A Miracle A Day

Sometimes, in life, something brings to your attention that you’ve gotten so far down a path that you don’t want to be that there is really no way back.  You just stop, look around you, and realize that you are unhappy with where you are and who you have become.

The natural reaction for many, probably even most, people is to give up and start sliding into despair, thinking there is nothing they can do about it.  It doesn’t have to be that way, though… there is something much more positive you can do, instead.

First let me say that from the easy perspective, the one that is up close and mired in the current situation, the feeling that there is nothing you can do about it is right… because that feeling is all about the fact that you can’t get back to “the way things used to be”.  If you move back a couple of steps, however, that very realization can be enlightening and even free-ing.

When you hit a point where you know that you can’t go back, that means there’s only one way you can go, and that is forward.  You can take your moment of darkness and turn it into the point where you breathed light and hope back into your life.

How do you do this?

You start by accepting that all of the things that brought you to this point are in your past, and you cannot change them.  You are who you are, and where you are, and right now is the only thing left that you can change.  You have to let it go, and forgive yourself… let who you have been and what you have done be in your past.  Let it even be a different person – you are NOT required to be that person any more.

Now you have a blank slate, an open canvas to paint yourself.  Who do you want to be?  The only one who can decide what gets painted is the painter, and that is you.

Other people in your life, whether friends, family, coworkers, or something else, may not like the changes that you make.  They only knew the person that you used to be, and if the new you is different enough, they may feel like they are dealing with a new person, and that takes time just as meeting any other new person does… perhaps even more so because they keep expecting you to be, and and act like, who you used to be, much as might happen if you met the identical twin of someone you already knew.

You can’t worry about others, though… you are your own home, and you have to build to suit yourself.  If you were designing an actual home for yourself, and you love to cook, you wouldn’t design one with a tiny kitchen.  In the same sense, you shouldn’t try to be a person that others think you should be.

Speaking of homes, that brings up another important point… walls.  As we go through life along whatever path we take, we build up walls inside ourselves… mental walls, emotional walls, even spiritual walls.  These walls generally grow up haphazardly, over time, in response to various things that happen in our lives.  They contain us, force us into internal contortions and stress just to fit inside, keeping us from truly being comfortable in our own skins.

Internal walls, much like walls in the world outside, require demolition.  Have you ever watched the show Extreme Makeover Home Edition?  The first thing the team does is demolition… tearing down all of the old construction, all of the old walls, in order to make room for the new home that will better fit those who live there.

You need to do the same… those walls are from that other person, the one that you used to be, and any that you leave standing are going to impact the design of your new home, your new self.  As much as you can, wipe them all out… and any that you do leave standing, take a close look at them to make sure that you want that to be a part of who you are becoming.

One last thing before I go… remember that this new home you are building doesn’t have to be complete overnight.  You can lay the foundation, and then take your time on the framing, to make sure that everything is where you want it to be.  The finishing, like choosing what color to paint the walls, can be far down the road… you don’t have to hurry, it’s not for anyone but you.

Even if you don’t feel like you’re at the end of the line, take a look around at the home you have built for yourself… is it time for some remodeling?  You may even find that today is a good day for demolition day for you, too.

Have you been feeling lost lately?  Or maybe not quite lost, but adrift… not really knowing where you’re going, or even which direction?  You can even feel this way if you know where you want to go, but are at a loss for what to do right now to get there.

It’s easy to start feeling lost or adrift when you feel like you are being pulled in too many directions at the same time.  The feelings are a trap, too… easy to fall into but hard to escape.

So if you’re feeling that way right now, what do you do?  You could start by looking at your life as a boat.  If you are in a boat and drifting without direction, what do you do to stop yourself?  You drop anchor.

An anchor in your life serves the same function as an anchor in a boat… it holds you steady against the wind and the tides.  It is something solid that you can rely on when everything else seems untrustworthy.

Life anchors are often people… someone you can trust.  It could be your spouse, your parent, your brother or sister, or your best friend.  They can also be places, places to which you can run and feel safe, or even things… some people might have a locket, a lucky coin, or even have their car as their anchor.  It can even be an activity… some people can get lost (in the good way) in something they love to do.

No matter what your situation, there will always be something, or someone, around that you can use as an anchor.  Anchors only work, however, when you hold on to them… if you dropped an anchor over the side of the boat that wasn’t attached by rope or chain, it wouldn’t do much good.  You generally start to get lost, or drift, when you forget to hold on to your anchors, though sometimes it can be when one is yanked out from under you.

