Healthy Happy Loving Life: An Interesting Life

Tags

adjusting to change, energy, Feeling energized, fulfilled, Healthy Happy Loving Life, Kebba, living beyond, making changes, moving on, not boring, uncertainty

© 2021 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM. http://www.kebba.com

© 2021 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

This neon sign was in a favorite Denver restaurant.  One day, a sudden blizzard blew across the city, dropping the temperature 80 degrees and blanketing the city with snow.  The main dining room was a bit chilly.  I looked up, saw this sign, and realized: my life has never been boring! And it will probably never be boring!  And I embrace my life.

How about you?

The more we are in step with the uncertainty of life, the more we find we’re Healthy, Happy, and Loving Life^sm?  It’s up to you!  

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress solutions expert, holistic guide, and award-winning author who celebrates life.  She has a longtime energy healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: The Pinball Machine of Life

Tags

adjusting to change, energy, Feeling energized, fulfilled, Garth Brooks, grateful, healing, Kebba, living beyond, making changes, moving on, Relationships, stress tips

Photo by http://www.livelifehappy.com

© 2021 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

Today, I offer my Pinball Machine Theory of Life.   Think of the top 3 disappointing events you’ve had in life.  A relationship suddenly over.  The job you KNEW was yours, and someone else got it.  The friend who suddenly cut you off.  Remember how much that hurt?

Sometimes, it’s like you are the ball on a pinball game board.  After the token goes into the machine, and the spring launcher is pulled and released, the ball zips up the slope of the game board.  Sometimes, like the pinball, you are racing up the board of life thinking you are definitely headed in a certain direction.  Then– wham!– you get hit with a flipper.  For a moment, you don’t even know what your new direction is, right?  You’re just reverberating with the impact of the flipper (ow!), feeling the pain, and trying to get your bearings again.  Then you begin collecting yourself, look up, and see what unintended direction you are now headed in.  Yikes! Not what the plan was!  And how many time has this happened to you?

Grammy-Award winning musician Garth Brooks has a powerful song called, “Thank God for Unanswered Prayers.”  In the song, he tells of being out with his wife and seeing the woman he dated in high school.  In high school, he used to pray for that relationship every night.  By the time he saw his old flame again, he realized he would not be in the amazing relationship he was in with his wife, had the relationship with his old flame worked out.  So now he is massively grateful for the passing of that old relationship!  He was redirected on the Pinball Machine of Life, and now he is deeply glad.

If you are a person of faith, remember this timeless truth [Romans 8:28]:  We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him…

When the flippers hit you, you are being directed for powerful purposes, by a Wisdom greater than our own.  Do your best to deal with the hurt.  Then embrace the new opportunities that are arriving.  Be the happy and grateful pinball.

Now, doesn’t it feel great to be even more Healthy, Happy, and Loving Life^sm?  It’s up to you!  

---

Kebba Buckley Button is a stress solutions expert, holistic guide, and award-winning author who celebrates life.  She has a longtime energy healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Second Day Back

Tags

Enjoying life, Healthy Happy Loving Life, Natural pain solutions

Welcome (back) to the new version of my long-running blog about being as healthy and happy as you can be, enjoying life as much as you can!  I started blogging in 2009, when social media was young.  I took a class on Facebook, Twitter, and blogging, and it was a mind-blower.  At first, I was spending 20 hours a week, learning and practicing my new skills.  I learned photo selection and manipulation, and how to get those pesky titles, subtitles, and captions in all the right places.  Now I’m fast at creating what I want.

I’m using the Ultimate Blog Challenge this month (look for the group of that name on Facebook)– one article per day– to motivate myself to get back in the driver’s/writer’s seat.  There was a lot of family business the last several years, and I just couldn’t keep up my weekly articles and newsletters.  For a couple of years, I did write monthly articles for an authors’ blog.  If you’re interested in seeing those, I will be making the collection available as a pdf ebook.  Now, a shift in family needs is allowing me to spend more time on what I’m called to do: consulting, healing, and writing.  During the last few years, I did continue teaching and speaking.  I finished two full-color browsing books:  Inspirations for Peace Within and Sacred Meditation.  My next planned book will likely be on stress and burnout.  Stay tuned!

Some people wonder how I got into the field of natural medicine.  While I don’t believe in dwelling on the negative, I will share my story briefly here.  In my twenties, I was a serious, focused workaholic engineering manager.  I published mightily; I had quite a publications list.  One night I realized the large knuckles of my hands were burning badly.  I dismissed it, since my mother had first experienced mild arthritis around the same age.  Mom had never done anything about her arthritis, other than take anti-inflammatories and supplements.  I look a lot like Mom and have had much the same metabolism.  So I thought, no biggie.  I have what she had.

