Category Archives: General

Posted on

How Do You Handle Adversity?

by

adversity2When adversity comes your way, you have choices. “What?” you say “What choices are there. I’d pick no adversity but it’s too late.”

Sure, that’s the ideal – to not have adversity in our lives but when it does come what you do with it, how you handle it can be more valuable than any lottery winning you could dream of. No, I’m not smoking dope. I’m serious.

What you learn, how you act will shape you for the rest of your life. It will give you support and foundation for handling what else might come in your life. You want to make the most of it.

It’s difficult to experience the adversity and it’s often more difficult to watch someone you care about go through adversity but there are definitely things to learn from these experiences.

So what are your choices? You can send the invites to your pity party and see who will come to join you in the “festivities” (and for how long – that’s the key and what are these folks bringing to the table in terms of your growth and health).

Your other choice is to learn the most from the experience. Go inside yourself, start a journal, ask yourself – “what am I supposed to learn from this?” or even “What can I learn?”.

Remember the phrase “What you resist, persists!” I think this is a very important phrase to continually remember. Stop resisting what’s staring you in the face. Embrace it – it’s here so your choices are to resist it or to embrace it. It will last a much longer time if you resist it and who wants that. The more you fight something, the more it fights back. Then you have to expend more energy to try to even keep it at bay.

If you embrace the adversity, make the most of it, perhaps change your course for a bit, it will simply run its course and then pass as it’s supposed to.

If you are experiencing financial issues, maybe you’re supposed to learn more about the Law of Attraction (I will be saying that about everything because learning about the Law of Attraction and how to use it to improve your life is a goal you should hold high). This means that you have to focus on what you believe, not what you don’t want or what you think you’re supposed to want. You have to examine your beliefs and see what brought you to that point. Then you can work on changing those beliefs in accordance with where you really want to be. Don’t wallow in debt and “poor me”. Pick yourself up by the bootstraps, look around you and see how you might be able to get out of that hole and start bringing abundance and prosperity (of all types, not just financial) to you. Who are you meeting along the way? What gifts do these people have to offer you? Even more importantly, what gifts do you have to give them? Is there someone in your surroundings now that might need your help? I don’t mean financial help. I mean just being there, being supportive, listening to them, caring about them, etc. Remember the posts about how you make someone feel is what they will remember about you. Maybe you are to discover a group of people you’re supposed to work to support when you get out of that rut. You might be making life long friendships. Wouldn’t it be great if you could actually help/influence someone to change their life, to embrace the Law of Attraction and understand it to change their life? How would that make you feel? I could go on and on but you get the idea. There is so much good that really can come from embracing the financial adversity.

Perhaps your adversity is in the health arena. What is the health issue trying to get you to see about yourself or your surroundings? Is there something in adversityyour  life that you need to change? Are you working too hard? Under too much stress? In a toxic environment? Not able to give enough time to those who love you? Is this problem trying to get you to slow down or stop doing what you’re doing in excess and smell the roses as they say? Maybe this health challenge is trying to get you to expand your horizons or change what you focus on the most. You can sit there and bemoan how bad you feel or how you can’t do what you really want to do — or you can sit there and say “ok, I can’t do x, y, z which I really love. But there are other things in life that I can do. What am I supposed to be paying attention to?” Perhaps you should read more, sleep more, write more, engage with others (family or friends) more…..Your health is telling you to slow down and reassess. When we’re going 100 miles an hour we don’t take the time to even think about where we are or where we’re going. Perhaps we should be trying to figure out what others are experiencing multiplied many times over. As I’ve told people before, I’m very glad I smoked, was very overweight and have epilepsy – why? Because as a physician I understand my patients a great deal more and can help them deal with some of these problems in a different way than those who just read about it in a book. The more we experience in life, the more we can reach out to help others and really identify with them – what do they say “walk a mile in my shoes”. This is the Universe’s way of helping you get in those shoes.

Maybe the overriding lesson in whatever adversity you come across is to teach you that it’s ok and human to ask for help. I know that’s a difficult lesson for me but one that adversity has recently taught me.

