I often get letters from folks sharing their experiences and asking questions. This correspondence can offer spectacular insights and musings that answer questions that many others have on their mind. So I’m sharing this one with you today…
Just a quick note as I’m writing from Thailand (Chiang Mai specifically, in the north of the country). It was a long trip – between 4 flights and hefty layovers – 27 hours worth. I’m here physically but tired and discombobulated having landed late yesterday and flopping at a simple and clean little hotel near the airport. I tried everything to sleep (including breathing, counting backwards from 100 and even the podcast “Sleep with me.”
“I am so stressed, I am stressed all the time!” Miguel lamented.
“Can you tell me more about what that means?” I ask. “Would you say you’re anxious or fearful about something?”
“I don’t know,” he says shaking his head, “I’m just really stressed!”
Miguel is typical in that he uses the word “stress” as a place holder for what he’s feeling – because he doesn’t have the language to apply to what he’s actually feeling.
Back in the day, anxiety was the wallpaper and furnishings of my mind. I (somehow) soldiered through, but living in anxiety was a way of life for me. I’d panic in social situations, I’d worry about upcoming events (that paranoid feeling of suspicion and mistrust of people or their actions without evidence or justification), and I’d ruminate – focusing on repetitive thoughts of catastrophe.
I’m still sick as I write this – well maybe more high than sick since I took a WHOLE gummy to sleep. But now, I have a little energy and strength to focus and sit up. Until the sleep kicks-in. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Last week I hopped on a plane to Holland to attend a 3-day psychedelic science conference.
What’s been coming up for you lately? Are you ruminating or obsessing about something that you can’t seem to shake? Well, I have some good medicine for that. We just completed my latest 30-day masterclass course on how to manage your difficult emotions. With that in mind, I want to share this practice with you – it gets to the heart of what’s knocking loudest on your head.
I have a friend who by any measure of success has “made it”. He’s an acclaimed authority in his field; he makes good money and others clamor to work with him.
Yet, he feels as if he’s never caught-up. As a perfectionist he’s nose to the grindstone working nights and weekends but seldom claims victories.
Are there shades of this in you? If so, you may have a form of depression, what’s called cold depression, that’s the opposite of what we normally imagine depression to be.
I often get letters from folks sharing their experiences and asking questions. This correspondence can offer spectacular insights and musings that answer questions that many others have on their mind. So I’m sharing this one with you today…
I was on time but without a moment to spare, so I sneaked into the back of the crowded yoga session right before the teacher, who was new to me, locked the doors. I plopped down on a cushion, closed my eyes and began taking long deep breaths like the rest of the class. Long, deep belly breaths. But not for long.
“I never get angry,” says a character in one of Woody Allen’s movies. “I grow a tumor instead.” This is a hilarious line but a poignant reminder how profoundly emotions can affect our human physiological functioning. Yet, as a culture, we generally place our physical well-being over our emotional well-being. We see it all the … Read more