon them to do what it would take to show up fully. To bring the best of themselves to every endeavor, every day.

That admonition has stuck with me ever since, and I work to not only share it with others, but to live it myself. Yesterday, when writing a blog post about my process for becoming a better steward of my time, his words from years ago came to mind again, as they often do. I ended the post by sharing the four categories I use to consider how to spend my time on who and what matter to me. And because it matters to me to be authentic and appropriately transparent about how I personally apply to myself what I am asking my readers to consider, I shared my four headings:

“In case you’re wondering, my categories were: Molly; People; Vocation; Everything Else. In that order.”

And, to be authentic and transparent, I had to think long and hard about confessing that the priorities for how I spend my time start with me. Even reading it now gives me pause as it sounds self-centered and like life is all about me. (Which, as the youngest of four, and as a four on the enneagram, sometimes it kinda is.) But this isn’t that. In order to show up for the other three categories well, for the people I love, the work that I offer, and everything else that matters to me, I have to bring as much of myself to those parties as I can.

Admittedly, every chapter is different, and what we can do to take care of ourselves in those chapters varies wildly. Sometimes the most we can do is find a few moments of quiet in which to take a few deep breaths. If this is one of those chapters, grab every one of those moments and gulp in as much air as you can before heading back into the fray. Sometimes extending grace to ourselves for doing what we can, and not shaming ourselves for what we can’t, is the most radical act of self care we can take.

We owe it to those who depend on us whether at home or at work or around the corner, to figure out what it takes to bring the best of ourselves to every endeavor, every day. And, we owe it to ourselves as well. I don’t want to leave anything on the table when my time is up. I just want to make sure I bring everything I have to the table while I’m here.

(Thank you DB)

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The Courage To Care

It can be hard to have the courage to take care of ourselves. To be willing to say no to requests, risk disappointing others, making changes that others may not like, and standing firm in doing for ourselves what we know we need to do. When we ignore our own needs in order to take care of those of others it eventually catches up with us, sometimes in ways from which it is difficult to recover.

One of the most loving things we can do for the others in our lives, especially those to whom we are the closest, is to love ourselves well. It bears repeating that taking care of ourselves isn’t about being self-centered, it’s about living from a centered self.

Photo: pixels.com

Photo: pixels.com



The Chase

Chasing squirrels is high on Gracie’s to-do list any day of the week. Because she can’t safely be off-leash out in our neck of the woods, that makes actually chasing one a moot point. If she tries, as she did yesterday, forgetting that she is tethered to an old stump, she will get caught up short in very short order.

The thing is, the squirrels don’t know she is on a leash.

This morning a tree squirrel who calls our property home was afraid to make a run for the woods, never realizing that freedom was his for the taking. Flitting from branch to branch he chattered constantly, trying to scold and scare her away. She circled the tree, jumped up on the trunk of the tree, and sat by the tree, but no matter how much Gracie wanted to chase that squirrel down, her leash wouldn’t let her do it.

Sometimes I want to put my thoughts on a leash. You know the ones. The ones that chatter and scold and scare us and just won’t shut up. What if we put them on a leash and tethered them to an old stump? And when those thought show up chattering and scolding and scaring, we remember that no matter how much those thoughts want to chase us down, the leash on which we’ve put them won’t allow it.

Pick a thought, put it on a leash, tether it to a stump, and head out into the woods where freedom is ours for the taking.

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Something’s Gotta Give

Only you know what it is. Nobody else can tell you what it is. If you don’t know what it is now, you will. Or you can, if you want to. It may take a little time, more than a little courage, and a splash of grace, but if you want to know what has to give in order for something else to show up, you will. Trust me on that.

What takes up space leaving no room for what wants to expand? What consumes your thoughts leaving no room for new ones to emerge? What takes up your day leaving no room for what brings you energy?

Something’s gotta give? What is it?

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