I’m having a tough time figuring out what I should do tonight. My evening freed up and now my brain is starting to churn.
I know what I should be doing but there is only so much time in on evening.
Here are my shoulds:
- Go to the gym and re-energize
- Make my holiday crafts for my relatives
- Email out an annoucement to business associates
- Read my book that I haven’t picked up in ages
- Bake holiday cookies
- Run a spyware software on my computer
So what to do…I’m feeling a little over whelmed by the list that is collecting and it could keep going if I spend any more time on it.
I think I’ll follow Scott’s advice and just take a breather/recess. I’ll make myself dinner and then decide at that point what I feel like doing.
I hope that taking a step back will help the anxiety. The gym probably would be a good thing too. First dinner and then decide. I have been going a mile a minute since I got up this morning so it’s time to let my brain reset for a bit before making any further decisions 
I won’t blog much as I have a headache and need to get some rest but I wanted to share what’s been going on in my life.
I have to say that since last Friday things just keep getting better and better. My new business venture Otter Ideas is starting to gain in popularity and I’m interviewing some terrific people that will help my business audience on their new business adventure. I am excited and nervous for my interview with Dave Howlett the founder of RealHumanBeing.org.
I’m finding that I’m really listening to myself and noticing the signs around me. I feel like I can hear myself growing, expanding my horizons. It’s a neat time in my life.
In yesterday’s session with Scott we had to tell him what our biggest stressor was and I knew mine was financial strain. I am getting used to a new life and it’s going to take a while to adjust.
However with stress and strain comes the inevitable whale feeling. The most stressed I get the more I feel out of shape, unattractive and a whole bunch of other nasty feelings about myself. I call it “whaling”. Anytime my husband would ask how I was doing, he knew to just leave me be when I said I feel like a whale.
So recently I have been more stressed but my whale suit that calls my name has been just sitting idle beside me. I haven’t had the need to put it on, but it just sits there waiting for when I really dip down and feel badly about myself. It’s a big deal that I have been able to avoid it and those nasty feelings but it was annoying me that is it sticking around.
So I asked Scott what to do with that. I know my two options and so far I have been exercising my first option which was to ignore it – but clearly that wasn’t working. The other option is to embrace it, try it on for size and realize that it just makes me feel worse and it will be easier to discard because I’m aware of the feelings and what’s causing them.
So I think tonight before drifting off to bed, I might try on my whale suit and discard it just as quickly. Let’s see if those feelings come back as quickly next time!!
I obviously have not been keeping up on my blogging. As you will have seen November 18 I was a little down. Thankfully I had an appointment booked with Cheryl on the 19th.
We sat down and Cheryl had a very specific direction that she wanted to lead our session and that was fine with me. I really didn’t have any preference except to start feeling a bit better.
The end result was that I left her office feeling better and knowing what set up statements and concepts I was working towards. I’m currently working on the idea that I can ask and accept help. I tend to be fiercely independant and a lot of the times I feel weak when I ask for help. We also worked on finding a path for me. It has been a long while since I felt like I knew that I was going the right direction.
I tapped that night before bed and would you believe it Friday morning turned out to be a succession of doors opening and little “ah ha” moments. It was truly amazing. Through some meetings that were already prebooked and a couple of conversations my life gained a firmer path which is what I was looking for. I feel really good about starting this week because I know what path I’m on.
I spouted my first batch of mung beans over the past few days and have been eating them. They are quite good and it’s neat that I grew them. My second batch are going to start spouting tomorrow I think. I think I’m going to move onto alfalfa spouts next but we’ll see what I find in the health food store
The last time I was in the health food store I picked up almond butter and from time to time I enjoy a teaspoon of that as a snack. It’s healthy and nutritious.
I have been working since noon on my businesses and such so I’m hoping to call it quits soon but I wanted to get an update in before I signed off for the evening.
Do you ever just get to the point where you want to say “Stop the world I want to get off”?
