Yesterday I had the amazing pleasure of spending 30 minutes with the brilliant Dr. Robert Holden. Dr. Holden is the best-selling author of several books includingHappiness Now!, Shift Happens! and the currentLoveability.   We found ourselves on the topic of stress and Robert said that stress isn’t the enemy at all, but a gift. Don’t stop reading! We haven’t lost our minds. The point is this:  begin to look at stress as a gentle wake up call to what needs to be changed in your life. Think of it as a friend who pops in to say “Excuse me. Sorry to bother you but this situation sucks. Do something about it!”

Looking back after our talk, I realized how many times stress had appeared as this friend. A few years ago I was in the midst of an incredibly challenging job that I didn’t love (understatement of the year) and every day was an exercise in desperately trying to keep my sanity. Stress was there. When I ignored it, it got louder and more intrusive. The days got harder. When I continued to ignore it, it showed up as an incredibly inconvenient, flashing neon anxiety attack!    And that’s what happens. Stress shows up as a signal that tells us we need to stop and take a look at what needs to change in our lives. For me, I realized that the job was no longer serving me and I left. I felt an immediate peace. I felt quiet and in that quiet, the next step revealed itself.  What is causing you stress right now? A job? A relationship? The bills rolling in? Think for a moment of three different ways you can change this situation to alleviate stress and send it on its way.

What if it’s something you can’t change? Perhaps you are stuck in a traffic jam or dealing with a button-pushing relative. When you are faced with something that you feel you cannot change, there is always one thing you CAN change—your MIND!  When you are faced with an immovable situation, ask yourself two questions: “What is the miracle here?” and “What is my purpose in this?” Personal example number 2. I have a baby who never sleeps.  Ever. No really, not EVER. I am a very patient person. In fact, if I were a super hero, super human patience would be my power. However, I am also a person who requires my solid 8 hours. Person that requires sleep + baby who does not  = a good bit of middle-of-the-night swearing and deep breathing.  Last night was one of those nights.  This time, however, I remembered to take my own advice. As my child cried every 20 minutes to be picked up, I asked myself the two questions:

What is the miracle here? The miracles flowed. My child is HERE. He is safe and healthy and loves to be in my arms. I have been blessed with the ability to comfort him. He can’t stay awake forever. (Though if anyone could it would be him.)

What is my purpose here? My purpose is to honor the gift I have been given and act as the supreme care-giver, comforter, and calming influence for this poor little guy who is getting five teeth at once. My purpose is to love him, rub his back and let him know that I am here. Always.

When you take a second to find the miracle and to reflect on your purpose two things happen. The first is that you remember how immeasurably lucky you are. The second is that when you are focusing on answering the questions, you are taking the focus OFF of how crappy and anxious you initially felt. Miracles and purpose bring peace. Peace squashes stress. The absence of stress fosters joy. You get the idea. Learn to stay in peace no matter what life throws at you and you become a jedi-master of your mindset. The first time you practice this and feel the breakthrough, you will feel powerful beyond measure. Let me know when it happens! I will happily sit on  my porch and have some champagne in your honor. =)

So I had an appointment last week. It was one of those appointments that had been on the schedule for weeks. It was the kind that cannot be interrupted under any circumstances barring a zombie apocalypse or something equally dire. But I have three children and am working from home and they don’t really care about important business appointments especially if a new episode of Spongebob is on or their sippy cups need a refill.

Long story short, my regular childcare help was unavailable. My back up was unavailable which means that I did nothing short of move mountains to arrange for my children to be out of the house at the time of this business call. You’ve probably guessed by now what happened. My husband left work to come home for the children. Ten minutes before the scheduled appointment time, the other party canceled.

But something miraculous happened. Or rather did NOT happen. I felt nothing. I rescheduled, called my husband and told him to bring the kids back and moved on with the day.  A year ago, I would have been FUMING. I would have been cursing the other person for their lack of consideration. I would have been agonizing over the fact that my husband had to completely rearrange his schedule and for nothing. I would have been resentful of the inconvenience. My heart would have beaten faster, my blood pressure would have raised and more than likely the whole day would have been shot. But now, I felt none of that.

I can’t tell you what an amazing feeling it is to stay in peace. Who knows why the other person canceled? Maybe she had an emergency. Maybe she forgot and double-booked (honest mistake). Or maybe she simply didn’t feel 100% on her A-game and preferred to reschedule at a time when she felt more productive. The reason is irrelevant because odds are I will never know the TRUE reason. And I don’t have to. And neither do you! Living in love means that you operate from a place of faith. You give others the benefit of the doubt. You trust that they are doing the best they can at any given moment and you forgive them when they falter, whether you’ve met them in person or not.  Detach. Let go of your need for everything to go as planned. Don’t take things personally because usually it isn’t at all about YOU. Trust that the hiccup actually served you for the better even if you can’t quite see clearly HOW.  Think of how many times you have let an unforeseen circumstance throw you into a ball of anxiety. Did it help? Would getting stressed have caused the other person to keep our scheduled appointment? No. Stressing and reacting to things that are beyond our control is a waste of time and energy and serves no purpose whatsoever.  Trust, let go and stay in peace. Me? I decided to be grateful for the unexpected break. And I curled up the kiddos. Spongebob isn’t so bad. 😉

The Truth and Nothing but the Truth!

