How To Get Your Daily Dose Of Awe

Anyone going through the divorce process knows you need the full range of stress reduction tools at our disposal. Tapping into awe is one of those tools I've recently written about. The article starts like this:

On my travels one day, I saw a skunk. Not one dead by the side of the road. Not one scurrying in the dark. It was a medium sized guy ambling across a campus road just after dawn. There were no other cars or people, so I had the opportunity to stop and watch. It had a clean and shiny coat. It didn’t seem to have a care in the word, pausing to sniff, then moving on. Also sharing this space with me were some squirrels, deer and geese.

It's hard to describe what I felt. Wonder. Peace. Community. Part of a larger world that included all these other beings. It all adds up to awe.

Read more here...

 

Before Your Emotions Get The Best Of You, Take A Moment And Just Breathe

Photo by nipananlifestylecom from Pexels

Try a mindfulness strategy to improve self-control under stress.

You know that person, the one that always challenges your self-control? It could be your ex, or might be a colleague you see occasionally at meetings, a friend of a friend, or a relative you only see at holidays.

How about those difficult situations, like getting a late charge because you forgot to pay a bill? Situations like that also tax our self-control abilities. Yeah, like that unexpected tax bill.

Yet another precursor of self-control problems is cumulative stress—you slept poorly, ate poorly, worked 12 hours straight and, just as you’re getting ready to shut work down for the day, the message arrives from your boss—Aargh, you are not seriously asking me to do one more thing today, are you?

That person and those situations, along with the stress you're already facingpost-divorce, are why you need mindfulness-based coping strategies.

According to Jon Kabat-Zin, “mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” Using mindful strategies in the face of stressors, like that person, you can behave in a controlled, thoughtful manner.

Having a mindful coping strategy, along with a couple of basic steps to improve self-control, can slow the burn, avoid the meltdown and help with a speedy recovery.

Continue reading here... 

How Many Therapists Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb?

One—it takes one therapist to change a lightbulb. But it really has to want to change.

You're post-divorce and there are a lot of changes you think you might like to make. 

And in these trying times, when we’re all trying to control anxiety and depression about the state of the world, learning to change how you react is a process. My yoga practice helps keep me grounded in how to learn, something we adults often lose sight of.

When you embark on a yoga practice like Ashtanga, you must have an intention to master the poses, breath and flow.

Fully committing to the practice is essential for progress. It’s not that it has to be done daily. It’s more that you practice on some type of regular basis with the goal of being all in.

Experimentation is required. Does it work better this way, or that way?

It’s not about comparing yourself to others. It’s about comparing yourself to yourself. Wow! I couldn’t do this when I started.

You don’t want to phone it in. Even if it’s a crappy day and you can’t do half of what you did just two days ago. You want to be present and mindful.

These principles of learning (intention to achieve mastery, commitment to regular practice, willingness to experiment, being fully present and mindful) relate to a lot of things in life. I think they relate directly to the process of change.

If you want to change your reactions to anxiety-provoking or depressing situations, you must follow these principles as you would to learn anything. And, of course, you really have to want to change.

 

7 Reasons Everyone Keeps Telling You To Meditate

The post-divorce period is always one of stress and angst. Meditation is a great practice to help you cope with this difficult time. I speak from experience. This is a piece I wrote about the value of mediation. It starts like this:

I bet you know people who meditate. They’re often hawking the benefits of meditation, right?

 Annoying as it is, they’re correct. 

There is a wealth of research showing the benefits of meditation. These benefits include greater happiness, an improved sense of well-being, better emotional control, more compassion for, and better relationships with, others, less depression and anxiety, improved focus and even less inflammation in the body.

Though you may understand the benefits of meditation, when you imagine yourself in the perfect meditation space…you’re sitting on a cushion, the temperature is just right, there’s a slight scent of lavender in the air, it’s silent except for the tweet of a bird outside…you know you are never going to find that in this lifetime.

You’re busy, it’s noisy everyplace, and there may be a smell in the air, but it’s more likely to be car exhaust or pet effluvia, than lavender. When it comes to meditation, that’s okay!

