How to Stop Living a "Shouldy" Life.

Live your days on the positive side of life, in tune with your most treasured values. And in each moment you'll have much to live for. Ralph Marston
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/ralphmarst564350.html?src=t_values

Live your days on the positive side of life, in tune with your most treasured values. And in each moment you'll have much to live for. Ralph Marston
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/ralphmarst564350.html?src=t_values

Live your days on the positive side of life, in tune with your most treasured values. And in each moment you'll have much to live for. Ralph Marston
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/ralphmarst564350.html?src=t_values

Live your days on the positive side of life, in tune with your most treasured values. And in each moment you'll have much to live for.  ~ Ralph Marston

You should clean the house.
You should cook.
You should bathe the dog.
You should go out and play with the kids.
You should exercise.

Isn't there a "should" to chasing my dreams?

I get overwhelmed with everyday life to the point that I am just not functioning well and my happiness has drained from me completely. I know it is happening when I forget appointments, losing everything I touch, yelling at inanimate objects ("Damn you, toaster! You burned my toast!") and just feeling tired- bone tired.
I want to be fulfilled and have a zest for the world, but it got sucked into the black hole of not-enough-time. The flip side is slowing down to smell the roses, I inevitably begin to feel as if I am getting behind. The laundry is piling up, dog hair is my new rug, and I would rather eat dirt than cook dinner by this point. Trying to carve out a life in all this living sometimes seems impossible. My mind tells me that this is my lot. It is no wonder I need antidepressants and anxiety drugs to function. This existence is enough to trample anyone's will.

The words to release me from this self-imposed prison cut through the static in my head: "You are only going to get the life you want by creating it."

These "shoulds" are just going to have to take a break now and then. If I am going to write, take a yoga class, go on a girl trip, or even just paint that picture I have been planning in my head for months- I am going to have to give myself permission to spend some time on the things that are emotionally significant to me.

 I have devised a simple method of sorting through the muck and creating the life of your dreams.

I call it: Stop shoulding all over the place. 

How am I sure I am not living from a "shouldy" value system? Simple- make up a eulogy! Yep, sounds crazy but I decided to put some time into the thought of who I want to be known as at the end of my life. A list of characteristics I believe defines that person leads me to be that person. Using a calculation from the components I want to embody, and the things in my life that are important, it was easy to prioritize and live according to my values.

I decided that I want to be kind, graceful with my word, empathetic, trustworthy, generous, supportive, forgiving, respectful and respected, secure, humble, joyful.
I ask myself- Do my actions and reactions match these traits?

I listed the things that are important to me:

• Health/ Well-being- nothing else matters without this.
• Marriage/Romantic Relationship- the person to share life with forever.
• Parenting- my part in creating the future.
• Extended family relationships- the backbone of my existence.
• Friends/ Social life- the fun and adventure of life.
• Career/ Work- my feeling of personal growth and development.
• Recreation/ Hobbies- the things that bring me joy and peace.
• Spirituality- my center for living my values.
• Citizenship/ Volunteer Work- what I give to the world.
  
  Live your days on the positive side of life, in tune with your most treasured values. And in each moment you'll have much to live for. Ralph Marston
  Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/ralphmarst564350.html?src=t_values

If these are the things in life, I value- do I live with the actions that create my intentions? Is my time allotted according to my personal priorities or by some other dictations- society, parental influence, occupational expectation, ect.?

When daily living matches personal values, there is peace and happiness.  We have begun living instead of "shoulding."

Healing My Mind With Yoga: A story of PTSD processing.

My most compelling personal experience with the healing principles of yoga began as an ordinary day. I had finished my daily yoga, homeschooled my kids and finished some housework. I had started cooking dinner. Standing in my kitchen stirring the boiling noodles for macaroni and cheese- I had nothing particular on my mind nor was anything upsetting me. With no warning, it began.

 Just as I might try to define love in actual words- “It” (my experience) was an intense and crazy mixture of feelings: fear, panic, dread, pain. I have anxiety in my everyday life but the experience of my regular anxiety to this day’s experience is like an ant to an elephant. I share the rest of it as a poem because defining it concretely just doesn’t do it justice.


My mind suddenly fractured into a million pieces. I cannot grasp even one thought as they fly around the room like an improbable poltergeist intrusion.

My body revolts with tension. Muscles restrict, at ready to run and find shelter. Alas, one cannot outrun their mind.

I am tumbled and tossed as the storm brews inside- there is no ground left un-shaking.

I struggle without anything to steady myself.

An earthquake in my chest, violent it shutters into my bones. I rattle and threaten to shatter like mercury glass in an old wooden frame.

