Three Deep Breaths

You know how some days you seem to be skating on the top of everything, rather than diving in like you are supposed to?  I now hate that I made myself think of diving into icy water, but please bear with me.

I’m referring to those days that are so hectic that all you can think of is the hecticness,  and you can’t even begin to try and figure out how to relax and feel better.

Start with three deep breaths* but make these three breaths happen while you are either boiling the kettle or peeling an orange (choose your poison!).

If you choose the kettle option, here’s what you do:

1) fill the kettle with fresh water

2) plug it in or put it on the burner

3) close your eyes, and take three deep breaths

4) put your tea in the pot, or the bag in the cup

5) pour the boiling water in the pot or the cup, and let it steep while you breathe in the steam (if you used a pot, pour the tea into a cup before continuing)

6) sit with your tea, smell it, taste it, enjoy how warm the cup feels in your hand, drink your tea

7) breathe some more

now pick one thing to do that will move you a step forward

For oranges

1) pick out an appealing orange (ha!)

2) take three deep breaths, inhaling the orange scent

3) focus as you peel it, does the inside smell different, stronger or weaker than the outside?

4) how does the skin feel in your fingers? how about the inside?

5) separate the orange into sections, and eat one at a time, enjoying the scent of the orange sections

6) breathe some more

7) now pick one thing to do to move yourself forward

Now, I know I’m not tricking anyone here. These are clearly mindfulness exercises but there is a huge difference in saying BE MINDFUL and in saying Do X, then Y, then Z.  If you have a ritual to call on when you feel the hectic hit, then you can put yourself back in a more peaceful frame of mind more quickly.  And a peaceful frame of mind beats the heck out of a frantic one.

Now, breathe again!

*yeeeessss, I do think that they help everything – well, except for cracked ribs, three deep breaths aren’t going to help there.

Christine | Three Deep Breaths | 10 20th, 2009 | No Comments »

I have been having a rough couple of weeks.  The kind of cold that leaves you feeling run down but never develops into anything bad enough to make you lie down.  Chilly weather.  A kid that just started Kindergarten, then was sick for three days and lost his enthusiasm for the task.  A couple of disagreements with people that are unlikely to be resolved, yet I felt compelled to to try.

I was at a real low.

Then I read this blog entry by Briana at Blisscovery and I felt so much better.  She’s talking about  an incident that left her feeling horrible and how she went through a series of steps to feel better.  Step 5 is where the magic is.

Her step 5 was to give herself space to feel what she was feeling.  She didn’t try to talk herself out of it, she just felt hurt, sad, and upset.  And she let herself feel that way.  And then, and then, she STARTED TO FEEL BETTER.

So, after reading that I decided to give myself some room to feel bad.

I feel weird about my kids being in school, and how that changes the amount of time they spend with me, and how that’s going to keep changing as time goes on.  That’s not necessarily bad, it’s not necessarily good, it just is.  And I’m not going to try to talk myself out of that.

I’m probably going to keep disagreeing with those people.  Neither of us is right or wrong, we are just not on the same page.  And that’s frustrating.  But I’m not fighting it.  It is what it is.  And I’m sitting with it.

When I don’t get enough sleep, when I don’t eat right, when I get a low-level cold, I skate around the edges of low-grade depression.  It’s a fact, and even though I try to eat right, try to get enough sleep, sometimes I won’t be able to and I may feel bad.  But that’s not permanent, and it will pass.  I don’t have to fight it, because that just ends with beating myself up about how I ended up here again.  I can just be right there with it until I feel ready to step back on the path.

Thanks, Briana.

Christine | Three Deep Breaths | 09 28th, 2009 | No Comments »

I like a good system.  As I’ve mentioned before, I am an INFJ and we have a nasty habit of getting lost in the search for the perfect system – I fight against that all the time.

One real system-seeking situation for me is my To Do list.  I’ve tried all kinds of systems, paper and electronic but until recently I haven’t been able to find one that lets me keep a good running list and a flexible daily list*.   (And as a juggler of kids, freelancing and volunteer work, I need flexibility)

One thing that does work for me, though, is my whiteboard.

