I have this friend, and she knows A LOT...I was listening to her give a talk about our nervous system and leading with the frontal brain. How the main job of that part of our brains is to find out what is wrong, to protect us from danger to FIX the problem and then find another one. Obviously this is a very important part of our survival. But the thing is, especially in the society most of us live in where water, shelter and food are easy to access, we don't need to be in constant survival mode....but our brains don't know that.
So today, when I woke up with cold my first instinct was to fight that shit with some hard core cold medicine. But I can't, because I'm growing a baby...which then started my brain into a ping-ponging of "woe is me" and "get over your spoiled self" and quickly escalated into some serious harsh fighting words which then shuts me down to do anything productive or adult like.
I let that happen for a little while, but then I remembered...I have the knowledge and ability to snap out of that cycle. All of the money spent on therapy hasn't gone to waste!!!
So I took a lot of deep breaths, I did what I call the "crazy lady self-talk" where I sat in my room and had an out loud conversation with the ping-ponging parts of my self AND LISTENED! And low and behold, I heard. All that jabber was just fluff to cover up the fact that I needed to hear "Hey, it does suck that you feel crappy and tired and still have to take care of little people and do adult things. I'm sorry and I understand and I know that you are capable. Just take one thing at a time."
Usually I call someone and hope that they will read my mind and tell me those things, but this time I said those affirming words to myself...AND IT WORKED! I felt validated, as well as motivated to keep moving forward. So forward I went... I took a few minutes to write a Power Flower note, then headed out to the bank and the mail box and the grocery store. AND then to the bus stop, where I drove past a woman who was sitting alone waiting for the bus. I pulled into the parking lot, walked down the sidewalk and happily approached her with the beauty of simple flowers. She told me that it made her day and asked to give me a hug, which I happily accepted...and then knocked her phone out of her hand and cracked the screen...BUT alas it's the beauty within the chaos and the mess that we can focus on, right?!
So friends, to all of us humans with brains that over think and over fix, let's remember that usually it's just because we need some extra comfort and validation. Let's stop getting in our own way...and do things, no matter how little.