It is bubbling up and stealing my breath. I am drowning in flash flood waters. They wash the ground out from under my feet with the debris of my past rushing past me. Glimpses of recognition send water into my throat; I choke, sputtering to hold on.

Nausea begins its assault, and my head goes beneath the water, I am sure I will succumb. As the many years before there seems no remedy to this disaster.

But then like a light shining through darkness my mind grasps a solid hold.

Yoga.

Forward fold- I calm my nervous system.

Hands firmly on the floor- I ground myself, focus on here and now.

Deep breath in- I am reconstituted and filled with intestinal fortitude.

Long sigh on release- I let the flood waters rush past as I am now only an observer.

Begin again with a deep breath- mental focus on the feeling of expanding the lungs as far as they can go. Mind picturing the filling of a balloon.

Observe the thoughts.

Hold for a beat this time- expanding the capacity of the lungs.

Let the memories flow past. They are below my safe perch- my breath.

Another emphatic sigh on release- forcing more air out of the lungs. Even more. Hold for a beat.

Controlling the breath brings control of my experience.

Continuing with the controlled breath I can be an observer. Passively watching of the mind.

The alchemy that worked for me: hands to the floor is grounding and offered the support of here and now, breath is time between thoughts which gave me space to safely observe my body sensations, the forward fold was a release to my nervous system and availed me the ability to self-soothe.

I believe everyone's equation is personal and developed through experience in yoga. The practice of yoga has become a substantial equivalent to cognitive behavioral therapy, for me. There is a neural map made from our experiences. For those of us with trauma, the pathways have become blocked or are in some way not serving us. The great news is that we can teach ourselves new pathways  There is no one size fits all method of yoga. Our experience in yoga is as vast and different as our other experiences in life, but there is an equation that will fit for every person who cares to look for it.

 Experiencing what I had so long repressed was like suddenly coming out from under a thick blanket. Yoga created a method of safe, controlled response to release old hurts. It allows me to experience life with an entirely new perspective.

  We can reclaim our life- Everyone deserves to be free.

An Appeal For Reason In Politics.

I had stepped away from politics.
My apprenticeship with Elephant Journal has forced me back into the world of news a bit, and immediately I am overwhelmed with the shallow understandings and reactive dynamics of our population. It is no wonder our politics have become so volatile. Our "sharing of opinions" has become reminiscent of the asinine arguments of children. Gone are the intellectual debates that we so sorely need to actually sort out our problems.

Slinging the same mud back and forth has become our means of conversing.

Watch as both sides make excellent points about each others arguments but nobody solves one damn problem.
https://www.facebook.com/journalpoems/videos/926035810829348/
https://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks/

Fighting fire with fire burns us all to the ground. It is pointless, frustrating, and a complete waste of time. It leaves us all feeling self righteous in the moment, but drained and hopeless in the long run.
The truth is that until we:

1. Agree to hear the points from a neutral place. 
2. Work together to systematically gather and consider the complications of our proposed solutions.
3. Compromise on a workable agreement where both sides give a little. 

"This is a lost cause."
What exactly am I saying? Our country is a lost cause? Society, humanity? Yes.

We stand to lose everything. We are already far into sacrifice: peace, freedom, morality, law, justice, integrity... We are not even surprised when the next corruption scandal breaks anymore.  I believe the degradation of morale stems from this mass of negativity. Feelings of injustice and victimization are bleeding into the entire culture. Everything we do now seems to have an undercurrent of dissatisfaction that permeates our work, home life and health.

We all know this isn't working and yet we just keep plugging along. Under some self soothing delusion that once we get the next guy into the White House everything will magically be right.
 It isn't the man. It is much, much bigger.

The elephant in the room is that we are operating from a fundamentally broken system. It may have had a good start, but over the years changes have slowly eroded this system of government into a dysfunctional money laundering scam. Voting is not going to fix that. Battling each other will not fix it. Destroying ourselves and and world at large will not fix it.

Hope is in: Conversation. Commitment. Compromise. OPEN-MINDEDNESS.

As long as seething anger is tainting our work, relationships and health we will continue to kill ourselves. It is affecting the very core of our souls so deeply that even the Earth is bleeding from our callousness. Everything we touch we are now tearing apart.

“Hurt people hurt people." Will Bowen

I propose we stop. 
Dave Canterbury once said the perfect thing, "My Dad always told me just go sit down if you are mad. Come back once you are thinking straight." 

It is imperative that we all step back and consider our circumstances more impartially. Change arguments into discussions. 
Let's get clear and point the finger at the real problem rather than each other. 