If you’re feeling lost right now, here are some concrete steps you can take to stabilize your life:

1. Focus On Where You Are Right Now
   

   One of the main causes of feeling lost is the feeling that you are being pulled in many directions at once.  You can combat this by concentrating on where you are right now, rather than where you are going.  It won’t cure your current state, but it can at least help you to keep it from getting worse.

2. Find An Anchor

   Once you are focused on where you are right now, look around you and find something that you can use as an anchor… find someone some thing, some place, or some activity that makes you feel safe.  Your anchor doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else, it just has to work for you.

3. Hold On To Your Anchor

   Once you’ve found your anchor, you have to hold on to it.  Life’s currents, the ups and downs that come constantly, can make you forget to hold on to your anchor.  As soon as you do that, though, you also start to find it harder and harder to hold steady on the course that you wish to follow.

4. Use Your Anchor

   Finding an anchor does no good if you don’t use it… spend time with that person, or in that place, or with that thing, and let yourself feel safe.  Once you feel safe, then you can start to let go of all the mental build up, slowing your wild swinging around.

5. Let Your Drifting Slow To A Stop

   Sometimes, when you feel progress, you want to just jump back out there and push ahead.  The same holds true with the feeling of being adrift… once you start to feel a little less stressed, you may feel the urge to push right back out.  That can be dangerous in the same way it’s dangerous to put too much weight on a recently broken bone… the surface may be healed, but it still may be a little weak underneath.  While I certainly don’t recommend that you spend the rest of your life hiding from, well, the rest of your life, I do recommend that you take the time to heal the damage that’s a little deeper, too.

I want to take a moment to reinforce the fact that your anchor doesn’t have to make sense as an anchor to anyone else… it’s about what works for you.  You may find something other people would consider bizarre that helps you… it could be a rusty nail, if that nail came from something important, or preparing meals for a crowd (working in a soup kitchen, for example).  As long as it gives you that feeling of safety and stability, even if it’s only so long as you’re doing it, holding it, or with that person, it can help.

It’s often easy to forget your anchors, or how important they are, too.  That’s a major reason relationships drift apart (see, the terminology is even the same)… the two people forget how important it is to spend time with each other, just using each other as an anchor… resting.   If you have a spouse, and they are NOT one of your anchors, you really need to work on your relationship.

You will, of course, want to reach out from your anchors, too.  But just like a routine makes you better able to appreciate and enjoy the exceptions, anchors help you to better reach out and move forward… you just have to remember to bring them with you.

When is the last time that you had real time off?  Real time off doesn't just mean time when you don't go into the office… it means time when you feel no rush to do anything, time when you feel like you can take time, and not in specified amounts, to do what you want to do.

Real time off means you don't have to go to the grocery store, or buy your kids clothes, or take them to practice, or fix something around the house (unless that's what you enjoy).  You don't have a vacation with a tight schedule, and for that matter, you don't really have any schedule at all… you truly have leisure time.

I can't really speak for ages past, but in the modern day, it seems to be harder and harder to disconnect and take time off from everything.  You have demands on your time coming from all sides… your job, your spouse, your kids, family, friends, people trying to sell you something.  It just never seems to stop.

You can, of course, make it stop.  Your time is your own… no one else can have any of it that you don't give them (short of kidnapping you).  It's all a matter of priorities… the higher on your priority list something is, the greater claims it can make on your time.

The problem is that we often forget to put ourselves on our priority list, or if we're there, we're way down near the bottom.  We need some of our own time, though.

When you don't get any of your own time, when it's all taken up by the demands of others, you begin to feel drained, and the longer it stays that way, the worse the drain is, until you feel absolutely empty inside, as if you were nothing but a shell.  The only way to get over that empty, exhausted feeling is to bump yourself all the way to the top of the priority list and take some time for you.

When you take this time, it doesn't mean you have to sit around and do nothing (although that's a valid choice, as long as it is a choice).  You can do anything you enjoy, just don't give yourself a set time limit… don't do something for just an hour, do it until that emptiness starts to fill, or hopefully fills completely, although that might take more than one time.

You can read, go fishing, play basketball, do something creative (write, paint, carve, etc.), or work on something that you enjoy.  The key is that it has to be something that you're doing just because you want to, just because you like to do it, not because you feel like it's something you have to do.

It also doesn't have to be alone, as long as having someone with you doesn't make you feel like the time is not your own any more.  In particular, I know that I can certainly feel like I have time of my own while still being with my wife.  That being said, I do occasionally enjoy some time that is just mine, with no expectations of me at all.

It's been a while for me since I had time that I felt was my own.  I've been working a lot of hours, and of course that leaves little time for taking care of all the other things that need taken care of in a life.  I think soon I may take the time to grab a pole, go out to a lake, and see if I can find some dinner.

