Offended? It Is Not Always About Us

Every day brings with it new reasons to be offended. Everyone has their own baggage that they bring into their interactions with others.  Someone cuts you off in traffic, says something rude, etc.  I always say, you never know what a person was experiencing prior to their encounter with you.

Once my husband and I went to a restaurant, and the waitress was particularly rude in seating us. Just her overall demeanor was extraordinarily, well, nasty.  My husband commented quietly about her behavior, and I on the other hand chose to “kill her with kindness.” I was extremely pleasant to her despite her treatment of us.  Upon her return to the table, she stated that another server would be handling our table, and that she needed to leave because her mother had just died.  I was in shock, we gave our sympathies, prayed with her and she left.  Her absence left the strongest impression on me, and reinforced my own need to be mindful of the people I encounter every day.  To remember that everyone is walking wounded in their own way, and more importantly, that it is not all about me/us. 

How many opportunities have you had to be offended already today? Did you take it personally? Did you take a step back and ask yourself, maybe this person is going through their own stuff? 

Make these questions a daily ritual in your interaction with others before taking offense, before, retaliating, breathe, and remember, it is not all about us.  Once we truly recognize this idea and take it into our spirit, we heal the hearts of others, and God’s grace heals our hearts as well.

Marital Battery Low? Using Ritual as a Way to Charge Up

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.  For if they fall, one will lift up his companion…” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

We charge up everything in our lives, cell phones, readers, computers, cars, you name it, and we charge it.  We charge these things because the battery wears from regular use, and a simple recharge can return it to its previous ability of functioning and productivity.  More importantly, we charge these things because we have deemed them as an important aspect of our lives that we need, and having dead batteries is simply unacceptable. 

Relationships are not that different, they require the same amount of care and attention.  Life becomes chaotic, balance is lost, and we don’t always make the best decisions when it comes to our partners.  The difference between people and things is that we cannot always detect when a relationship battery is low.  Computers and phones give us indicator lights in a variety of colors to demonstrate the urgency, but humans are as bit more complex.  Partners demonstrate their relationship batteries are low through behaviors and language.  However, what if both partners are so busy they are unaware their marriage battery is low, but one or both clearly notice that something is awry?  Remain dedicated to recharging your relationship batteries by recognizing the signs that the indicator light is on low, and in danger of burning out, and it in before it dies.  Signs your battery is low:

1.      Rituals are low, stopped or non-existent in your relationship.

2.      Life priorities take precedence over quality time with your partner.

3.      You cannot remember the last time you asked your partner out on a date.

4.      You cannot remember the last time you flirted with your partner.

Ritual is important in relationships, and serves as a way to charge our relational batteries regularly.  In relationships it is important not to settle for merely having a battery that is charged, but ensure that the quality of the relationship with all of its benefits and applications are also at maximum capacity to produce harmony.

Many things interest many people, therefore, it is important for couples to slow down and recognize what is important to them, and integrate those priorities into their rituals they choose to recharge their relationships.  Listed are a few examples:

1.      Read a nightly passage, poem, scriptures together in bed and discuss it.

2.      Send each other flirtatious messages or texts throughout the day.

3.      Set aside time each night to engage in fifteen minutes of “connect time,” a hug, a caress,

a conversation, a joke (laughter is a great ritual to have or start daily in your lives).

In order for these to work, they need to be implemented daily, once you remember to make one another a priority, the process will organically and naturally happen.  Give it a month, and the indicator light may not need to come on, because you will recognize the need to charge your marital battery before it gets too low.  Happy charging.  

Gratitude, Prayer and Honesty: Do They Make You Feel Better?

Have you ever had a day where you felt like nothing did or could go your way? Maybe your day started off great, and one event caused a sudden 360 that put a damper on the rest of your afternoon.  No one is immune to having bad moments occur in their lives.  These moments drain the energy right out of us, making it difficult to see how things can actually turn around.   Not a great feeling is it?

Have you ever had a day where you received a phone call, text or someone walk up to you to tell you, “I appreciate you,” “I am grateful for you being in my life,” “thank you,” “God bless you?”  Statements like these can turn our inner rain to sunshine, a frown into a smile, or bring joy where there was sadness, all from the power of words.   When we demonstrate gratitude to another person, we alter their state of being, we change something in the atmosphere.  Gratitude is contagious. 

Gratitude, by definition is the idea that we are thankful and appreciative of benefits that we have received or will receive in the future.  Usually, this acknowledgement comes in the form of an emotion, expression or outward action. 

How do you feel after hearing forms of gratitude? What does it do to you? Physiologically, quite a bit including, lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, increased endorphin levels, temporarily improves focus, and diminishes feelings of pain (by stabilizing pain receptors in the brain).  Wow, these are mere examples of the physiological benefits, in addition to the relational and personal benefits we receive when expressing and receiving gratitude.  Prayer has similar physiological benefits as well.   

Oprah recently began a sort of gratitude revolution, people are asked to reflect daily on a question that takes them to a place of being grateful.  For example, this appreciation can be for something they gained or learned as the result of another person or self. Put another way, this gratitude revolution places daily recognition on someone or some experience that has had a positive impact on your life.  This creates a form of gratitude energy that gains momentum through the pure act of consistent reflection on being grateful. 

This week there has been much discussion about the concepts of gratitude, honesty and prayer.  In the last two weeks we have celebrated gratitude, National Honesty Day and National Day of Prayer.  Certain days of the year are devoted to celebrating these constructs, ideally through our acting on them, with the hope that we make these actions consistent rituals throughout our daily lives.

