possibility – in thriver words

Free Your Mind

“Free your mind and the rest will follow.” ¹

Remember that song, “Free Your Mind” from the 1990s? It’s seared into my memory by a moment on the dance floor. I looked to my right and grooving to En Vogue as if she had not a care in the world was a woman about to go on trial for killing her husband. I knew her from the pictures that were plastered on the front of my newspaper every day. I felt shocked, amazed, and somehow challenged/inspired. Even if she was innocent, how could she possibly feel free enough to fully enjoy that moment?

I’ve come back to this question from time to time in the ensuing decades. I inherently understand that no matter what has happened or what other people think, my thoughts are mine. And I’m happy letting my mind roam free. But understanding on a deeper level why she could dance freely in a situation in which I would be more likely to hide requires an exploration of the emotions, training, and thinking that limit me.

Exploring these has led me to some thoughts on how can freeing your mind improve your life. Here are a few:

You cannot control anyone but yourself.

The dancing alleged murderer could not control the crime investigation, the newspaper reports, her employer (who fired her the minute she was arrested without waiting to see if she was guilty), or any of us on the dance floor. She could only control herself.

Attempting to impose limits on someone else so that they will conform to you is futile. When you change yourself, everything around you will shift. Sometimes this may be joyfully in the direction you desire. Other times it will be painful. I witnessed a moment of joy on that dance floor. No matter what my training said about an alleged criminal enjoying life with abandonment, that moment was inspiring.

For everything you think you know about someone, you don’t know much unless you’re willing to invest.

So often we make choices based on people’s outward presentation. This limits our choices for friendships, romantic partners, employees, and caregivers. The caregiver who treats you with kindness, gentleness, affection, and respect may use bad grammar or vote for another political party. The well-read, well-spoken, impeccably dressed professor may beat his wife.

My parents greatly diverged in their understanding of this concept. Very few of my dad’s friends were acceptable to my mother. They were mostly what you’d call colorful characters that brought him laughter, adventure, and intellectual stimulation. My mother preferred socially acceptable appearance above all else. She missed many opportunities for expanding her thinking and enriching her life even within our extended family.

Free your mind to visualize.

When you learn to waterski, you also learn to fall. If you can’t get the falling out of your mind, you won’t get it out of your muscle memory. We accept that many sports require conquering the mind game. Life in general is no different. And just like you can improve your basketball shot by visualizing, you can improve your chances of becoming successful at any goal using the same technique.

I’m not saying that visualization will suddenly make me a great basketball player, but unless I can see the possibility of becoming one, I’m doomed before I start. Many of us have learned how to visualize failure.

Most limits are self-imposed.

If your initial response to this statement is a four-letter word, that’s not surprising. It’s more enticing to believe that we are limited by outside forces. It is a fact that outside forces affect us and may change the options, but they limit us less than we believe they do. When we let go of the idea that outside forces control our fate, we are required to face our own demons.

Taking responsibility for our limiting thoughts and behavior is much more emotionally difficult. It may require processing through anger, grief, and loss. It may require a shift in self-image. It will require some decisions that don’t feel good. Letting go of self-imposed limits is not easy, but to the degree it’s hard it’s also healing and rewarding.

Flip the script.

If you understand the value of freeing your mind but aren’t sure how to start seeing the possibilities, try flipping the script. For example, instead of imagining only how awful you’ll feel if you don’t get the job you really want, imagine how great you’ll feel when you do. Don’t stop there. Imagine days, months, and years filled with excitement and fulfillment. Hold onto those thoughts and feelings until you feel a shift from anxiety to confidence.

It is at that moment that the world of possibilities will open. You don’t need that particular job anymore. You want it, but it’s not the only gig in the world worth having. There are millions of opportunities. When your mind is free to embrace all the options, you’ll be free to see abundance instead of scarcity.

It’s not mind over matter.

For some this will work differently. If you have experienced significant trauma, you may need to free your body before you can free your mind. The two are significantly intertwined. There’s nothing wrong with this and there are great tools to help – somatic experiencing therapy, EMDR, and yoga for trauma are all great options for helping your body release so your mind can follow.

Another benefit of freeing your mind is problem solving will get easier. There are multiple solutions to any problem that presents itself. An open mind makes it possible to imagine creative and innovative approaches. Easier problem solving alone is a great reason to free your mind!

