25 Ways to Relax in Under a Minute

Taking care of yourself equals receiving the care and love of your higher power. Self care is imageGod’s love, pure and simple. Your creator does not need or want you to feel all beat up, bent out of shape and burnt out. Your creator wants you to feel rich, lovable, fulfilled and loved. This is where your strength and comfort come from.

The hardest times to do self-care are when you’re beset by life’s unavoidable obligations, trials and tribulations. Try one of these when you’re so overwhelmed you feel you can’t possibly take more than a minute.

  1. Brush your hair
  2. Pull up your socks and tie your shoes
  3. Wash your hands sloooowly after using the loo; revel in the hot soapy water
  4. Splash cool water on your face; blot ever so gently
  5. Take a long, slow drink of water. Keep a water bottle nearby for this
  6. Look around the room and pick out everything that’s your favorite color
  7. Raise your shoulders up to your ears. Hold to the count of 30, then drop them. Repeat
  8. Send someone a little “thinking of you” text or email
  9. Lightly run your hairbrush over the tender inside of each arm and give yourself a chill

10. Read a page in a meditation book you keep near your work station just for that purpose

11. Call your BFF and ask permission to work just a little bit not-so-hard. I promise she’ll give it to you.

12. Pray this three times to yourself: “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”

13. See how many things you can write in a minute that you’re grateful for

14. Stare out the window. Set a timer. Find one at http://www.online-stopwatch.com/countdown-timer/  I dare you!

15. Make a list of what you’ll do with your first million.

16. Pray the Serenity Prayer a few times: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Or another favorite prayer or inspirational verse. You might like to memorize one or two at a more relaxed time for this purpose. I often use the 23rd Psalm. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+23&version=KJV

17. Stop. Breathe. Wait. Tell yourself, “There is nothing in front of me that’s life or death.” (Unless, of course there is. In which case, put this blog down and  go to it!)

18. Consider the importance to life of marshmallow peeps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAUUL-Ypdu8

19. Repeat to yourself: I am enough, I have enough, I do enough.

20. Reach your arms around yourself and give yourself a big hug!

21. Take off your shoes and assuage your arches

22. Think of a friend who’s struggling and send her some good vibrations

23. Think of someone who’s on your last nerve, like your boss or your teenage son, and pray, “Bless him. Bless me.” Repeat.

24. Stand up. Reach up. Streeetch as tall as you can. Lean to left. Lean to the right. Streeeetch!!!!

25. Forward this list to someone who might need it! Pat yourself on the back for doing a good deed. Feel better!!!!!

Find more self-care, self-loving guidance in my book The Hungry Ghost: How I Ditched 100 Pounds and Came Fully Alive. Find more inspirational suggestions in other blogs at gayedelman.com. You can also sign up to receive the blog as an email newsletter.

Some Thoughts on Desire

Is desire bad? Some religious and spiritual teachings seem to say it’s how individuals and communities get themselves into trouble.

But even some religious leaders have said we need desire. Desire is part of who we are as humans. It is part of our motivation to do the good that we do, as well as the bad.

As a deeply, wildly, intensely passionate person, I think about this a lot. And the way I see it, things boil down this way:

Extreme, mindless desire can derail a life, a family, a community, a nation, a hemisphere, a world. Extreme, mindless, unmitigated desire creates a Bernie Madoff, a mortgage crisis, a Holocaust.

These are the low desires. The venal, me-first-everybody-out-of-my-way-I’m-coming-through desires. You see it not just in global issues but in the rude, careless, dismissive ways people treat one another on the road, in stores, at work, even at home.

Low desire can manifest, too, in self-destructive urges like addiction. The addict who cares more about her next binge or score or hit than anyone or anything, she’s succumbing to low desire.  Cravings, those gut-punching, mind-bending thoughts that you have to have it (whatever it is) right now or you’ll die are extreme, physical manifestations of this low desire.

But there is also high desire. It is characterized by the passion to help others, live with integrity, do the right thing, share privilege, use no more resources than you need, and work for the greater good. It is also, not only in my experience and observation, but in the science of developmental psychology, characterized by the born-in passion to connect with a source of power and guidance bigger, grander and more mysterious that a solo individual.

We all have both kinds of desires in us. We all have seeds of war and seeds of peace. Which will we water?

