Stronger Than You Know

[caressa]

Stronger Than You Know
Getting Ourselves Worked Up

Our capacity to cope successfully with life's challenges far outstrips our capacity to feel nervousness. Yet in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to an event that we believe will test our limits, we can become nervous. While we may have previously regarded ourselves as equal to the trials that lie ahead, we reach a point at which they near and our anxiety begins to mount. We then become increasingly worked up, until the moment of truth arrives and we discover that our worry was all for nothing. We are almost always stronger and more capable than we believe ourselves to be. But anxiety is not rational in nature, which means that in most cases we cannot work through it using logic as our only tool. Reason can help us recognize the relative futility of unwarranted worry but, more often than not, we will find more comfort in patterns of thought and activity that redirect our attention to practical or engaging matters.

Most of us find it remarkably difficult to focus on two distinct thoughts or emotions at once, and we can use this natural human limitation to our advantage when trying to stay centered in the period leading up to a potentially tricky experience. When we concentrate on something unrelated to our worry?such as deep breathing, visualizations of success, pleasurable pursuits, or exercise?anxiety dissipates naturally. Meditation is also a useful coping mechanism as it provides us with a means to ground ourselves in the moment. Our guides can aid us by providing us with a focal point wholly outside of our own sphere.

The intense emotional flare-up you experience just before you are set to challenge yourself is often a mixture of both excitement and fear. When you take steps to eliminate the fear, you can more fully enjoy the excitement. Though you may find it difficult to avoid getting worked up, your awareness of the forces acting on your feelings will help you return to your center and accept that few hurdles you will face will be as high as they at first appear.

What do you think?

[Lin]

This reading rerminds me of the time in my life when my mom was dying of lung cancer. I was teaching school, helping care for her as much as I could, and my husband was drinking every day. It was tough. It was very tough to be the best teacher I could be. I had to shut out worrying about if he would be in jail or the hospital by the time I got off work. I had to not wonder if he was out there drunk driving and putting himself as well as innocent other people on the road in danger. I had to not think about my mom gasping for her every breath and me being poweless over it. I had to detach from all of that and be the best teacher I could be. I owed that to the students in my class and to their parents who trusted their precious children to me to teach.

I had never been to alanon at that time, and I did all of this without having the steps, slogans, or even my HP beside me. (so i thought) By the time my mom died, 1 1/2 years after she was diagnosed, I learned I had inner strength that I never knew was there. I've heard a saying...what does not kill you, makes you stronger. There were days I thoguth I could not do some of hte things I had to do....things I had to do for my mother that you have to do for a tiny baby. (She lived with my brother, and there were things only a daughter should be doing...not a son.) All the while I had to not show my fear on my face to her. I made it through and on the other side I was much stronger.

Today I know I can get through even the toughet of challenges. It may be stressful and painful while going through it, but luckily for me and those around me, today I have a program to help me. I have program friends to help me. And most important of all I have my HP beside me, to guide me, protect me, inspire me, calm me, and direct me. I put my trust in him, and my life can be so much easier. I still have challenges, but today I have the strength adn the tools to meet those challenges.

LIN

[caressa]

Thank you for sharing Lin. The program has helped me with my own health issues. I just got word that I have to go back for more x-rays and an ultra-sound on my breast because something showed up on the ones I just had ten days ago. I don't know what the problem was but just knowing there could be something is kind of scarey and I won't know until the middle of October.

[caressa222]

Small world, I just posted that this was my thought for today from my meditation with my butterfly cards.

[caressa222]

This has proved true in the hospital. It is good when others endorse your strength and efforts.

It has been a long journey from not being able to walk and move my legs to walking with my walker.