Go Gently...Please

Now is a time to go gently with yourself and with others.   Now is the time for love, for generosity, for kindness and compassion – toward all beings, including you!  It is the time to care deeply.  It is NOT the time to judge, shame, or condemn others.  I see the temptation and suspect it’s going to get stronger as we grow more impatient, frustrated, and weary.  And so, I plead with you, please, please be gentle… 
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March 11th, just a little over 3 weeks ago, marks the day our world changed forever.  It was not long ago at all and yet it feels like a lifetime ago… we got the call that morning telling us that the mighty Mom Klein had died.  We visited our son (2 days before visits were shut down for the foreseeable future), grateful we could deliver this news in person and share our tears, love, and hugs.  I went out to lunch with my sister at a local restaurant and enjoyed a nice meal, and probably another hug or two. 

March 12th – with a growing sense of things quickly spinning into something unknown and foreign, I did a radio show with Lori and Keith from Recovery Coach University Radio.  With a heightened sense of awareness, we did wipe all the equipment and surfaces with Clorox wipes and mostly kept our distance, but we didn’t yet get how serious this was.  We joked about the toilet paper hoarding and shook our heads in confusion… and just to be safe, on the way home, I bought two packs.  We affirmed and were relieved by my younger son’s decision to cancel his trip to Florida for Spring Break, even though he is young and healthy… already it felt like the unquestionably right call.  Just days earlier I had told him I thought they’d be fine to go… 

Things were changing and happening so rapidly and have been ever since.  I feel like I’ve been caught in a whirlwind… internally and externally.  A blur of news updates, of emails advising of extra precautions being taken which rapidly morphed into “We are closed until further notice…”  Cancellations, closures, schools switching to online learning,… more and more erasures in the planner of all the trips, appointments, and events I had coming up.  April went from one in which I would barely be home to one in which I will only be home, with no plans. Each day brings with it a swirl of thoughts and feelings as I try to magically predict when this will all be over, fall into despair, perk up at a story of goodness – living within the chaos of it all. 

It’s a lot.  We must be gentle. 

There has been so much letting go… of classes, appointments, events, routines, regular support, fun times with others, contact with loved ones.  And, in all this letting go, we are all feeling the weight of uncertainty.  Those words “until further notice” land with a dark and ominous tone. They remind us that life is always uncertain – we just usually pretend it isn’t.  Somehow it feels extra uncertain right now with so many things being disrupted all at once.  The fear is palpable as this invisible antagonist sweeps around the world.  As we take in the death tolls, we are faced with our own immortality and the truth that one day those we love will also die.  We hope it won’t be alone. 

We are ordered to shelter in place, to self-quarantine, or to PAUSE as our NY Governor has called it.  For a moment we imagine all that we’ll get done in this time when busy-ness is taken away.  But then we feel the weight of it all, and we are reminded of how exhausted we are and that stress takes a toll on everything.  We are brought to our knees as we are forced to confront what is truly essential.  To re-prioritize our lives – what really matters?  Health.  Relationships.  Life.  Love.  Kindness. Compassion. Generosity.

All these free offerings??  They are oh so tempting to someone with Bright Shiny Object Syndrome, like moi!  The urge to fill in all that usually coveted white space is strong, and I catch myself mindlessly signing up, saying “yes, please distract me from the here and now…”  Nature abhors a vacuum, and apparently so do I.  Until I reality check and realize my bandwidth is not as wide as my white space – it’s actually much, much less than before. 

I remember to be gentle with myself. 

I don’t need to do all the things – only those that will really nourish me.  I only need to be on the calls with people and in groups that feel supportive.  I can skip the rest.  This might not be the time to learn a new skill or to focus on business.  This might be a time when less really is more.  I want to do more less! 

Over the past few weeks it has been easy to let this ever-present concern consume us.  It’s been easy to get obsessed even when we didn’t intend to.  Even if you don’t watch the news (which I don’t generally), the news is everywhere…social media posts, headlines of breaking news at the top of my email inbox and within every single email that comes in it’s there… Coronavirus… COVID-19. We need to be informed, but we don't need to be flooded with input.  It's too much to digest. 

We see the inherent inter-connectedness of all beings and this both terrifies and empowers us.  We are reminded that viruses don’t respect borders, oceans, or walls. 

We find ourselves reeling as we ride the roller coaster of emotions in this human experience – feeling our own and the collective fear, overwhelm, sadness, dread, and grief while also being uplifted and inspired by the many acts of compassion, caring, kindness, love, and generosity.  This time bringing out the best and the worst in us. 

It’s a lot. 

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Submitted by Barb Klein, LifeResults volunteer and founder of Inspired Possibility

Replace Self Doubt with Self Compassion

Self doubt creeps in all the time, it's very sneaky. For me, one of the ways I notice that I'm experiencing self doubt is that I feel guilty or inadequate. Or feeling guilty because I feel inadequate. What I need in these times is self compassion. But how do you replace self doubt with self compassion?

Today I was feeling guilty because I was tired. Dog tired. Struggling to drag myself off the couch to make breakfast tired. The story I was telling myself was that I'm being a bad mom and not even taking care of myself. I told myself I was giving in to being tired and not squeezing every last second of free time with my daughter. I wasn't feeding us on time. I wasn't keeping us to a schedule. I didn't have anything fun planned for us in the morning. I wasn't even going to make it to the grocery store to pick up eggs for the week before lunch.

In my sleepy haze, I was searching for the reasons I was tired. Trying to combat the guilt and self doubt with reasons to excuse the exhaustion. And then I remembered I don't need a reason to be tired. Sometimes we are tired, and that's ok. Sometimes we need more rest and that's what we need, no reasons necessary.

Then I asked myself if the self doubt was true. Is it true that I'm a bad mom? No. Is it true that I wasn't taking care of myself? No. I found a way to get some rest while my kid played safely in the baby-proofed living room. Is it true that I need to spend every spare second of free time staring at my child and trying to engage with them? Definitely not. We ate, we played, I didn't nap the whole day away. I got the rest I needed and took care of us, too.

When self doubt creeps in, there are several ways to notice it and take away its power. These are ways we talk to ourselves in our heads. These are also ways we talk about ourselves out loud, phrases we use all the time. Here are some tricks and phrases to replace self doubt with self compassion.

1. Replace "I don't" and "I'm not good at" with "I haven't" or add "yet" to the end of your sentence.

   Whether spoken aloud or in your mind, this alleviates the pressure of not being perfect. If you're thinking of trying something new, "yet" can give you a mental boost to help you get started.

2. Replace "you" and "one" with "I" when speaking about your own experiences. 

   Taking ownership of your experiences and emotions with first-person speech is empowering. 

3. Replace "try" with "will do" or "I can commit to" for a realistic view of commitments.

   No one likes feeling like they let someone down. I don't like feeling like I let myself down. Gain confidence by keeping commitments, starting with realistic goals and expectations.

4. Replace "should" with "want" or "need."

   A dear friend once told me "don't should on yourself" when she heard my self doubt bubbling up. Actually, you don't have to should anything. Stop, go back, and replace the sentence with "want" or "need" to see if it's true without any guilty feeling. "I should go to the store." "I want to go to the store..." no, I don't want to right now. "I need to go to the store..." yes, but it's not immediate and can wait until later.

5. Replace guilt and shame statements with the truth.

   Challenge feelings of guilt and shame, like I did in this example above, by asking if they're true. It's very likely that they're not true and your inner voice is being mean to you. Be nice to yourself by thinking of all the reasons it is NOT true. You can even write them down.

Submitted by Camille Zess, LifeResults board member