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5 Intention-setting Ideas for Sweeping Away What No Longer Serves

What are you planting in the soil of your mind this spring?  Is the garden of your mind full of weeds?

Taking time to clean our homes after a long winter’s nap is an annual tradition that crosses many cultures, including Persian, Jewish, Japanese and Judeo-Christian among others.  This tradition of renewal has roots in neurochemistry as well as spirituality.  Our homes, though, may not be the only spaces that could use a good cleaning.

Our minds are very cluttered too, especially as we try to navigate a multi-tasking addicted world.  Our brains are not wired to do two things at once and, when we try, it simply means we are not giving our best to the tasks at hand.  Over time, multi-tasking sets us up for inevitable failure, which can over time pollute the soil of our minds.

Therefore, this spring, I would like to support your efforts to weed the garden of your mind.  Below are some ideas for reducing the toxins in the soil and creating space for your authentic self to bloom:

  1. Volunteer.  Volunteering for a cause you feel connected to can bring you a different perspective, supporting the both/and way of thinking.  We live in a dualistic either/or mental world that drives us to compare, compete, and separate, supporting disconnection and distress.  Ancient traditions guide us to see the world in a different, non-dualistic way that supports connection and inner peace.  Holding two seemingly different perspectives in the mind at the same time can act as great fertilizer for creating space for mental growth.  Volunteering can provide you with an opportunity to practice this non-dual thinking.  Consider volunteering and when you find yourself viewing aspects of the experience as contrary or conflictual, pose the question “Might both perspectives be true at the same time?”  If you can hold both in your mind at the same time, it expands the mind’s ability to declutter itself of constricting beliefs (aka weeds) and plant seeds of curiosity, acceptance and connection.
  2. Identify triggers.  When we experience uncomfortable sensations in the body and powerful emotions come up, it’s a sign that our natural adaptive fear response has been triggered for human survival.  It is mission critical to honor our survival responses to fear (i.e., freeze, fight, flight, faint/flop, fawn/friend) because they are immediate, automatic, and instinctual responses to potential life threatening experiences.  Accepting and understanding them as such goes a long way to releasing the sense of power they have over you.  Consider beginning the process by simply identifying your triggers.  When you notice that you have been triggered (and it won’t be in that immediate moment, give yourself some time to reflect after the body and mind reconnect), write down what was going on right before the body sensed the threat.  Then see if you might be able to identify how the body responded to the threat in that moment – did it freeze, did it run away and hide, or did your people pleasing part step forward?  No response is bad, remember it is automatic and adaptive to survival.  And your body might respond to different threats in different ways.  Can you also hear the voices in your head that say things to you like “You’ll never be good enough.” and/or “You’re not worthy of love.”?  If so, write those negative beliefs down, and congratulate yourself as you have just been able to identify the weeds that are strangling your garden from growth!  The more you are able to identify your triggers and the weeds that have grown in the toxic soil of fear, the less likely those parts of you will get behind the wheel of your car to drive your life.
  3. Set Boundaries. The inability to say no to others is a weed that grew from the fear response of fawn/friend and often is the mask of our people pleasing part.  Our people pleasing part comes from a place of wanting to be accepted by others to create a feeling of belonging.  Belonging is a normal human desire and protects us from outside threats.  Yet, the fear of not belonging drives our authentic self underground into that toxic soil of our minds.  Consider practicing saying no to others to say yes to yourself, starting small.  It will be important to recognize that the fear of disappointing the other person will be present, so I offer the mantra of “Say no, so others grow.” to support your efforts.  Remind yourself that the fear of disappointing will pass, creating space for both you and others to grow.  Then, after saying no, watch what unfolds afterwards.  Write about the space you created, noting how both you and the other person grew!
  4. Practice Gratitude.  The human brain develops in a way that starts with the survival responses first and then finishes with the growth of our ability to rationalize our experience.  So both the emotional and logical parts of our brain are intelligent!  Yet, the survival parts of the brain are the most powerful, as they are designed for the survival of the human race.  Therefore, we need to actively invite the engagement of the logical mind that is able to identify the positive aspects of awareness and understanding to balance the emotional fearful negative bias of the brain.  Consider practicing gratitude as a way to support that balance.  Research suggests that the human mind finds balance between 5 positive thoughts and 1 negative thought.  Perhaps start and end your day with identifying 5 things you are grateful for.  If you would like to really challenge the mind, take what you might have experienced as triggering that day and see if you can find something to be grateful for about that trigger!
  5. Explore Self Compassion.  As we are perhaps practicing the above intentions, remember we are turning over the toxic soil and weeding the garden of our minds.  In as much, we are working towards acceptance of all parts of ourself and how they served us.  Reminding ourselves during the journey that all of our sensations and emotions are normal, natural adaptive responses to the world in which we grew.  With that awareness and understanding, we are fertilizing the soil with empathy for our struggles that we have survived.  What we come to accept about ourselves is that we are both limited and limitless, flawed and flawless, skilled and unskilled beings.  As we begin to experience this acceptance of all parts of ourselves, we invite the flowers of self compassion to grow.  Offering ourselves the same compassion and loving kindness as we might offer others, supports our resiliency and connection, both with others and ourselves!

