The other day I saw a man standing in the Fraser River with the cold water up to his groin.  I shuddered just looking at him.  He said that the hip-waders he was      wearing kept out some of the cold and the rest he ignored.  He told me that he loved fishing and would stand there for hours at a time, just casting out the fishing   line and then reeling it in again.

Personally, I can’t imagine anything more boring, but I know that thousands of people love it.  I asked him why he did it.  He replied that he liked to fish where there weren’t a lot of people (I guess that was my hint that he wanted to be left alone).  He said that fishing was very restful and stress-reducing for him.

I thought about what I like to do that was quiet and restful – and stress reducing.  As a Stress Relief Coach, I know lots of tips and techniques to reduce stress, but it was the “quiet” part that I pondered about. 

I love to read and watch movies but even though I may be resting physically, I’m still being stimulated by what I’m reading or watching.  It is not really “quiet” time.

I guess that for me, my ”quiet” time is when I go for walks by myself in nature.  I especially love to walk on the dyke along the Fraser River.  It is so beautiful everywhere I look.  On one side is the river and on the other is the valley, with its farms and fields. All around me are the mountains, lorded over by Mount Baker. 

I used to listen to music or motivational talks when I walked but I don’t any more.  When your mind is being stimulated by music or someone speaking, there is no time to just think and feel. 

This is my quiet time.  When I walk, I look and listen and ponder and pray and just allow myself to be.  I have learned to carry my camera with me because I am always amazed at what I see on my walks and the lessons about life I learn while I am out there.

If you are feeling really stressed, maybe one of the reasons is that you are not giving yourself some “quiet” time.   Try it and let me know how you feel.

I have always liked snails.  I love the colors and shapes of their shells.  The other day when I was walking along the dyke by the Fraser River in Mission, BC there were dozens of snails along the path. 

As I looked at them, I realized an interesting thing.  The snails inside their shells probably thought they were  hidden away and safe.  But they were going nowhere and not only that, they were in danger of  being stepped on and killed!  The snails who had the courage to come out of their shells were moving – off the path and towards the grass.  In the grass, they would be safer and they would also have access to food.

I thought of how much we could learn from the snails.  How many of us are stuck in our “safe” routine, doing the same thing we’ve been doing for years?  We may not be happy or fulfilled but we are safe.  But are we really?  Someone once said that if you stay stuck in a rut, it becomes your grave.  We have to have the courage to leave our shell, stick our neck out and move.

I heard a minister say that the saddest thing about a funeral was not the death of the body.  It was the death of all the dreams.  Is there something that you have always wanted to do?  Are you doing anything about it?  You might not be able to do the whole thing, but are you doing anything to fulfill that dream? 

If you’re not, what kind of a snail are you?

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!

I was given a wonderful gift today!  I was invited to attend a a First Nation’s (Indian) Medicine Wheel ceremony.  I had no idea what to expect and was a little unsure of my welcome because I wasn’t native. 

When I arrived, the person who had invited me wasn’t there (she actually didn’t come for another two hours) but I was warmly welcomed and immediately included in the circle of people sitting together under the canopy (it was cloudy, cool and threatening rain).  When I looked around, I relaxed immediately because at least half, if not more of the people were not native.

I learned that a true Medicine Wheel lasts for several days instead of the one day event I was at and the whole theme is tied to nature.  The Wheel itself is divided into four parts: earth, air, fire and water and a great  reverence and gratitude  is shown for the blessings we receive from nature.

I wasn’t able to stay for the whole day and won’t go into all of the details but everybody in the circle spoke at least twice.  There were a couple of quotes made by different people in the group that impressed me. 

1.  Freedom is doing what you want to do but liberty is doing what is right.

2.  The greatest religion is a religion of love and prayer is the language of your heart.

One thing that each person did was bring a stone, which could be used in one of two ways.  It could be used as a prayer stone where you would instill into the stone what your desire was.  The other way is a profoundly useful tool for reducing stress.  You could instill all of your anger or pain from an experience into the stone.  When everyone was  ready, the stones were buried in the ground around the medicine wheel.  This could be symbolic of eliminating the pain from your own body and spirit and burying it forever.

I hope that I have understood and translated what I saw and heard today correctly.  If I haven’t, please reply and correct me.  I only had a taste of what I thought was a very moving, special experience today.  I believe that truth and beauty can be found in all religions and beliefs. 

I also believe in the importance of creating memories and grabbing opportunities when they come.  In the end, that is all we have is the memories of what we’ve experienced in our lives.  I don’t want to get to the end of mine having regrets for lost opportunities to learn, grow, experience and touch other’s lives for good.

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?

We have created an internal map of what we think reality is.  We create this map as we grow up, in such a way that we can feel the greatest amount of safety – usually within our family situation.

According to Bill Harris of the Centerpointe Institute, “In your map you might, for instance, suppress certain feelings or aspects of yourself because it wasn’t safe to express them while you were growing up. As an adult, though, you might find that certain areas of your map don’t work very well – they don’t serve you as well as they did when you were a child, when you were small and powerless and your situation was different.”