When we feel into and channel our higher desires, starting with the yearning to listen to and heed the inner guidance, lovely things happen. Following my higher yearning helped me to be a good enough mom, though I had a lot of early mis-training to overcoming. It has helped me write words of healing and hope over the years, including my recent book The Hungry Ghost, about how I healed from binge-eating and how others can too.

And it helps me now, as I ask the Universe to show me, just for today, what can I do to increase the peace? How can I help myself and then others transform irritation, pain and trauma for the greater good?

These, I hope you’ll agree, are desires to be fed and shared. When we pool our desires good things happen. Babies are born and nurtured. Crops are sowed, reaped and brought to market. Broken families reunite. Illness and injury heal. Friends discuss misunderstandings and clear the air. Enemies make eye contact, shake hands and lay down their arms.

High desires, well nurtured and mindfully directed, enable us to walk through this day, doing as little harm as humanly possible and, maybe, doing a little good.

Where’s My Money???

This handy, dandy art work is the result of my million years of living, working and trying to understand how money gets made ethically, number one, and how to get behind what I know and love to do in and for the world, number two.

Whew! With thanks to my business coach, Melody Stevens I have come to believe that the best place to work from is in the spot where heart meets market. And that, said Ms. Mel as we both roared with laughter right there in the Manalapan, NJ Starbucks, is reality!

I don’t have to sell out. I have to buy in…to my own work, my own calling, my own strengths, my own abilities.

Okay! As my friend Traci Bild  would say, “I am my own lottery ticket!”

Meaning, my life is my own, as I choose to make it. With the help of my higher power, always and forever, one day at a time.

Any questions?

 

Getting God to Answer

The one who made the flower made me and thee.

When I am honestly in quest of the true truths, not succumbing to the crap my monkey mind churns out, I dialog in my journal with God. I do not do this nearly often enough, but when I do, it can really be wonderful. Like a conversation, even.

I should tell you I don’t have the kind of HP who jumps in front of me with visions and things. I have friends who say they receive insights and direction this way and I believe them. I am also aware that my HP knows visions would freak me out, so instead gives me clues. These are not feathers or leaves gently floating into my face just when I’m asking for a message from heaven. They’re not pennies that show up in odd spots at right times the way they do for Dear Abby readers.

My HP is more subtle.  When I get guidance, it tends to be an intense, cool, calm sensation of power and clarity below thought and feeling, directly under my breast bone. These sensations can, however, be subject to interpretation, and require that I sit still to receive them. I have trouble with this.

So sometimes, like I said, when the brain is more or less in place and fitting properly, I actually think to ask in writing what I need to know. And often the answers just come as I write along. Some random examples culled from the last few weeks’ journals:

Gay: How many mistakes are too many?

God: Try and find out. All mistakes are forgivable. Humans are innately good. If you have done evil, it’s because you have moved away from the source of good. When you move back into the light, all will be well.

Gay: How much work is enough?

God: You have to do what you have to do. You can only do what you can do. (I first heard this from a friend when we were sharing a cube and I was overwhelmed and freaking out. God is happy to use anything and everything to deliver a message. HP also doesn’t seem to mind having to repeat things. Which is good because I seem to be a slow learner on some of this stuff.)

Gay: Where is the money?

God: Do you have what you need? (God sometimes talks like a shrink.)

Gay: How much am I allowed to have?

God: As much as you need.

Gay: But I feel guilty.

God: Keeping yourself poor in body, mind and spirit does not help people who are poor. Nor does taking excess beyond your needs. You are not a princess. (Ouch!) You are not a pauper. (Yay!)

Gay: What is my right work?

God: What do you want to do?

Gay: What do you want me to do?

God: I created you as you. You are Gay. Be Gay. (Now God’s sounding like my mom. How come moms and God never tell you what that means?????)

Gay: What is death?

God: (Silence.)

Gay: Why won’t you tell me?

God:  I will.

Gay: When?

God: Not now.

Gay: Sometimes I hate you.

God: I know.

Gay: Aren’t you going to smite me?

God: Nope. I’m over that. (God has a sense of humor. I hope. Right. Hmmm. Maybe I should ask?)

Gay: Do you have a sense of humor?

God: Kangaroo.

Gay: Right. Thanks.

God: You’re welcome.

Gay: Seriously?

God: Seriously.