I have had a bunch of different emotionally taxing things to deal with over the past few months – some of which are for the better, but still have emotions attached to them – and I’m busy trying to process my feelings, emotions and such as fast as possible and it’s not working. I hear from friends, body confidence participants and Scott and Cheryl that I have some grieving to go through but I’m relunctant to give into that.
I want to feel settled in my life and my technique of barreling through everything is apparently not the way to do that. So I’m going to have to work with Cheryl a little more on how to uncover and deal with the raw emotions and hopefully there is a way to fast track through some of the tougher issues.
While I’m not making the progress that I would like and tonight I binged nicely on chocolate I know why I’m doing these things and what’s happening which makes it simpler and the guilt factor isn’t as horrible. Tomorrow is a new day – no need to beat myself up over little hiccups.
I really kind of wanted to report that I am making great strides on weight loss and such. But my strides are in self awareness, forgiveness and acceptance – really probably more important than actual weight loss.
My 6 month letter is going to be sent out in 5 months 3 weeks and I’m no further along to my goal….so I’ll need to find a way to see what is stopping my progress. I’m a very strong willed person – if that hasn’t become obvious by now – so I’m going to make this happen. You have no idea what I’ll look like in 6 months. It’s going to be a whole new me from inside out! Just you wait!
I love the gym. I truly do. I enjoy exercise classes and I also like to work my muscle groups with weights and such. This isn’t for everyone but I developed a taste for it years ago. Granted I have drifted in and out of gyms for a long while now but I think I’m back into the groove.
Tonight I went to the gym for about 1 hour. It didn’t take too much time and gave me the chance to listen to music and concentrate on me for a bit.
The flip side to going to the gym is that I ates a terrific bowl of icecream before I walked the dog and went to the gym. There is no way that I’m going to give up my sweets and I believe that everything that we do needs to be done in moderation – that counts for exercise, the food we eat, how much we work, etc.
So until someone else tells me that I’m not going to be able to achieve my fitness goals because I’m eating icecream, then I’m going to profess myself as the icecream eating gym rat!
My answer is “Yes I can”.
This past Saturday, I participated in the 1 day seminar called Can I Do This? which was put on by Scott Tate, Cheryl Laird and Erica Brandl.
This seminar was focused help you define what you’re working towards, discovering the road blocks that have been in your way and giving you the tools to work through them.
Each speaker spoke on a different topic which was their own true passion. Hearing the speakers individually at separate events would have been terrific and given us much food for thought – however the combination of the 3 that day provided us with knowledge and tools to help us accomplish our goals and live our lives to the fullest.
So the goal that I set on Saturday is to improve my fitness level. I got to spend some time that day writing down why I want this. I came up with the following reasons:
- It’s a great way to get in “me” time
- My brain gets distracted by having to concentrate on the exercise at hand and not always work
- To improve my mental and phsyical health
- I want to fall in love with my body’s strength both mental and physical
- I want to see myself as athletic
And there it is.
One of the things we did in the seminar was answer the question “How do you want to see yourself?”. Each of us took about 7 minutes to write a detailed description of what we wanted to see and then were told to self address the envelop provided. Erica will be sending this letter sent back to us in 6 months. I know that what I wrote focused a great deal on my fitness and so I’m pumped up to work towards the description that I put in my letter.
I have already started to make changes by reducing my daily stress, I have increased my walk time with my dog and my gym clothes are ready and waiting for me to hit the gym tomorrow. It’s all coming together!
Ok so Wednesday night was not a good night. I found myself very down and out. It was one of those moods that hits like a tonne of bricks and each negative thought spawned another one and another one.
I was very clear in what I was feeling and that fact that I had so many feelings inside me all trying to be heard in my head it was no wonder I was feeling a bit out of sorts.
So I did the only thing that I knew might help me. I wrote to Cheryl a long run on sentence with all my feelings. I was going to see her for a one on one session the next day and I thought this might give us a place to start at when I arrived for my session.
