The Stress of Stuck

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Inner Critic, Inner Mentor, Kebba Buckley Button, stuck, stuck and stressed, the stress of stuck, UpBeat Living

© 2016  Kebba Buckley Button, M.S., O.M. World Rights Reserved.  http://www.kebba.com      

                                        

Don’t you hate feeling “stuck”? Maybe you can’t think of which thing to do next, or you’re blocked on a task you know you need to be on.  On a daily or hourly basis, when you feel stuck, you may have trouble starting that 4-hour project or even that 30-minute exercise session.   You are in the Stress of Stuck!

To get unstuck, experts recommend we gather all the right props around us, to help us feel ready and organized for each task.  In addition to the tools and equipment, a mug of a favorite herbal tea, a coffee drink, a water, or a particular soda, may help us feel ready to accelerate into that task.  While I can’t find the research basis yet, many people tell me that starting to eat a handful of M&Ms™ somehow gets them in gear to start grading those papers.  For my clients who can, I recommend running in place for 2 minutes.  This accelerates blood flow and relaxes the shoulder muscles, which releases typical tightening of the neck muscles, thus releasing correct blood flow to the brain and energy within the brain.  This makes the task seem easier and go faster.  Try this before a task you normally dislike, like leaving for work or cleaning the kitchen.  If you can’t run in place, try gently rolling and stretching your shoulders for 2 full minutes.

So, on a larger scale, what holds us back from jumping into new experience?  What keeps us from stepping up to our greatness in new levels?  Is it simply fear?

Recently, I became aware of the concept of Inner Critic, a powerful psyche function that inhibits action.  In a therapy context of Internal Family Systems, the Inner Critic is the dimension of a person’s consciousness that says “you’re not good enough” or “you shouldn’t try that, because you’re not up to it.”  According to Bay Area therapist Bonnie Weiss, the Inner Critic is trying to protect you from embarrassment, failure, and other dynamics, so it should be viewed as your friend.  The Inner Critic is trying to help you live well.  However, by holding you back, the Inner Critic can create the very thing it is trying to prevent: your failure.

Celebrated author Robert Kyosaki has said,

It’s not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life.  It’s what you whisper to yourself that has the most power.

The Inner Critic stands against your Inner Mentor, who is wise and helps you make adult decisions.  The trick is to get to know your inner parts, especially your Inner Mentor, and get them cooperating with each other.  If your Inner Critic is keeping you from walking up to an opportunity and introducing yourself, try this simplified technique:  stretch each leg and each arm briefly, exhale, inhale, and notice the challenge seems more interesting and less intimidating.   Repeat.  Over the longer term, Weiss says, we should also cultivate practices that develop our sense of self, such as journaling, meditation, inviting in witness consciousness, and yoga.

What do you want to step up to in your day or your life?  Why not step up now?  So roll your shoulders, shoulder up, and shoulder on.  Claim your life.  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 .

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UpBeat Living: Doing What You Can’t

Tags

beyond expectations, choices, energy, Fear, Feeling energized, fulfilled, Inner Mentor, living beyond, unstuck

© 2012 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

Photo by Kebba Buckley Button

East of Tucson, where the Santa Catalina Mountains meet the Rincon Mountains, there is a beautiful area called Redington Pass.  In season, water rushes over the rocks at the Tanque Verde Falls there.  In dry times, the boulders at the Falls have a smooth, eery beauty, shaped by the erosive power of the seasonal flows.  Hiking in this area is very popular, but the trails are hazardous, due to a type of rock that crumbles easily underfoot.  A woman arrived at the top of the dry Falls with a new companion who insisted they climb down the dry rocks of the Falls.  She asked, “but won’t we have trouble getting back over these huge, smooth boulders?”  Her companion insisted it would be fine.  At dusk, they were trapped adjacent to a 300-foot chasm, unable to reverse their downslope climb.  The companion leaped across the chasm to catch a fire hose that was bolted to the opposite side.  The woman climbed out using ½-inch ledges that, the week before, she would not have believed could save her.  The next week, she read that a hiker had died at Redington Pass, because the trail fell away from under his steps.  Someone had died where the woman did what she would have thought she could not.

On April 2, John and Helen Collins were flying back home to Wisconsin from Florida in their twin-engine Cessna.  John, 81, owned several planes and was the knowledgeable pilot.  Helen, 80, was an experienced passenger, having travelled with John for decades.  Helen was recovering from heart surgery and had very little stamina.  Six miles from their destination, John had a heart attack and passed out, over the controls.  Helen contacted the Sheriff’s Department for help.  A local pilot flew up to the Collins’s plane to give Helen radio instructions so she could land the Cessna.  With help, she did what she was unable to do the day before:  she landed the plane.  She sustained only bruises.  See the nearly intact plane in the MSNBC report:  http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/03/11001564-80-year-old-woman-lands-plane-after-husband-passes-out .

