I went for a walk along the dyke a few days ago and I saw the plant (pictured above on the left) lying on the ground.  I stopped and picked it up (pictured above on the right). 

But I knew that it would fall down the next time the wind blew.  Why was that?  The plant was too top heavy and the roots were not strong enough or deep enough to keep it up. 

I thought how often that plant represents our own lives.  Too many of us have weak roots.  Our early childhood conditioning and/or negative things that have happened in our past do not give us the strength we need to withstand the problems and challenges that are part of everyday life. 

When the wind blows (problems arise) in our life, we are not strong enough to withstand them and we fall.  This can show up in many ways: any kind of addiction, including overeating (the drug of choice for many people), depression, anxiety, fears and phobias, self-defeating behaviors and attitudes.

Unlike this plant though, there is something we can do to strengthen our roots and rebuild our lives the way we want them to be.  The first thing we have to do is realize that we are responsible for the quality of our lives.  This is incredibly powerful because it means that we have the power to change what we don’t like. 

The most powerful tool I’ve ever found for digging out and eliminating the weak, damaged roots from the past and replacing them with strong, healthy roots that will support and sustain our growth is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). 

Just like I helped that plant to stand again (even if only for a short time), I can help you strengthen your roots and rebuilt your life the way you want it to be.  There is always hope!

What would you do if you woke up to find yourself being thrown out of an upstairs bedroom window?

We had the good (or bad) fortune to stay for four days at a beautiful condo right on Okanagan Lake at West Kelowna last week.  Unfortunately, there were three forest fires burning in the area at the time and many people around us were being evacuated.  We were not in any immediate danger but as we drove by one of the fires in the hills behind us, I looked up at the billowing mountain of smoke and had a memory flashback to an incident that had happened fifty-two years ago.

At the age of seven, I lived with my parents and five year old brother in an older two-story house in the small town of Kindersley, Saskatchewan.  My father was a train engineer and was away doing an overnight run one summer night.  I woke up to find  my mother had picked me up in her arms and was carrying me to the open bedroom window, where she tried to throw me out.  I kicked and screamed and held on for dear life, refusing to let go, even though she kept telling me too.  As a result of my frantic kicking, my bare feet hit the red-hot livingroom window and the sudden shock of the pain caused me to let go and I fell to the ground below.

Crying and standing there in my underwear, I walked from the front door to the back, expecting my mother and brother to come out the door.  Hearing a noise, I looked up and saw my brother falling to the ground.  Only he didn’t land on his feet.  He fell on his face, hitting a pipe with his nose and upper lip.  Then my mother, wearing only a slip, climbed out, holding onto the small box that held the electrical wires.  The box broke and she slid down the side of our stucco house.

By this time, I’d realized our house was on fire.  I could see the flickering red flames in the living room window and the smoke billowing out of both doors.

The neighbors quickly arrived with blankets.  While the firefighters chopped holes in the roof of our house, we were led away to have our wounds cared for.  Both of my feet were badly blistered, my brother’s face was so swollen he looked like a little boy pig and my mother’s side was badly scraped by the glass in the stucco wall.

For years, I used to tell people that it was my fault that my brother was so badly hurt.  I thought because I’d fought so hard to hang on to my mother’s arms, that she had thrown my brother head first so she wouldn’t have the same problem. 

 Many years later, the subject came up and my mother was there when I told my version of the story.  She snorted and asked: “Is that what you remember?”  She said she had done nothing of the kind.  She let my brother out of the window the same way she had me, but when he fell, he landed on the pipe and hurt his face.  I had always thought that I was responsible and felt guilty for the pain my brother experienced.

How many things do you believe that are not true?   How much guilt are you carrying needlessly?    Are there burdens that you are carrying that you don’t need to carry?

There is a video called “What the Bleep?! Do We Know Anyway?”   It is a wonderful video that demonstrates how we create our reality.  I encourage you to rent it from your local video store.  It is well worth watching.

I want to quote Dr. Andrew Newberg, an assistant professor in the dept. of Radiology at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and a staff physician in Nuclear Medicine.  Dr. Newberg’s research, which has been performed with the departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, has focused not only on specific disorders but also on various activation studies designed to show how brain function is associated with various mental states.

Here is what he had to say in the movie:

“We build up models of how we see the world outside of us.  And the more information we have, the more we refine our model, one way or the other.  Ultimately, what we do is tell ourselves a story about what the outside world is. 

Any information that we process, any information we take in from the environment is always colored by experiences that we had and an emotional response we’re having to what we’re bringing in.”

This is just another way of stating what was quoted in the last blog.  Shirley Macleane, the actress and author said: “We do not see the world as it really is.  We see it as we are.”

