Mingle2 - Philadelphia Singles
Dear Jesus,
I am so tired. My weariness goes all the way to the bone. Even when I sleep, I wake up exhausted. I am worried about so many things. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that you understand even my doubts and that you love me in the midst of them.
My schedule is so packed with important things, and I can’t imagine giving up even one of them. Help! Will you really show me where to put my left foot and my right? Lord, I want to believe; help my unbelief. Give me a heart that hungers and thirsts to know you, even more than I hunger and thirst for rest and peace. When I want to know and understand you more than anything else in my world, I will have come to the beginning of the end of the stress that threatens to undo me. Reveal yourself to me, Lord, and I will follow.
Amen.
There are two days in every week about which we should not worry, two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension.
One of these days is Yesterday with its mistakes and cares, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains. Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control.
All the money in the world cannot bring back Yesterday. We cannot undo a single act we performed; we cannot erase a single word we said. Yesterday is gone.
The other day we should not worry about is Tomorrow with its possible adversaries, its burdens, its large promise and poor performance. Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control.
Tomorrow’s sun will rise, either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds...but it will rise. Until it does, we have no stake in Tomorrow, for it is yet unborn.
This leaves only one day...Today. Any man can fight the battles of just one day, it is only when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternities...Yesterday and Tomorrow that we break down.
It is not the experience of Today that drives men mad...it is remorse or bitterness for something which happened Yesterday and the dread of what Tomorrow may bring
— Author Unknown
1. Give yourself 10 points if you feel that you have a supportive family around you.
2. Give your self 10 points if you actively pursue a hobby.
3. Give your self 10 points if you belong to some social or activity group that meets at least once a month (other than your family).
4. Give your self 15 points if you are within five pounds of your "ideal" body weight, considering yur height and bone structure.
5. Give your self 15 points if you practice some form of "deep relaxation" at least three times a week. Deep relaxation exercises include meditation, imagery, yoga, etc.
6. Give your self 5 points for each time you exercise 30 minutes or longer during the course of an average week.
7. Give your self 5 points for each nutritionally balanced and wholesome meal you consume during the course of an average week.
8. Give your self 5 points if you do something that you really enjoy which is "just for you" during the course of an average week.
9. Give your self 10 points if you have some place in your home that you can go in order to relax and/or be by yourself.
10. Give your self 10 points if you practice time management techniques in your daily life.
11. Subtract 10 points for each pack of cigarettes you smoke during the course of an average day.
12. Subtract 5 points for each evening during the course of an average week that you take any form of medication or chemical substance (including alcohol) to help you sleep.
13. Subtract 10 points for each day during the course of an average week that you consume any form of medication or chemical substance (including alcohol) to reduce your anxiety or just calm you down.
14. Subtract 5 points for each evening during the course of an average week that you bring work home: work that was meant to be done at your place of employment.
Now add your total score. If you scored in the 50-60 point range you probably have an adequate collection of coping strategies for most common sources of stress. However, the higher your score the greater your ability to cope with stress in a healthy way.
Don't Quit!
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must; but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up, though the pace seems slow;
You might succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup.
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out;
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit;
It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.
_____________________________________________________
I was reading through some of my favorite verses in Philippians today and read again Paul's statement "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:12-13.
I recently had a client that just couldn’t say no. She struggled with family members, co-workers…even her pets. Her teenaged kids were walking all over her, her co-workers dumped all their work on her desk, and the dogs wouldn’t stay off the furniture!
As we started talking about assertiveness she looked at me like I was an alien from a far away planet. She just couldn’t see herself saying no. To her it seemed like too much work, and she worried that people wouldn’t like her. My question to her was, “Do people like you now, or do they just like that they can use you?” Ouch. I could tell that the wheels were turning and she was beginning to understand that it might be more important to like her self and get respect from others. She didn’t have a clue how to get started. I pulled out an old book from my bookshelf. The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook introduces a useful approach to assertiveness with its LADDER mnemonic.
LADDER describes a six-stage process for handling problems in an assertive way. These are:
L – Look at your rights and what you want, and understand your feelings about the situation
A – Arrange a meeting with the other person to discuss the situation
D – Define the problem specifically
D – Describe your feelings so that the other person fully understands how you feel about the situation
E – Express what you want clearly and concisely
R – Reinforce the other person by explaining the mutual benefits of adopting the site of action you are suggesting.
Although this is only a beginning in becoming assertive, it is a beginning! Recognizing a problem is the first step to finding a solution!
One of the keys to stress management is perspective. If you can look at a problem from a different perspective you may be able to solve it, or at least see the humor in it. Many times in counseling I ask clients to keep a "gratitude" journal. I ask them to write down three or four things that they are thankful for at the end of each day. In writing down what they are grateful for they begin to focus on the positives instead of the negatives. I usually give them this reasoning; Have you ever bought a new car and as you are driving home you see your particular make and model of car everywhere on the road? It is not that there are more of those particular cars on the road, it is that you have just started to pay attention to other cars. It is called selective attention. We attend to the things that are important to us. So...if you begin to look for things you are thankful for you will improve your perspective on life. Try it!
Have you ever opened your e-mail account and wanted to scream because of the sheer number of new e-mails that came in over night? I recently changed my e-mail address and it has been a great opportunity to rethink my e-mail habits. For instance, I had to decide whether or not to rejoin some of the e-mail subscriptions that I had. Some were very informative...most of them were, actually...but I just had too much information being dumped into my inbox every day.
My subscriptions included (not an exhaustive list):
The American Association of Christian Counselors
Spark People (a diet subscription that I never opened)
Christian Counseling Journal
TGIF (a great workplace devotional by Os Hillman)
Kohls
JCPenney
Overstock
Vista Print (a great way to get business cards or postcards very cheaply!)