Read more here...

The Zen Of Wellness

Divorce is a time of turmoil but also an opportunity to recreate yourself. It's a great time to look at your life in terms of health and wellness.

In my recent article I suggest an approach to wellness that I found useful post-divorce.  See what you think. It starts like this:

Does the thought of creating a wellness plan trigger fear of deprivation, pain and suffering? You may worry about a diet free from unhealthy foods, the physical pain involved in starting an exercise program or the suffering of trying to make good choices when it would be so much easier to have that drink, smoke that cigarette or enjoy that chocolate cake. 

As much as you try to avoid it, you can't help but notice that, in the news again, is the advice to eat more fruits and vegetables and less meat and sugar. It's time to take that advice to heart.

With heartfelt caring for your mind, body and spirit, I suggest an Eastern approach to practicing wellness. I borrow from the Buddhist eightfold path, tenets to apply to your wellness plan. May it ease your suffering and enliven your plan to try: 

Right Speech

Stop undermining your plan by being washy washy about how many times a week you'll get to the gym or whether you can really live without your favorite fast food. 

Read more here...

 

The Post-Divorce Survival Guide

The Post-Divorce Survival Guide

I am excited to announce the publication of my new eBook, The Post-Divorce Survival Guide.Tools For Your Journey. It is available  on Amazon .

With tips and steps to escape negative thinking, emotional impasses and behavioral stagnation, the book will help you negotiate the treacherous terrain of post-divorce life. Lightened up with a heavy dose of humor, I draw on the positive psychology literature with concrete suggestions to pro-actively manage and thrive in the difficult situations and adverse conditions that arise in the wake of divorce. 

I call on my personal experience with divorce, and years of work with clients going through this devastating life experience, to show you how you can emerge even better than you were before. The book addresses three tasks of post-divorce adjustment. The first is "Acceptance," identifying the reasons for the divorce and viewing them in an empowering way. The second, "Coping," provides help dealing with the often unexpected consequences associated with divorce. "Becoming," the final section, encourages you to aspire to be your best self and view your divorce as an opportunity to flourish. 

There are chapters on developing a positive mindset, identifying and using signature strengths, developing more optimism, setting and reaching goals, becoming happier and cultivating mindfulness. There are also chapters devoted to practical aspects of post-divorce adjustment including acceptance, emotional reactions, coping with your ex and dealing with issues like holidays and vacations, relationships with friends and relatives and dating.

I hope you find it useful and enjoy it. I'd love to hear your comments. 

6 Ways To Be Crazy Post-Divorce

I’ve been accused of being crazy many times post-divorce. In the interest of full disclosure, even pre-divorce, when my son was in kindergarten, his school employed the standard mother’s day gift: a handmade card inside of which the kids got to show off their penmanship and newly acquired language skills. The stem provided was, “My mother is…” My clever son’s fill-in-the-blank was, “crazy.” I feared this was not exactly a ringing endorsement of my services as psychologist and life coach.

So it’s not surprising I was taken by Heather Havrilesky’s article, “TV’s New Wave of Women: Smart, Strong, Borderline Insane.” I knew there would be useful data here for my work in progress, an instruction manual on how to be crazy post-divorce. Read more here...

Emotional Eating Post-Divorce

Some of us eat when we’re upset post-divorce, others, not so much. I’m addressing the former, AKA “emotional eaters.” You just made it through Valentine’s Day. Perhaps it wasn’t your happiest. Did you drown your sorrows, boredom or anger in a bag of chips and salsa, a gallon of ice cream or an entire chocolate cake? Many would call this emotional eating. Not me, and here’s why.

Ever notice how you suddenly feel like eating something when you walk into your kitchen? You don't have to be sad, mad or bored. The eating triggers are all there for you: the fridge, the cabinet with the chips, the bowl on the counter. They call to you, eat something; you know you want to. When you have down-time at the office, aren't you more likely to grab a snack than when you're flat out, trying to make a deadline? There are eating triggers at the office as well: the break room, the drawer where you keep your emergency stash of goodies. I call this mindless eating, as compared with mindful eating which I will recommend shortly.