Wrong!  Within a year, I was burning from head to toe, and aspirin wouldn’t touch it.  There was a terrible stiffness with the burning.  On the worst day, it took me 2 hours to turn over to reach a telephone, to call in sick.  I thought I might have about a dozen years before I would be in a wheelchair.  There would be no marriage, family, or children.  I took up yoga and jogging.  I worked and experimented and prayed. I continued my career in hydrology and engineering.

In the eighth year of my research and efforts, a miracle was revealed: I had beaten it!!  I was at a party, when a friend started talking about Her Arthritis like it was her lover.  After being introduced to her new diagnosis, she bought a new car for it.  We had been going on group campouts.  She bought all new camping equipment for her companion-disease.  She bought new furniture for her companion-disease.  I listened as generously as I could.  Finally, I heard myself say, “well, when I had horrible crippling arthritis… I did (these things to beat it)…”  I was so shocked to hear myself speak of the horrible burning condition in the past tense, that I can’t tell you what the friend replied.  Or even what my sharings were.  I do remember her frowning at me.  We were both struggling to be polite.

Within a couple of years, I was so involved in natural- and energy medicine, and natural pain solutions, that I was bored with hydrology and engineering.  I gave notice and left the engineering firm I was working for. I opened my own holistic healing practice and have now been at it for over 30 years.  I have helped many, many people with energy healing, dietary adjustments, intuitive guidance, positive languaging, relationship strategies, and understanding the “why” of their physical discomforts.

I invite you to join me on this journey of seeking happiness, health, and a love of life!

—————————————————–

Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author.  She also is an ordained minister and has a natural healing practice. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br),and Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

 

Opinion Stress: What You Think of Me Is None of My Business

Tags

achieving goals, acid stress, at choice, Effective living, Kebba Buckley Button, Letting go, moving on, Releasing, UpBeat Living

© 2015 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM. World Rights Reserved.

 

Fotolia

 

Now be honest: how many times today did you consider someone else’s ideas about you? How many decisions did you make because someone else would or would not like exactly what you did? If your hair is royal blue and forms a peak across the center of your skull, maybe this isn’t you. Or maybe it is.

 

As a stress management expert, I want you to navigate as freely and joyfully through your life as you can. I want you to find the greatest health and fulfillment you can. And that means dealing firmly with the things that cause you stress, pain, and fatigue.  The results are a lifestyle I call Upbeat Living, always emphasizing the Up beat, like the music term.

 

One of the things I see most draining people is the desire to make a choice that is harmless to others, but there is fear of others’ opinions. So many of these fears are small. For example: you’re having lunch with a vegetarian, but you really crave a burger, and that’s better for your metabolism; you’re afraid to order what you want, for fear of disapproval. Or you want to cut your hair short and dye it vivid red, but you’re afraid of negative feedback in the workplace or that the one you’re dating will be less attracted to you. But some of these fears are bigger: maybe you want to leave your current financial career that’s sucking your soul dry. But you’re afraid your family will disown you if you become a chef.

 

Argue for your limitations and they are yours.

~ Rev. Terry Cole-Whittaker

 

If the vegetarian expresses disapproval of your lunch order, the message is that you are wrong—not worthy. If your workplace expresses disapproval of your hair color, the message is that you are wrong—not worthy—for their group. And if your family would disown you for quitting your draining job and becoming a chef, the message is that you are wrong and not worthy.

 

Several decades ago, I encountered a book by (Rev.) Terry Cole-Whittaker, with the most amusing title: What You Think Of Me Is None Of My Business. Cole-Whittaker believes firmly that each of us is already a complete person, with nothing missing. So we cannot be inadequate.

God does not make junk!

~ Rev. Terry Cole-Whittaker

So according to Cole-Whittaker, other people are not our source, the Divine is. Since God/the Universe/the Divine is completely infinite, all options are open to us, and the sky is the limit. Or not even. She encourages us to think very freely about why we’re attached to what and whom, and to be open to just releasing those attachments. We often have a very strong sense of possession: MY job, MY hairdresser, MY beloved. She tells of realizing she was hanging onto her first marriage, long after it was no longer working or salvageable. She finally got honest with herself and saw she didn’t want anyone else to have her husband!