Last fall I picked up a cheap 8×10 white board at the dollar store and put it up next to my calendar in my kitchen where it would be easily visible.  Now, whenever I have a busy day or something that REALLY needs to get done I put a list on the whiteboard where I can see it (and so can the rest of my family) and it creates a sense of urgency about those tasks.

When I’m really organized and I’ve taken the time to plan my week’s To Do on a piece of paper (or on the websites listed below) I can pick the things to do each day from that but often my list is composed by looking around at housework and other tasks as yet undone, and by wracking my brain for details on work and the like.

The board is fairly small so I can’t really add too many tasks (and I put a time limit on any large ones  – work on article 30m – so they are something I can measure, take action on and cross off).  And the funny thing is that the kids respect the white board,  they ask me to put things for them on there (‘I’d like to play videogames this afternoon, can you put that on the list?’  ‘I’d like to have pizza for supper, can you put that on the list?’) because they know that the stuff on there gets done.

If something odd comes up, and I can’t get a job done, I can erase the other tasks and leave that one for the next day without feeling weird about it.

All hail the whiteboard!

What do you use for a To Do list?  Have you used a whiteboard? Did it help?

*I’m currently having good luck with Pocket Informant on my iPod Touch – I’m using in it in conjunction with Google Calendar and Toodledo so I can add things using my desktop computer and then check it on the Touch.

Christine | Three Deep Breaths | 06 26th, 2009 | No Comments »

As a mom, I sometimes get my day off on the wrong track, and I try to juggle work and parenting at the exact same time, and I end up doing a half-assed job of both. I have this work sitting on the screen (or paper) in front of me and I can’t wrap my mind about it, and I have my kids dive-bombing me like they were gulls and I was holding a French fry. I know they just want my attention, and I know that my work needs my attention, but if I am juggling, I am not giving either parenting or writing the attention it is due.

And almost every single time, I forget that unless I am on deadline, the solution is to delve into whatever my kids want for a little while. To stop and read a story, or to go play, or go see the fantabulous new trick, or to just lie on the floor and let them climb over me.

The thought of doing that is exhausting, but it is usually the only way to do it. At least then my work delay is for good reason.

It’s just another manifestation of the paradox of choice, the grip of indecision, really. I need to commit myself fully, for the moment, to one thing or another and since I cannot fully immerse myself in my work when I am also solely responsible for my children, then I must choose them. And that’s a satisfying choice in itself. I never feel that time spent playing with them is wasted, but yet I have trouble making that switch from even half-heartedly focussing on my own interests and focussing on theirs. Yet once I do, I feel much better. I feel like I have made an investment in them once I switch. Because I hate when a whole day goes by without me having spent ‘quality’ time with them.

And turning your attention fully to the matter at hand is very satisfying, even without the moral weight of giving your children ‘enough’. I can lose myself in time with my kids, just as I can lose myself in anything else, but I will admit that it is much harder. My children don’t bore me, but their activities can. I don’t want to direct their play, but the building and rebuilding of lego structures can only hold me for so long and I would much prefer to spend the two minutes talking to them. Idon’t know if it is their ages or their gender but they are not very interested in talking to me about ‘nothing’ It’s different if I can talk to them about what’s in front of them, but that puts me right back to trying to engage myself with legos.

It’s really a challenge, to strike that balance, to find the way to keep myself there, but when I do I feel good. At the end of spending time just doing what my kids want, I don’t feel ansty, distracted and frustrated. I feel peaceful.

Christine | Three Deep Breaths | 06 24th, 2009 | No Comments »

I have been reading and working through MJ Ryan’s  This Year I Will…  and I’ve gotten really into one aspect of her approach. 