And I think I'll give my wife some time off soon, too… I'll take care of the kids, and give her time to do whatever it is that she wants to do.

That's it… don't forget to put yourself on your priority list for your time.  You can thank me afterward  

When someone does something to you to intentionally hurt you, it can make it much worse than if they were to do the same thing accidentally.  When speaking of mental wounds, part of the reason for this is that you feel like there must have been something about you that made them want to hurt you.

That is almost never, quite possibly actually never, the real cause.  The real cause is nearly certain to be the internal pain that they feel from something in their own life… it could be something from early childhood, or it could be something from earlier today, but the desire to inflict pain on someone almost always originates from your own pain.

Think back to the last time you did something to intentionally hurt someone, even if it was very small.  What were you feeling at the time?  It wasn't sweet, sugary feelings of happiness and love, was it?

You may not have thought directly of pain… you may have been angry, or jealous, or some similar emotion.  Those feelings only come from pain, however… you don't get angry, for instance, without feeling that someone has done something wrong to you.

The same is true of others… no one truly does things just because they enjoy inflicting pain.  Even if it seems that way to them,  THAT feeling in turn is caused by some pain from their past.

That doesn't mean that their actions are justified, by any means… it's still wrong to hurt someone intentionally, regardless of how badly you've been hurt in the past.  Your own pain isn't a valid excuse for inflicting pain on others.

On the other hand, once you realize that the harm comes from the pain of another, it does make it far easier to forgive them, and somewhat easier to not take hurt from the actions in the first place, even when they are intended to cause pain.  It takes away their power, because you realize that they are attacking from a place of weakness, not a place of strength.

And it's amazing the amount of relief that you feel when you truly forgive someone… it takes a lot of energy to hold a grudge.

Try this, when you have a chance:  Think back to one of your hurts that you carry with you… it doesn't have to be a big one, but it could be if you choose.  Now think about the person who caused that hurt, and picture them as having done it because they were lashing out from their own pain (a feeling the vast majority of us are familiar with).  Let yourself feel that feeling, the conscious knowledge that you are saying or doing something you don't really mean because of your own hurt, and then understand that whatever they did came from a similar place, that they had just as hard a time controlling it.

It changes the way you feel about it a lot when you look at it that way, doesn't it?

As we go along through life, we will accumulate injuries, both mental and physical.  Some are minor, like stubbing your toe, and they heal quickly and easily, without any need for action on our part.  Others are major wounds, sometimes even requiring the assistance of others.

When it comes to physical wounds, the degree of attention needed is usually obvious, though even small injuries can get infected and cause serious problems if left untended.  The natural reaction is to do whatever is needed, to the degree needed, in order to take care of it.

Burying Our Mental Wounds 

With mental wounds, however, the immediate reaction is generally to bury it, with the depth we bury it being directly related to the depth of the injury.

We then leave these gaping wounds buried inside of us, under layers and layers of distractions meant to make us forget it's there.  And it often works… our conscious mind doesn't even remember the original injury.

The subconscious mind does, though.  And it acts upon it, influencing our conscious mind, making us feel certain ways in certain situations and draining our mental resources just to keep it from getting any worse.

If you accumulate enough of these wounds, buried deep enough to be below conscious level, it can completely drain you of your fire within, the fire that keeps you going, makes you passionate about the things you love, the fire that IS you.  When this fire flickers and fades, it can be very difficult to build back up.

And the thing is, your conscious mind knows that your flame is dying, and that knowledge hurts.  So it does what comes naturally, and finds yet more distractions, attempting to bury that pain as well, adding yet another leak to the fuel that keeps the fire burning.

All of these buried wounds aren't really "safe", either.  You may not think about them consciously, but things going on around you can still touch them, and cause them to flare up, making you hurt (without even knowing why, if it's buried deeply enough) and likely making you strike out at either yourself or others.

Much of the time this is undetectable from the outside.  People have no idea how badly you hurt, how weak that fire is flickering inside of you, and so they have no idea that you need help… even those closest to you.  They don't know why you lash out at yourself or them, but they still get hurt (even hurting yourself hurts those closest to you). 

So you are left hurting, maybe dying, inside and hurting those around you, particularly those who are closest to you, without even consciously knowing why, but either feeling guilty about it (which is yet another injury) or feeling nothing at all.  Because that's the final response to all the pain… shutting down all feelings, good and bad.

None of this sounds pleasant, even if you've already shut down your feelings… you still know, in the back of your mind, that you are hurt.  There is something you can do about it, though.

