Tools you already have to deal with this crisis

Last week I was in the middle of my freak out. I didn’t WANT to be strong, I had enough, I had to stop and do some self-care and self-monitoring before I could help anyone else.  I wrote about it in my blog here.

The good news is, I didn’t stay there.  As I said at the time, it’s OK to have the freak out, but eventually one has to pull up her big girl panties and just deal with it.

I knew as I was walking through it, that my task was to honor my feelings and let them be.

”Let them be…allow them to exist, leave them alone”.

“Just because I have a feeling, doesn’t mean I have to do anything about it. “

These are my go to phrases when I’m faced with feeling “some kind of way”.

To add to my anxiety, I wrote in my journal “am I giving up?” (as in giving up my business, my ministry…my public face.)  At the time, I couldn’t answer that question because I honestly didn’t know.  I felt numb, I felt…defeated. I knew enough to allow that question some room. I’ve come to understand that when my mind is fearful, no good decisions can be made.

A fellow coach and dear friend was concerned. She heard me utter those words and asked if we could meet to talk it over. I said sure.  For a second, I thought about putting off our conversation because I didn’t have any answers, I didn’t even know what the actual questions were. Magically, a good coach’s job is to provide the right questions. I figured it couldn’t hurt to talk it out, so we agreed to meet online the next day.

Bless her, she came prepared to talk it all out and to offer encouragement. She helped immensely. Together, we figured out that a part of me had been incredibly triggered by the chaos. We reasoned that because I grew up in an incredibly chaotic household, this inner child become overwhelmed and needed to shut things down for a bit.

But when it came time to the question of “am I giving up”, I knew I wasn’t ready to seek the answer. I had no feelings about it either way and I told her that I wasn’t going to pursue anything more about it. It was, I told her, a question I had to sit with for a while.

Fully stated the question was “am I giving up on my dream” and such huge questions deserve the time and space needed for a wise and soul filled answer.

Sometimes sitting with a question is the best thing we can do. In our “instant answer” world, it seems an odd thing to simply allow a question to see the light of day, to expand into our consciousness…and to just allow it to sit there unanswered. The pressure for a solution is great.

I learned this wisdom from a quote by the poet R.M. Rilke

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms or like books written in a foreign language.

Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question.

Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer some distant day.”

Currently, our entire world is experiencing the pressure of unanswered questions. There are just so many.

As Rilke says, it’s a matter of living the questions, because we’re not ready to experience the answers.

And isn’t that just the hardest thing??

Let’s face it; we’re all in new territory here. On a personal level I knew from past experience that I would eventually emerge from my isolation stronger and more positive, yet, there was still doubt.  When we’re talking about our entire society….how can we possibly know? We just have to be patient.

I’ve come to realize that we, as light workers have been preparing for this. We have all the tools we need individually to make it.

Because all we have is this moment and we get to choose how we’re going to feel in this moment and every other one after that.

It takes patience and it takes courage.

We’re experiencing things we have never experienced before. It’s really, really hard to remind ourselves that all we can do is focus on the here and now. We can focus on the good we can do, we can focus on a life beyond a pandemic, but we can only control the choices we make in each and every moment. That’s it…that’s all we’ve got.

And…that’s enough.

All the self- improvement and spiritual wisdom we’ve learned has prepared us for this.  For a long time, we’ve been saying the spiritual and enlightened words. These words are really easy to say when things are going well, when life is “normal” and there’s plenty of food on the shelves and toilet paper in the bathroom.

But now…now it’s a question of living the concepts we’ve been talking about.

It’s time for us to walk the talk and the truth is, we can.

There are so many tools already in your toolbox. You’ve been training for this.

Here are some of the tools I’ve been working with:

Breathing…lots and lots of breathing – I have an alarm set on my phone that goes off every two hours. When it goes off, I stop, take three deep breaths and focus on the moment. Lately I’ve been placing my hands over my heart and uttering a quick prayer.

Gratitude – there is so much to be thankful for right now. Our medical staff, our grocery store workers, our truckers, our military, the kindness in others, electricity, water, heat. I found myself thinking about how grateful I am for the technology that allows us to communicate instantly around the globe. Could you imagine what would happen if we COULDN’T tell people to stay home and what precautions to take?? Gratitude raises your vibration and right now, we need all the high vibes we can get.

Prayer – It doesn’t matter what you pray about or who you pray to…what matters is the positive intent, the light we bring, the strength we gain from working with our personal higher power.

Mindfulness – it’s really easy to slip into fear right now and lord knows it’s easy to look at lack and desperation and feel those feelings. As much as possible, ask yourself what you are thinking about when you feel fear and then remind yourself that all you can control is this moment. Then breathe and go back to the above. You need your wits about you right now, and if your body is in fight or flight mode and fear, you won’t be able to think. As much as possible…breathe, let the feelings be…pay attention.

Kindness – it goes without saying there are people who have it worse than you. People are scared and we can be the light for them. We can show kindness and appreciation; we can offer an encouraging word. These things cost nothing.

Hope – man…this is tough right now isn’t it? Hope helps me! This morning I found myself wondering what the grocery store will be like when I have to do my mom’s monthly shopping next time. I made myself stop and look at my calendar. Mom receives her social security check on the 3^rd of the month. Today is the 23^rd. Things have been changing daily and they have been changing rapidly. I cannot know what will happen in the next 12 days, just as I didn’t know 11 days ago what would be happening today. All I can do is hope things will improve. I can choose to focus on what I would like to see rather than fearing the worst.

Hope…hope will get us through.

Breathing, gratitude, prayer, mindfulness, kindness and hope…these are the tools of a light worker. With these, we can raise our vibration and heal ourselves and others.

What tools are you using?

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