Remember, most of all, though, that we have attracted this adversity. That’s so hard for people to accept but it’s true. Just as you can work with the Law of Attraction to bring you great things, the negative things are brought to us by that same Law of Attraction. The most important lesson in adversity is to dig deep and find out what beliefs are in you that have caused you to be on the vibrational plane to draw this to you. That’s the thing you should always be working with as well as trying to figure out what other lessons there are in this adversity.

Take a look at what’s happened in your life and see what you can come up with.

Terrie

Posted on

Momentum Monday

by

momentum-monday1people will never forget how you made them feel

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

~ Maya Angelou

I cannot tell you how true this is AND how important it is.

What you do for other people whether it’s through actions or words is so very important. It can even change and protect some people’s lives. Sometimes a smile or a kind word will be the only thing a person has to hang on to to keep themselves from taking their own lives. You might laugh but it’s so very true.

If you read my race report about my Trek across Tennessee, you’ll see the importance of how everyone around me made me feel when I was suffering so much. From the sleep deprived and extremely fatigued race director to my good friend in California, just their thoughts and words made such a big difference in my being able to continue onward. This friend in California was phenomenal. Even though I didn’t have time to respond to her texts or Facebook messages, she continually sent them. She didn’t have to. She could have just said “Well, to heck with it. Terrie hasn’t responded so she’s on her own”. But she didn’t. She continued to cheer me on, not knowing what an amazing difference that made in my mental attitude. Thank you Ginger!

Take some time each day to make a concerted effort to do something nice for someone even if it’s just to smile and ask how they are or if there is anything you can do for them. This will make a difference – I guarantee you. You may not know that at the time but you’ll know in your heart that you have made someone feel good or feel important.

As one of our guests recently said “humans are social beings” – we rely on others for so much. This age of technology has made many folks forget that. Don’t you be one to simply cram yourself into your phone and computer. Take time to connect with others.

Terrie

Posted on

Perfectionism?

by

PERFECTION2Happiness and perfection definitely are at a crossroads. It’s difficult, if not impossible, for the two to go together.

Most people who are seeking perfection are not happy. They may create artificial happiness by claiming that they only seek what is best for everyone (the perfect answer) but their life revolves around the quest, not the attainment.

If you repeatedly start over or change something because it’s not perfect, it can be for many reasons. If you are interested and think of yourself as a perfectionist, you might want to examine why you seek that perfection. Your superficial answer may differ greatly from the answer you’ll get if you delve deeper inside of you.

Many people use perfectionism as a form of procrastination (not intentionally of course). But if you don’t keep going or even start on something (especially because things are “not ready because they aren’t yet perfect”), then you don’t have to worry about the result because you’ll never get there. And when you don’t have to worry about the result then you don’t have to worry about the criticism or comments or reactions you’ll get when you do finish what you’re working on. It’s easier to not start or not get very far.

This might be considered the same as “distraction”. People use perfectionism to continually be distracted – so they don’t have to be present, they don’t have to pay attention to what’s going on inside them. If they are repeatedly distracted trying to get something “perfect”, then they don’t have “time” to pay attention to what’s inside them or even what’s around them. Are you trying to escape from the present?

Others use perfectionism to keep from finishing. I guess this could be considered a form of procrastination too. But if you don’t finish then you don’t have to deal with success (or failure) and the attendant issues associated with that. Once you succeed, then people have other expectations of you and you then may feel you have to live up to those expectations. That can be frought with issues – especially the imagined ones. Usually the actual issues are never as bad as the ones we anticipate or worry about. But those anticipated ones are very real in our minds if we don’t stay in the present. Never finishing a project because it’s not “perfect” is a great way to not have to deal with those issues, anticipated or real.

These folks want happiness but can’t ever attain it because they are always seeking something better. But who defines what’s “perfect”? Do we even know what “perfect” is? I don’t think so. You may have your idea of what’s “perfect” but I don’t know that there is a universal committee mperfectionism2aking those determinations. You just drive yourself nuts trying to reach that arbitrary level called “it’s now good enough – it’s perfect”.