Ryan suggests that asking yourself why you do a particular self-sabotaging thing repeatedly is not always useful.  Asking ‘Why?’ gets your left brain analyzing the problem but it won’t necessarily trigger any solutions.  To do that, you need to bring your right brain on board by asking ‘What?’

What can I do differently? 

What can I do right now? 

What would make this situation better? 

She says that answers may not be immediate, and they may not be direct – you might get a song or an image caught in your head and have to find the message – but answers will come. 

I have already found this technique useful when I was trying to figure out how to exercise more.  I had spent a long time trying to figure out why I didn’t but I had gotten nowhere, so after reading Ryan’s book I asked myself  ‘What can I do to help myself exercise more frequently?’  and the answer came.  I had to commit to doing some type of exercise daily, and I had to set a period of time to do it in. 

So I decided that every day in May I would exercise for 30 consecutive minutes, but I wouldn’t specify what those 30 minutes would be.  So, all throughout May, even when I was sick (Mother’s Day weekend! it sucked!) I clocked 30 minutes, either walking, doing WiiFit exercises, or going to the gym.  Letting myself off the hook for the specifics, and deciding on an end date was key, and it made the difference*.

So, now I ask you to stop asking yourself why you aren’t getting something done,  and instead ask what you need to/want to/can  do to get it done?

*My Myers-Briggs personality type (infj) leaves me with a tendency to waste a lot of time searching for the perfect system to acheive sometime.  I tend to avoid starting if I haven’t got a system in place.  BUT being aware of that tendency has made me find ways to avoid the question of a system and just get started – to find the system as I work.  It’s a challenge, but it’s helpful.

Christine | Goal Setting, Three Deep Breaths | 06 3rd, 2009 | No Comments »

Okay, so you’re overwhelmed, right?  Your to do list is huge, and for one reason or another you can’t get to anything on it.  You feel lousy about that and that’s making it worse. 

You can’t focus, and you feel like lying on the couch, balancing a bowl of cheezies on your chest and watching reruns of Friends until your eyes burst and you have an excuse not to get anything done.

Now, while that is indeed one strategy to cope with being overwhelmed, you won’t actually feel much better at the end (although the middle part will feel okay, at least until the eyes bursting part).   If you would prefer to feel a little better when you are done, why not try something like this:

Pick three categories of stuff you need to do.

Pick one small task from each category.

Write them down.

Do one small task.

Cross it off.

Do the second small task.

Cross it off.

Do the third small task.

Cross it off.

Call it a day*

There, then you will have accomplished SOMETHING today, and you will feel at least a little better.

Here’s my list from a rough day a few weeks ago:

House:  Wipe stovetop.

Writing: 5 minutes brainstorming for article.

Kids: Read two books with the boys.**

I was fully prepared to call it a day after I completed those things, and when you have been stuck, that’s perfectly legitimate, but on that particular day my three tasks gave me momentum, and I was able to get about 30 minutes of writing, and some unpleasant housework out of the way, and created enough brainspace to play some games with my sons.  The purpose of the exercise is not to ‘trick’ yourself into doing more, but if that happens, all the better.

Good luck.

*Whenever anyone I know suggests that it’s time to call it a day, one of us invariably says ‘Okay, it’s a day!’  and makes the rest of us smile.  Try it, see if it works for you.

**In case I need to state the obvious,  care and feeding of my family is part of my autopilot,  so the ‘Kids’ category of my to do list is for fun extras not for the basics.

Christine | Parenting | 05 11th, 2009 | No Comments »

Note: From time to time I will be posting book commentaries on threedeepbreaths.   This particular one is part of the MotherTalk/MomCentral book tour for Suzy Welch’s new book, and I received a free copy of the book in order to review it.  If I didn’t like it, I had the option of dropping out of the tour, so I will only be posting about books that seem useful to me.  I will always distinguish between books that are part of a tour, and books that I am reviewing from my own collection.

Suzy Welch’s 10-10-10: 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years: A Life-Transforming Idea , to paraphrase various descriptions, is about learning to choose the life we live, acting rather than reacting to changing circumstances.  When faced with a decision, following her 10-10-10 method will guide you to give serious thought to the consequences, rather than just going with your ‘gut.’ 