I’ll just dance my way out now.

https://www.kheljournal.com/archives/2015/vol1issue6/PartB/1-5-77.pdf

http://www.cooking2thrive.com/blog/preparation-healing-manage-expectations/

Focus on What You CAN Do

Balance what you can’t do by shifting to focus on what you can do. Right now, there are so many things we can’t do. We can’t go to work. We can’t sit in our favorite restaurant or even take our laptop to Starbucks for some people watching. We can’t have a birthday party. We can’t get always get the food we want, the laundry detergent we prefer, or toilet paper at all. It’s legitimately frustrating and can lead to a pattern in which we get caught in a loop of negativity.

This is a challenge that’s faced during normal times by those of us who have to restrict our diets in certain ways to feel good and be healthy. That too is legitimately frustrating. The key to avoiding consistent low level anger and stress in both situations is to balance what you can’t do by shifting to focus on what you can.

I love puzzling through problems. When I have a computer issue, I get so caught up in the steps of trying a solution and observing the response that I lose track of time. Hours can pass before I remember to get up and move around.

It’s not that the problem doesn’t irritate me. It’s not that I’m happy that I can’t get my work assignments done. But I also recognize that my mind is invigorated by troubleshooting and I am usually successful!

Conquering the machine is a great feeling! That’s what I choose to focus on when a computer problem arises. And if I can’t directly solve the problem, I look for a work around. That’s another invigorating puzzle.

My grandmother used to say, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” While that’s a pretty gruesome visual, I took the message to heart. Any time I feel stuck, I repeat that to myself. When I can’t immediately see an alternative, I walk away from the problem and do laundry or dishes or file the papers on my desk–something to keep my hands busy and let my mind wander.

Before you know it, an idea will pop into my head. If that option doesn’t work, at least I know I had an idea. If I had one, I bet I can have another one. Before you know it, I’m in a spiral of ideas that are moving me forward! I get caught in a pattern of positivity.

I’m certainly not immune to the feelings of anger, sadness, and loss that come with giving up what was or how I want things to be. I struggle and fill my friends’ ears full sometimes. I try to be aware enough to make sure that’s part of the process of letting those feelings move through and out rather than a way to wallow.

The past month has presented an ever-growing list of things we can’t do. The upcoming months will present more. Accepting that reality while holding the idea in our minds that there will be other things, perhaps that we’ve never considered, that we CAN do is the key to keeping us from a cycle of negativity. My intention for this week is to be mindful and put my focus on what I can do.

So I’ll end with the obvious questions this brings. What can I do? What can you do?

5 Hard Questions that Can Save a Life (and Spare Some Pain)

Try It, You’ll Like It!

You may remember the phrase from 1970s Alka-Seltzer commercials, “Try it, you’ll like it!” The urban dictionary defines it as a lie your parents tell you, especially about food. It’s the theme of the Dr. Seuss book, “Green Eggs and Ham”. Around here, it usually follows me telling Ben about a new recipe and him responding, “That sounds terrible!” (A guarantee, by the way, that it will be delicious.)

One night a few years ago, I made a salad topped with Mandarin oranges. Ben popped one in his mouth and said, “Oh, that’s good. I never knew these were so good!” I was confused. I replied, “Ben, I sent those in your lunch box to school every day and you always ate them.” He said, “No, I used to open the container & throw them in the trash or trade them for chips.” Really? For YEARS I sent Mandarin oranges in Ben’s lunch every single day because I thought he loved them. Apparently, he’d never even tried them. All I could do was laugh.

Sometimes we have preconceived notions about a food whether we’ve eaten it or not. We may not like the way it looks or smells. We may not like the way its name sounds. Rutabaga isn’t particularly audibly appetizing to me. But the only way to know whether I will like the way it tastes is, in fact, to try it. This can be a real obstacle for a child newly diagnosed with Celiac Disease who may believe all gluten-free food is gross.

It’s true that there are many gluten-free packaged foods that taste unpleasant, and a few bad experiences can even make an adult skeptical. I took some cookies to a Final Four party the other night. Of course, I advertised them as gluten-free. While this appealed to a couple whose son is gluten-intolerant, everyone else was immediately hesitant to try them. Mind you, these were homemade oatmeal cookies fresh out of the oven, not something odd and unheard of. I watched the crowd tentatively view the pan until finally one person tried a cookie and eagerly finished it. The ice was broken. By the time the evening ended, only a couple of cookies were left. Thank goodness for that first adventurous taster.