 

Try this: find 15 minutes of you-time in a quiet place. Or find it in a charming coffee shop where you plug in your laptop, with the hum and chatter of the place creating happy white noise. Now free-write to yourself and the Universe about your life—what you like and don’t, what’s working and what isn’t, what and how you would have things in your dream life. Do you see ways in which you’re feeling stuck? Now: YOU are the only person who can choose differently.

 

What I think of you is none of your business. And what you think of me is none of my business. But what you think of your life, what nurtures you, and what would make you happy and fulfilled—those things are entirely your business. Create some you-time every day, as you can, and keep writing to yourself and the Universe. Keep adding to the “discussion” you have going with you and the Divine. Notice what makes your heart dim or race. Notice you’re beginning to make small changes. And maybe you’re starting to make big ones.  Now, that’s Upbeat Living!

———————————————————–

 

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Energy – Peace – Meditation

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition(http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc ). Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine, available through her office. Just email SacredMeditation@kebba.com.
• For an appointment or to ask Kebba to speak for your group: calendar@kebba.com .

UpBeat Living: Forgiveness Part 2: Forgiveness for Empowerment

Tags

allergy relief, Amish, at choice, Dr. Eileen Borris, forgive, Forgiveness, Grudges, moving on, peace, peace within, Peacemaking, personal peace, stress, The Dalai Lama, UpBeat Living

© 2014  Kebba Buckley Button,  MS, OM.  World Rights Reserved.

 

Dr. Eileen Borris

In Forgiveness Part 1  (http://wp.me/pw4HM-jI), we talked about how important it is to your own health and wellbeing, to forgive.  The extraordinary forgiveness of an Amish community showed how humans can choose to follow their faith, forgive murders, extend compassion to the family of the murderer, and move on in constructive ways.  This time, we consider the work of an international reconciliation expert and how we can choose to be affected by her work.

 

Dr. Eileen Borris (www.globalpeaceinitiatives.com) can teach you what you need to know about finding forgiveness.  She has been teaching forgiveness and reconciliation around the world for the Institute for Multi-Track  Diplomacy (Washington, DC), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).  The last time I saw her she had just returned from giving workshops in Kuwait.  She was about to go to Rwanda, for the Healing Wounds of History Conference.  Wherever she goes, Dr. Borris transforms.

 

It is possible to realize that the past is past, that continuing to feel anger and hatred serves no purpose.

~ The Dalai Lama

 

In her book, Finding Forgiveness, the Foreword is offered by none other than His Holiness, The Dalai Lama.  His Holiness points out that: “When we become angry, we stop being compassionate, loving, generous, forgiving, tolerant, and patient altogether.  We deprive ourselves of the very things that happiness consists of…it is possible to realize that the past is past, that continuing to feel anger and hatred serves no purpose.”

 

Dr. Borris’s core methodology involves 7 steps:  becoming clear, telling your story, working with anger, working with guilt, reframing the situation, absorbing pain, and gaining inner peace.  She does not ask you to deny the wrong that occurred.  She does not ask you to forget it.  She does not ask you to not-seek appropriate justice where a crime has occurred.  What she does do is expose the complexities of forgiveness and invite you to work this process, ultimately setting yourself free.

© 2014 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM

 

Why do we need to forgive?  The final purpose for the individual is empowerment.  You  are at choice at all times.  When you forgive, you get back your power over whoever made you their victim.  Dr. Borris makes the point that animals do not hate.  Hatred requires conceptual thought.  But humans are able to hold thoughts of hate and vengeance lifelong.  How much energy does this steal from a person’s upbeat living lifestyle, joy, health, and productivity?

 

Try this for a moment:  bring to mind some terrible personal injustice that was done to you, which you have had trouble forgetting.  Perhaps someone attacked you.  Perhaps a boss treated you badly or even fired you unfairly.  Perhaps Mom always loved your sibling better.  Perhaps someone badmouthed you, telling tales that were totally unfounded.  Bring this injustice to mind and feel vividly the stress and emotions that come with it.  Did your heart hurt or your back tighten up between the shoulder blades?  Did your shoulder tops tighten painfully?  How about your neck, your head, or your stomach?  Do these sensations feel like they are blessing or enhancing your beingness in any way?  Of course not.  So what has the toll on your mind, heart, body, and spirit been, in the months or years since the injustice occurred?  Is that toll enriching your life in any way?  Of course not.

 

 Whatever your faith basis, does it make sense to hang onto any burden you do not need to hang onto?