I'll wager that you know some people clean when they're upset. Do we call them "emotional cleaners?" No, because people who clean when they're upset also tend to clean a lot when they're not upset. They clean mindlessly when nothing needs cleaning, about which everyone who lives with them will complain endlessly. Eating works the same way. In other words, you eat mindlessly.

I’m betting that if you eat when you’re upset you also eat at other times that you’re not actually hungry. You may eat without even considering whether you're hungry. You probably don't notice when you're full, or if you do, you don't stop. I'm not a huge fan of pejorative labels, like "emotional eating." It makes it a thing that you have, like a disease. It is important to recognize, however, that a survey of psychologists  identified emotional factors as interfering with diet attempts.

If you want to address the factors that undermine eating too much, you have to be more mindful about your eating. Mindful eating revolves around eating when you're hungry, slowly savoring the experience and stopping when you're full. With practice you will learn to consider, before that first bite, whether it's the smart thing to do at that moment. With practice you will learn to enjoy what you're eating and notice when you've eaten enough. With practice you will learn to make good choices. Instead of eating chips, maybe your time would be better spent looking for your date for next Valentine's day.

Somebody that I used to know. Gotye

Enhance Your Post-Divorce Well-Being With 5-Minute Mindfulness Practices

I know what you're thinking, you don't have five minutes to spare, especially now that you're divorced. But I'm here to tell you that you need to make just 5 minutes each day.  This is a little bit of time you can take to separate yourself from the post-divorce madness and stress.

We know that you can reduce stress and emotional reactivity, and increase focus and well-being, and improve your health, all with a few simple practices. Cultivating mindfulness can bring these rewards. Have to deal with an ex-spouse?  Research suggests improvement in emotional control is also associated with mindfulness practices. And who can't use more emotional control post-divorce?

There are as many ways to become more mindful as there are people, so here are my suggestions for cultivating your mindfulness. You have to try them out, and see what fits for you.

Breathe mindfully, by taking slow breaths that start in the abdomen and work their way up to the top of your head, exhaling as slowly as you breathe in. Spend 5 minutes a day breathing this way. Try breathing into your stress, be it a stressed muscle or a stressful thought.

Notice your thoughts without judgment. This means just noticing, not questioning, editing, criticizing or controlling your thinking. This is a biggie post-divorce. Everyone tends to be hyper self-critical in this time. Observe your thoughts nonjudgmentally for 5 minutes each day.

Experience what you're feeling in your body without trying to change it. Take 5 minutes daily to do a body scan. Start at your toes and work your way up to the scalp, just noticing what's going on in your body. Simply be aware of places you're tight, loose or neutral.

Focus on what you're doing with awareness. Whether you're walking (feel the air on your face and your feet hitting the ground), eating (notice texture and taste) or sitting (attend to body temperature and heart rate), try noticing all the perceptions and sensations you experience during a 5 minute period.

Meditate daily. Choose a type of meditation that suits you. There are many options. Do it daily for 5 minutes on your own, or find a meditation center or group where you can practice and learn. Many people find that practicing with a group deepens the experience.

Practice loving kindness toward yourself and others. This is a meditation in which you wish for things like safety, health, happiness or freedom for yourself. Then you extend that wish to your loved ones, to acquaintances, and finally, to your not-so-loved ones, for 5 minutes of your day. Depending on where you are in the post-divorce process, this last one can be very helpful. It's liberating to give up the anger and have positive wishes for your ex. Really.

Practice an ancient healing art like yoga, tai chi or qi gong by spending 5 minutes a day on it. Taking a few classes will teach you the basics. Simple yoga poses can be learned in no time on-line. You can practice alone. As with meditation, sometimes practicing with your kids, partner or a friend is a nice change.

Pick a time you can practice one or more of these daily. Work it into your schedule. As your daily mindfulness practice becomes routine, you will notice that an increase in awareness and a decrease in judgment begins to permeate the whole post-divorce experience. Control over your thinking and behavior becomes easier. It all comes together to reduce stress and enhance well-being. I'm not saying five minutes will bring all the rewards, but I suspect that once you start doing five, it will turn into 10, then 15, and who knows how much well-being you can attain?