Yes, I am an inner peace coach. But I am also human. And sadly, I am reminded of this fact a gazillion times a day. Last week I had plans to swim at my friend’s house. I got my three small children changed, sun screened and ready to go. That is no small feat. My youngest just turned one and getting him ready to go to the pool has become a three person job and one of those people better be a member of the Olympic Wrestling team. I am convinced that dressing this baby has adequately prepared me to wrestle an alligator should the need ever arise.   I get to my friend’s house and no one is there. I carry my ridiculously heavy, awkwardly large pool bag around back to see if they are already swimming. Nothing. I call one of their cell phones and learn that plans had changed last minute and that they were all at the park. I was fuming. I get in the car and tell the kids. They are sad.  We start to make the ½ mile drive home and in that 1.5 minute drive here is what happened in my head:

I can’t believe they forgot to call me. So inconsiderate.

Clearly they don’t cherish my friendship.

They are probably sitting there now talking about me.

What did I do to them? I don’t remember doing anything to deserve this. This really hurts.

Maybe I am just not as close to them as I thought I was.

Mind you, these are two of my closest lifelong friends who have ALWAYS been there for me, always had my back but I had already had a hugely challenging morning and was exhausted from the night before. But do you see what I did right there? I made up a bunch of “truths.” And my body reacted to those truths. And so did my children. I was angry, breathing heavily, speaking in a dialect I like to call bitter staccato. Long story short, my friends felt awful. It was a miscommunication. They each thought the other had called me and three hours later we were totally fine, hugging it out, back to normal. Amazing that just shortly before then I was devastated and mentally convinced they were ending the friendship. Pay attention to how many stories you tell yourself throughout the day. Someone is late and immediately you think they must not value your time. You pass an acquaintance from your kid’s school and she doesn’t speak to you. You walk away ready to tell everyone who asks what a mega-bitch she is, or worse, you walk away wondering why you aren’t good enough for her to say hello to. Guess what? It’s all crap. You are making it up! You are one hell of a story teller aren’t you? We all are. And it sabotages our peace.

Inner Peace Principle: Seek the truth

In every situation you encounter ask yourself this question: “What do I know to be 100% true?” Usually you will find that the answer is a big, eye-opening “Not much!”

Maybe you have a friend who never calls you. She is always happy to hear from you, but if you were keeping score, (and many of us are), you are ALWAYS the one who calls. Odds are, you start putting some checks and balances on the relationship. You think back, checking the score card, coming up with all sorts of bullshit and false self-righteous thoughts like “I’m done! If she wants to talk to me, she can pick up the phone.” Perhaps your friend is struggling and breathes a sigh of relief when she hears your voice. Perhaps she thinks of you often, but with a bunch of kids at home just doesn’t find the time to chat with friends during the day. You don’t know. Read that again. YOU. DON’T. KNOW.

There is one thing we are all masters at and that is the art of Ego Story-telling. Ego Story-telling is when we have trouble getting out of our own heads. We assign blame, judgments and mis-placed anger. We weave tall tales about people we know, and don’t know, making assumptions about their lives, their character, their feelings about us. It’s all crap. I had a client call me a couple of weeks ago. He had been stood up twice by two different women and felt a dive in his self worth. “I’m just not good enough. Since the divorce, I’m broken and they can sense it.” I said, “Ok maybe. Or maybe they saw your pictures on facebook, were completely intimidated by how handsome you are and didn’t feel ready to put themselves out there. Hell you made up the other story, why not make up one that’s a little more fun and empowering?”

Similarly, I had another client who had a friend of the opposite sex that suddenly stopped speaking to him. He had reached out but to no avail. She was treating him totally differently, as though a five year friendship never existed. He was devastated, spent weeks trying to figure out what he had done, convinced maybe he had made her uncomfortable, or said something wrong. I asked what he knew to be 100% true. He replied, “Nothing. She won’t talk to me.” Exactly. He knew nothing. He had no idea why she had stopped speaking to him. Maybe it was because her husband didn’t like the friendship. Maybe it was because she had developed feelings for him. In this case, the truth may never be known so I encouraged him to let go of his attachment to it. In this situation, you make up a truth you can live with, one that empowers you and assigns love to them, and you move on.