While I didn’t feel great going to bed Wednesday night, I did feel a bit lighter for expressing my feelings and getting them written down. Thursday morning came and went and I went about my day as normal and much less stressed than the night before.
My session with Cheryl did have a jump start because of my email and we are uncovering some fascinating things from my past that I haven’t thought of in ages but seems to be one of the corner stones of a few troubles that I’m experiencing.
It was a good session and I’ll be working hard on my EFT to continue to break down some barriers that I have.
So today was session 3 of 6 and our focus was how we can shift our thinking about movement and exercise to having fun and playing.
The people in my group had very clear reasons for not wanting to exercise or step into a gym. We all had some negative emotions attached to exercising and I believe most people do.
I like to exercise although I do have my moments when I find it more work than fun. But I find that my block is finding the time to get it into my day. As we tapped and measured our outcomes, we needed to dig deeper into my issues of “not having time” and that lead to an emotional release of feeling like I don’t take care of myself as well as I should and feeling like I’m last on my list of priorities.
We all feel from time to time that we have busy and hectic lives and that our health and wellness take a back seat to everything and everyone else. There is something to be said about thinking this way, however in these kinds of sessions, we have to verbalize our deepest thoughts and at that point things become very real.
I think that just the act of telling people in a room that you place yourself last has a huge impact on you, but the great thing about these sessions is that you knock down the anxiety felt from your feelings right then and there. You might not get rid of all of it but you have determined what is causing your distress and can work on it.
My group progressed incredibly well this week. There were a lot of great success stories shared which is always inspiring to hear.
I was able to share some of my stories but as I told them I noticed that I felt overwhelmed almost paralyzed with what I am trying to accomplish. My life has gone through some interesting changes and I definitely feel stretched further than I thought ever possible. It is encouraging me to grow as a person which is great but I’m looking forward to some more guidance from Cheryl in our private session this week.
I”m back home safe and sound and I have been going through emails to just get a handle on things for when I return to the office tomorrow morning.
On my 9 hour drive home today from northern Ontario, I got a lot of time to think about this past weekend, my relationships with people around me, my life in general and while there are stressful times I couldn’t help but feel lucky for what I have.
I will admit that I woke up in a bit of a panic knowing that I’m going to be returning back home to business as usual which can be very stressful and I managed to tap myself down from that panic. I thought that it might come back or be worse as I continued my trek home but it stayed at bay.
I’m sure that my panic and fear of the future will creep up again but I am confident that my realization that I am very lucky for the life that I lead will come in loud and strong and will be a part of my tapping regime if I get down.
I want to thank everyone who had a part in my wonderful long weekend. While none of us really knew what to expect I believe it was a nice reunion of friends and family and for that I’m very grateful.
Well here I am in Bruce Mines, Ontario which is about a 1/2 hour south east of Sault Ste. Marie just mellowing out. I’m at the table enjoying my lunch and staring out at Lake Huron and a bonfire that is going.
This is my first visit to my ex-husband’s house and I came up here for the weekend with my dog Smore. I arrived on Friday and I’ll be leaving tomorrow.
It’s been an interesting and emotion experience. Lots of questions pop into my head and I doubt I’ll ever find the answers to most of them. While that is a little disconcerting to me I guess I’ll just have to life with the fact that I can’t know and control everything in life.
As I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got up here I decided ahead of time that I would just let things take its course and not put too much pressure on me to watch what I eat, drink, etc. I wanted to enjoy myself and if I found myself stressed then I would let food play a non-guilty role in my coping.
I’m thankful to say that food hasn’t played a huge role in my visit. I was able to get in some great tapping by the lake’s edge and just take in my environment. I wasn’t expecting to not have to use food as a stress reducer. But perhaps just giving myself permission to eat food if I needed it helped in that it was going to be a non issue regardless of the situation. Food for thought!