~ Rev. Kebba Buckley Button

 

If you would like to challenge yourself, try the following exercise.  Get a pen and paper, and make notes of your thoughts and experiences as you do this.  Imagine your life if the injustice had never occurred.  What hours would you have spent enjoying life and your loved ones?  Would your marriage be better?  What friendships might you have developed, based on sharing happiness and companionship, that you did not because of the injustice?  How well would you have slept?  What excellent health would you have had all this time?  How much better would your concentration have been, on the job or in fulfilling recreation or charity work?  Would you have earned more money?  So what if you could have forgiven this injustice early in the game, and not spent any of this time on distraction, negativity, complaining, and generally experiencing a burden?  These may be tough questions for many of us.

 

Whatever your faith basis, does it make sense to hang onto any burden you do not need to hang onto?  You are always at choice.  What is your willingness to possibly hang up self-burdening beliefs about the importance of an injustice to you?  If these questions are provocative for you, why not pursue them further?  Your journey can be very freeing.

 

Now imagine living in a community where everyone is compassionate, everyone forgives and there is no impulse for revenge.  Now imagine that in the World community.  Countries would be waging peace, not war.  Imagine.

 

Some resources for further reading and techniques include:  Bruderhof Forgiveness Guide (www.foregivenessguide.org), A Course In Miracles (acim.org), Forgiveness Foundation (forgivenessfoundation.org), and the Forgiveness Project (forgivenessproject.com).

_____________________________________________________________

 

● Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition (http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc).  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister.

● Liked this article?  You can buy Kebba’s books:  just click the links!

• Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br). 
• Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core (Second Edition) (http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc)             

● Enjoyed this post?  Please click “like” in the FB widget in the right hand column!  You’ll have our undying gratitude plus a huge rise in your Good Karma.

● Please comment!

● Get these articles by email– just click the Subscribe Free option in the right column.

● Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UpBeat Living: When Life Flips You Off Track

Tags

change, dealing with change, Garth Brooks, Kebba Buckley Button, life change, Pinball Machine, relationship, stress, Stress Management, UpBeat Living

© 2014 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

 

©M. Rosenwirth – Fotolia

Think of the top 3 disappointing events you’ve had in life.  Maybe you were in a relationship you believed in, and suddenly it was over.  How about the time you had your heart set on a job, you knew you were the prime candidate, and you didn’t get it?  Then there was that friend who suddenly cut you off, with a weird reason or no reason.  Remember how much that hurt?

 

Enter, the Upbeat Living Pinball Machine Theory of Life.  Sometimes, it’s like you are the ball on a pinball game board.  After the token goes into the machine, and the spring launcher is pulled and released, the ball zips up the slope of the game board.  Sometimes, like the pinball, you are racing up the board of life thinking you are definitely headed in a certain direction.  The right direction, surely.  Then you get hit with a flipper.  Ow!  For a moment, you don’t even know what your new direction is, right?  You’re just reverberating with the impact of the flipper (ow!), feeling the pain, and trying to get your bearings again.  Then you begin collecting yourself, look up, and see what unintended direction you are now headed in.  Yikes!  This is a new direction!  Not what the plan was!

 

Now let’s talk about that major relationship change.  Grammy-Award winning musician Garth Brooks has a powerful song called, “Thank God for Unanswered Prayers.”  In the song, he tells of being at a football game with his wife and seeing the woman he dated in high school.  Back then, he used to pray for that relationship every night.  By the time he saw his old flame again, he realized he would not be in the amazing relationship he was in with his wife, had the relationship with his old flame worked out.  So now he is massively grateful for the passing of that old relationship.  He was redirected on the Pinball Machine of Life, and now he is deeply glad.

 

Life is a tapestry woven by the decisions we make.

~Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kiss of the Night

 

Now, that perfect job you didn’t get—what changes would that have created in your life?  Changes that would have prevented something great that then did happen?  Here’s an example from this writer’s life:  20 years ago, she flew to Denver for a pre-hiring interview with an international company.  Having done projects with the CEO of the Colorado Division, she knew it was only a matter of negotiating the position and salary.  In Denver, she scoped out where to rent an apartment and what moving arrangements would be involved.  But when she called the man who was to interview her, he said he would call back in 20 minutes.  Then he never did. He never managed to meet with her during the 5 days she was there.  When the CEO asked how her conversations with the interviewer went, she told him they never even met.  The CEO said, “but I thought it was a pre-hiring interview?’  She said, “yes, I thought so, too.”  She never heard from the company again.  It was a bitter disappointment that hurt for many months.  Now, however, she sees that she would never have met and married her husband, had she been given the job in Denver.  She was redirected for a powerful reason.