5 Intention-setting Ideas to Reduce Stress

April is Stress Awareness Month!

The month of April, among other things, has been designated Stress Awareness Month.  The first step to making any change in our life is awareness.  Without awareness, we tend to  continue on our journeys doing the same old things, repeating old patterns, all while hoping the results will be different.  The pandemic has brought additional sources of stress, so it is perhaps even more critical now for our health to consider the impacts on our lives.

With awareness comes understanding, which leads to compassion and choice.  One of the best habits we can develop for our body/mind/spirit health is learning our personal triggers and noticing when and where we feel stress.  To this end, below are some ideas to consider to support this healthy habit:

  1. Understand common sources of stress.  Change – good or bad – tends to create stress.  Therefore, recognizing the amount of change we are experiencing in the moment can help the mind to understand why we might not feel ourselves.  With this awareness and understanding, we might be more willing to offer ourselves some compassion, letting that compassion support our next choice.  We all might recognize that the loss of a partner or other loved one as being stressful, yet we might not be as aware that marriage, pregnancy, retirement from work, quitting smoking, vacation, and/or moving to a new home are stress producing life events.  Consider taking a moment to complete the Life Change Index Scale (The Stress Test) to deepen your understanding of what life events are considered stressful and determine your current level of stress from those events.
  2. Know the symptoms of PTSD.  The source of our stress might not be coming from our current experience of change but may be emanating from a past experience of trauma.  Most of us are aware that war Veterans may experience Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); however, many (I dare say most) of us are not aware that PTSD can be a result of early adverse childhood experiences such as divorce, having a parent with a mental health challenge and/or addiction, and/or witnessing domestic violence, non-the-less more overt abuse and neglect. Consider taking a moment to complete the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Questionnaire to determine your ACE score and how your childhood experiences may be impacting your current body/mind/spirit health.
  3. Identify where you experience stress in the body.  Once you have gained a greater awareness of what life events (past and present) cause change and stress, consider taking a moment to sit in reflection, welcoming your stress to be present in your awareness, and sense into your body.  We all experience stress in our bodies differently.  Some of us might experience headaches/migraines.  Others might experience digestive issues, such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).  And others may experience frequent, diffuse muscular and nerve pain.  Our bodies hold great wisdom, so taking the time to welcome the sensations and notice where the mind’s awareness is drawn into the body, contributes to the foundation of the healthy habit of acknowledging when and where we are experiencing stress.
  4. Give yourself permission to learn to relax.  Many of us were not taught to value fun and relaxation as a basic human need.  In fact, I think the message most of us sensed was that we must work hard to be successful (whatever the definition of success might be for each of us) which does not leave time and space for anything else.  So know that it is up to you to challenge that message by embracing a new message, one that allows you to prioritize you.  Prioritizing your self-care is not selfish!  It is absolutely necessary to find balance and peace and health!!  Therefore, consider finding what works for you, whether it is movement, writing, connecting with others, anything that is a way to release stress from the body and mind and give yourself permission to just do it.
  5. Set limits.  I discovered a mantra many years ago that I found very freeing:  Say no so others can grow.  And yes, it can be easier to say than do!  However, with a little practice and a change in perspective, you will find it gets easier.  The change in perspective is seeing “saying no” as a gift you are giving the other person (and also to yourself!).  For example, when teaching a little one to tie their shoes, at some point you must say to them, “No, I’m not going to do it for you today as I know you know how to do it yourself.”  And, although they might get mad and cry (and even scream), if you stick it out, the joy they experience once they have done it themselves is the gift.  When you can really embrace this new perspective, you will begin to think “Who am I to think I have to do everything myself and rob others of opportunities for growth?”  If one of your personal values is growth then saying no to others can be seen as the necessary rain for the growth of others (and, oh, by the way, for yourself).  Setting limits in this way results in growth while reducing stress by reducing the probability that we will overcommit ourselves.