Try some Iyengar Yoga Music to get in the mudra.

A version of this article was originally published at YourTango.

No More Damsels In Distress Post-Divorce

I couldn't find a better post-divorce survivor if I tried, than Sigourney Weaver in Political Animals.  As Weaver said in an interview Friday, "When I look around the world, I don't really see too many damsels in distress." As Elaine Barrish, Weaver is strong, determined, intelligent and competent. So of course Barrish is called cold and calculating by some.

No one exits a marriage sans angst, but what are the successful ingredients in a relatively distress-free post-divorce adjustment? These are my suggestions for damage-control:

Take yourself seriously. Whether it's as a parent, at work or in a new pursuit, whatever it may be, what you're doing is the most important thing you've ever done in your life. Make it real. When you're busy taking yourself seriously, there's not much room for negativity.

Focus on what you're doing. What you're doing deserves your complete attention. The class you've started, the meal you're cooking, the work you're doing, they're all worthy of your focus. While taking care of business, you don't have time to wallow.

Try new stuff. Consider something different.  I doesn't matter if it's yoga, speed-dating, a triathlon or an art class. Shifting some of your time and attention to mastering something new is a good challenge. It creates positive energy and optimism.

Keep busy. Forget about taking time to process.  You'll process enough. Keep yourself scheduled and doing things. Think about the people and things you want in your life, and make space for them.

Be authentic. Let your thoughts, words and deed reflect the things you truly believe in. You may have to figure out what you believe in, since divorce does have a nasty way of shaking up all our beliefs. But these are good things to spend time thinking about. What do I really want, need believe?

Practice stress management. You can cultivate the non-judging, patience and acceptance of mindfulness, increase or change your exercise, make more time for friends or spend more time with nature. Think about what decreases your stress and do more of it.

As Barrish said, "You'll never get to the next great moment if you don't keep going." If you'll forgive the mixing of media, be a Ripley. Be the last survivor.

Survivor, Destiny's Child

Life Balance Post-Divorce

I’ve been writing about work-life balance, something I’ve written about before.  It occurred to me that the topic was relevant to post-divorce in a few novel ways.

First, you’re going it alone, where previously you were a couple.  It’s not necessarily a problem, but it’s different.  I find this a most interesting area.  As a couple, you must place some your desires secondary to the well-being of the couple.  If you didn’t, perhaps this has something to do with why you’re divorced.  If you did, here’s your chance to put you first.  I don’t mean to the exclusion of others in your life, but you simply don’t have that other person whose desires get equal weight.    I’m very happy when people find it possible to prioritize new or dormant interests as a result of singledom.

Second, you’re juggling new things, things you may not have been concerned with before, like dating or spending more time with friends.  This might include, less fun though, more childcare juggling or household responsibility juggling.  You can’t make more time, but you can make the time more meaningful with mindful awareness.  Engaging, focusing and connecting when engaged in various activities makes each one more meaningful.

Third, you may be doing more stress-management for the obvious reasons, necessitating even more time-management.  Managing your stress is important for a variety of reasons including your happiness and that of those around you at work and at home.  Planning is key here.  You must schedule decompression activities, whatever they may be.  Whether it’s walking, reading, puzzling or making music, and the list is endless, you have to include some fun and relaxation in your schedule.

 Sometimes it seems overwhelming, but it can be done.  Prioritizing, mindful awareness and planning all help reduce the overwhelm.

Use Your Emotional Intelligence Post-Divorce

Having just written a blog about EI, I started thinking about how to use some of the concepts for the post-divorce adjustment period. EI is all about skills for managing emotions, ours and others’, so it seems appropriate to consider in the turmoil post- divorce. Here are a few ideas.

Be authentic, not phony. What a great time to set the intention of being who you really are. You don’t have to fit into someone else’s fantasy of who they want you to be. Be yourself. And if you’re not sure who you are, find out. Try different things. Experiment. Have fun.

