Blog
LISTENING WORKS WONDERS
I was talking to a friend of mine at the gym yesterday whose mother and father had recently been put into aged care. His father has advanced dementia and his mother keeps telling him how sad she is being away from her home and how she hates the aged care facility.
My friend would like to help his mother but there is little he can do. He said, “I feel so powerless. I can’t fix it for her and she’s so sad.”
I told him that feeling powerless in such a situation is perfectly natural, but then I asked him, “Have you tried reflective listening? It’s true that you can’t fix your mother’s problems but what you can do is listen to her and try to understand what she is feeling. It’s a wonderful thing to be really listened to and receive empathy. So instead of feeling powerless, why don’t you try to immerse yourself in your mother’s world, really listen to her, and try to understand how she is feeling? If she feels you are listening to her and really trying to understand her situation, she is very likely to start talking about other things or even start talking about the benefits of her new situation.”
Reflective listening is a wonderful tool. Examples of reflective listening in this situation are, “It seems the change has really been unsettling for you mum” and/or “You sound very sad mum.”
My friend left me feeling so much more able to face his mum. He no longer felt powerless. He now had a strategy, a strategy which would help him to connect with his mum in a meaningful way. The magic of really listening and trying to understand can work wonders.
EARLY RISING
People often ask me why at 71 years of age I choose to get out of bed at 5am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and head for the gym, particularly since I’m retired and could go anytime. One reason is, that I find getting out of bed at 5a.m. three days a week gives me a kick start. When there is no reason to get out of bed many people, if not most, tend to stay in bed longer and longer and from my point of view, run the risk of stagnating. By getting up three mornings a week and taking myself to the gym to work on my body I feel like I’m still going to work, that I’m still relevant. Also my getting out of bed so early three days a week, for me, creates a division between Monday and Tuesday, and Wednesday and Thursday. Otherwise the whole week, in fact life itself could feel like one long, ‘same as, same as,’ monotonous day. My getting out of bed at 5am and heading for the gym also gives me sense of purpose and it makes me feel alive and active. It also adds to my self-esteem because, it is difficult to do and this makes me feel strong and vital, ‘out of the box.’ In addition going to the gym so early gives me more time to write during the day encouraging others to live the life they want to live. So many people’s lives are unnecessarily hamstrung by the restrictive nature of stereotypes and/or the expectations and opinions of others.
SELF SABOTAGE
Most people have dreams, things they’d love to do. However many people fear failure, so they sabotage their opportunities, rather than face the possibility of failure. But the biggest failure of all is staying the same, staying stuck and allowing oneself to stagnate. Don’t fear failure! If something doesn’t work out, so what! You’ll have moved forward, you’ll have learnt something and you’ll have picked up another life tool.
The thing is we don’t really know what we want, until we have a go at what we think we want. By having a go at what we think we want, we can find out that what we thought we wanted is not, what we want at all. By having a go we find out more and more about what we do want. Sometimes the things we thought we wanted turn out to be other peoples’ wants, planted in our minds as children.
People also sabotage their opportunities to realise their dreams because they fear that one or more significant other might disapprove of the dream. If you are one of these people, you must ask yourself the question, “Am I really living my life? And if the answer is, “No,” then the next question is “Whose life am I actually living?”
Another reason people sabotage their opportunities to realise their dreams is to protect their idea of self. If you embark on a dream, some part of you will change, so some ask, “Who will I be if I change? I know who I am now, but what if I change?” The self-image is like an old friend. It’s been around a long time. Tampering with the self-image can be unsettling. There’s something very comfortable about keeping one’s self-image undisturbed, but if you sabotage your opportunities because of this fear, nothing will change and your lot in life will be same as, same as, for the rest of your life.
So you see, simply embarking upon a dream can be difficult, let alone striving to realise it. Courage is necessary. Do you have the courage? I hope so!
MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS
The notion of an ideal marriage springs from fairy tales. Can you imagine Cinderella and Prince Charming having ding dong argument?
In fairy tales marriages are supposed to be happy all the time. The thing is happiness is not a permanent state. It is a transient state. It comes and it goes, here one moment, gone the next. No relationship can be happy all the time, but it can be strong.
In relationships where the couples feel the marriage must be happy all the time, disagreements tend to be avoided, and so the two people don’t get to really know each other. They simply avoid talking about anything controversial.
Far better than a happy relationship is a strong relationship where you really get to know each other and work through whatever there is to work through.
A strong relationship is one with substance, one that allows you to really get to know each other warts and all.
A strong relationship is one that you can count on.
Strong relationships are sometimes happy, sometimes volatile, sometimes sad but always real. They are warts and all relationships.
LET YOURSELF BE SEEN
The other day at the gym I noticed one of my friends sitting on a gym machine looking very glum indeed. I went over to him and asked him how he was. “Oh I don’t know,” he replied, “I’ve just come back from a holiday in Spain with my partner and I didn’t really enjoy it. In fact I’m sick of doing the things I don’t want to do. I’m sick of just fitting in. I feel my life’s over.” “What do you mean you feel you’re life’s over,” I said, stunned. “Well,” he replied, “I never get to do what I want to do.” “Why,” I asked. “Well I don’t want to say what I want to do because I don’t want to make waves,” (For those who are unfamiliar with the Australian expression “make waves,” it simply means cause trouble or any inconvenience).
It is little wonder he was feeling down. Keeping silent about what you want to do in life is a certain way to depression. Of course letting others know what you want to do means, letting yourself be seen. It means exposing your interests and desires and for some people this can be scary because, shock, horror, someone might object! If someone objects well, that someone, he or she, is free to do whatever he or she wants to do. People are not joined at the hip.
