Hi!
Welcome to the March addition of the Monthly Connection.
Last time we chatted, we talked about:
The skill set of the BOTH/AND.
How being in connection is a process (OKš, Pocket Cindi)
The fact that nobody stays connected forever (Grrrš¤, Pocket Cindi)
And the fact that when we feel all of our feelings - mad, glad, sad, ashamed, and afraid - we become wholehearted (Yayš, Pocket Cindi)
And, like every newsletter, we also review the Fundamentals of Connection:
And nowā¦ letās get to this monthās message!
Iām hearing from a lot of you how rough it is out here, and how baby elephants alone arenāt cutting it! (Even though they are awfully cute and they make us smile).
You might even be thinkingā¦
āCindi, do you have anything that could help us as
we are drinking out of this Fire Hose of Stress?ā
Yes! I think you are all going to be much happier with Pocket Cindi this month, as sheās out of her timeout and has this to say about dealing with this Fire Hose of Stress:
Building I Can Handle it Muscles is the solution to turning down the Fire Hose of Stress!
Let me explainā¦
Letās start by looking at the direct connection between decreasing stress and the belief that I can handle it (as inā¦stress).
The more I believe I can handle it (stress),
the less stressed out I become.
(Cool, right?)
Maybe youāre now thinkingā¦
Ok, great I buy that Cindi.
The million dollar question remainsā¦
HOW do I do this?
How do I build an āI can handle itā muscle???
(Excellent question, btw.)
Have any of you played with your baby elephants this past month?
Even if you stayed with that adorable image for a moment, let me ask you:
What happened to your mood, your inner landscape?
Did it shift or change, even for a split second?
Did it change your ability to handle whatever stressors were present in that moment? (Even if it was short livedā¦)
Pretty impressive, the power of that little elephant, hey?
Think about that while we pause for a word from our sponsorā¦
āI Can Handle Itā muscles are brought to you by our sponsorā¦ ATTENTION!
Attention is where we put our focus.
andā¦
Where we put our focus is where we put our precious energy!
šŗ And now back to our regularly scheduled programming. šŗ
Letās try a two-part thought experiment to bring this all together.
Part One: The Sole Attention Lens - ALL or NOTHING
Can you see how this single lens, this One-Sided, ALL or NOTHING system of looking at our stress, ourselves, and the outside world is wildly skewing our data and creating inaccurate beliefs about us and the World?
The STRESSORS arenāt the problem.
(Remember, every single problem can be tracked back to Disconnection.)
The System of Disconnection (using our sole, ALL or NOTHING attention) is the culprit.
Thatās what is causing our wild pain.
Part Two: THE BOTH/AND Lens
Enter the Baby Elephant - (i.e. the good stuff) - laughter, gratitude, kindness, beauty, creativity, nature, intelligence, wholeness, and love.
First, visualize the teeter-totter with all those difficult feelings on one side.
Next, visualize the baby elephant walking on the teeter-totter to the other side.
What do you see?
Yes, the teeter-totter is beginning to shift.
Maybe we might have to add other cute baby animals like pandas and wood ducks to join our friend.
Now what is happening to the teeter-totter?
As we add our cute joyful friends (the good stuff), in addition to the mad, sad, ashamed, afraid side, we begin to balance the teeter-totter.
Not only is there an increase in joy; something happens to our ability to handle the other side of the teeter-totter.
Those feelings of mad, sad, and ashamed might be changing!
Perhaps the intensity of those feelings is getting lighter as the difficult side of the teeter-totter becomes more balanced.
And, do you notice that your ability to handle those difficult feelings is changing too?
Could you say those feelings are becoming more manageable?
With the heavy feelings becoming lighter, is anything changing in the way you are thinking about solutions to those stressors? Or with your behaviors regarding stressors?
Whatās happening to your beliefs?
Notice we are not eliminating feelings, we are adding to them.
Note:
This is not escapism, where we ignore the hard stuff and focus only on the baby elephant.
Bringing the Both/And to our internal teeter-totters, gives us energy from the good stuff and simultaneously decreases the intensity of the difficult feelings.
The result?
We can begin to HANDLE IT!
When we bring the BOTH/AND to our inner Emotional teeter-totters, it changes not only the feeling landscape; it shapes our thoughts and behaviors.
As our thoughts and behaviors become more manageable, due to the BOTH/AND effect, it circles back and adds more I Can Handle It messaging to our feelings.
Go, baby animal friends!
This beautiful spiral is what allows us to place our hand on the water faucet, which controls the pressure to the fire hose of stress. Even though we may not be able to turn off the stressors, we can choose to turn the faucet down to a manageable level.
This is the I Can Handle It muscle in action.
We Can Handle It because we, the only people we can change, are in charge of where we put our ATTENTION.
TIP!
ā”ļø How to Build I Can Handle It Musclesā¦ ā¬ ļø
(According to our friends, the Animal Behavioralists)
Baby animals in the wild learn drop dead serious things about survival, social order, how to hunt, who and what to avoid through PLAY.
Turns out JOY, the event of play, is a fantastic way for us
to learn and integrate important life saving information.
š Go, baby elephants! š
Enjoy playing with your inner teeter-totters!
Until next month, looking forward to seeing you around on the playground!
Connection Coach Cindi
P.S. If you have a friend who might want to meet Pocket Cindi and hear all about baby elephants, please share!!!