Be centered, not reactive. What calms you down, relaxes you and allows you to take things as they come? Whatever it is, do it. A lot. Use all the mindfulness skills at your disposal to be able to act with awareness, nonjudgmentally. Be kind to yourself.

Be resilient, not fragile. It really is a marathon. You’re not going to sprint through the post-divorce period. Think about what you’d need to do to run a marathon. You’d need a goal, a plan, support, positivity and dedication. Think about all the difficult things you’ve accomplished in your life. This is no time to wimp out. You’re tough. Show it.

Be present, not absent. Being present is about being able to experience things in the moment without getting sidetracked by thoughts, worries or predetermined ideas. Presence is about being confident in your own skin because you’re an important, worthwhile, talented person with lots to offer. Fill the space you enter with everything you are. Make an impression.

Be Here Now, George Harrison

Post-Divorce Zen

I read about a Zen teacher who came to a town during a drought and was asked to bring rain. Instead of asking for rain, he moved into a house and tended his garden. After a time, it rained. The master’s explanation was that he tended the garden to deal with an imbalance in himself. As he gardened, his internal harmony increased. As for the rain, who can say?

The learning I take from this is simple. Tending to things in the body, mind and our relationships helps us move on and be ourselves. It’s the same with so many difficulties. Trying to get rid of painful emotions and memories simply doesn’t work very well. I like the combination of acceptance and being you find in mindfulness.

We can’t change the past and we can’t directly stop the pain. But we can heal and we can do positive things. It’s this moving forward that leads us to our new lives. And before you know it, it’s raining.

Contact me to attend a free 2-session teleseminar, Move Into Post-Divorce Life.  Enjoy the Journey. 

Just because it's fun, Umbrella, Rihanna.

Post-Divorce Intentions

Mindful behavior involves intentions. In short, you consciously decide what you’d like to be doing and then set an intention to do that thing. Consider what you’d like to be doing differently post-divorce, and what intentions you might need to set to make that happen.

You have to consider the things you’re struggling with and what your intentions might be. Some of the possibilities for post-divorce intentions are:

*I notice my many positive qualities (being divorced is not my central defining characteristic).
*I am present in the moment (and not dwelling on how things were or could have been).
*I take care of things myself (even if I haven’t always done so).
*I speak only in neutral or positive terms about Jon, Jill or whoever (i.e., your ex).
*I focus on wholesome, healthy thoughts about my divorce (not unwholesome or unhealthy thoughts).
*I believe being single is a normal, healthy state (not a lowly life form just above an amoeba).

Identify your intention(s) and go through these four steps.

First, be aware of your intention. Let’s take the intention, I believe being single is a normal state. Negative thoughts that come up about being divorced (e.g., I’m a failure, Everyone is married but me, You have to be in a couple to be happy) are thoughts to notice but not dwell on.

Second, remind yourself of the intention when you notice the negative thinking. When you notice you're thinking that everyone is married except you, remind yourself that being single is normal, that many people are single, even never-married, and are perfectly normal.

Third, keep the intention in mind with some reminder you develop. You have a beloved object you’ve acquired after the divorce that you put on your dresser to remind yourself every morning that your intention is to live with the knowledge that being single is a normal, healthy state. You set a reminder on your phone that pops up every 3 hours that says, I’m a powerful, attractive person. Each is a structure you establish that reminds you of your intention.

Fourth, keep track of how you’re doing with your intention and notice the gains you make. If you feel you can do better, design a plan for doing so without criticism or judgment. Perhaps the object on your dresser is working well, but you need something at the office too. Great! Do it.

Being aware of our intentions and setting them mindfully can be a real help post-divorce.

Reduce Post-Divorce Stress with Mindfulness

I really like mindfulness techniques for getting more centered, calm and managing stress under any circumstances.  Anyone can learn to be less judgmental, more patient, more present, more intentional and more authentic. 

Have a look at my recent eZine article on the subject with specific attention to the post-divorce situation.  And namaste baby.