Pay Pal
Freecycle (in two towns)
Bank (I get a daily update on my balance)
Google alerts (I had daily updates on 5 different topics of interest)
Picasa Web (they updated me any time one of my friends posted new pictures)
Comcast
Church Prayer Chain
Church Newsletter
Client e-mails
Office Depot
Office Max
Staples
I'm exhausted just looking at that list! I began the process of paring down my e-mails by making the list you see above. Then I decided which ones I really opened and read each day. I still get many of them, but I have modified them. I changed my subscription from freecycle to the daily digest (once a day listing of everything offered instead of multiple e-mails a day) and limited myself to one town. Google alerts come to me once a week now instead of every day. I decided that although the Os Hillman devotional was great, I never actually read it...so I didn't inform them of my new e-mail address. Spark People was a no-brainer since I never used it. I get flyers from most of the stores listed in my Sunday paper, and since I don't usually order things online from them I cancelled those e-mails.
Well, you get the idea! Once you have eliminated unnecessary e-mails use the "Do, Delegate, Dump, Delete" process on the remaining e-mails in your inbox.
Do - if there is something that needs your attention or a reply do those first.
Delegate - forward e-mails that need to be taken care of by someone else
Dump - If there is information that you need and want to keep, dump it into permanent storage by making a hard copy or by saving it as a document.
Delete - they say 80% of e-mail is junk...don't be afraid to hit the delete button!
We DO have control over some aspects of information overload. Take a look at your inbox and get started!
Several years ago I left the church that I grew up in. The church that felt like home to me. It wasn’t because I moved away, but because of some major problems in the church. I won’t go into the gory details, but it was a necessary move for our family. I remember thinking that it would be easier for me to move across the country than to make the move to a new church. It was a painful time. One of the things that I discovered in the move was the psychological technique of reframing. Somehow, if I was going to survive emotionally, I had to change the way I looked at the move.
Interestingly enough, I found that there was a great opportunity that I hadn’t realized in going to a new church. No one knew me there. While that was what I feared, it also meant that no one had any preconceived ideas about who I was and what I was capable of. In my home church I was viewed as “shy little Diane,” a description that no longer fit, but kept people from seeing my potential. I was able to recreate myself in the new church. I took on responsibilities that would have never been offered at my home church. It was an exciting time!
I learned that the way I looked at the situation affected how I felt about it. When I focused on the loss of my home church I felt depressed, lonely, and mad. But when I began to focus on the opportunities of going to a new church I was energized, optimistic, and excited. Same situation…two outlooks.
Reframing is a powerful tool that can help us refocus our attention from the negative to the positive. So, the next time you are going through a stressful situation, try to reframe and refocus…there may be a hidden benefit that you’re not seeing!
Many times we get stressed out because we have some big, overwhelming projects on our to do list. I am in the process of downsizing and getting ready to move, which means cleaning out the 20' wide, 5' deep, shelves floor to ceiling closet in my basement. I opened it up last week, and thought...where do I start? We have lived in this house for 21 years. Our children have gone through college, married, and moved out, and yet we still have boxes of toys and other mementos from their childhood. I was overwhelmed just opening the door! So how do you tackle overwhelming projects? Here's a list of steps to help you:
1. Figure out exactly what needs to be done... set some goals. My goal for the basement closet was to get rid of things that haven't been used in years and to organize and store properly the things I was planning on moving to the next house.
2. List everything that is connected to the project. I listed things like label a box for each of the kids to go through. Designate some boxes for trash. Mark a box for donate/yard sale. Buy some bins for all the Christmas decorations, have some extra boxes on hand for anything that I was unsure of.
3. Make a list of supplies that you need to purchase. I bought some plastic bins and some banker boxes that could be used for storage or sorting and could be broken down if they weren't used but I wanted to save them for later.
4. Figure out how much time you have to get the project done and break up the project into manageable pieces. I have about six months before our new house is built and ready to move into. I wrote out a schedule for getting the closet done.
Here is how I divided the project:
After I got going on the project I realized that I needed a few more divisions. I had boxes of photographs that had not been labeled or dated so I put them all in one box. I also needed some boxes for toys that we were going to keep for the grandchildren.
5. Once you know what needs to be done and how much time you have you can schedule tasks on your calendar and even send yourself reminders to get things done. I use http://www.hassleme.co.uk/ to send myself reminders for things that I might tend to put off.
For other projects you might even want to make your list and then circle the things that absolutely have to be done in red and then schedule only those things. Any additional things you get done will make you feel even better about yourself and the project!
Stress Management professionals often use the term mindfulness as a state of mind that reduces stress. Although I am certified in stress management I often have a problem reconciling modern stress management techniques with the Bible. Psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn defined mindfulness as: "paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally." The interesting thing about modern psychology is that, as Solomon in Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun! Every psychological principle can be found in the Bible. Unfortunately, men take Biblical principles and twist them to fit their understanding. Mindfulness meditation is really godly meditation minus God. Kabat-Zinn was on the right track until he used the words “non-judgmentally.” The Buddhist practice of mindfulness encourages it’s participants to empty themselves of desire to reach nirvana. However, the Bible tells us “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.” Romans 12:3. Although we, as Christians, are to be mindful, we have to be careful of anything that asks us to empty ourselves in a way that directly opposes Biblical principles.
As a Christian counselor I often teach clients how to relax through meditation. Philippians 4: 6-9 is the Biblical basis for meditation: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me–put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you."
So, the next time you’re stressed out, practice mindfulness…not by emptying your mind but by filling your mind with the things of God…and the God of peace will be with you!
One way to get rid of stress is to take a vacation! I may not be posting much this week because I'll be in Cancun for a week! I know...poor me!
