Youthful Life: X

" Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we are not perfect. " Fred Rogers Some days we're overwhelmed, while others we are underwhelmed. When are we just well ... whelmed? I think of how often I hear from others that they are overwhelmed, and that feeling leads them to paralysis. It's that moment of having too much, excess, or more than we can bear that scares us into submission. We shut down. We break down. We stop moving. The irony is what we really need to is to keep moving but do so strategically, in ways that give us back control. We just need to do or handle one thing, and one thing only before moving on to the next thing. I think about what happens when my laundry piles up. I've done one load and need to fold it, but then here comes another, and another, and suddenly I have a mountain of clean clothes that seems so insurmountable that I cannot even begin to imagine tackling it. So I do...

"The only thing you sometimes have control over is perspective. You don't have control over your situation. But you have a choice about how you view it." Chris Pine Reframing makes the picture different. Reframing is a powerful tool that we have in our arsenals to view our experiences in the ways that we dictate. Reframing let's us craft the narrative, and the story we tell ourselves about our own lives. So much of our lives can be dictated by fear. Fear is paralysis. Fear is a blockade. Fear is holding us back. Fear is not a way to live. Fear prevents us from living. Oh, what our lives could be if we lived in spite of fear. Fear, apprehension, nervousness, and all their dastardly cronies that prevent us for the fullness of life can sometimes be overcome through reframing. We can take a hardship presented to us, and make it small. We can take it is a challenge that will benefit us in the process. We can turn it into something of our own creation. It's taking ...

" Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity." Hippocrates Life is about experiences - all of them, the good and the bad. Life is about making sense of those experiences, and gleaning what we can from them. Sometimes those lessons are easy to extract, to apply, and to keep pressing on - other times, we struggle to find the root cause, the bottom line, the essentials. It's the things that have caused us pain, heartache, and that indescribable heaviness that elude us. We have to learn how to heal or else the wounds that have been inflicted upon us will never do just that. We have to find the right bandage, surgery, or rehab to get us to where we need to be. Each healing process is going to be unique but it has to be appropriate for our trials and tribulations.  Healing is as much about the process of healing as it is choosing to heal. That is choosing to unpack the baggage we lug around - the hurt, anger, sadness, resentment, anx...