We always have that choice. In any situation or any relationship we have the option to choose love, assume good intentions, be who we are despite who they are. We have no idea what someone else goes through 24/7. We don’t know their internal struggles, we might not know their goals, their feelings, their insecurities. What we do know is how we want to feel. We want to feel loved, validated and happy. So rather than coming up with a block buster worthy tale that fills you with resentment, try a happier script; one that offers love and forgiveness to the other person and power and peace to yourself. Save the drama for when Hollywood calls. 😉

Image from theyogablog.com    

Full disclosure. I’m kind of a commitment phobic. I have a really hard time saying “yes” to things because then I am expected to actually do them. That’s how it works right? And I definitely don’t want to be one of those people that posts on facebook about all of the amazing things they are planning to do only to crawl sheepishly into the corner when they STOP training for that marathon.

There is one particular practice that I have resisted with such fervor and determination you would think it had insulted me at a party or slept with my husband—meditation. I have read a boatload of personal development and wellness books and every single one sings the praises of quiet meditation. No really…Every. Single. One. I just didn’t get it. First of all, it felt like a waste of time. Why sit quietly with my eyes closed when there was perfectly insane reality TV to watch? It turns out that I also have three small children. We’re busy. When I think “meditation” I picture some holy, quiet woman sitting Indian style with a monk on a hill. She probably gave up coffee and sugar ages ago and never says the F word. That’s just never going to be me. I’m Italian. There’s nothing quiet about me. It’s not like I didn’t try.

I bought the book Meditation for Dummies. It suggested all kinds of different methods for beginners. There was the counting method to clear your head. There was the breathing method of course which just reminded me too much of childbirth. (This is supposed to relax me, not produce post traumatic stress symptoms.) And then there were the projection methods that involved picturing an apple, picturing a movie screen etc. None of it worked. I have no attention span and was bored out of my mind. I gave up. Fast forward a few years and a third kid later and I dragged out the candles again. I decided this time to “become one with nature” and headed outdoors for my meditation time. Here’s how it went:

“Ok. I’m sitting. I am sitting in the grass. What if a bug crawls on me? Am I allowed to smack it? Focus. Breathe. What is that noise? Who in the hell cuts their grass at 6:30am? Focus Gina. Breathe… I smell bacon. I wonder who’s making that? I should have eaten first. Jesus I can’t focus at all. I suck at this. Ok try again. Breathing in and breathing out…. MOOOOOOM!!!”

And that was it. The past year, however, something shifted. Life happened. My third child was born. I dissolved one of my businesses. I felt overwhelmed. Lost. I bought more books and of course at least once in each of them the subject of meditation came up. If you do the research, which I begrudgingly did, it turns out that pretty much every important person in history who contributed anything of value to the human race practiced some form of meditation. (Sigh.) I couldn’t put it off any longer. There were things in my life that I was looking to change and this was the one thing that I hadn’t tried. I mean hell if it was good enough for the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra and Russell Brand, maybe it would be good enough for me.

A friend of mine who I consider to be quite enlightened (and who also happens to be a millionaire) meditates regularly. She advised me to start slowly, committing to just two minutes, twice a day. You might think that sounds entirely doable, but if you’re a mom you know that peeing alone is a feat of Olympic proportions, so four uninterrupted minutes are hard to come by. As a coach, I know this is an excuse. If a client said these things to me I would call it “resistance.” For myself, however, it’s perfectly justifiable right? Wrong. I set my alarm to ring a bit earlier and start with two minutes. I close my eyes for a bit, check the clock once to see if I can quit. The next day I up it to three minutes. Something shifts. I feel really relaxed when I open my eyes. I feel like there isn’t anything that can rattle me; not the morning rush before school, not traffic or a fussy baby. I am super calm. Calm is a foreign feeling to me at this point. I continue to up it one minute each day that week. By Friday night as I am sitting at dinner with friends, sipping my wine, I am keenly aware that something is different about me. I am judging no one. I am feeling something that I cannot put my finger on but it’s fantastic. I am at peace.

By the following week I am up to ten minutes and I suddenly find myself wishing for more. It is at this point that I stumble on this video from Deepak Chopra. It’s a short, guided meditation. Deepak says, (and I’m paraphrasing) that many people mistake meditation as a practice that is meant to help you tune out, when in fact the beauty of the practice is to help you tune in. Meditation takes you to the space between your thoughts and that space is meant to be a portal to voice of the Infinite. It is in your quiet time that ideas will flow, that your perspective will shift. Take a look. http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/deepak-chopra-meditation

It’s not about chanting. It’s not about getting into (and holding) some perfect yoga pose that only 20 year olds who have never given birth are meant to get into. It’s about being still. It’s about shutting off the phone and just BEING. Listening. It is in this quiet time that you invite the voice of a higher power to speak to you, to guide, and to fill you with peace and healing. And guess what? It works.

There are people who have reported incredible transcendental experiences during meditation, almost like lucid dreams. There are folks who say that some of the greatest inventions and masterpieces of our time were shown to their creators during deep meditation.

I didn’t have anything trippy like that. I didn’t see an image of the next great invention. I didn’t get the formula for the next breakthrough cure. What I did get was a new level of peace, a new space for hope, a new feeling of being one with a higher power, and 90% of this post. Hey… it’s a start. I’ll take it. ;).