It’s six in the evening. You’ve been at it since six this morning, yet you feel there is so much you have yet to accomplish. You want balance; time for your family, yout friends, your community, yourself, not just your work. How, when so much of you goes into what you do every day just living?
You are not alone. In 30 years the restlessness of imbalance had visited me. I fell out of balance again and again, like a gymnast falling off the balance beam. I wondered how do gymnasts do it? How do they balance? Is there a similarity to sustaining balance in my life? After numerous times being out of balance and trying to figure out why/how I “fell off,” I found that like gymnasts, it is remaining focused on what keeps me balanced verse why/how I fall out of balance that is key. With this revelation I also found that what balanced me was so much more rewarding than constantly managing all the incidents that had me “falling off the beam.”
This is possible for you and you need not wade through 30 years as I have.
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Most scientists who study emotions focus on negative states: depression, anxiety, fear. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson has spent more than 20 years investigating the relatively uncharted terrain of positive emotions, which she says can make us healthier and happier if we take time to cultivate them.
Fredrickson’s findings are the subject of her new book, Positivity (Crown). Though its title might make it sound like a self-help best seller, the book doesn’t belong in the pop-psychology section, and Fredrickson is no Pollyanna telling us to put on a smile before leaving the house each morning. Negative emotions, she says, are necessary for us to flourish, and positive emotions are by nature subtle and fleeting; the secret is not to deny their transience but to find ways to increase their quantity. She recommends that, rather than try to eliminate negativity, we balance negative feelings with positive ones. Below a certain ratio of positive to negative, Fredrickson says, people get pulled into downward spirals, their behavior becomes rigid and predictable, and they begin to feel burdened and lifeless.
To read more of this article, go to Utne Reader- Are You Happy Now
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Carol Kauffman has a question for you: If your life could look the way you’d really like it to look, what would that be? Depending on your answer, she’ll help you build on your strengths so you can pull yourself toward your goals, step by small step. She’ll also hold you accountable.
Although Kauffman is a psychologist, this is coaching, not therapy. Codirector of the new Institute of Coaching at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, she is working to solidify the growing body of evidence-based research supporting the relatively new field that is often defined by what it is not.
“Therapy helps you overcome the challenges of the past and coaching helps you very clearly identify your vision of the future,’’ she said. “Coaching is a process of change that revolves around strengths and potential, rather than feelings of pathology and pain.’’
To read more of this article, go to Boston.Com - When a coach may help
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Some nights waves of weariness beat against our brains, crash against our hearts, wash over our bodies, threatening to erode our best defenses like sand dunes upon the shore. The water is cold, dark, and deep. Diversions that have worked in the past - drink, drugs, food, sex, shopping, work - now obscure a dangerous undertow. Nothing seems to hold back the tide. We need someone to throw us a line, to rescue us from drowning in disappointment.
When these nights come and I find I’m stranded alone on the beach of faltering belief, I have refuge in a very centering and comforting prayer by Dame Julian of Norwich, a thirteenth-century English mystic:
ALL SHALL BE WELL,
AND ALL SHALL BE WELL,
AND ALL MANNER OF THINGS SHALL BE WELL.
This simple affirmation of faith is especially comforting because it seems to console the dark submerged sadnesses of the inexplicable, the unexpressed, the unresolved, the unfair and the undeniable that stalk my soul after I close my eyes. I’ll say the prayer over and over again softly, under my breath like a mantra, not trying to understand the meaning of the words because I can’t. Some mysteries are beyond our comprehension. Some mysteries we will never solve. Never know.
So instead of trying to make sense of it all, I’ll simply let the spirit of the words soothe my frazzled mind and harried heart until sleep comes. Sometimes we can’t make sense of it. Sometimes none of it makes sense. Sometimes it just is. But if we can hold on long enough for this night to give way to another day, all shall be well, even if it’s different from what we had expected. Even if it’s different from what we had hoped for and believed with all our hearts would happen.
ALL SHALL BE WELL,
AND ALL SHALL BE WELL,
AND ALL MANNER OF THINGS SHALL BE WELL.