As always, if you try any of these intention-setting ideas for holistic health, I would love to hear about the impact they might have had for you.  Please send me an email at linda@sanctuary4compassion.com to share!

5 Intention-setting Ideas to Embrace Your Values

Our culture informs us that our needs are not important and instead suggests that it is better to focus on the needs of others.  However, what if I were to say that our needs are our personal values.  Would that make a difference in how you think about and embrace your needs?

As humans, we all have needs.  It might be the need for beauty in our lives or the need to be treated respectfully.  Having needs or values does NOT mean you are needy or selfish!

Why is any of this important?  Why am I focusing on this topic?  Well, because embracing our personal values is a huge step forward in finding and maintaining inner peace.  Being unaware of our values can be compared to driving our car without a destination in mind, where it might appear to others that we are moving ahead, yet we actually feel lost or overwhelmed.

So, below for each benefit of embracing your values, I have also included an exercise to help you identify yours for yourself.  If you have done this in the past, it might be fun to try it again, as your values do evolve as you change and grow.  I hope you will consider trying one!

  1. Become More Self-Aware.  If you have not spent some time in reflection on what is important to you – and are unable to name your top 5 values – then you might feel confused when your reaction to something seems disproportionate to the stimulus.  Everyone holds a core set of personal values that influence – conscious or not – our priorities and reactions.  One way to identify your core values is to consider choices or decisions you have made in the past.  Perhaps consider journaling about several major and minor decisions you have made recently in your life and write down what factors you used to make these decisions.  As you do so, you may discover a pattern in the factors that played into those decisions.  Maybe you redecorated a room in your home where you decided to create a separate area for yourself that included your favorite picture of a sunset and a place to put fresh flowers with the intention to allow yourself to find yourself there when you need some peace and quiet.  And when deciding where you wanted to take your next vacation, you decided to go by yourself to a remote location “to get away from it all”.  From these decisions, you might draw a conclusion that space and beauty are important values of yours, that when those values are not honored, begin to create a sense of uneasiness inside that is hard to define.
  2. Set Healthy Boundaries.  Healthy boundaries that you set for yourself are basically a reflection of your core values.  Therefore, if you have difficulty in setting such healthy boundaries, it starts with identifying your core values.  Again, perhaps find yourself with your journal and write down your responses to the following:  1) What you can and cannot tolerate; 2) What are the rules you try to live by; 3) What values have been instilled in you from your family environment; 4)  What do you admire in others; 5) What might be a deal-breaker in a relationship (e.g. what would cause you to leave a relationship if it was not respected) and 6) What are the things that were hurtful in your family environment that you would not want repeated in your life as an adult.  What emerges from your journaling are your core values and, from this point, you are able to formulate your healthy boundaries in preparation to communicate those boundaries to others.
