Peace and Calm
Greetings Christianson Chiro gang, I made this whole blog post right before Christmas and forgot to hit publish! Pregnancy brain! So here it is a couple weeks late but as we have just wound up the holiday season maybe you can still relate to the sentiment. This blog post is about changing very small things in your mindset to make a big impact on how you feel. Enjoy!
Happy Holiday wishes!! I thought Peace & Calm would be a good theme for this week as it’s the week of Christmas! I know this time of year can bring up many feelings, from magical & joyous to stressed & anxious and anywhere in-between. Hopefully this blog post can help you find some moments of calm in this busy season!
As some of you may know, as I’m writing this I am 26 weeks pregnant! I’ve felt many things during this pregnancy both mental and physical. The physical side at times has been very challenging, with the worst days including puking 8 times a day, sometimes paired with a migraine. Then there are good days too where I can’t believe I feel almost normal and I want to get as many fun things in as possible to take advantage of the day! I feel as though my mental state has been jumping around quite often during this experience as well. Sometimes I feel like, “I got this! Scott and I are so looking forward to this and can handle this no problem!” And other times I feel like I’m so behind, or should know more than I do, or be more prepared.
Today I am feeling very peaceful and calm and while it may just be the hormones, I think it more likely may be a mindset shift from our hypnobirthing class. Sometimes we just need a little reminder about perspective, right? I thought I would share some of the things I’ve been thinking of today in hopes that it will bring you some peace & calm too, because who doesn’t want that in their life?
The Language We Use is Important
For the past 5 weeks, Scott and I attended a hypnobirthing class, with Erin from Flutterby Birth Services, LLC in the MSP area. It was a really neat experience, one of the things we focused on was language that we use to describe situations/ things that are happening to us. The words that we choose to describe things has a profound impact on how we feel. We discussed many examples of this for birthing and it’s amazing how just changing one word can deeply change how you feel. For example, Erin taught us that instead of using the word contraction, to use the word surge. Doesn’t that sound less intimidating and intense? To me surge sounds temporary, manageable, and like it has a rising and a falling. Versus contraction sounds painful, long, and more fear inducing to me.
Tony Robbins talked a lot about this too, when I was going to his seminars. He reminded us that the language we use every day is so powerful and impacts how we feel. One of his examples was something that would normally make you angry. Instead of swearing and/or yelling, maybe you use a word like interesting. His example was, some of his employees lost A LOT of money at an event he was hosting. He said normally, he would’ve been very angry. But instead he decided to use the word interesting, i.e. “Interesting, how could you lose track of that much money that quickly?” And then they worked on solving the problem with less emotion involved in the situation.
Think of a couple words you can exchange
I encourage you this week to think of a couple of your own substitutions for words, for whichever situation you find yourself in currently. To give some quick examples, maybe instead of thinking of your house as messy because you have lots of pets like us or maybe you have kids instead or both kids and pets. You could think of it as a loving space, where maybe there is dog hair around but it’s because you have three beautiful dogs that give you love every day and are always so happy to greet you.
Maybe instead of being bummed about going in to work on a Monday, you could think of it as your opportunity to serve others, or a chance to use your talents.
As you will likely quickly be able to tell, cleaning is not one of my favorite things to do. Perhaps instead of thinking you are cleaning or doing chores you can think of it as tidying or beautifying your space. Or creating a calm environment.
I think you get the idea, exchange whichever words are most impactful to you and try it out for a week!
What if you couldn’t complain?
One year for lent, I was trying to think of something to give up during the 6 weeks of lent. Usually I would think of a food or beverage to give up, like alcohol, or candy/sugar/desserts. However, that year, I was already doing a very strict diet due to GI/Digestion issues. My strict diet was basically Whole 30, only I did it for 8 months. So no alcohol, sugar, rice, bread, pasta, basically most carbs cut out. My diet mostly consisted of fruits, veggies, and meat, and some dairy as I’ve never had an issue with dairy. That didn’t leave much else to cut out for lent. Therefore, I decided I would give up complaining for 6 weeks. That was an interesting time! If you think about your usual recap of your day, think of it without being able to complain, even one time. No complaining about work, or your spouse or your kids or your pet, or traffic or politics, etc. I quickly learned that I needed to reframe, my descriptions and thoughts and to look for the good, or else I didn’t have a ton to talk about!
Not that I am a constant complainer by any means, but you can’t even say something like “Ugh, I got NO sleep last night, and I’m exhausted.” Instead, it would be something like “I got the opportunity to read a lot last night, or the moon was really beautiful, or I had lots of time to think.” It has a different feel, right?
Or if you were talking about your spouse or your family, you couldn’t say something like “It really annoyed me that the dishes didn’t get done.” It would be more like “I had a great conversation with my spouse, or my husband installed a new headlight in my vehicle.” It changes your lens through which you view things, so that you see the positive instead of the negative.
At first this was a very conscious effort, my mind would come up with a complaint, and then I would have to see the good out of that situation or focus on something positive. However, after about a week. I just started to view my day, interactions with others, and events differently. And it was a much more pleasant way to go through life! If you have to see every problem as an opportunity for you to grow or learn something, and you can only see the good side of the people you love (or that’s where your focus is) it really changes your day to day life! I started to really enjoy my days, and found they were filled with much more gratitude and thankfulness. It also made me realize how often other people complain. I don’t even think most of us are aware of it. But how different would your life be if you didn’t complain for a week or two? At the bare minimum, I think it would be less stressful and more enjoyable.
So maybe as you go through the rest of this week, think of some words you can replace and/or trying out not complaining for a few days and see how you feel!
Wishing you well as we start off 2022!