Although at the time, it was the right choice because it kept us alive, it may no longer be serving us for our best good.  These suppressed, internalized negative emotions can lead to all kinds of inappropriate coping or stress distraction activities: sex, alcohol, drugs, T.V., music, food, sports, negative attitudes, computers, video games, sleeping, reading, anger, dissasociation, sickness, injury, illness, etc.

Do some of the things on the above list surprise you?  Too much of anything, even good things, can be a bad thing.

Do you want to know what causes stress or why you have the life stress that you’re experiencing? 

This simple formula might be helpful:         EVENT + PERCEPTION

You  start with an Event, which is neutral; it is neither good or bad.   You then filter it through your Mental Perception filter to compare it with everything that has ever happened before in your life (whether you remember it or not).  Based on your past experiences, you will then assign your own meaning to the Event.

In order to create a Negative Emotional Hook or make the Event be a stressor in your life, you have to add Intense Emotion.   So the formula then becomes:            EVENT + PERCEPTION + INTENSE EMOTION

Here is an example of how a negative emotional hook could be created.  Suppose you’re walking down the street as a small child and a snarling dog lunges at you.  The snarling dog lunging at you is the Event.  You think that you are in danger.  That is your Perception.  You instantly go into the Fight or Flight Survival Response.  Your heart is pounding and you feel Fear.  That is the Intense Emotion.

You have now created a “Negative Emotional Hook”.  From that moment on, every aspect of the event: every sensory perception – what you saw, heard, touched, tasted, smelled and most importantly, what you felt, has been hardwired into your nervous system.  And because it has been hardwired using your Survival back brain, you can’t process it logically through your thinking brain.

So the formula then becomes:                                                                                                                                                                   EVENT + PERCEPTION + INTENSE EMOTION = NEGATIVE EMOTIONAL HOOK!

Each time you experience anything at all similar, whether real or imagined, you will fire off the whole sequence of negative conditioned reactions that were part of your survival response the first time the snarling dog lunged at you – even if the original incident has long been forgotten.  If you just think about it, you will have the same physical and emotion reaction.  Remember that the mind cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined.  It will always react as if it were a real threat. 

From then on, no matter how old you are or how long ago the Event happened, any time you are exposed to anything that is anything like the Event, you will automatically revert to the Emotional age and stage you were at when the Event first happened.  You may have been five when it happened and you are fifty-five now, but you will think, feel and react the way you did when you were five – if you have not eliminated this Negative Emotional Block that was conditioned into your system.

So what are the possible results or consequences of a Negative Emotional Hook?

Depending on the person involved, the key byproduct of this Event could be:

a)  a Mental Block – a limiting belief like: “I don’t like dogs” or “animals are vicious”, etc.

b) an Emotional Block – anxiety attack: “I hate/fear dogs, animals, walking outside, sudden movement, etc.

c) a Physical Block – “I have a headache, backache, etc.  I guess I can’t go for a walk.

Or All Three!

Now we used a snarling dog, which created a fear of dogs as an example. But the same process applies to any experience that creates any kind of limiting behavior or belief.  The best way that I have found to eliminate these Negative Emotional Blocks has been Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).

I would like again to quote Dr. Joseph Dispenza, from the video “What the Bleep?! Do We Know Anyway?”  Dr. Dispenza specializes in neurology, neurophysiology and brain function.

Dr Dispenza said that “there is a part of the brain called the hypothalamus.  The hypothalamus is like a little mini factory.  It is a place that assembles certain chemicals that match certain emotions that we experience.  Those particular chemicals we call peptides.  They are small chain amino acid sequences.

In the hypothalamus, we take small chain proteins called peptides and we assemble them into certain neuropeptides or nerve hormones that match the emotional states that we experience on a daily basis.  So there are chemicals for anger and there are chemicals for sadness.  There are chemicals for victimization and there are chemicals for lust.  There is a chemical for every emotional state that we experience.

The moment we experience that emotional state in our body or in our brain, the hypothalamus will immediately assemble the matching neuropeptide (nerve hormone) that is then released through the pituitary into the bloodstream.”

What does this mean to us?  It means that our body physically responds to the emotions that we are feeling and it responds instantly.  It also means that we interrupt these chemical reactions by changing the way that we are feeling.  The best way that I have found to do that is by applying the powerful stress-reducing tool of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).

What is the real cause of our stress?  It is our mental model of the world, based on our values, beliefs and early childhood conditioning.

Dr. Newberg, associated with the hospital at the University of Pennsylvania, has focused his research on various activation studies  designed to explore how brain function is associated with various mental states.

Quoting Dr. Newberg: 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 that we take in from the environment is always colored by experiences that we had and an emotional response we’re having to what we are bringing in.

Shirley MacLaine, the actress and author, says the same thing:  We do not see the world as it is.  We see the world as we are.

Last, I do not know who said this but I believe it is true.  “I would not have seen it if I didn’t believe it.”

So how can we apply this information to our own lives?  We can look at the our life that are stressful to us by taking a life stress test.  Go to www.SherylStanton.com/life-stress-test.html

Then we can decide to do something to reduce  it. www.SherylStanton.com