Recently, on an idyllic beach on the coast of Brazil, dozens of people were sunning, relaxing, and swimming.  The day was easygoing and calm.  Suddenly, lumps appeared in the inbound surf.  As they got closer, it became clear that there were about 30 of them.  People started walking to the water’s edge to stare in disbelief.  It was a group of creatures swimming vigorously toward the shore.  They were actually dolphins, headed the wrong way.  Beached, they would not survive.  The people watching quickly began to experiment with ways to help.  The first tried grasping a dolphin by its fins, pulling it back toward the surf.  Others saw it was difficult to grip the fins and pull the dolphin, so they tried grasping the tails of other dolphins.  Soon, a number of compassionate humans were grasping dolphins and turning them back into the surf.  The redirected dolphins then raced away in exactly the direction they had come from, toward deep waters.  The day before, would any of these people have thought they would know how to help save a group of dolphins?  They had no experience with redirecting confused dolphins.  Yet, out of concern for creatures in distress, this group of people promptly pitched in and experimented, successfully saving all of these dolphins.  A video shows how quickly and completely this rescue took place:   http://elcomercio.pe/player/1384898.

What these three stories have in common is that the people came up with solutions when urgent needs arose.  The day before each scene, they would not have said they had these skills.  They might have laughed if someone had said, “Do you think you would ever…?”  Yet they did what they could not.  Whether you believe this was entirely human creativity or whether you see the Divine in these stories, ask yourself:  in what areas of life have you been thinking you “can’t?”  Make some notes for yourself about areas of life you wish were different, but you believe you can’t change.  Then think of the people who “couldn’t” but did.  Pick something from your list and consider stepping up.  It’s your life.  You are the only one who can live it.

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— Your comments welcome! —

Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com .

UpBeat Living: Your Mind’s Eye

Tags

choices, energy, Feeling energized, fulfilled, happy, Inner Mentor, Kebba, Mental equivalents, responsible, Stress Management, stuck, unstuck

© 2012, Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

 

Whatever your belief system, it is crucial to hold the most positive thoughts and images in your mind.  Ernest Holmes (1887-1960), the founder of Science of Mind, described “The Law of Mental Equivalents”.  He said, basically, that what you hold in consciousness is what you will get in your reality.  This has been proven true in a number of fields, as your brain and body take instruction from your thoughts.

 

Do you ever wonder why some people always cheerfully achieve success, while others are down in mood and fail at many doorsteps of opportunity?  Success is very much in your mind.  Your mind takes instruction from your thoughts, and your nervous system acts them out.  Try this experiment.  If you have a friend who knows muscle testing, ask them to muscle-test you before and after you say the following phrases.  Otherwise, find a 10-pound object or a gallon bottle of liquid, and lift it before and after you say these phrases.  Ready?  Lift the object.  Notice how heavy or light it is for you at this moment.  Say 10 times, at any speed, “I am a weak and unworthy person”.  Your nervous system takes this literally.  Now pick up the object again.  Notice how much heavier it is?  Now reverse the effect.  Say 10 times, at any speed, “I am a vital, strong, valuable person.”  Pick up the object again.  Notice it has become lighter.  Now, always remember that your brain and nervous system are listening to everything you say.

 

Now consider the phenomenon that your brain and nervous system do not know the difference between a real situation of terrible conflict, like a nasty fight or an assault, and a portrayed situation, as in a TV show or movie.  In a good mood, go to a movie theater and see any of the currently popular end-of-the-human-race movies.  You know, machines are arising or attacking from space, and the situation is impossible.  Although not currently in theaters, Independence Day is a good example of this genre.  If you have a portable blood pressure monitor, by all means take your blood pressure before and after you see this movie.  At the end of this movie, you will feel very stressed, your adrenaline will be rushing, and your blood pressure will be up.  You may feel hyped up or exhausted, fearful or cranky, and easily startled.  Leaving the venue, you may be driving “with a heavy foot”.  Your brain and nervous system thought they were in a real war.  If you really want to take in movies like this, but you want less of a stressful effect on yourself, rent them, show them at home, and when you feel your stress building up, look at other objects in the room and think of puppies and babies.  Notice your whole bodymind system shifting when you shift your attention.  Truly, you choose what stress and negativity you feed your mind and body.

 

Now consider an apparently mundane example.  Today may be a really hot, humid summer day where you are.  It may be so hot that you would prefer not to be out in that weather, but to zip efficiently from your air-conditioned home to your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned office.  That’s a healthy strategy.  However, we all know people who, on this kind of day, must chant out loud, “Boy is it hot!  It is so sticky!  It’s hard to do anything on such a hot day!  Aren’t you hot?  How can you wear that (bolero sweater/long pants/closed shoes)?  Aren’t you miserable?  It’s just miserable!”  What reaction do you think that person’s bodymind system is having to this chanting?  That’s right: the person feels hotter and hotter.  And if you listen and/or repeat their comments, silently or to others, you will feel hotter!  Do not dismiss this as “just psychological”.  The sensations are real, and you have a right to live the best and most comfortable life you can construct for yourself.  So have several cheerful rejoinders to the heat-chanters ready when they start in.  The one I use most is (delivered in a light and cheery voice), “Yes!  You know, it’s almost like Phoenix in the summertime!”  Then I quickly leave the area so the chanter can’t argue.  Do not get sucked into anyone’s negativity!  You will pay for the indulgence with fatigue and an unclear mind.  If you are a person of faith, remember God wants you to use your creativity to make the most of your life and your gifts.

 

Do you want to live your best life now?  Good!  Then notice negative programming, make notes, and work toward creating the best brain, body, and lifestyle you can.  It’s up to you.

 

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 –Your comments welcome!–

Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com.