What’s The Value of Friendships?

Many years ago, I  asked someone the question, can you live a fulfilled life without friendships?  the answer was yes, but you need to be very clear about what you are giving up and be at peace with that.  I don’t agree totally with this answer because I believe friendships are important and provide a venue, aside from our nuclear and extended families for us to come together to share, connect, laugh, grow, cry, and learn.  And these are just a few benefits, there are many other great benefits of friendships.  For instance, one of my friends is a great listener, trustworthy, and honest.  She knows me very well.  Whenever I need an honest, objective opinion, she is the person I turn to.  Another friend is great to hang out with.  She is down to earth, funny, smart and posses a very realistic perspective about life.  These friendship doesn’t require a lot of my attention, because we have developed a strong bond.  However, there are some friendships that require a lot more of our time and energy and these friendships may leave us feeling overwhelmed at times.  Nevertheless, we still value them.  

I believe that friendship is an act of giving and sharing between two or more people.  There are times in our friendship when we will need to give more, and that’s okay because we are placed here to help each other.  We should give generously of our time and resources.  But the red flag should go up when we are the only ones doing all of the giving.   My red flag went up when I did an assessment of my friendships some time ago.  The result yielded that in a particular friendship, I was giving so much more than I was receiving.  That didn’t bother me, but it became explicitly clear that this person wasn’t an equal nor positive contributor to the friendship, needless to say, our relationship ended. 

My thought about the question is that I don’t believe anyone can live a very fulfilled life without good friendships.  But, I do believe you can live rather well without “unhealthy friendships”–those that constantly deplete your energy, time, resources and don’t help to replenish them.  The fact is there are some friendships that hinder our personal growth.  And it is up to us to figure out whether it is time to relinquish, or redefine them. 

Tired of Being Sick and Tired?

So you are tired of being sick and tired. You are having a bad year or have had a bad decade, nothing has gone well for you, well so you think. You’ve done just about all that you can do and what you’ve done has exhausted all of your resources. All of your attempts to fix the situation failed and to add insult to injury, it has gotten worst. It seems like you’re in a cycle that keeps producing the same negative results. You’ve reached your wits end and help isn’t coming fast enough. You’ve cried, prayed, meditated, recited your daily mantras, thought positively, sought counseling, talked to friends, applied hope, but nothing has worked. So you are at the same place where you’ve begun and you’re tired of being sick and tired of the same BS.

Well have you considered living with uncertainty and detaching from the outcome, from the expectations you’ve set for yourself or the situation? It’s certainly not easy to do, but living with uncertainty gives us the certainty that we are not in control of the outcome. We are only in control of our response.

Take rest in the knowledge that not ever thing in our life needs to be worked out, fixed, changed, or improved. And when fixing or changing is required, it is usually us who needs it. And if we start from that place first, the situation changes on its own. However, some things are just the way they are and there isn’t anything you or I can do about them. This sounds very pessimistic, but on the contrary it’s an optimistic view point because it challenges you to accept the things you can not change and find peace in that, which you so desperately need now. There are some who have spent a lifetime trying to fix whatever they weren’t pleased with in their lives. Unfortunately, most of them failed horribly and lived a much unfulfilled life. Do you want to be one of them?

Pema Chodron, author of Comfortable With Uncertainty offers four methods for working with chaos in your life.

1. When you encounter difficulties in your life, slow down enough to be present, let go of the multitude of judgments and schemes, and stop struggling.
2. Use the poison as fuel to wake up. Don’t push difficult situation away, use them to connect with other people who, just like you, are in pain.
3. When the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps into the path of enlightenment.
4. Regard whatever arises as the manifestation of awakened energy. Use everything in your life as the basis for attaining enlightenment.

Tired of Being Sick and Tired is a paradigm-shifting workshop presented by Deborah George-Feres.  Interested in having Deborah present this workshop at one of your event?  Email her at info@indigocoachingsystems.com.  

