Getting through January

In Australia January is the month when heat takes over, a lot of usual activities and businesses take a break, the hectic pace of Christmas is over and the children are on a long school break. Some of my clients in the past would report that this time of the year was difficult to endure and they felt lonely and isolated.

But there are some things that can help us to survive this month, and some opportunities that can be taken up in this less busy time.

Cultivate being

Life needs to be a balance between being and doing, and this month provides an opportunity to build more times of “being” into our lives before “doing” takes over again. One of the best ways of “being” is mindfulness, and I have found two good resources to assist with this.

Sarah Rudell Beach of “Left Brain Buddha” offers a blog and free (as well as paid) courses on Mindfulness. Her style is relaxed, realistic and non-dogmatic and she is very generous in sharing resources. Left Brain Buddha can be accessed at:

https://leftbrainbuddha.com/

Insight Timer is a website or App that offers thousands of free guided meditations (including some Christian ones, for those who are seeking these), and can be found at:

https://insighttimer.com

Expand your mind

This month is a good time to do some reading (borrow books from the local Library) and/ or to learn a new skill (there are many opportunities on the internet and these can be sourced by doing a simple google search).

Find creative things to do

There is time now to be spent on following creative interests and hobbies, by either starting new projects or finding unfinished ones that may have been relegated to the cupboard. This can result in a sense of achievement and possibly a chance to build up a store of gifts to give to others throughout the year (or even to prepare for next Christmas). Small projects, that are not too hot to work on, can use up left-over materials from other projects.

Take time to do some organising

Planning for the year ahead can be as simple as writing reminders on a calendar or in a diary, or more in depth. Rhonda Hetzel on her “Down to Earth” blog  wrote some good ideas on this topic this time last year, and these can be accessed here:

https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2018/01/january-thinking-about-year-ahead-and.html

Informal gatherings

Whilst taking a break from formal groups, take advantage of opportunities for informal gatherings, by inviting friends over, arranging spontaneous coffee mornings, meeting friends for lunch, and generally doing the socialising that it can be difficult to find time for during the rest of the year.

Remember: During January we have the gift of time.

Looking sideways

Back in June 2014 I wrote in my diary that the sunrise this morning was a blaze of billowing red, but I had needed to look sideways to see it. How often we concentrate on the view ahead and miss something extra special when we don’t look sideways. This, of course, is another form of broadening our view and is also a metaphor for lateral thinking.

Being enriched in the shades of grey

Black and white thinking is so limiting. It excludes allowing us to be enriched in the shades of grey, a place of no easy answers, but a place that is also less likely to result in simplistic solutions to complex problems – simplistic solutions that lead to many unexpected consequences and thus more problems.

Finding alternate ways of doing things

There is usually never only one right way to do something. Rather there are more likely to be many ways, and some may be more effective than others. If we stick to only one way (because it has worked) we may miss a better or easier way, because we have neglected to look sideways. Looking sideways may also result in us learning something new.

Seeing danger coming

If we don’t look sideways we may miss the approach of something dangerous. Remember the childhood mantra of look to the right and look to the left before we cross the road? Looking sideways can give us the chance to evade or prepare for the approach of something we need to protect ourselves from.

Finding unexpected delights and pleasures

Just as I would have missed a beautiful sunrise if I had not looked sideways, so we can pass by other enriching experiences without knowing, unless we keep gazing around to the sides as we travel our life journeys.

Counselling is often about helping others to look sideways

Many counselling theories and techniques have the ultimate goal of helping clients to see things from new perspectives. For instance Narrative Therapy is based on seeking alternate strength based stories, Solution Focused Therapy looks for exceptions and CBT seeks to change unhelpful thinking patterns into those which are more helpful. These are all forms of looking sideways.

Remember: If we spend all our time focused on the horizon, we may miss treasures that the waves carry to the shore. Rachael Magowan (www.rachaelmagowan.com)

A metaphor for our life journeys

In May we re-visited Bald Rock in northern NSW and, as we walked the track to the top, I could not help thinking that the features along the way provided good metaphors for life journeys.