Prayer, honesty and gratitude, both in expression and reception have numerous benefits to our daily living and overall lifestyle.  It only takes five to ten seconds to add any of these rituals into your daily moments.  Gratitude, prayer and honesty instill hope.  Very often each of these acts can put or keep us on the purpose for our lives.  Have you prayed today? Have you expressed gratitude? Did you choose to try to be honest as a lifestyle?

Share with me what gratitude, honesty or prayer has done for you.  Thank you in advance.

Be well

ClinicalTonya

Ritual and Grief: A Personal Journey

In recent years, I lost someone extremely close to me, my grandmother, Ma.  Having such a young mother, my grandmother was a second mother to me, thus, she had a tremendous impact on all of my learning and development.  I can recall my first day of kindergarten, upon her arrival to pick me up, she noticed two children fighting on the lawn.  At that moment, she looked at my mother and said something to the effect of “she will not be returning here.”  I was enrolled in private school immediately. 

These are my memories and experiences of her, strength, courage and wisdom, beyond any I have yet to encounter again.  We are all impacted by death in different ways, and everyone has their own grief process.  Throughout my career, I have had the honor and privilege of ushering many through the journey of a loved one’s transition.  The process is a roller coaster of emotion for most, being flooded with tears one moment, fine the next, or completely numb, to name a few stages.  Many of us are familiar with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and her stages of grief. Although fairly accurate for some, these stages serve merely as a guide, not a robotic manual of how one will or should act.

My own experience went unnoticed until recently, as I was under the assumption that I was dealing with it, and taking care of everyone else.  Little did I realize I left several inner and outer casualties as a result of my grandmother’s passing. 

For the purpose of today’s blog, the casualties are less important than how I actually worked through the grief process in releasing to her to Heaven.  I went back to Spirit, to Jesus, for me, that is where my strength comes from.  I began using ritual as a form of healing.  In many cultures and religions, telling stories of the loved one is a way of honoring and grieving them, so I began to do this regularly with my family members.  Eventually, we all began sharing stories, connecting memories that others we were all able to participate in through story. 

According to scripture, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, so I began talking to her, for I know she is with me.  Narrative is also a place from which much insight and peace can appear, so I began writing letters to her.  These letters would include things I cherished, things I missed, or how I and other family members had been coping since her transition.  Lastly, I engaged in a ritual taken from Judaic tradition.  I lit two Yahzreit candles, one for her and one for me.  Yahzreit, which has the root of Yah, as in Yahweh, one of the names of God, is a memorial candle that symbolically represents mourning, and the human soul.  The candle is also a reminder of the fragility of life, and to not take life’s moments for granted, for they are as fleeting as a flicker of light.  The candle burns for twenty four straight, until it burns out.   I take this to mean that everything has a season to die.

This ritual has had a wonderful effect on me, in that, her presence feels more tangible.  The process of mourning and grief is always for those that are left, not the one that has passed.  As I write this blog, it is time for the candles to burn out.  My candle went out first, and the one for my grandmother continues to burn strong.  I interpret her candle still going as a sign to me from Heaven that God gave me her strength and abilities, that she is doing just fine, I live because she existed, and I am better for knowing her...I also took from this that I will always be ok. 

That is the gift of the present moment, the gift of loss, and the gift of ritual. 

     http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/119648

Ritual: Finding Meaning in the Little Things

I recently saw a program for a funeral that was unique in presentation.  Rather than a picture of a person in some period of time that captured their essence, this was not that.  It almost appeared as a painting with dark outlines of a man on a boat facing the sunrise, with a fishing rod in hand.  To some, this was an outline of the man who passed and he liked to fish.  However, when I saw this program, the image mesmerized me.  This man, with all of the degrees and accolades that define success in our culture, enjoyed the simple things. 

Those that were close to him remembered and honored his reverence for fishing, a ritual he engaged in for much of his life.  This ritual was demonstrated by taking out special time, and specific instruments to engage in centering himself with nature, and filling his soul with peace.  This is the very essence of ritual.

Ritual can mean many things.  In this case, it means those little everyday moments that bring us comfort and peace, that bring us back to our true selves.  Small rituals should take you out of the chaos of your daily living and bring you back to center. 

The “big” rituals are nice, weddings, birthdays, holidays etc., but life is about the in between, the journey.  Rituals make us better for ourselves, and better for other people. 

Please remember what I have, and will always say:  “without having these small daily moments of celebration—you can miss your life if you are not careful.  Remember to celebrate.

I look forward to your comments on how you choose to celebrate, until next time. We will talk soon.

ClinicalTonya

Rituals: Celebrating Life in the Small Present Moments

“Rituals will not add more hours to your day, but they add more quality to your life.”

A Ritual is an action performed for it’s symbolic value, or often just for the sheer pleasure that comes with the ritual itself.  Rituals can do many things for us.  Most important among them, rituals remind us of who we are. 

They remind us to show up in the present moment, for the present never returns to us again, rather it becomes the past. 

“We tend to live in one of two places on our life journey, the past or the future.  It is time for us to make a point to be more present in our own lives.”

Take time right now to reflect on the concept that you have small, incremental moments, that are worthy of celebration, daily.  For some, it may be a morning cup of tea or coffee, a sunrise or sunset, laughter, seeing or hearing someone you love and care for, celebrate these moments.  If you forget to celebrate these moments, you miss your life.  

Read more on ritual at Bliss blog next week, until then, find small reasons to celebrate.  We will talk again soon @ClinicalTonya.