Dig Them Up

What you can do is peel back those layers, and bring the wound back to the surface.  It isn't painless… in fact, it usually hurts as bad or worse than when it first happened.  It's like pulling off a bandage that has gotten stuck in the wound… it's necessary, but it hurts.

Until you bring it back to the surface, though, you can't heal from it.  Even once you make the decision to start, you have to keep your mind from running back to the distractions, trying to avoid confronting the pain directly.

You may also find that your mind tries to divert you to smaller wounds, keeping you away from the thing that's really hurting you.  That's okay, you can deal with those in exactly the same way, and then there will be less distractions for the next time.

Heal Them

So, on to the actual "dealing with them" part… how do you go about healing the mental injuries, so that you stop bleeding away the fuel for your fire?   There are two ways… you can do it by yourself, or you can do it with the help of another.

1. DIY – Do It Yourself
   

   If you're going to try to do it on your own, the first thing you have to do is get rid of all the current distractions.  This involves finding a quiet place where you can be alone, with no interruptions.  Once you're there, close your eyes (having the lights low or our can help too, but isn't required) and breathe slowly and deeply… the slow part is just as important as the deep part.  Count your breaths… you'll need at least ten to start relaxing, and thirty is better.

   Now let everything that comes up go ahead and come up… don't try to stop thinking, or try to bury anything, just let it go.  Keep your breathing nice and slow, and all of your current distractions should come up, get the consideration they want from your conscious mind, and fade away.

   Once they are gone, you can get down to business.  You should know, consciously, at least one source of mental pain… so intentionally bring that pain up.  Let yourself fully feel the pain and whatever emotions go with it… any attempt to do anything else will interfere with your healing.  That pain is going to be there until you let yourself feel it all, and like a loan from a bank, it accumulates interest until you pay off the principal.

   That means that the longer you wait to deal with it, the more pain it's going to inflict… so don't give in and let yourself be distracted.  Just let yourself fully feel the pain, and as you do so, you'll be able to start letting that pain go.  It may take more than one time if the injury is deep enough… just deal with what you can for now, and come back to it in a few days (you need to give yourself some rest… healing old mental wounds is draining).

   You can repeat this process as much as you need… you may find some injuries heal more easily than others, being dealt with completely after one attempt, while others may take dozens of times.

   You shouldn't expect to be completely healed of all wounds in a week… this is more likely to be measured in years, and is something you're likely to continue to need as life goes on and you are wounded again.  You should, on the other hand, be able to feel progress after even just one time, as the weight of carrying all those old injuries is lightened.

2. Using The Help Of Another
   

   The first thing you need to do is to find someone whom you can trust, someone who won't judge you or criticize you for what you say.  This can be found in someone who does it professionally, a true friend, or, rarely, someone who simply wants to help.  Each type of person has their own advantages… a professional has experience, and so may be able to help you find things you didn't even know were bothering you, while a true friend understands what you're saying in reference to you specifically, and someone who simply wants to help… well, that just depends on who that person is.

   Once you find the person who is going to help you, you'll want to prepare similarly to when you are doing it yourself… find a quiet room, close your eyes, and take a few deep, slow breaths.  This will help to calm and relax you, allowing you to lower some of the walls that you normally have up, which effectively keep the pain inside.

   Again, like when you're doing it by yourself, you need to have a place and time when you can be free of interruptions… you don't want to be interrupted when the wound is wide open.  Once you have this place, start talking about what bothers you, mostly a free flow of consciousness… say whatever pops into your head.  The reason for this is that your mind will likely try to stumble around a bit, avoiding the real injury, until all of a sudden it pops out.

   It's likely that when it pops out, you'll even be surprised at what the real source of pain is.  Mostly, if something hurts enough, it's buried so deeply that you have no idea that it's there, let alone the source of your pain.  The free flow of consciousness allows your subconscious to pop this up from that level to the surface, where you can examine it and deal with it.

   When it comes up, let it bring all of the pain and darkness with it.  Let yourself feel all the negative emotions, and the pain, and let them run their course.  Once they are gone, you'll likely feel pretty drained, but you'll also feel like you've given up part of your burden.

Whichever way you choose to go, healing by yourself or healing with the help of another, if you keep it up, it gets easier as you go along, because your burden keeps getting lighter and lighter, and so you have more and more mental resources available to deal with the next (and any new) injury.

You'll also usually find that your life in general just seems better… you'll react more positively to almost everything.  The people around you will notice, too… the ones who are closest to you may even comment or ask what's changed.

Maybe you can even help them to start the process themselves… there are very few people out there who couldn't use some mental healing.