Deepen emotional learning about loneliness

After the eight weeks of building your daily healing and growing habits to tackle loneliness, you will have already experienced changes in yourself. 

You are noticing significant changes in some of the ways that you are reacting to situations. 

To deepen your healing and your growth, daily practice the following:

  1. Excellently care for yourself.

Excellently caring for yourself excludes feelings of guilt and obligation.  Commit to letting go of those feelings relating to caring for yourself first and foremost!

Simply care for yourself lovingly.

Let’s begin.

Lovingly practicing self-care requires being fully present with and for yourself. You are spending quality time with yourself during those moments that you are taking good care of yourself.  You are your best friend at that moment.  You are your person at that moment.

  1. Meditate at least once a day for 15 minutes (Ziva meditation).  This will take about 20 minutes when you add the before and after a routine.

What I adore about Ziva meditation is that there is no judgment.  She advocates for letting go of judgment about thinking. Just do your best.  

Read her book called “Stress Less, Accomplish More.”

Doing her meditation has helped me genuinely become much more productive throughout my workday.

And again, it is so easy.

  1. Continue Journal (same one from the eight weeks)

The chances are high that after eight weeks of purposeful journaling first thing in the morning, you will likely smoothly have been continuing to do so because of the benefit it has been producing. 

  1. Practice being in the now.

One of the most valuable things that I learned from Ekhart Tolle’s The Power of Now is the idea that in this very moment, everything is ok.

His words show that when we are worrying, we are in the past or the future.

Also, when we live in the future or the past, we miss out on the present moment.

We all know this, and yet, it is too easy a practice to be in: being anywhere but the present moment. 

We are always running after the future or running from the past.

By being fully present in the moments of now, we are our most loving, most creative, and most resourceful.

The truest of the truth is that we are the most powerful in the now.  We have the most incredible access to our best selves in the now.

  1. Listen to learn

If your experience with listening had been hostile as a child(abused verbally), you might have difficulty being fully in the moment to listen to other people expressing themselves.  

If you had not experienced being in the moments of now fully to observe and listen to all that is going on around you, you might not know-how.

We miss out on so much as we live away from the now.  We miss out on people around us, those who are important to us.  We also miss out on our power by missing out on the real alchemy of life.

  1. Daily practice focusing on what you have the power to control and let go of what you can’t control.

Learning how to do this will save you from worrying, ruminating, feeling anxious, anxiety, and the negative emotions that waste your time, energy, and personal power.

When you then use your energy, time, and power on what you can control, you become a person who makes things happen.

As you take your focus and put it on something that you have the power to affect and take actions, you are creating a movement that frees you from being stuck.

You have the power to control a lot of things. Frequently, when we are stuck, it is because we are focusing on what we cannot control. We then waste time spirling into worries and anxieties.

When we focus on things that we have the power to control and take actions(since we can) and see the fruit of our labor. It inspires us to take more steps.  We do more and become more empowered.

By following your eight weeks of learning and healing with the above six steps, you will grow deeper into healing, reaching for your full potential self.

Obstacle is the way, by Ryan Holiday

The types of books I love have the following attributes

  1. I love learning something new
  2. Inspires me to see possibilities
  3. Learn life skills that help me become a better version of myself
  4. Empowers me
  5. I gain new insight into human nature
  6. Learn about other great books

“Obstacle is the way” has all of the attributes that I love about books.  

  1. I learned about the many people in history that overcame huge obstacles by never giving up, using disadvantages to empower themselves, doing whatever it took, persevering, moving beyond their egos, never stopping moving, and focusing on the process instead of their egos.
  2. I was and am inspired to look for ways to tackle what has been a challenge for me in my life
  3. Focusing on new ways of looking at my challenges teaches me new life skills that will help me be better equipped for my current project and my future projects.
  4. Reminder to not waste time
  5. I am reminded that human possibilities are beyond what we can imagine 
  6. To never give up
  7. To keep moving
  8. Focusing on the process and not the result which actually helps you succeed better because your aim is to learn, grow and do your best

I love the phrase, “love obstacles.”  I cannot imagine a life of less than what you can possibly be when you are in the mode of loving obstacles.  Life has them.  We can either succumb to them, or resent them or fear them, or we can use them to fuel our growth, fuel our strengths and fuel our successful outcome.