Anyway my friend continued to sit on the gym machine, his face glum and his head down. “I feel I can’t do anything about it.” He said. “I just feel my life is over.” “Rubbish,” I retorted, “how old are you?” “Fifty, I’ll be fifty one this year.” “Well,” I said “I’m 71 and I’ll be 72 this year and my life’s certainly not over, far from it, I’ve got too much to do. You know it’s not always easy to make your life happen. Life doesn’t have a habit of coming up to you and saying, just let me know what you want and it’s yours.” In order to live the life you want to live you must have a go, make mistakes and learn. You must let yourself be seen. Hiding underneath “I don’t want to make waves,” is never fulfilling, never exciting. In fact it’s not even living. Life can be more than just existing. So lift your head up over the parapet and go for it!
GO FOR IT!
In my years as a psychologist I have seen people run back to a position of pain, suffering and disappointment, just to appease their childhood beliefs. I have seen people sabotage their opportunities and sabotage their happiness just so they can be in synch with what they were told to believe as children about life and themselves and their place in the world.
Think a moment, did you have an opportunity you sabotaged or passed up for no apparent reason, other than the opportunity made you feel uncomfortable?
And is there something you would really like to do but cannot bring your-self to do?
And is there a dream that keeps surfacing that you keep explaining away?
If you are like most of us you will have found all sorts of “valid” reasons as to why you were not, and are not able to pursue that dream or to do the things you would like to do. But deep down you know that the real thing stopping you is fear, fear of going outside what you have come to believe is possible and or permissible for you.
If the life you would like to live happened to fit snugly into your idea of who you are and what you should expect from life and into what your family and friends and workmates and the society in general would look favourably upon, you would not have a problem. It would be full steam ahead for you.
But this is not likely to be the case and so many of us stay stuck, paralysed in inactivity, fearful of moving one inch outside what we know. We comfort ourselves by telling ourselves that one day we will be able to live the life we want to live and to do the things we want to do.
But time has a tendency to slip by like some unnoticed quiet achiever and suddenly one day we wake up to find out it is all too late. Don’t let this be you. Go for it!
MISTAKES ARE LEARNING TOOLS
We need to look mistakes and disappointing experiences as learning tools. Without the learning we pick up from our mistakes and disappointing experiences we’d not get very far in life. And so when things go wrong think, ‘This is a necessary and useful pit stop on my road to success,’ and simply make the necessary adjustments and keep going and you will become better and better and stronger and stronger.
The most helpful things I learnt as bodybuilder were from the things that did not go the way I would have wished. In fact I had some very embarrassing and unpleasant experiences while competing in Natural Bodybuilding, like having my right breast slip out of my bikini bras while I was being judged on stage in front of about five hundred people and not being aware of it until I looked down some time later. This led to my having more secure bras tops, post haste! Another time I put my body tan on so dark the judges told me I looked like a charcoal chicken. I didn’t do that again. I learnt. I immediately changed both the product and the technique.
Anyone who does anything makes mistakes. This is the way we learn. Those people who say, they have never made a mistake have, most likely never done anything, certainly nothing outside the ordinary. If you are one of those people who are reluctant to venture forth for fear of making a mistake you are destined to do very little in life.
STAY STRONG
STAY STRONG
The other day at the gym a 70+ male friend of mine told me he sometimes didn’t feel like coming to the gym, but he was always glad he made the effort. “Yes,” I said to him, “Our quality of life depends on us continuing to do our gym workouts. We simply mustn’t stop.” Secretly though, I must confess that when 5a.m. arrives and it’s time for me to get up, I don’t feel all that excited about getting out of bed and going to the gym, but I always go and always feel great afterwards. The same day, I was just about to drive out of the gym car park when the same fellow came and tapped on my drivers’ side window. I would down the window and he said, “You know what I said about the gym.” “Yes,” I said. “Well,” he said, “before I came to the gym and did Weight Resistance Training (WRT) I couldn’t walk without a walking stick and now I don’t need to use one. So what I’ve done, I’ve put my walking stick in a prominent position in my house so that anytime I feel like wavering and not coming to the gym I see the walking stick and it reminds me of what would happen if I stopped coming. JUST ANOTHER TIT BIT ABOUT THE WONDERS OF WEIGHT RESISTANT TRAINING!
ABOUT JANICE
STIMULATION OR STAGNATION
In my opinion there is only stimulation or stagnation, there is no in between. If you are not being stimulated by life you are stagnating and in a state of decay.
You need to be continually testing yourself and struggling with challenges.
Sometimes we look with envy at those who seem to be having an easy life. For instance I have seen well-healed people, decked out in fine attire, drinking exotic coffee and going out to expensive restaurants, living the comfortable life and travelling the world in an effort to amuse themselves, but what I see with these people is the withering away of their life spirit and a gradual decline into old age.
Another group who seem to have it easy are those among us who choose to stay on welfare and spend their money on drugs. We ask, ‘How come these people have got it so easy? And how come we have to pay for them?’ We feel put upon and annoyed with these layabouts.
But think a moment. What have these people got to look forward to? What adventures? What experiences?
The fact is these people are actually cheating themselves for they will never know the excitement and the joy of achieving something beyond what they thought was possible. And sadly they will never know who or what they could have been.
And then there are those who say, “I’m not quite ready to live the life I want to live. I’ll do it, when I feel more comfortable about making a move.”
If you are one of these people, the chances are extremely high you will never live the life you want to live because you will never be ready, for one never feels comfortable with the idea of moving from the known to the unknown and so if you cannot muster the courage to face the fear of moving into the unknown you will stay forever stuck in the ordinary. Go for it whatever it is!