Today, I invited my friend and colleague Mari Ryan, CEO of Advancing Wellness to post a guest blog.  She shared a wonderful story and a great lesson for us all!  Here it is:

When I got up at 5:30 this morning I was cranky. I went to bed cranky. I decided the best way to deal with this feeling was to walk it off, so I took my Cairn Terrier Miss Kate for a long walk. As I walked along the main road, a young man on a bicycle came whizzing by. He yelled “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” I thought for a moment and shouted back “It sure is!” As he continued down the road, he put his hands out to the side as if he was flying. With all that joy he was exuding, he was flying. His joy was absolutely contagious. It suddenly made me think – “So what are you so cranky about? Take a lesson from him and be joyful”. As Miss Kate and I continued our walk, I contemplated the young man who challenged me to see the day from a different perspective. I consciously chose to think differently – to appreciate the things I have to be grateful for and to enjoy the beautiful morning that I was experiencing on my walk. When I got home, I tackled a few of the things that had been making me cranky and felt much better. I hope I see that young man on another early morning walk soon.

Mari Ryan is CEO of AdvancingWellness (www.advwellness.com), a worksite wellness company based in the Boston, MA area.

Wow, the stuff upset it made of.

I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day.  She was busy helping her daughter get ready for a semester abroad in South America.  There was much to do.  And, aside from these preparations, my friend, a busy physician and generous community volunteer, also had a long list of patient phone calls to return and meetings to plan for. 

Being a teenager, her daughter decided it was time to go shopping for necessities for her trip.  I mean, it was time RIGHT NOW.  Not a few days ago, when her mom suggested they go, not tomorrow night when she had already made plans to be with her friends but RIGHT NOW!  And, on top of that, the daughter had just learned that there were very few plane tickets left on a flight she wanted to take for a vacation trip she was planning with her boyfriend in December.  So, that needed to be dealt with RIGHT NOW too. 

Now, if you have teenagers, or remember the days when you did, you know what I’m talking about.  If you are a teenager, you’re probably saying to yourself, “And your problem with all of this would be?” 

Being of sound and rational mind and removed from the situation as you are reading this, you are likely saying to yourself, why didn’t the mom just say no.  Why didn’t she say, “I can’t take you shopping right now, dear.”  or “Go ahead and make the plane reservations yourself. You’re a competent, capable young lady.”  I’ll tell you why…  STRESS!

The daughter’s unreasonable requests and sense of urgency arose from stress as did her mom’s reaction which was, in her words, not one of her best parenting moments.  Underneath it all, both, aside from being busy, are nervous about this upcoming trip.  And the anxiety hadn’t been identified or expressed.  So, it came spurting out in their interaction like toothpaste from the tube. 

This kind of upset happens often and it usually isn’t about the specific thing that might trigger it.  For example, how often do we (women) get upset because our husband’s (sorry guys) don’t take out the trash?  I mean really, is the trash that important?  No. And, it generally isn’t about the trash.  It’s about some other unmet need or frustration and it comes out because it’s safer to identify and talk about the trash than whatever the real source is, if you even know.

We want to be all things to all people, we want to have it all work out.  We keep giving and doing and contributing and then, all of a sudden, we get to our personal tipping point.  The proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back, and we didn’t even see it coming.  We were too busy to notice that we were dangerously close to the edge. 

In hind sight, what my friend said she wished she had done was to say to her daughter, “I know this is important to you but I can’t go right now.  Let me do these 3 things first and then we can go”, or “I’m sorry, it just won’t work for me to go tonight, let’s look at our calendars and figure out when we can both go.”   Or she might have stopped and realized that perhaps her daughter’s sense of urgency was generated by her own (the daughter’s)  stress and anxiety and addressed that. 

What she regrets doing is losing her temper.  So today, in the calm after the storm, she will take a few moments and process the interaction with her daughter, mend the bridge and the two will move on, having learned a little more about themselves and each other.

And in the future, and the lesson for us all, is to monitor your own stress level and create ways to take care of ourselves so that we can be our best selves in the relationships that are most important to us.

