Daily Gratitude: This should be a no brainer in our day and age. Everything happens at the speed of light. What’s news this hour won’t be news in 12 hours. Something else will have taken its place. In the same way we do spring cleaning, we need to do some decluttering of our minds. “That’s the way we’ve always done it” is never a good reason to continuing doing something. Sure it may involve a little more effort to embrace or at least try something new, but what if it works so well, it ultimately makes your life easier? Wouldn’t that be great? If you’ve had resentment for one or more persons in your life, isn’t it time to let go of it? You know the other person probably doesn’t know you’re harboring the resentment. So, it’s usually only hurting you. What if you let go of that? How much pressure and pain would you be releasing from your system? How much healthier could you become with releasing that pent up energy. You know that energy is doing something inside you. Energy doesn’t just stand still. Unfortunately, what it’s doing is wreaking havoc on your body (especially your nervous system). I had a great mentor who believed that most people who have had cancer have some degree of resentment buried deep in their soul. That is not a scientific study but was only based on her experience but it also fits with the anecdotal experience i’ve had as a physician. Anyway, take some time to get the broom out and do some cleaning of your old ways and have an “open house” so to speak during which you can entertain new ideas.

Daily Gratitude: I love this. All too often we feel we have to eliminate our fears in order to do something. That’s hard to do. But if you look at it from the perspective of this quote, it makes it pretty simple. If you had to run into a burning house to retrieve your computer, your fear would probably win out and you wouldn’t do it (i hope anyway). But, if your child or children were in there, the fear you might be feeling is overshadowed by the love and your protective nature as a parent and human being. You’re still afraid if the fire but saving your kids is much more important. I’m taking a certification course and it involves in person classes with break out sessions (my least favorite activity) and also involves lots of other things I’ve never done. Am I afraid of all that? You bet. Is what i will be able to do more important to me than that fear? Definitely. Same applies to starting the 180 seconds to a better life – Talking with Dr. Terrie. I was more scared of doing that than i have been in a very long time. But, my desire to do it and teach again was more important than the fear. it still took me a long time to get it started but it was that the importance overshadowed the fear that helped me get going. Try looking at some of your fears like this and see how much courage you can develop.

Daily Gratitude: This is another concept that depends on learning to calm your nervous system. This complex system has one goal. That’s to keep you alive, protecting you from anything it perceives as danger. The key word here is “perceives”. It takes all the experiences you’ve had and stores every detail about them (especially your reactions) in its massive database. Everything goes in there. Why? So that when you come upon something, it can quickly scan that database and evaluate the current situation compared to all it finds in its previous records. You can see how someone who has been exposed to less than ideal circumstances throughout their life and especially in childhood may, in your eyes, appear to “overreact”. That is not a fair judgment, however, since you have no idea of what they experienced and how it was interpreted. “Danger” is an individual thing. What we don’t always take into consideration, though, is that it’s not the person in front of you making that determination. It’s the composite of past events, and the more influential events were those occuring in childhood. Basically, then, it’s a way younger version of the “adult” in front of you that’s deciding. What is in no way a “danger” to you and maybe most of your friends, might become a frightening big deal to that person. I say all this to, once more, emphasize how important learning to calm your nervous system is. If you’re not there yet, though, you can always ask others for help finding the way out. Once again, you can practice this with small things in your life, building your problem solving muscles on the little things. Ask yourself the “how can I solve this?” Don’t even entertain an idea that it’s not possible to work through it. Everything we do requires practice. People don’t win Olympic Gold Medals just by deciding or dreaming of winning one. They may not even be any good in the beginning. They learn how to do whatever it is they want to do. Then it’s just practice, practice, practice. That’s when it becomes “second nature.” if you think about what i talked about in the beginning of this post, that’s how your nervous system learns to react with fear. It’s usually a repetitive trauma that leads to those behaviors. Sure it can be one significant one such as a motor vehicle accident, an abuse, or a major unexpected loss. But, more often than not, it’s something that’s happened many times over. Just know that there is a way out….then, it’s easier to work to find that way.