Healthy Living DIY

Cut to scene from an average American home -- Tuesday, 7:00 pm: Dinner's finished, kids are fussing about their homework, mom and dad are frazzled. Everybody's stressed from a hectic day. The place is in chaos.

Bring up the sound: "I'm stressed out! I'm not doing anything tonight. Gonna put my feet up on the couch and watch some TV. I've had it!" (Mom talking.)

"Me, too! Time to relax." (complete agreement from Dad).

And so it goes. Stress to relaxation -- right?

Not quite. This isn't relaxation, it's numbness. Once they come to, they'll be just as stressed as they were when they knocked themselves out with the self-medication of the TV set (or Internet browsing, or any other diversion).

They forgot a step.

"You tell me, you're the psychic."

I listened as Caroline Myss told of the comment that inspired her to take her career as a medical intuitive in a different direction. I'll share the story with you in just a moment. But I'll tell you right now that there was more behind Caroline's response to that comment than taking offense at a participant's careless quip.

The comment spoke volumes about the participant's frame of reference toward her own health and healing process. Simply, she was not engaged.

As a practitioner in a health care field myself, a state of engagement is easy to recognize. A person comes in with a particular goal in mind. As we pursue that goal, the engaged person offers feedback, asks questions, and shares relevant bits of their life story. The disengaged person -- figuratively and sometimes even literally -- settles in for a nap.

A short while ago, we explored the healing state of commitment. Today, we'll begin our look at engagement.

... or control an outcome. The participants in any of my wellness coaching activities know I'm big on producing measurable results. But influcencing a result and controlling an outcome are two different bananas. One is possible, the other generally is not.

It's useful to appreciate the difference. I have an excellent, though I'll warn you right now sad, opportunity to illustrate with a situation that just occurred in my own life. I was able to influence a result. But ultimately, I could not control the outcome.

In this article, we'll explore several views on the factors that affect a health outcome -- and then I'll share my story.

Ok here's that happy ending. As of Friday, February 16th, Christopher and I have a new roommate. Meet Max!

He's looking a little scruffy in this picture, since he was a stray himself just a few days before. But don't be concerned. He's spiffing up real nice as he gets used to his new home, and vice versa. We'll keep you posted.

Courage. Another essential state for healing.

A short while ago, we began a series of articles exploring different states that are helpful for healing, starting with the state of engagement. Today we'll explore the state we call courage.

The word courage comes from the Latin root word for heart. In today's modern French language, the word "coeur" means heart. When a person acts courageously, we may say that they have a lot of heart.

You might wonder what courage has to do with healing, but it's really simple. One of the main reasons people get in trouble in any area of life (including the area of health and well-being) is that they fall prey to the emotion of fear.

I messed up this week. I guess we all do it once in a while. And I just did. I'm posting the comment here so that ... just to be clear ... you get that I get that in the end, we're all just human.

Someone in my world made a careless mistake. Was it intentionally wasteful and disrespectful? Honestly, I don't know. What I do know is it looked that way to me at the time. And these are, unfortunately, two very sensitive issues for me. The careless actions were essentially "against" nearly everything that I'm "for."

How did I respond?

Next on our tour of healing states is the state of receptivity. We've spoken about this before, yet I look around and see the same old situations over and over. So let's touch on it once again.

It's been said that the most dangerous words in the English language are "I already know that." It's also been said that we don't get ourselves in trouble so much from what we don't know, but from what we don't know we don't know.

Great wisdom in those words!

If you've read my previous post on "What to do when you mess up," you'll know that I recently over-reacted to someone else's careless mistake. At the root of the careless mistake was a lack of receptivity. The person acted as though something was true, when in fact they were way off the mark.

The catch? Despite having absolutely no experience in the life domain in question, the person assumed they knew exactly what needed to be done. Instead of stopping to ask a question or seek guidance, they barged ahead -- and straight into trouble.

I'm sure I've done the same thing at some point. And so, probably, have you. We're human.

Yet ...