Things you can do to be better than happy during the coronavirus lockdown

The Coronavirus lockdown has been stressful for a lot of people.  It has caused them to feel afraid for the future and frustrated with what they cannot do right now.  Some even have to deal with feelings of loneliness. None of us asked for this condition and you have the right to feel the negative feelings that you do.  While that is true if there is a way for you to experience something different, would you do whatever it takes to experience better feelings than you feel right now?  I am guessing yes. No one wants to feel bad and everyone would like to feel better.  

Let me tell you a story about a man who was captured during the vietnam war, tortured for over 7 years as the prisoner of war and he used a philosophy to not only deal with the torturous prison but also to guide his men through it as well.  He used Stoicism. It is a philosophy that comes in very handy for use during stressful times as well as being a great guide for happiness in life.

Using Stoicism, I would like to guide you through a few questions and reveal to you what you can do afterwards.  Have three pages of papers ready. Or you could do this on the computer.

First, make a list of things that are happening that you do not like, because of this coronavirus lockdown?

It might go something like this:

  1. Cannot go anywhere.
  2. Can not go to work.
  3. Live in a small place but cannot go outside.
  4. Have less money now and am afraid of running out.
  5. Gaining weight sitting at home and eating.
  6. Feeling stir crazy
  7. Feeling lonely

Then create two headings:

  1. Things that you have no power to control
  2. Things that you have the power to control.

Take all items listed in your original list and put them in the appropriate category.  They might look something like these.

  1. Things that you have no power to control
    1. Cannot go anywhere
    2. Cannot go to work
  1. Things that you have the power to control
    1. Afraid of running out of money
    2. Gaining weight
    3. Feeling stir crazy
    4. Feeling lonely

According to Stoic philosophy, we should take focus off the list 1 and focus all our attention on list 2.  A Stoic would believe the list 1 is a waste of your time and it is foolish to waste time.

Next, below each item, write down all the actions steps that you can take to solve the problem.

  1. Afraid of running out of money
    1. Make money online
    2. Conserve spending
  1. Gaining weight
    1. Exercise
    2. Eat to lose weight
  2. Feeling stir crazy
    1. Learn a new skill
    2. Work on a creative project
    3. Join and start a zoom group
  3. Feeling lonely
    1. Join and start a zoom group
    2. Find ways that you can help people online
    3. Work on your passion-ed project/If you don’t know what that is, then work on finding it

Once you have made the list and wrote out what you could do about each of the issues, you then can take action steps that you have listed.

Taking those action steps can be very powerful.

Mother Teresa was quoted in saying, “We can do hard.”  We can do hard.  

How a stoic would handle pain of heartbreak

Stoicism has been used by people going through highly stressful situations like being a prisoner of war. 

One of the most powerful stoic principles that comes in very handy during stressful times is to focus on what you can control and take focus off of what you cannot control.  In other words, if you have no power over the situation, take the focus off of it since it is a waste of your time and energy and put your focus on what you have the power to control because that is worth your time and energy.  

If you think about it, it is a smart way to live.  In addition, if you were to put your focus on all the things that you have the power to control, you might easily create a very successful life in every way.

A stoic would take a look at the various aspects of a particular heartbreak and do their best to let go of things that they have no power to control and then focus on what they do have the power to control.

Do you have control over your ex wanting you back? No!  Do you have control over your ex finding someone new? No.  Do you have control over taking back a mistake you made? No!  Do you have control over someone else’s mind? No!

Do you have control over doing self work to heal yourself?  Yes! Do you have control over what kind of a person you want to be?  Yes! Do you have control over learning something new that could enhance your life, career, joy, happiness, fulfillment and success?  Yes! Do you have control over taking loving, kind and compassionate care of yourself? Yes! Do you have control over getting your body and mind into healthy shape?  Yes! And so much more!

A stoic would tell you to focus your whole self on the second set of questions, but not the first.  The first set is a complete waste of your time and it takes you nowhere but horrible. And simple waste of time itself is terrible because you can never get wasted time back.

If you are going through a heartbreak, what set of questions would you choose to focus on so that by the end of your healing period, you could come out of it empowered and full of life?

Heart-break

According to one of the great stoic, Marcus Aurelius, obstacles are the very things that can powerfully help your life, if you allow it. Your heart-break could be just the opportunity that you had needed for growth in your life.