I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack

Namaste

People Are Not Machines

How much of ourselves do we want to give away?

You are in charge of you. You decide how you will respond.. You are not a puppet for someone else to pull your strings.

There are some self-help things we can do to relax our mental predispositions to dysfunctional habits. Individually we are only one person. Each day has only 24 hours. But sometimes we try to put too many to-do-things in too small a time frame. Sometimes we have a choice, other times we do not. When we over-work machines, the machines break down.

Currently we are treating ourselves like machines, and we are breaking.

Our pride and ego insist we must, at all cost, do the impossible, to have success, keep our job, or just get to the end of the day. What good is it to get everything done, and have nothing left for ourselves but exhaustion, body aches and pains, poor sleep, over or under eating, and ill temper?

The first sign we have taken on too much is we lose our sense of humor.

How is your energy?

There is more to life than the things that are accomplished. What do we do to rejuvenate?

Do we feel selfish for taking good care of us?

How is our self-esteem?

You matter. I matter. We all matter. It is no accident we are on the planet at this time. We have our life’s mission. However, we need to be healthy. We cannot help others if we cannot help ourselves.

When we find ourselves on an airplane getting the safety talk before the flight takes off by the flight attendant, we are told to make sure to put our oxygen mask on ourselves before we put on the oxygen mask on our children or those we are taking care of.

Why?

Because we cannot help others if we cannot help ourselves.

We are worth more than our, or someone else’s, goals and achievements. We are worth more than the machines we use.

Taking care of us includes all levels of us, mind, body and spirit.

What do you do to de-stress?

Stop making excuses why you cannot mentally take a break. Shut off social media. The world and everyone in it will still be in the same place in 15 minutes. No, you will not die if you are not plugged into social media for 15 minutes. You won’t lose your social status in 15 minutes. Take a breath.

Take a walk in nature. Go to a nearby park, the ocean, a lake, anywhere you can hear the sounds of nature. Enjoy, really enjoy a cup of coffee, tea or your favorite beverage. You know what works for you. Do not give in to the old familiar excuses why you cannot relax.

I know what I am speaking about here. I am a mother of five grown children, grandmother to 10 grandchildren, married and retired after having worked as a newspaper correspondent for many years with must-meet deadlines in the midst of the children’s doctor, dentist, school and teacher appointments, and later with other jobs including owning my own successful business specializing in holistic health. I do understand this dilemma with heavy stress seeming to be the only acceptable way to deal with life. It is not.

We make a mistake when we make everything in our lives have the same intensity as if the building we are in is on fire. If your building is on fire, stop reading this and get to safety. But if your building is not on fire at this very moment, take another deep breath.

It will help to make a list of the priorities that are important to you, something you can work on this week. Set a goal to have you run your life, not have your life run you. So many problems go away if we simply get up a bit earlier. This is not always a popular suggestion, but it is something that can work if we have a plan in place. Perhaps we need that cup of coffee before the rest of the family wakes up so that we begin our day with solitude rather than chaos.

Try this experiment out to see if it might work for you on a night when you do not have to go to work or be someplace at a certain time the next morning. Tell yourself the night before you go to bed exactly what time you want to wake up in the morning. Do not set that rude-awakening alarm. It is so nice to wake up peacefully without that obnoxious sound machine. I have done this for over 20 years now and have never once over-slept. If you happen to wake up prior to the time you want to get up, simply smile and tell yourself you still have “X” number of hours or minutes left and sink back into your pillow. This is just a peaceful suggestion that possibly might work for you to begin your day with less stress. You will never know if this is possible for you unless you try it.

Whether you are confined to a jail cell, your work cubicle, your car or your home, you can take a short mental break by relaxing, dropping shoulders down away from your ears without anyone even knowing what you are doing.

Take a deep breath. Your body does this anyway when you have had enough. You automatically take a big sigh. When you notice you are at your wits end, take three, long, slow deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. If you take 15 such breaths, it lowers blood pressure, no matter what is going on around you.

Remember, no matter what other people tell you, you are in charge of you, not the other people. God gave you this life, not other people. Yes, we have bosses at work, and family at home. But no man or woman is in charge of you, unless you are in that jail cell, but even then, you are in charge of your thoughts and how you will go about your day. Our intention is everything.

You can intend to have a good mood or bad mood. You can even intend to be stressed and not be stressed. I know, this sounds like an over-simplification of the “real problem” you are having. Think about this, even if you are stressed beyond belief; whether or not you are stressed, you will still go through the same life situation. You do have a say in how you go about your life.

Is it fun or enjoyable for you to turn everything into a drama-filled activity? Drama-filled days leave us all feeling as if all the air is let out of our balloon. We can get caught up in our own or someone else’s drama before we realize it. Once we become aware of it, that is when we can begin to take charge of our thoughts, words and actions again, rather than be a puppet to them.

We may not have a choice in what we have to do today. However, we certainly do have a choice in how we go about it. This is a very good place to start when we feel that our lives have run away with us, like a wild stallion running through the field.

Grow deeper in faith. God promises to be with us, even in the hard times. You are never alone. God is closer to you than your next breath. Those of us who pray know this for a fact. If you have never prayed to God, Father of Jesus Christ, now would be a good time to authentically ask for spiritual help. Ask for his free gift of the Holy Spirit to guide you. It is there for the asking. If you never ask, you will never know.

Remind yourself that you are in charge of you and how you will go through this day with peace, integrity and joy. It is possible.

God Bless