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Arete Warriors – spirit, mind, body strong
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The Good News Is, You Can Change It.
Dear Reader
My friend Jenny Donnelley wrote a book entitled Still, 7 Ways To Find Calm In The Chaos. Here’s the introduction.
I woke up this morning with plans to begin writing this book and somehow “this morning” has turned into 7:24pm.
I am sitting in my running car in the dance studio parking lot. My nine-year-old daughter, Esther, gets out of her dance lesson in ten minutes. Two babies are fussing in their car seats. Mercy is whimpering, while Eden is screeching. “I want Daddy! I want to go to church!” Big. Bursting. Tears. My ears hurt.
I cave in. “We are not going to church. No one is at church right now. If you stop crying, I’ll give you my phone.”
Tears freeze on her face. “Okay.” Incredible composure. This is a new child.
I hate that a phone will calm her down. Resisting the temptation to judge myself as a lazy or failing mom, I am grateful for the few minutes to type the words you are now reading.
This is my life.
And rest is found right in the middle of it.
Jenny, mother of 5, has long been a beautiful example to me in many wonderful ways. I’ve seen her in many stressful situations & she is cool as a cucumber.
We’ve all met those people right?
How can some people remain so calm & collected despite being surrounded by complete chaos? What do those super-human people have in common?
Somehow, they’re able to keep the storm swirling around them outside, where it belongs.
Jenny goes on in her book to describe an old barn they bought, fixed up & converted into an amazing, cozy event center. I’ve had the pleasure of staying in this incredible place & trust me when I tell you, they turned it into a heavenly retreat.
But when they first bought the barn, it was winter. And they first used it before doing any of the renovations it would eventually endure. She recalls that first gathering inside the barn, as they all huddled up together in many layers, still cold because of the lack of insulation & the many holes throughout the old walls.
The temperature inside the barn was about equal to the freezing temperatures outside.
After a lot of hard work, time & energy, they transformed the place. Today, it doesn’t matter what the temperature is outside the barn. They can now just press a little button, & it is a perfectly comfortable temperature inside.
This is the perfect description of those people that seem to be so even keel, calm, & comfortable, despite the chaos they are surrounded by.
They don’t let the weather, inside.
How do they do that?
Let’s Prepare – the warm up
Months ago, Nadia was in a bad place mentally with one gymnastics coach in particular. She had it in her head that this coach was “trying to hurt” her. I sat her down one day, when she wasn’t all worked up about it, & we worked through Byron Katie’s work. We’d spent maybe 10 minutes on this, but as I watched her righteous indignation, I felt like we were wasting our time, so I finally just told her to go play.
Two days laters, while in the bathtub after practice, Nadia casually mentioned to me, “Tonight, at practice, I was looking at Claire & I thought, “She’s not trying to hurt me. She’s just trying to help me.”
😳
I was stunned. Still makes me teary eyed to tell the story.
I had not thought our “work” had done anything, but as she processed through other ways of thinking & examined how her thinking could be faulty, she was able to see the situation in a way that served her better.
It’s not about being right or wrong. It’s about being able to see things in a different way. And if I can show her how incredibly powerful her mind is, I feel like she will have a superpower of sorts.
She filled a huge crack in her barn by changing her thinking. If she’d continued on being convinced the coach was trying to hurt her, she
- A. would not have heard anything the coach was trying to tell her &
- B. would have had the extra weight of bad weather clouding every future interaction, which would have led to her
- C. continuing to look for evidence that she was right & the coach was wrong.
You can see how one negative thought, right or wrong, clouds every response after it.
Let’s Work – the exercise
You have access to this same superpower.
Imagine the outbursts, bad decisions, jerk reactions, & overall STRESS we would avoid if we could only prevent the storm that surrounds us from getting inside (where our decisions are made).
This superpower can be yours by doing the work needed to close up the holes (thinking that doesn’t serve us) & reinforcing the right places (clear thinking) to keep the storm outside, where it belongs.
Brooke Castillo’s podcast The Life Coach School taught me how our thoughts lead to our emotions, which lead to our decisions & eventually our action (or inaction). And that, of course, leads to our outcomes.
The Self Coaching Model is something she teaches people to work through any “problem”. It is her version of The Work by Byron Katie, which is what I did with Nadia that day.
I welcome you to dive into any of the above. You might start by printing off The Work & try working through a thought lately that is not serving you.
Do the work, however you choose to do it. It takes time, effort & energy, & sometimes it’s not fun, but to want, try or hope is more exhausting. I promise.