I’m acutely aware of a theme here… we have a nasty habit of complaining!  When times are good, we complain, when times are tough, we complain, when something is red and we wish it were blue, we complain, when it’s cold here in New England, we complain and then the minute it gets a bit hot and humid, we complain again!   Yikes!  Look around you.  Aren’t there more important things to focus on than the weather?  Don’t you have dozens of things for which you are grateful?  Aren’t some things just perfect.  Even those things that don’t look perfect at first, turn out to be exactly right.  For example, I have a friend who was laid off from her Senior Management job in March.  She immediately started a job search.  She was one of 2 finalists for a position she thought would be perfect for her.  But she didn’t get the job.  She was very disappointed.  Then, 2 weeks after getting that news, her eldest son was diagnosed with a serious illness.  She spent the following months researching, finding and visiting doctors, supporting her son, handling all of the details of his illness and his treatment.  She now, totally believes that her not getting that job was perfect.  She could not have been successful at it and handle all of the issues around her son’s illness. 

Even in what appears to be your darkest moments, your greatest disappointments, your biggest setbacks, there are reasons, lessons and value to be mined.  Look for them.  It may not become apparent right away…but there’s almost always a pony in there somewhere!

Things I need to do today:

1. Breathe in
2. Breathe out

Ah, if only life were that simple.  But no, we have to go and complicate it.  Should I breathe in through my mouth or my nose?  Should I breathe out through my nose if I breathed in through my mouth?  How many counts should it take me to breathe in?  What if I have bad breath? How do you do that belly breathing thing I learned in yoga?  Is yoga really helping me after all?  Maybe I should stop spending my money on yoga.   And on and on and on.

Fortunately, our autonomic nervous system doesn’t allow these questions to stop us from breathing.  But, often, such self imposed mental anquish does stop us in our tracks.   We are paralyzed into inaction… stuck!

My client Geri, provides a great example.  Geri had been at home raising her 2 children for a long time.  Once they were in school and less dependent on her on a day-to-day basis, she wanted to go back to work.  She had worked in the retail industry for a while before having children and she’d liked it, but she didn’t want to go back to a full time, high pressured job.  So, Geri was exploring some self-employment options.   She was excited about the idea of opening a consignment store in her town.  When Geri created a game plan and wrote out action items for herself, she got really excited.  When she went to take action, she began to feel a bit overwhelmed.  The steps were clear (on paper) and most of them she know how to do, but something kept getting in the way.  She kept overthinking things and getting stuck.  Upon examination, she realized she was scared.  Further exploration uncovered the source of her fears:  although her husband said he was supportive, what if she got too busy to grocery shop and make dinner? what if the kids got sick and needed her?  what if people didn’t bring her items to consign?    what if her friends, who were still at home didn’t include her in their activities anymore?  what if she couldn’t continue to do the volunteer work she enjoyed?  what if she opened the store and nobody came?

Before Geri could move forward with her business, she had to identify her strongest fears, consider the likelihood of their coming to fruition and develop strategies to overcome them if, in fact, she determined they were real enough potential derailers.

Once she had wrestled her fear to the ground, and only then, could she take effective action.  That isn’t to say that Geri didn’t continue to feel some fear and anxiety about the change she was creating, she did.  But she was able to put that fear into perspective and not let it stop her from moving forward anyway.

So, if your inner voice seems to be winning the battle of 20 questions, take these steps and get on with your dreams.

1. Recognize that your questions may be masking some inner fear.  Identify what you are afraid of.

2.  Ask yourself, how likely it is that the fear will be realized.  My colleague, Suzanne Blake, recently shared this acronym: Fear is Fantasized Experiences Appearing Real!

3.  Consider the worst thing that could happen if the fear was realized?  And, if that did happen, what  would be so bad about it?  What might happen next?  And then what?  For example, if Geri couldn’t make dinner everynight, what would happen?  Her husband could make dinner, they could get take out, the kids could share responsibility for preparing some meals, Geri could stock the freezer so there was alway something available, they could eat cereal for dinner once in a while and live to tell about it.  And then what might happen?  They might be a little angry but they’d get over it, they might learn how to cook and be more self sufficient, they might become more appreciative of all that Geri had done for them over the years, they might not even notice.   When you work through a problem, you can cut it down to it’s real size, which is often miniscule.

4.  Determine what one small step can you take to inch (or catapult) yourself forward?  Remember, reaching out and asking for help is often the best action step.  Trying to overcome your fear alone may get you tied up in knots.

It’s as simple as this:

Breathe in

Breathe out

However it works best for you.  No rules, no absolutes, only possibility.

Remember:

“The only thing we have to fear is fear it’self – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified, terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
~ FDR – First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933