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July, 2005 Greetings, Welcome to your fr*ee monthly e-newsletter about living the solution...not the problem! Written and published by: Dr. Toby Silverton & Dr. Bev McLagan Sent to subscribers in Canada, U.S., U.K., the Middle East and Asia. Many thanks to everyone who forwards the newsletter on. We grow through your recommendations so please keep up the good work and forward this newsletter to a few friends and colleagues. In This Issue: It was late afternoon after a particularly crumby day. I could find nothing to look forward to; not work with a full week of technical glitches putting me behind, not security after news that poor advice coupled with my own poor decision had put me in a tax squeeze, not family whose invitation to visit felt more like a guilt-ridden command performance…I won’t go on, I’m sure you get the idea, you’ve probably had one of these days too! I was spent. My energy-well felt dry. My 24/7 inner radio station was repeating how life was disappointing and demoralizing and how I just “needed” to win the lottery, retire to an isolated island, grow my own food and rip out any electrical connection to the world… I warned you it was bad. In the midst of this turmoil, I was proactively looking for solutions and instead just kept feeling like I was slamming into a cement wall. Time to change radio stations! Thank goodness the solution landed... ...Creating more calm. This day reminded us how many clients ask for strategies to stop all the stressful and negative sound bites that play in their heads. What do you do when your brain gets stuck in a deep groove and you begin to listen to the talk that leads you down what feels like a dark tunnel and fills you with doubt and dismay? It’s just plain hard to shake yourself loose and to create calm. At this point we should probably offer you a lot of psycho-babble about this being an old pattern from a bad childhood, discuss how your thinking state will sabotage your progress, teach you thought-stopping techniques like the old elastic band trick, or do an analysis of your self-talk, all perfectly legitimate options...but today we are offering a simple low to no-tech solution that is right in front of you. We are suggesting you look outside yourself at the very moment you are fully and inwardly focused down the dark tunnel. I owe my solution to a little bird I know. No, no…this is not code for some person who shall remain nameless (although that might have been a more interesting story <g>) it really was a black-helmeted chickadee who visits the birdbath on a regular basis. I have become accustomed to its splashing, but today his diversion offered a solution. While I was busy listening to the “shock” talk radio going on in my head, staring in an unfocused way into space and hoping for divine intervention, it arrived in the form of a bird! My attention was caught, my perception and focus moved from inner turmoil to outer beauty. The splash of water drops off it’s wings, it’s quick flight through the the trellis…and in that moment of refocus my stress level dropped. Not only could I laugh at the bird I began to notice the beauty of the entire garden. The tiered beds of flowers in all their glorious colours, the yellow and pink poppies bending in the wind, the garden was alive and I was actually enjoying it all. Where once negative thoughts morphed into one another, similarly one positive moment of awareness led to many more. The solution was so simple, recognizing a “point of opportunity” to break out of the negative news cycle. Next time you are having one of those “moments” when nothing seems to be going right, you swear the world is conspiring to give you “one of those days”, look for a “point of opportunity”. You may not have a chickadee at your office window, but the next time one of the ever-present pigeons lands… look up, take a moment. Just like we have to “refresh” our computer screens – renew your view. What we are really talking about here is creating calm through simple meditation. And it is so simple. You do not have to find a mountain to sit on, empty your mind of all thoughts for hours on end, chant, find a guru or join a cult…you just have to take a moment and learn to create calm. Relax, it doesn’t have to be a long moment in an already stretched day. A client of ours with a really stressful job in child protection found that simply getting up from her desk and looking out the window at the clouds immediately brought a change in perspective. Likewise, another financial wiz client finds just a short walk in the neighbourhood near her office, with her awareness purposely focused on checking out the flowers in the gardens, clears her head like nothing else. Sometimes, sharing a laugh with a colleague can literally shake your body and mind out of the doldrums. Can’t get out of the office, take a photo of a favourite relaxing place of yours and hang it on the wall or just tear out a picture of that tropical beach and prop it up on your desk. Next time you are going around in circles in your head, stop, breathe and stare at your favourite view of tranquility. Ok, maybe it does sound kind of “new age”, but for you pragmatists and scientists out there, there is plenty of evidence that one of these “breathers” will change your physiology and just how simple can stress management get? Creating calm, a living solution that you can use at work, at home, in your daily life.
Warmly Toby & Bev You are free to use material from Live the Solution!® in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution including our website and email link. The copyright notice should read: "By Toby Silverton, PhD. and Bev McLagan, PhD. of Silverton McLagan Coaching. Contact: coach@livethesolution.com. To unsubscribe or change your email address, just go to www.livethesolution.com/lwiezine.html Did you enjoy receiving Live the Solution? If you did, please forward it to your friends and associates. We would like to hear from you, email us your comments and ideas. T: 604-241-0810(PT) or E: coach@livethesolution.com. Visit our website at www.livethesolution.com. |
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