In our life journeys we can be travelling along OK ...

But at times we can feel that life is hemming us in and we feel trapped ...

But if we find the courage to back out of the corner (that is going nowhere), and take one step after another, we may find another way through.

Sometimes wide open areas can be just as scary, and it can be difficult to see the path ...

But if we keep searching we may find signs ...

And connecting with fellow travellers can leave us feeling less alone.

Sometimes life can seem to be teetering on a precarious balance ...

But if we broaden our perspective, this will probably help.

Remember: be mindful of the smaller details along the way too.

A walk in the Grand Canyon -- a new perspective

The Grampians National Park in Victoria is a bush-walker’s paradise and today I would like you to come on a mini vacation through the Grand Canyon – one of the iconic walks in the area.

Starting from the Wonderland car park, we walk alongside the cascading creek which runs through the canyon (the legacy of a wet winter, as this area if often dry), and finally enter the canyon itself.

We are accompanied by the burbling sounds of running water as we make our way over the path on the grey rocks, looking up at the awesome walls of the canyon from time to time when we pause from watching our footing.

Every so often we glance back the other way to views back down the canyon and towards higher ranges.

Then we continue on through the canyon, which constantly changes.

We walk carefully across a smooth rock face, thankful for the protective rail.

Eventually we reach the end of the canyon, where a small waterfall greets us.

And today, this normally awesome canyon has a new thread weaving through it with the cascading water, giving us a different experience and perspective, just like new perspectives can weave new threads through the stony pathways of our life journeys.

Murphy's Law

I cannot let Mad March go by without mentioning Murphy’s Law – commonly used to blame anything that goes wrong.

What Murphy’s Law really means

Although similar sentiments have been expressed right back to the 1800s, the name Murphy’s Law  arises from physics and is attributed to Edward Murphy who reputedly, in the 1950s, developed new measurement devices that failed to perform, and then said something like “If there’s more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then he will do it that way”. However there is some debate about its origins and, over time, it has come to mean that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, or to quote Colonel Stapp (who supposedly first publicly coined the phrase) “Everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong”.

Murphy in the workplace

In my workplace I would blame Murphy when:

• I would put extra preparation into a client session and they would subsequently fail to attend.
• I had spent many hours preparing a group session or talk and it was cancelled at the last minute.
• I would drag myself into work when feeling unwell, as I was concerned about a particular client, and then they would be a no show.
• The computer was down on the last day that statistics were due.
• The printer would not work when I needed to copy handouts for a session later that day.
• Clients urgently begged for appointments and then did not present .

On what occasions would you like to blame Murphy’s Law?

The usefulness of Murphy’s Law

Metaphorically blaming Murphy can inject humour and take the sting out of an otherwise stressful situation. There is a Murphy’s Law café in Darwin which could result in an interesting dining experience (I chose not to test it out) and the term is often used in a humorous context.

It also reminds us that life is full of unpredictability and that we need to allow for things to not go as planned.

But, of course, when I went to add this post, the internet was down and my husband had to use his phone to create a hot spot!

And then there is Yhprum’s Law, which is that:”anything that can go right will go right” and is Murphy’s Law in reverse. 

Putting our own stamp on things

Every time we adapt something to suit our needs, or do something our way, we are putting our own stamp on things. This can help us to feel creative, pleased, contented and fulfilled. It is something we can often do in the workplace and many times we may have done it without even realising. Those of us who work in rural environments are constantly adapting tools and resources to be more appropriate for a rural context.

What does it mean?

 Putting our own stamp on things is about doing things our way, not the way others think we should do them. It means being true to ourselves, acting according to our core values and being an individual, and it may mean having the courage to stand out from the crowd. It may also mean standing out form the ordinary and mediocre and choosing to be different to others without disrespecting them. It definitely means doing things in ways that support our growth as human beings.