 

As to a friend who suddenly cut you off, let’s put it in perspective and then give thanks.  Recently, a client was suddenly dropped as a friend because she declined a vacuum cleaner demonstration.  That’s right.  She politely declined an emailed request, due to an extreme work schedule.  Also, she did not know the friend-of-a-friend-of-a- friend that she would be helping by giving 2 hours for a demonstration of a product she could not afford.  The inviter sent an attack reply, assaulting the client’s integrity and spirituality.  He said she was monetizing their friendship.  The client was thinking, “[W]ell, ONE of us is monetizing the relationship!”

 

Leeda knew friends never turned out to be what you expected. They came and went in waves, pulling away and coming back, leaving you feeling safe one minute and lost the next.

~ Jodi Lynn Anderson, Peaches

 

The client then phoned the inviter’s wife to ask if she felt the same way.  The wife said she would call back.  Immediately the inviter emailed the client again, nastily ordering that she must not “go behind his back” to talk to his wife, and best she not contact either of them again.  Did the client really want to be friends with people who would go ballistic over small matters?  Reconsidering a number of past hints of the dark side of these “friends”, the client sadly let these friendships go.  Since, she has come to be glad they are no longer in her life.  Now she has more time for more compatible friends.  She was redirected for powerful reasons.

 

Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it…Don’t allow his anger to become your anger.

~ Bohdi Sanders, Warrior Wisdom:  Ageless Wisdom for the Modern Warrior

 

If you are a person of faith, remember this timeless truth [Romans 8:28]:  “We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him…”  When the flippers hit you, you are being directed for powerful purposes, by a Wisdom greater than our own.  Do your best to deal with the hurt.  Then embrace the new opportunities that are arriving.  Be the happy and grateful pinball.  Now that’s Upbeat Living!

 

—————————————————————————————————

 

● Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition (http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc).  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister.

● Liked this article?  You can buy Kebba’s books:  just click the links!

• Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br). 
• Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core (Second Edition) (http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc)             

● Enjoyed this post?  Please click “like” in the FB widget in the right hand column!  You’ll have our undying gratitude plus a huge rise in your Good Karma.

● Please comment!

● Get these articles by email– just click the Subscribe Free option in the right column.

● Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UpBeat Living: Letting Go

Tags

Effective living, fulfilled, happy, Letting go, moving on, unstuck

© 2012 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

 

Recently, I met a man  in a meditation class who said all the major things in his life had just changed.  His relationship, his career, and the part of town he lived in had all changed quite recently.   He was feeling highly impacted by all these things shifting at once, even though he was looking forward to the positive results and new horizons.  He seemed almost shell-shocked.  He was trying meditation as a means to collect his wandering, stressed consciousness and perhaps help him feel grounded again.  He was aware of a need to emotionally let go of his previous ideas of who he was, and also to let go of bonds he had had with family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues.  I heard myself saying to him, “it’s only the process of detaching that hurts”.

 

The more we hang on to the past, the stronger we grip the ties that bind, the more we give the bonds strength.  For example, we may care about a relative or romantic interest who does not care much about us.  The more we talk about that love we want, that we are not getting from that person, the more energy we are giving the relationship, and the stronger the bond is—on our part.  Continuing to love and ache for returned love, from a person who does not return those feelings, is no thankful situation.  It is unrewarding.  I once heard this described as, “going to a hardware store looking for milk”.  Yet, giving up that one-sided caring may be extremely painful.  And we need to give it up.

 

In the 1980’s , the term “codependence” , or “codependency”,  came into use, in part for unrequited caring.  When a person wants something from another who cannot or will not give it, and the person keeps pursuing it, that behavior may be viewed as controlling. If you want to read more about this way of looking at things, look for books by Melody Beattie, such as Codependent No More.

 

Some time ago, a young couple who were neighbors of mine moved away.  I found out only hours before the moving van removed them from my street.  I was jolted. I felt distracting pangs of loss for days.  Ouch!  I asked myself what I was “missing” so strongly.  I was very fond of the couple and yet knew that our friendship really never got off the ground.  I would probably not hear from them again.  So what were these pangs?  Then I realized, the young couple didn’t care that I cared.   My admiration and affection for them was entirely one-sided.  They had no particular interest in me.  While it is always good to like and admire people, and to wish them the best, I needed to let go of the idea that we would become friends someday.  I had entirely created my own pangs!  Then I remembered  that word for one-sided attachment:  codependency.  Oh yes!  Time to laugh at my humanity.  And I did laugh!