I joined the MotherTalk/MomCentral book tour for 10-10-10 (and received a free copy!) because I love reading personal development and success books. 

Now, I don’t go in for the Stuart Smalley  ‘You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you!’ type guides, but I enjoy books based on solid guidelines that helped the authors get a better grip on their lives.

Suzy Welch uses lots of examples (from her own life and from other people who use 10-10-10) so the reader can see how the method works in real life** situations, which makes for an enjoyable read.

I like Welch’s writing style, it’s authoritative but friendly at the same time.  And the system that she suggests is very simple.  When you are faced with a decision that matters, instead of going with your highly emotional, reactive, ‘gut’ you should put the decision in your brain by gathering information and doing a 10-10-10: asking yourself about the consequences of your decision in the immediate future (10 minutes), in the short term (10 months) and in the long term (10 years).

My first reaction to this idea was a bit of tension, because I was afraid it was one of those ‘Will this matter in 10 years?’ ways that people use to dismissing someone’s immediate concerns, but that wasn’t the case.  Instead, Welch is suggesting that you develop a fleshed out idea of how the consequences will affect you, not suggesting you write off today’s turmoil because it doesn’t matter. 

In fact, she specifically cautions against focussing too much on any part of the 10-10-10 timeline because all of the time frames matter – this method is about teasing out the big picture, identifying important issues, rather than going with our immediate reactions to situations. 
  
10-10-10 works best when you have a good sense of your own values.  Welch guides you to identify your values* by asking a few specific questions, and then you are supposed to use them to guide your visualization of the outcome of your decision over time.  Will this decision bring you closer to living by your values?  (People often state values differently than they live them, because they are not always conscious of how day-to-day actions add up).

Once you are clear on your values, you can use 10-10-10 to make sure you live as close to them as possible.   When faced with a decision, Welch says to develop a specific question addressing the problem (i.e. Should I accept this job?).  Then gather information*** and use the 10-10-10 structure to imagine what you will feel, and what the impact of your decision will be in:

- 10 mins (How will you feel? How will others feel?  What does it make you think about?)

- 10 months (Will you be settled in? Will things have calmed down?  Will you be closer to living the sort of life you want?).

- 10 years (What path does this decision put you on? Where could your decision lead you?  How will others remember this decision?)

I like the idea of using a framework for making decisions, because in parenting and in writing I often find myself with only vague ideas about why I chose a particular path, or why I feel we *should* choose that one.  That makes it hard to be consistent and hard to explain (and I’m a huge fan of information and explanation****) why I think things should go the way I do.  Using 10-10-10 will help remind me that some of the challenging actions I must take now (not giving in to the whining about video games, for example) are the groundwork for benefits in the future (kids with a variety of interests).

I’ve already helped a friend use 10-10-10 to make an important decision, and the feeling of regret that came over her when she thought about it being 10 months from now and not having taken action was immediately useful to her – and powerful for me because I could see how the thought affected her. I can definitely see myself using the 10-10-10 structure for helping my kids, for making career decisions and for mediating disagreements.

I do have a few suggestions (when do I not?  I am a suggestions queen!). 

I realize that people should read the whole book (or at least most of it) before undertaking 10-10-10 so they would have all the information before starting to use it, but lots of people will probably skim for the action steps.  For that reason, I would have like to see the section about determining values earlier in the book.  To be fair, it IS in the third chapter, which is pretty early, but it felt like I already had many of the tools to use the method by that point and then discovered there was a step before step one.  

Welch mentions values in the first two chapters (she says in chapter 3 that she has already mentioned them five times) but I would have liked for her to reference the upcoming values section in the first two chapters.

I would also like to have a 10-10-10 template included in the book or on her website.  Perhaps a values worksheet and then a form to use to structure the process the first few times you do it.  And a few, leading, thought-provoking questions would be great too. I think that would add great value to the book and help some people cement the process.