We are overtaxed and underpaid which leaves us ready to pounce on each other. There is plenty of waste and corruption that has nothing to do with us- the general public. Putting non-opposing issues as pitted adversaries we are cutting each other's throats. Blame is more productively placed on policy than people. We can and should turn our attention to that elephant in the room.

The Respect For Darkness.

I would like to present my case for respecting the darkness.

Remember that weird girl in school? The one with the spider earrings and the black band shirts. She was kind of moody and missed school a lot. She was always cracking jokes and making everyone laugh but inside she was fighting the battle of a lifetime. That was me.

There is no way to fully describe the dark side for those who have never been there. Let me give it my best try: It is gloomy and lonely.  While others around me were playing sports and finding their gifts and talents I was barely scraping by in school and obsessed with dying. I felt like I lived in a world with an excess gravity. Everything seemed harder for me to accomplish, impossible really. Every interaction felt like a burden and drained me of every drop of energy. I was trapped in an unwanted life where I languished. Miserable, I felt judged and misunderstood. My mother would ask what was so horrible about my life. I could only think to explain it as "what is so great"? Her love of life seemed naive. The bits of joy that sometimes happened along just seemed unbalanced to the fact that life is hard. My mind emphasized work, struggling and how I spent most of my time in agonizing worry. Then after years of that drudgery I was going to just die.

It shocked me, years later, to read that they have found that PTSD is perhaps created by our inability to cope with trauma when we feel isolated and unsupported. This concept is commonly demonstrated when servicemen begin suffering after their return to everyday life. Although their family and friends love them they cannot easily empathize with their feelings. They have no one anymore who really understands what they have experienced.

Could something as simple as empathy and support be the cure to such a devastating issue?

I can assure you that voyaging into the darkness of depression is not a choice. There is no draw to make anyone decide to go in and set up residence. I stumbled in quite accidentally at the age of 13 after my friend was murdered. I got abducted by the darkness without even knowing it had overtaken me. There was no warning to let me know that suddenly my mind had shifted. My thoughts had just suddenly become bleak and hopeless- it is not like I realized my thoughts were abnormal from who i had been before... They were still just thoughts in my head. My mind had changed but it was still my mind. I was unable to detect any difference.

For my closest friends and family it was confusing and even frustrating. It looked as though I had willfully abandoned them and that I had the choice to simply come back out. I had one friend who accused me of just wanting attention and I was completely taken aback as that was inconceivable to me. It was painful and alienating to be so incomparable to everyone that they could even come up with such a motivation. I had truly become completely removed from everything and everyone.

Now, before I have you believing that darkness is all bad and has no merit, let me tell you what it gave to me...

 It was a slow recovery that was similar to digging myself out of a grave.  Over time and with a lot of talking, explaining my darkness to my mom and getting professional help, I began to experience some feeling again. We painstakingly exhumed my soul from the dread, fear, hurt, sadness and grief. It took years but I finally emerged, much changed. 

I knew I had recovered when like a sunrise dawning-a vista of brightness and euphoria began to appear before me. Like never before there was a brilliance to existence. My eyes could see and my mind could process... there was light. I began to see happiness even in the mundane. There was excitement and hope. I now had people and places I wanted to explore and appreciate.

There was another new appreciation that had developed. I had a real love in my heart for those hurt and struggling. I was drawn to people who were suffering and able to resonate with the depth of their agony. I had been there, I had known it too.

 The dark side has definitely left it's mark on me. It is the easy understanding of others who are so lost in misery and feel totally isolated from every person in their life. I can hold space for them. I know it is heard when I tell them over and over, I am here and I will be right here as long as you need me to be, even when it seems it is doing no good.

Even 20 years later I still feel like a beacon to those lost in their darkness. I am the living proof that there is possibility of liberation from it's hold.

I celebrate the time I spent in darkness now I know that what almost killed me- instead has made me wiser. My time in the dark has become my gift. It keeps me soft and kind and serves forever as a contrast that allows me to see, and help others find, just how truly resplendent living can be.

A Poem-
The darkest dread is that of fear -and of the unknown,
The deepest pain released in tears, as my depression grows,
That sinking lonely feeling, the hurt cannot be told,
Rearing it's ugly head and crushing me in it's hold,
It tears me from my family- pushes my love down deep inside,
It steals my every moment and belittles me with lies,
This monster dwells within me- it never takes a leave,
It hides amongst the shadows and descends like a disease,
There must be a way to kill it, surely there is a cure,
I must find a way of escaping- not much more can I endure.
Written on 11/5/1991
In the midst of my deepest darkness. I was 17 years old.