If you are the parent of a gluten-intolerant child, an adventurous approach to avoiding gluten may be the greatest gift you can give him. Playfully sampling new foods, trying new recipes, and expanding her food vocabulary will help your child feel like the choices are abundant and fun to make. She may not be able to eat a traditional croissant, but the world is still her oyster.

Delicious, kid friendly, and gluten-free doesn’t have to mean expensive, difficult, and time consuming. This Cooking2Thrive recipe can be made with ingredients available at any grocery store. In fact, you may already have all the ingredients in the pantry. If so, grab a kid and have him bake you these cookies:

PB & J Cookies

About 25 cookies

Baking parchment
1 cup sugar
1 cup natural crunchy peanut butter (peanuts & salt)
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1 1/2 tbsp Concord grape jelly
Water

Preheat oven to 350º. Line cookie sheet with baking parchment.

In medium bowl, combine sugar, peanut butter, salt, and egg. Mix well, then stir in jelly. Form dough into small balls approximately 1 inch in diameter. Place balls on cookie sheet about 2 1/2 inches apart.

Put water in a small cup. Dip a fork in the water and use it to press each ball flat, then press each ball with the fork a second time at a 90º angle to the first pressing.

Bake for 10 – 12 minutes. Remove parchment to cooling rack and cool for 5 minutes, then remove cookies from parchment directly onto rack to continue cooling. Serve.
pbj
Helping prepare recipes like this can be a mind opening experience for your child. Once he has prepared and sampled a delicious gluten-free cookie, he still may not be convinced each time you say, “Try it, you’ll like it!”, but he’ll be much more likely to feel good about adhering to the diet that makes him healthy.

When you keep an open mind and adventurous approach, your gluten-intolerant child will learn to see possibility and abundance rather than deprivation and restriction in the words gluten-free. That makes me feel better. How about you?

What is the Best Thing about a White Christmas?

This morning, I’ve been looking out the window at the 10 inches of snow that fell on Christmas. It is beautiful. The branches on my elm tree are sparkling in the sunlight. The streets are quiet because we have no snowplows in the south so most people are staying home. I feel relaxed because I don’t have to hurry to get ready and get out the door to get to the office by a certain time. In fact, I feel like I’m able to move at my own pace instead of at the pace of someone else’s expectations.

Is that it? Is it that the snow frees us from the usual expectations, takes away the pressure of rushing around to accomplish the too many tasks of our over-scheduled lives, and allows us to move at the pace we determine is correct to meet our immediate needs?

Is it the quiet that comes from the soft snow cushion that muffles sound, plus less traffic noise, and no airplanes passing overhead? Is it the beauty of the snow’s changing reflection of light that keeps pulling us into the moment?

All of these questions have run through my head as I’ve relished the quiet peacefulness of the day, lingered over coffee, left the TV off, and wiggled contentedly under the blanket covering my legs. I feel less pressured, more peaceful, and more connected to the being of life rather than the activities of life. I am able to continually watch the light changing on the snow and stay right here in the moment.

It is as if the veil that clouds life’s possibilities has been lifted and I am free to explore what I want right this minute. I don’t have to try to get around to seeing my options once I’ve met everyone else’s deadlines (a time I know will not come before I’m too exhausted to care). I can stay in, or bundle up and go out. I can shovel my walk, or see how many funny looking footprints I can make. I can cook brownies and then cake and then the bread that has been rising to the warmth of the oven vent. There’s plenty of time for the bread to rise twice without me having to plan ahead. I can put on make-up or I can skip a shower. I can read a book, organize photos, meditate, do yoga, or just sit quietly and be with myself.

This is the kind of day I want to have every day – the kind in which I’m present in the moment, open to the possibilities, and deliberate in the activities I choose. For me, such a day always begins with stillness and quiet. That’s the very best thing about a White Christmas – beauty that keeps me focused in the moment, and the blank slate created by a blanket of stillness and quiet. It is from this place that all good things begin.

“Free your mind and the rest will follow.” 1

“Free your mind and the rest will follow.” ¹