 Overall, I think the 10-10-10 method is a very useful framework for decision-making and it could remove a lot of angst from the process of making important changes in your life. 

*And she does this without injecting her own values in there.
**For everything from a discussion with a kid to choosing to relocate for a job
*** Sometimes the 10-10-10 structure helps you gather information, sometimes you need to gather information first and sometimes it helps you realize you need more information before a decision is possible.
****Seriously, I could never, ever, get enough information, not if I had a million years to research a topic.

Christine | Three Deep Breaths | 04 23rd, 2009 | No Comments »

I’ve been out of my groove lately, my routines have all gone by the wayside in the face of house repairs and it’s driving me crazy.

Before the last two weeks, had you asked me about my household routines I would have said something like : “I like the idea of routines, how they simplify your days, and how you can reduce the number of choices you have to make  every few minutes, but I don’t think I have very many.”

It turns out that I’m wrong, I have lots of them.  And having three men tearing out gyproc, adding plaster, and generally taking over most of my main floor and two upstairs rooms, forcing me and my sons to spend most of our time in our recroom, has brought them into stark relief.

I have spent most the past two weeks out of sync, a little flustered, and rather stressed out.  I used every technique I have (and I have many) to get myself to calm down.  I  took three deep breaths, cut my to do list to the bone, meditated, did yoga, tried to get out of the house as often as I could, and I immersed myself in activities with my sons.  They all helped but they didn’t get to the heart of the problem.

Then, on Thursday, I casually mentioned to a friend that my ordinary patterns were all thrown off and it clicked.  My ROUTINES were shot.   Unfortunately between Easter vacation and the continued presence of the workers, I couldn’t just re-establish my usual days. 

But I gave it some thought and realized that I need to be able to sit by myself with some tea, and read a little,  as close to first thing in the morning as possible.  I couldn’t put all my routines back yet, but I could do that.  So on Friday morning, I got the kids’ breakfast, got them dressed and then sent them to the recroom without me.  And I sat in the kitchen with my giant cup of tea and a book, and there, amid the plaster dust, bits of plastic, and all manner of household detritius, I gained a little sanity, a little calm. 

So I’d fully recommend that if your routines have been shifted, for whatever reason, you take a few minutes to look at your day and see what parts of your routine make you feel most centered, most in control of your mind, and see if there is a way to re-establish those.

PS – Sorry for the radio silence, the house repairs have limited my computer time and my brainspace.  Regular posting resumes today.

Christine | Three Deep Breaths | 04 18th, 2009 | No Comments »

The tagline of my blog says ‘Take control, feel better’  and I thought it was high time I explained that a little.

I’m in the process of learning how to let go of trying to predict all possible outcomes of new situations, and how to be a little more comfortable when sitting with uncertainty, and it’s a challenge.  But even as I am trying to learn that, I have realized that I do have some control in every situation – at the very least, I can control my own reactions and I can choose how to behave.

That’s what my tagline is about.  Trying to accept the level of control you have and learning to work with that.

With two kids, a marriage,  a freelance career, a huge volunteer position and all sorts of other commitments, it can feel as if I am being swept through my days, reacting rather than planning, and letting chaos swirl around me.  

It doesn’t feel good and I want to feel good. 

I enjoy all of my commitments and I have freely chosen them, so I want to do a god job and I want to have as much fun as possible while I complete them.  So that’s why I practice a lot of the things I will be talking about here.:  

• I meditate to slow things down, get my brain in the right mode and learn to be more mindful.
• I plan my weeks as much as I can, so I can manage my time effectively.*
• I exercise so I have more energy.
• I have as many routines as I can get away with so the day has a nice rhythm, and I don’t have to make unnecessary decisions.**
• I have a short list of things to do every day (write for 10minutes, do 5 yoga poses, meditate for 2+ minutes) so no matter what else happens, I accomplish that much.