  3. Guide Decisions. If you are clear on your values, decision-making becomes much easier.  When presented with a difficult decision, by asking yourself the question of “What would someone who values X do in this situation?” can help guide you to make the choice that aligns best with your core values.  Perhaps sit with someone and create a long list of values (or use Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication Needs Inventory as a starting point). See how many you can come up with!  Then, individually go back and read each one, circling the ones that stand out or really resonate with you.  You can circle as many as you want the first read-through.  Go back a second time and begin to cross off some that don’t seem as important as the others, until you narrow the list down to perhaps around a dozen.  From that point, see if you can put them in the order of importance to you.  Once you have the list, consider sharing your top 5 with the other person, offering examples of how these values guided you in a recent decision you made.
  4. Discover Your Purpose.  Many of us search for a life time to figure out what our purpose is in this incarnation.  I believe we search for such a purpose because purpose and meaning is a universal human need.  However, not all of us had the appropriate guidance to uncover our natural gifts or core values.  Discovering our values can help us to identify our purpose with more clarity.  It is hard to know what you want from life or what you want to offer to the world if you are not clear on what is important to you in life.  Knowing your personal values helps you align what you do with who you are, supporting you in offering your gifts to the world with more confidence and ease.  To assist you in discovering your top 5 values, consider the previous exercise and now imagine you are in a boat with the dozen or so values that resonated with you.  Your boat springs a leak!   As the water starts to rise, the only way to stay afloat is to throw a value overboard.  The water continues to rise – another value must go overboard or you will sink.  The only way to save yourself is to continue to throw your values overboard until you are left with your top 5.  And, if you are feeling really brave, throw all values overboard until you have your top one!
  5. Gain Greater Peace.  As you begin to bring your values with you as guides into all of your relationships, including the one with yourself, you will begin to feel more at peace with the boundaries you set, the decisions you make and the work that you do.  I compare identifying your core values to building the foundation of your home.  If you know a solid foundation has at least four footings, what footings are you building your house upon?  Mine is built upon compassion, gratitude, integrity and thoughtfulness.  I’d love you hear yours!

As always, if you try any of these intention-setting ideas for holistic health, I would love to hear about the impact they might have had for you.  Please send me an email at linda@sanctuary4compassion.com to share!

5 Intention-setting Ideas for Creating Healthy Boundaries

What I have experienced since learning about and setting healthy boundaries is much more freedom and less stress in my life!

However, before a healthy boundary can be created, we need to understand what a boundary is and is not.  Boundaries are anything that limits something.  For example, time is a boundary, because there are only 24 hours in a day.  No matter how much we might want to negotiate for more, Mother Nature is not going to budge!

On the other hand, boundaries are not selfish.  In fact, boundaries can be quite empowering.  I was once offered a way of looking at setting boundaries as a gift that I can give another person, to help them reconnect with their own autonomy and competence, building their self-confidence.  This way of looking at boundaries does not mean that we stop helping others out when they are in need; however, it does ask us to deploy our skills in discerning what the best choice is in each moment.

When we can embrace the idea that setting boundaries is self-care (not selfish), then we can begin to take steps toward identifying the boundaries we want to create that will benefit both ourselves and others.  A mantra I was offered to assist me in shifting from the belief that it is selfish to prioritize my needs over the needs of others is “Say no, so others can grow”.  Take a moment right now and write this mantra down on a piece of paper or index card and place it somewhere that is accessible to you on a daily basis.  Now, think about it for a moment longer.