The things we can put our own stamps onto

Some of the things that we can do our way include:

• Choosing how we dress, what we eat and how we live our lives
• Tweaking programs to fit our needs and the needs of those with whom we are working
• Choosing the tools, resources and style of working with our clients
• Choosing between options and how we choose to use advice from others
• How we deal with challenges
• How we choose to react to situations and the perspectives we choose to take
• How we carry out required tasks and the order in which we do these
• Daily routines
• The kinds of movies and programs we watch, the books we read and how we use our relaxation/ leisure time
• Putting our own spin on creative activities

Ways of encouraging ourselves to remember

Sometimes we need to work on believing in ourselves and building up our confidence and we can do this by reminding ourselves that we are allowed to do things our way, listening to our inner nurturing voices rather than the unhelpful voices of others and putting ourselves in the “driver’s seat” of our own life journey “cars” so that we can choose the direction and where our “car” is going to take us.

An exercise in putting our own stamp on things

In the Women’s Support Group that I used to facilitate we would regularly take a base recipe and brainstorm ways that we could vary it to suit our own needs. This was a practical way of encouraging the women to put their own stamp onto something.

Quiche

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees (Centigrade)
2. Beat together 4 eggs and ½ cup milk (low fat is healthier) and add any flavouring herbs (dried coriander is nice)
3. Line a pie plate with pastry (or leave this out and grease the plate to make frittata instead)
4. Fill the pastry shell/ pie plate with a mixture of any of the following:

• Tuna or salmon and dill
• Left-overs from main meals
• Left over Chinese (including rice)
• Chopped up hard boiled eggs
• Tomato and basil
• Any chopped vegetables e.g. carrots, peas, beans, corn, broccoli, cauliflower etc.
• Capsicum
• Spaghetti/ noodles
• Onion or garlic
• Sun-dried tomatoes
• Ham, bacon or salami or chopped sausages
• Cooked chicken or left-over meat (chopped)

What else could be added?

5. Top with grated cheese and/ or paprika
6. Bake for 50 mins or until set

A smaller version could be made by halving the quantities

In the words of Fanny Brice: Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later if you are posing, you will forget the pose and then where are you?

Bubbles always burst

The highs of life are moments that don’t endure forever. They can give us pleasant memories to sustain us through the more difficult times, but most of our daily life is lived in the realms of the ordinary.

Some other metaphors

When we were at Karijini National Park in the Pilbara in Western Australia we attended a service conducted by Judy, a pastor from Frontier Services. She talked about how the rivers here flow underground under sand, but emerge in a few places of exquisite beauty (which, I further reflected, have been fashioned by the forces of erosion).

She went on to say that the life-force of these places is still ever present flowing under the desert sand and this is what is sustaining, rather than the areas of spectacular environment, which we only visit briefly.  Although she likened this to our spiritual lives, in that most of the time we are walking through desert, I think that this applies to life in general.

A second metaphor she used was the Spinifex Ant, who discards the husks from the seeds and leaves them in piles at the entrance to the nest, taking only the useful parts of the seeds down into the nest. This too can be applied to our lives if we spend more time feeding it with meaningful and sustainable things instead of seeking the froth and bubble of life.

Highs can become ordinary

When highs become part of usual experiences they may no longer be highs. We may no longer take in beautiful/ spectacular environments with a sense of “oh wow” feelings when we see them all the time (or, in some cases, even for the second time). It is the same with life experiences of highs, and when they are over we are often left with a sense of being let down, and then try to seek more, only to have this repeat over and over. This does not bring us lasting happiness.

Trying to make bubbles last longer

Adding artificial substances like glycerine can prolong the life of bubbles, but they still eventually burst. Some people try to artificially prolong, or induce, life bubbles through the use of drugs, only to find that this does not make them last forever either.

Remember: Just as the highs don’t last forever, neither do the lows.