Are you a perfectionist? Why? When did it start? Was this something you were taught? Do you consider yourself happy? Can you start AND complete projects without having multiple restarts? Can you then move on to another project once that one is done? How do you feel when you’re working on a project? Does this work create anxiety in you? What are your feelings when you’re about to start a new project?

Answer some of these questions and then more importantly ask yourself if you can “just go with it” whatever “it” is. What is “good enough” for you? Can you get to a point where you can just keep going and accept that it will be very good even if it’s not perfect?

Think about your life this week. What has to be perfect, if anything? Are you happy when you deal with those things? Are there only a few areas of your life that you practice perfectionism? Or are there many? If it’s not in all, what is the difference in how you approach different things? How do you feel about those you need to have perfect and how do you feel about those you don’t get obsessed about?

Terrie

inspirational (7)

Posted on

Where is Your Finish Line?

by

stick_figure_race_finish_400_clr_6285You don’t have to enter an official “race” to talk about your finish line.

We all have finish lines almost every day of our lives. It depends on how you define that phrase. I see people whose finish line is the end of a work day or perhaps the achievement of a goal.  Maybe it’s when the kids go to bed or when you go to bed or even when you stop working for the night.

The point I want to emphasize, though, is that the fact is you “cross” the finish line – you don’t stop right at it. You keep going in other words. You move on to something else. If it were a running race, perhaps you’d move on to your car or the food table or your home. But you’d keep going – somewhere.

In all of life you have to keep going or you get stuck and stagnate. This happens frequently when people fail to look beyond the achievement of one goal. When they’ve reached the conclusion of that one, they have a let down period and get depressed and often just stop doing anything. It takes a great deal of momentum to pick back up again. It’s much better if you anticipate the end of one project and already have a new “goal” or finish line delineated.

There really is NO finish line except perhaps death and that is even debatable depending on your view of the afterlife..

Stop demarcating your life with various arbitrary finish lines or at least change their name to something cute that simulates “new start line” (that’s not cute but you can come up with your own term).

It would also be of use for you to do an inventory (it’s past time for a midyear inventory anyway) of all your past finish lines and what they led to next. It will give you a much better timeline of your life and your growth than the Facebook timelines. Go way back and see if you can list everything you achieved and then what came next. See if you can see a nexus between the two. I bet there will be because most of what happens to us is NOT random despite what we may think.

Stop wishing for the end, just think about the next step. We don’t really want to reach the end – we want to reach the beginning of something new because it will have been based upon your last achievement. Case in point – I just finished the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life (my Trek across Tennessee) but when I crossed that finish line, I knew it was simply the beginning of processing all I learned while out there alone as well as figuring out what I would do if the physical damage I experienced is irreparable and I can’t run again, or what I will reach for if it does resolve. There were so many openings in my life and soul once I crossed that finish line – it was the beginning of a new life!

Where are your finish lines leading you? Have some fun exploring!

Terrie

Posted on

Momentum Monday

by

momentum-monday1“The qualities that you seek in a relationship will be important to you and it is important that you know what you want in a significant other so that you can use the Law of Attraction productively to attract your ideal relationship.” ~ Frank Mangano

We always tell you to make certain that you’ve made a list of the qualities and characteristics you DO want in a significant other. Don’t leave things to chance. Make certain that you actually use this wonderful Universal Law (the Law of Attraction). You use it by focusing and concentrating on what it is you do want – from a positive perspective – not what you do NOT want. The best way to do that is to make that list. And if you find yourself saying something like “I sure don’t want a guy who snores”, change it around to “I want a man who sleeps soundly and quietly”.

Do this with everything in your life! Make a list of what you want. Actually write it down so that there is more energy put into the desires. Then you can read that list over and over again and modify it as necessary – add to it, change the wording, etc. Make sure that it’s positive and an actual reflection of what you want. Sometimes reading what we wrote later is very helpful. You might go “what did I mean by that” or “whoa, that’s not what I really want” or something else.

Plus, when you read it over and over, it gets more embedded in your mind so there’s more there to focus on!

Try this

Terrie