If you are still not buying it, here is an example that I think most people will be able to connect to.  Imagine a child is ready to learn how to tie their shoes.  You begin to teach the child how to do it.  Each day you teach the child, you watch them trying it on their own, showing progress and excitement as their fingers start to cooperate.  Now comes the hard part – the day you have to tell them “No, I’m not going to do it for you anymore, because I know you can do it by yourself”.  It hurts you to hear their protests and see their tears, but you stand your ground.  Now envision their face when they come back into the room and want to show you how they were able to tie their shoes by themselves.  Can you feel their joy!

Think of this example when you begin to explore setting healthy boundaries, remembering that when you say no, you are creating space for another person to figure something out for themselves because you BELIEVE in them, that they are capable of doing it without you doing it for them.  I know first hand that this sounds easier said than done, so below are some intention setting ideas to support your efforts in establishing, clarifying, expressing and reinforcing healthy boundaries:

  1. Identify Boundaries.  Many of us may have grown up in families that did not explain or demonstrate healthy boundaries, so we might need to take a moment and think about any boundaries we might have established or are aware of in our lives.  For example, the walls, windows, and doors of our houses create a boundary that we call home.  Our bodily reactions might have not allowed pets or certain foods in the house due to allergies.  Our spiritual roots might have offered rules of conduct that limit our behaviors, such as no public display of affection.  Creating time to identify some boundaries that exist in your life, starts to grease the wheels of the healthy boundary making machine because the growing awareness invites in choice.  For example, just because you might be allergic to cats, doesn’t preclude you from having a dog!
  2. Explore Emotions.  When you sense you are having an emotional response – whether positive or negative – stop and explore!  Emotions are the part of our intelligence that informs us about what is working and what is not working in our lives.  Emotions are the best guide to knowing when a healthy boundary is needed.  When an emotion arises, ask yourself ‘What is this emotion I am experiencing in this moment?’, ‘What is it telling me?’, and ‘Do I want more or less of it in my life?’.  When the powerful emotions such as anger (and all of its variations), pain and fear arise, the universal message is that your needs are not being satisfied.  Consider taking a moment to identify some recent situations where you felt one or more of these powerful emotions arise and write them down in the context of what brought them up.
  3. Clarify Your Needs/Values.   Now comes the hard part.  When we realize our emotions arise in response to our needs, whether they are being satisfied or not, it means we now need to own the fact that we have needs (AND WE ALL DO) and we have a responsibility to identify exactly what those needs are if we want to deepen the connections we have with ourselves and others.  Another way to view our needs is to consider them our core life values – what is it that we value enough to fight for in our lives.  To help you get started in this area, there are some universal human needs:  autonomy, connection, physical well-being including safety, honesty, peace, play and purpose.  If you would like to take a look at a longer list of such needs/values, Marshall Rosenberg has a Needs Inventory that I would recommend.  Reflect on this list along side of your emotional responses to help you narrow down the list to your top 4 values that will help guide your healthy boundary creations.
  4. Communicate a Healthy Boundary.  Now that you are armed with the knowledge of your needs/values and what happens when those needs are not being met or worse, being ignored or disrespected by another, the next step is to plan for an appropriate confrontation in order to express your healthy boundary.  Keep in mind that confrontation does not equal conflict and that you have a right and responsibility to ask for what it is you need.  Also keep in mind the other person might not be able to give you what it is you need; however, that must not stop you from at least asking and trying to negotiate a healthier space.  To help you craft your healthy boundary, consider using the 4-step process developed by Marshall Rosenberg which was designed to diffuse emotionally-charged situations by reducing blame and shame.
  5. Make a request.  It is not enough to tell someone that your needs are not being met and expect them to know how to respond to such a communication.  It is important to clearly ask for what it is you would like from them in order to have your need be met.  For example, if you determine that you value beauty as reflected by a neat and clean home and become distressed when when your need for beauty in your home is not being honored, the request might be “Will you help me clean our home or keep our home clean?”.  Such a request might lead you into a negotiation about the specifics (e.g., frequency, specific tasks, etc.), so consider making requests as concrete as possible (inviting a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response) such as “Will you help me keep our home clean by washing your dishes in the sink?”.  One last thought – when you start to clarify and express your healthy boundaries, it may seem awkward for both you and the other person because it might be a new way of interacting.  Some suggestions to support success include:  start with setting a healthy boundary around something that feels relatively minor on your emotional scale, write out the process (including your feelings, needs/values and request) and have it in front of you when speaking to the person, and know in advance that you will most likely have to communicate your boundary more than once (often several and sometimes many times) before the person fully integrates and consistently implements the request agreed to initially!