 

I got busy with my real life and my real friends and lost my distraction over the loss of the lovely neighbors.  Only the detaching was painful.  It feels great to have no further bonds there.  Who and what do you need to let go of?

———————————————

● Kebba Buckley Button is a corporate stress management trainer and the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You, and the 2012 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core.  She is also an ordained minister.

● Your comments are welcome!

● Get these articles by email– just click the Subscribe Free option in the right column!

● Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com .

UpBeat Living: Life Bats You… in a Different Direction

Tags

adjusting to change, energy, Feeling energized, friendships, fulfilled, grateful, healing, Kebba, living beyond, making changes, moving on, Relationships, stress tips

Photo by http://www.livelifehappy.com

© 2012 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

Think of the top 3 disappointing events you’ve had in life.  Maybe you were in a relationship you believed in, and suddenly it was over.  How about the time you had your heart set on a job, you knew you were the prime candidate, and you didn’t get it?  Then there was that friend who suddenly cut you off, with a weird reason or no reason.  Remember how much that hurt?

Enter, the Pinball Machine Theory of Life.

Sometimes, it’s like you are the ball on a pinball game board.  After the token goes into the machine, and the spring launcher is pulled and released, the ball zips up the slope of the game board.  Sometimes, like the pinball, you are racing up the board of life thinking you are definitely headed in a certain direction.  The right direction, surely.  Then you get hit with a flipper.  Ow!  For a moment, you don’t even know what your new direction is, right?  You’re just reverberating with the impact of the flipper (ow!), feeling the pain, and trying to get your bearings again.  Then you begin collecting yourself, look up, and see what unintended direction you are now headed in.  Yikes!  This is a new direction!  Not what the plan was!

Now let’s talk about that major relationship change.  Grammy-Award winning musician Garth Brooks has a powerful song called, “Thank God for Unanswered Prayers.”  In the song, he tells of being at a football game with his wife and seeing the woman he dated in high school.  Back then, he used to pray for that relationship every night.  By the time he saw his old flame again, he realized he would not be in the amazing relationship he was in with his wife, had the relationship with his old flame worked out.  So now he is massively grateful for the passing of that old relationship.  He was redirected on the Pinball Machine of Life, and now he is deeply glad.

Now, that perfect job you didn’t get—what changes would that have created in your life?  Changes that would have prevented something great that then did happen?  Here’s an example from this writer’s life:  20 years ago, she flew to Denver for a pre-hiring interview with an international company.  Having done projects with the CEO of the Colorado Division, she knew it was only a matter of negotiating the position and salary.  In Denver, she scoped out where to rent an apartment and what moving arrangements would be involved.  But when she called the man who was to interview her, he said he would call back in 20 minutes and never did. He never managed to meet with her during the 5 days she was there.  When the CEO asked how her conversations with the interviewer went, she told him they never even met.  The CEO said, “but I thought it was a pre-hiring interview?’  She said, “yes, I thought so, too.”  She never heard from the company again.  It was a bitter disappointment that hurt for many months.  Now, however, she sees that she would never have met and married her husband, had she been given the job in Denver.  She was redirected for a powerful reason.

As to a friend who suddenly cut you off, let’s put it in perspective and then give thanks.  Recently, a client was suddenly dropped as a friend because she declined a vacuum cleaner demonstration.  That’s right.  She politely declined an emailed request, due to an extreme work schedule.  Also, she did not know the friend-of-a-friend-of a friend that she would be helping by giving 2 hours for a demonstration of a product she could not afford.  The inviter then sent an attack email, assaulting the client’s integrity and spirituality.  The client called the inviter’s wife to ask if she felt the same way.  The wife said she would call back.  Immediately the inviter emailed the client again, nastily saying she must not go behind his back to talk to his wife, and best she not contact either of them again.  Did the client really want to be friends with people who would go ballistic over small matters?  Reconsidering a number of past hints of the nature of these “friends”, the client sadly let these friendships go.  Since, she has come to be glad they are no longer in her life.  Now she has more time for more compatible friends.  She was redirected for powerful reasons.

If you are a person of faith, remember this timeless truth [Romans 8:28]:  “We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him…”  When the flippers hit you, you are being directed for powerful purposes, by a wisdom greater than our own.  Do your best to deal with the hurt.  Then embrace the new opportunities that are arriving.  Be the happy and grateful pinball.

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● Your comments are welcome!

 

● Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com .