In the last few blogs, I have written about how we could develop negative emotional blocks from our parents, even if we had “perfect” parents.  However, how many of us had “perfect” parents?   I forget where I read this statistic, but one of the well known authorities suggested that 96% of people came from “dysfunctional” families.

Most of us had parents who may or may not have been doing their best, but it wasn’t very good.  After all, none of us were born with instructions on the best way to raise us.  Also, most of our parents had no experience or training on how to be good parents.

I remember when my first daughter was born.  I was 23 years old and a registered nurse.  I should have been very confident, but I was absolutely terrified.  Physically, I knew how to look after her but the awesome responsibility of having to care for such a completely helpless person 24/7 was overwhelming for me.

I heard one experienced father say:  “Before I was married, I had no children and six theories on how to raise them.  Now I have six children and no theories”. 

That was exactly my experience.  With our first child, I had no idea how to handle each age and stage that she went in to.  By the time I figured out how to handle it, she was out of that stage and into another. 

As the other children were born (five in six years, including one seriously handicapped child), I soon learned that each child was completely different.  What worked for one child, didn’t work for the next one. 

I spent most of those years, just trying to get through each day with some measure of peace and sanity.   The sad part is that I raised my children the way I was raised and how could I have done any differently.  I didn’t know any other way.  Just as my parents did before me, I did the best that I could with the level of knowledge and awareness I had at the time.

In my next blog, I will share some of my childhood experiences with you.  As you read them, you might relate to some of them.

I have been a registered nurse for over 30 years.  I am a part of the Western medical system.   But I have learned from my observations and my own personal experience that for the most part, Western medicine is very narrow minded in its approach to solving physical problems.

They think of the body as a bag of body parts and chemicals.  If you think that way, then the obvious cure would be found by using drugs or surgery.  Which is typical of Western medicine today.  This is not written as an absolute but a great majority of the time, when a person goes to see the doctor with a problem, they will leave with a prescription for a drug.

In many, many cases the drugs are not only not necessary, they can often be very harmful as well.  There are so many side effects with drugs and the more drugs you are taking, the greater the risk that the drugs will interact negatively with each other.

That is probably my greatest complaint with Western medicine.  They tend to just try to treat the symptoms instead of looking for the underlying cause of the symptoms.  I believe that is one of the reasons so few people actually get better.

Many people drink to relax and reduce their stress.  They feel better - temporarily. 

It’s interesting that we actually have a term for when it is socially acceptable to start drinking.  It is called “Happy Hour”.  That is usually after work, where overstressed and unhappy, unfulfilled workers can go to have a drink and forget their problems.

Of course, “Happy Hour” can be different times for different people.  Both of my parents died, from what I believe to be alcohol-related illnesses.  Their “Happy Hour” started at 3:00 and continued until they went to bed.

Unfortunately, all the alcohol consumption does is mask the stess.  It does’t solve the problem that caused the stress in the first place.  It just adds many other, often more severe problems that just increase the stress load.

Just as a side note, I am told that after an Alc0holic’s Anonymous meeting,  many of the people are smoking.  In a effort to stop drinking, they just change the addiction to something more socially acceptable – but they are still just trying to control the symptom of the stress instead of resolving the problem that is causing the stress!

This blog is for all women who are suffering from Christmas Stress.  Christmas is supposed to be and can truly be the most wonderful time of the year.  But unfortunately, for many people – especially women – it is not.  According to the Stress Level Charts, Christmas has a stress level of 15 out of a possible 100.

There are many reasons for this.  If you are already feeling stressed with the every day load of time, money and energy commitments you are trying to balance, the extra demands of Christmas can be truly overwhelming!

What are the extra demands of Christmas?
Read the rest of this entry »

Probably the most important step in reducing your stress about a potential natural disaster: flood, fire, earthquake, tsunami, tornado, hurricane, or whatever, is to first identify what it is you are stressing about.

Sounds pretty basic, doesn’t it?  But you would be amazed how many people have not done that.  Why?  Because, as I wrote earlier, when people are in Stress Mode, they are not thinking.  They are just reacting. Read the rest of this entry »

Once you have physically prepared for a potential natural disaster, like a flood, earthquake, fire, tsunami, earthquake, tornado, or whatever, then you just have to wait. This is the killer for most people.

Just like my older friend, who sat by the kitchen window, watching the river – day in and day out; people worry about what is going to happen and how it will affect their lives. This is what is so emotionally draining for so many people: not knowing WHEN or even IF! If you know for certain, then you can prepare and get on with your life.

THE GREAT UNKNOWING CAN BE DEVASTATING ! Read the rest of this entry »

Although we can be given warning of a potential natural disaster (like a possible flood for those of us in the Fraser Valley),  or a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, tsunami, fire, etc. none of us really KNOW when it could or even, IF it will happen.

SO HOW DO WE PREPARE? Read the rest of this entry »