So the control in the tagline refers to dealing with this moment, to making this moment better,  to sweeping your day along rather than getting swept along by it. 

It doesn’t mean asserting a iron will over everything.  It means putting yourself back in charge of your day, your time, and your life, as much as possible.

*This can be a real challenge for stay-at-home parents, when you have to constantly respond to your kids’ needs and your time is so flexible (does it matter if you make that call now or in an hour?),  it can feel easier to just stumble along rather than creating a schedule that needs to change over and over.  But I’ve got a few ideas to help with that.  All in good time.

** If you always do x before y, you never have to decide what to do first.  It sounds foolish to worry about a decision like that, but when you have a routine and those decisions are removed, it really is easier – one less thing to think about.

Christine | Three Deep Breaths | 03 31st, 2009 | No Comments »

Visualization can be a very useful tool to relieve stress, improve performance, and create a positive outcome scenario.  Athletes use it to ‘practice’ perfect form,  sales people use it to get over nervousness about cold calls, and stressed out people can use it to bring about relaxed feelings or to rehearse potentially difficult situations and reduce their stress.

I will be introducing some specific visualization practices in a few days, but for right now I am just going to talk about visualization in general.

I’ve always had trouble with it.  I just don’t have the power to see myself in my mind’s eye.  I don’t know if that is because I am more of a word-oriented person or if I haven’t honed the skills to visualize in that way.

But, like I usually do when I can’t do something, I read up on it.  And not only did I discover that a rich description (no problem!) that you repeat over and over can serve a similar purpose, but thanks to Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization I discovered a way to put myself into my mind’s eye.

Now when I visualize something, I write a rich description first, and then I use Gawain’s suggestion:  I visualize the situation around me and instead of trying to see the whole thing like a movie, watching myself, I visualize it like I was there.  I am seeing the richly described location through my eyes, I can feel the textures and fabrics, I can hear the noises,  and I can see my hands doing the actions I am trying to practice.

This is different than trying to picture my whole body in the scene, because unless I am in front of a full length mirror, I rarely see myself that way.  But I always see my hands doing things, and I feel things like blowing air upwards so my hair puffs out of my eyes, so I can more easily imagine doing things if I create a scenario where I watch my hands, or feel that common action.

That’s what I suggested for a friend of mine who was having trouble with stress at work last year.  She was juggling so many projects with so many details that she was bringing her work home with her, in her head.  Here’s the basic scenario that I created for her:

I suggested that she imagine herself doing the usual things she does when leaving work, except before she stepped out of her office she was to imagine picking up a heavy stack of binders that contained all the notes, mental and physical, that she had made on each project.  I told her to think about how heavy they were, to think about how her arms would ache from holding them, how she would rest her chin on them to hold them in place while she walked.

Then, when she stepped out of her office, she was to imagine she was in a long corridor that had appeared between her door and the door outside, and that the walls of that corridor contained a number of small alcoves, the perfect size for a binder.  As she came to the first alcove, she was to shift the weight of the binders to one arm, and use the wall to support them so she could take the top binder off the pile and place it in the alcove.  When she did that, a label would appear above the alcove so she could identify what binder it contained when she came back for it.

I told her to repeat that for however many binders she imagined she needed.  And then when all her binders were safely stored, she was to imagine stretching her arms, or rolling her shoulders to relax from the effort of carrying the binders and then walk out the front door, relaxed, knowing she could pick up where she left off when she returned to work.

Of course, she had to fill in the details herself, what her office looked like, what she was wearing, the sounds of her shoes on the floor, what her office smells like, so she could visualize it more fully, make it more real.  But the scenario helped because she had a concrete, if imaginary, way of putting down the burdens of work before she went home.  And she didn’t have to be able visualize her whole self to do it.

  I’m going to have lots of visualization advice on this site over the next while, but if you need something more I offer a paid service for custom visualizations - click on the ‘Services’ link above.

Christine | One Foot in Front of the Other, Three Deep Breaths | 03 21st, 2009 | No Comments »