Overcoming Worry

As humans, we all worry over something or the other, whether it may be big or small, but some of us worry more than others. However, if you allow worry to control your thinking, it can negatively affect your health and well-being. Dale Carnegie, prominent lecturer of his time and best selling author offers some great tips on overcoming worry in his book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

Fundamental Principles for Overcoming Worry:  

1. Live in “day tight compartments.”
2. How to face trouble:
   • Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen?”
   • Prepare to accept the worst.
   • Try to improve on the worst.
3. Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health.
4. Cultivate a Mental Attitude that will Bring You Peace and Happiness:
   • Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope.
   • Never try to get even with your enemies.
   • Expect ingratitude.
   • Count your blessings — not your troubles.
   • Do not imitate others.
   • Try to profit from your losses.
   • Create happiness for others.

The 3 Laws of Life!

In my meditation this morning, I’ve found myself focusing on my past teachings about life. What emerged from my meditation were myths. As I focus in on this word, my inner self reminded me of some of the myths I was taught about religion, societal values, marriage, work, and many other elements that are a part of my everyday life. For some people, these societal teachings have made them who they are today and have worked well for them, probably on all levels of their life. And I can say some have served me well also. But I couldn’t help to think, if I know then what I know now, would I be in a different place, or would I be a more “successful” person?

For the past five years, I found myself questioning many of the teachings that are so heavily interwoven into every aspect of my life, as well as society. I began dissecting, and analyzing them for their validity, efficacy and relevance to my life. What I’ve discovered is that many of these teachings made me felt stagnant, they kept me in a comfort zone and didn’t allowed my mind to be opened to different perspectives. I felt mostly inhibited, afraid, disempowered and have stifled my personal and spiritual growth.

As I began to question most of these teachings about values, I was led to many books and people that have opened my mind to a new way of thinking. I began abstracting the common elements that I found and derived with what I call “life laws”. These laws are for living a joyous and rewarding life. What I found wasn’t much different from some of the teachings I’ve been taught. For example, they all spoke of a belief in a higher power and love, love for oneself and love for others. However, the major difference was that the religion that I practiced for many years, ignored the physical, metaphysical and universal laws of life, which made all the difference in how my paradigm was shaped, how I processed information, treated others and myself, and fully understood the lessons from my disappointments, successes, challenges and tragedies.

The “life laws” that I’ve discovered are very simple and most of us have heard them in some form or another. I haven’t stated them exactly the way I’ve discovered them, but I haven’t changed their connotations. Here are a few:

• What you sow, you will reap: whatever you give to life, whether by actions, words, intentions or deeds, the universe gives it back to you, sometimes with greater returns.
• Guidance is already given, our choices are not. God or the higher power/force has already given us guidance through its divine love. It is up to us to tap into it on a daily basis. There are several ways to do so; I find meditation, prayer, and daily affirmations useful ways to access that guidance. A similar “life law” is what you ask for is what you receive.
• Be mindful of your thoughts: our thoughts form our perceptions, our perceptions form our choices and our choices form our reality. Every action emerges from a thought. We can re-program our minds so our thoughts fall within the “life laws”.
• Respect and Love of self: there is a stark difference between self love and selfishness. Self love comes from divine love. It is “direct knowing”, knowing that you are a part of greatness and you have a valuable contribution to make in life, it is pure, it is authentic, it allows you to open yourself to others and to share that love. Selfishness is all consuming of oneself, usually a selfish person will only address matters that affect or relate to them. The selfish individual doesn’t place much emphasis on how their actions and choices impact others. Most times selfishness emerges from lack of self love, fear, jealousy, abandonment and many other emotional and psychological issues.
• A consciousness of a higher power. Whatever we call a higher power, my research shows that there is a powerful force that exists in our universe, which protects, guides and loves not just us, but our planet and everything else that exists in our universe. It also created the “Universal laws”. How we relate to this higher power or force is up to each individual. You can choose religion, spirituality, or other means to relate to this force.

I can not end this by saying I’ve mastered all of these “life laws”, or any of the others that I haven’t mentioned here. The “life laws” have helped me to form a different perspective of life, be less judgmental, more intuitive, open to possibilities, and be conscious of my thoughts and actions. One of the “life laws” that has made a difference in my life– is the power to choose. This law has helped me to understand that the higher power has given me the authority to live my life the way I want to. This specific law is in direct contraction to one of my childhood teachings—life is predestined. I must follow a specific path to reach my destiny. This couldn’t be more false, because if the higher power gave us free will, which means we can choose our path, why then would it writes the entire script for our lives?