As always, if you try any of these intention-setting ideas for holistic health, I would love to hear about the impact they might have had for you.  Please send me an email at linda@sanctuary4compassion.com to share!

5 Intention-setting Ideas for Raising Happy and Healthy Kids

“It takes a village to raise a child.” ― African Proverb

Many of us may not have children or our children may already be grown, yet it doesn’t mean that we can forget about our parenting skills, because we never know when our “parent part” may be called upon to assist in raising happy and healthy kids.  And, if you are a furbaby parent, as I am, the following intention-setting ideas are appropriate for our four-legged kids too.

So, in honor of Purposeful Parenting Month, I thought it was critical in order to raise the vibration for all children – the “little one” inside all of us, the ones we may have the honor of raising directly now or in the future, and the ones that we may find ourselves interacting with in a less direct relationship – that we reflect on some ways that we can foster the development of trusting, loving, and healthy kids.  Below are some ideas for consideration:

  1. Set Boundaries.  It’s important to set rules and boundaries for our kids, whether two-legged or four-legged.  We all need to know how to behave in a respectful manner when interacting with others and it is up to us, the responsible adults, to model and teach our children what that means.  It is also important to be consistent once a boundary is set, otherwise, we will create confusion.  Children look to adults for protection and direction and setting healthy boundaries goes a long way toward making them feel safe and calm.
  2. Make Time for Play.  Play is a basic human need – no matter how old our bodies get!  Embracing this need allows us to prioritize fun in our lives and include our children.  Research has also shown that it is important to play with your animals if you want to improve their behavior.  Playing with children is not only good for them, but good for you as it allows you to stay connected with your own “inner child”, that part of you that wants to express its sense of creativity, stay true to your authentic self, and pursue goals with passion.
  3. Catch Them Doing Something You Like.  Positive reinforcement has been shown to be the most powerful motivator as it makes us feel good about ourselves and more connected with others.  Expressing appreciation and gratitude towards your children when you observe them doing something that brings you joy, especially when it is not expected or tied to achievement, can be especially powerful.  For example, simply thanking your child for sharing with or showing kindness to another person can plant a seed for similar behaviors in the future.  When it comes to our four-legged kids, a simple pat on the head when they sit down next you quietly or come to you when you call them, will create the connection that invites them to repeat such responses.
  4. Love Equally and Uniquely.  It is important to not show favoritism, even if you feel it at times.  So, recognizing that our children have different personalities and other qualities that will draw us towards and away from them at different times, find a unique way to express your love to each of your children that fits with them.  Then, set the intention to use those unique expressions of love at least once a day with each child.  This guidance can also be applied to our furbabies.  Maybe one four-legged is a “morning” or “sunshine” baby while the other is a “nighttime” or “moonshine” baby, so you can plan to spend time with them when they most need it.
  5. Make Eye Contact.  Providing  our little ones – both human and furry – with a loving gaze produces a biochemical response that strengthens the connection, or bond between you and them. The level of the hormone oxytocin has been shown to increase in both humans and dogs after spending time looking into each other’s eyes.  Oxytocin is also known as the bonding or cuddling hormone and is sometimes referred to as the love drug. It is associated with trust and that warm, fuzzy feeling when you are close to another.  So, if you want to give yourself a boost of love or a sense of connection, slow down and LOOK to make eye contact with your children!