Remember to worry…
Tag Archives: letting go of negative
Domestic Violence Awareness Month- Day 21
You are more resilient than you think…..
Domestic Violence Awareness Month- Day 20
Compare yourself ONLY to your best self….
Domestic Violence Awareness Month- Day 14
Take a shot of POSITIVITY….
Domestic Violence Awareness Month- Day 13
You are allowed to make mistakes….
Screaming at the ocean…..
Have you ever sailed?
I used to sail a little as a teenager in Trinidad. A friend had a catamaran and a whole load of us would go out on the weekend.
Life was simple then!
Some of the things I remember from sailing is that someone would be in charge of the rudder and someone would be in charge of the sail. When the two worked together, the sailing was smooth and sweet. When the two started to argue, I was always losing my balance and falling overboard. For some reason, my two mates were always the same two loggerheads; Ray G. and Noel M. were their real names. I want them to know I remember that they were not always the best sailors in the world!
Good thing we are still friends and can have a good laugh now.
Remembering those days of treading water, endlessly, in the ocean, while Ray and Noel yelled at each other that it was the other’s fault, made me think of how I handled the situation.
I never yelled at the ocean, I always yelled at Ray and Noel, who in turn always laughed at me!
Last week as I was coaching someone, I heard myself say to her, “Stop Yelling at the Ocean!”
What did I mean?
This is what I meant….
When we begin to obsess that our life situations are someone else’s fault, we are yelling at the ocean.
When we find ourselves on high emotional seas and we forget how to use our sails (past lessons and personal responsibility for our own happiness) and our rudders (strengths and positive self talk) we blame the ocean for overturning our boats and for upending our lives.
If you find yourself wishing that OTHERS had acted differently and you wished that THEY would just do ______ (fill in the blank)_____ so that you could FINALLY get on with your life…..You are Yelling at the OCEAN!
Oceans do not have ears.
Oceans do not have feelings.
Oceans are there to help you to navigate to someplace else.
Have you caught yourself yelling at your oceans recently?
STOP!
Use all that energy to chart a new course and find good sailors to help you.
Ray and Noel if you guys ever read this, I still love you and I’m glad we had so much fun together. And know that I’m still treading water!
Love and light,
Indrani
Ms. Know-It-All…..
I was at a well known treatment center a few weeks ago and on the last day of my event I decided to eat breakfast on the lawn.
I usually ate in the cafe but on this particular day the weather was glorious and I wanted to savor the fresh air.
I sat at a table that was already occupied by two young women.
I immediately started to engage with them as is my way and we were having a sweet conversation.
Another woman joined us, and the party began.
Within 5 minutes, the new woman had chased away one of the original people and was expounding on how I should fix my life.
THIS woman KNEW that:
1. I was hanging around negative people.
2. I was deliberately choosing to hang around negative people.
3. I was clearly not making the right choices in friends.
Mmmmmm…. I wanted to:
1. Snap at her.
2. Throw my OJ at her.
3. Dig out my inner bitch and have at it.
Instead, I chose to turn my body away from her and engage with the other woman at the table.
Ms. Know-It-All then turned her attention to the woman I was talking to and proceeded to tell her how to fix her life.
This woman was just the most “knowledgeable” person I had met in quite a while.
She then told me to contact her and that she could help with my foundation.
I almost choked.
I smiled at her, and said “Have a good day” and went to class.
I congratulated myself for not losing my cool and for having the courage to be graceful about leaving the table.
Have you ever met people like this?
Some of these people are in our families and it’s not so easy to leave them behind.
There are, however, lots of people we continually choose to be around who are always “in our business.”
They know everything about everything. They are experts at philosophy, history, psychology, social skills etc. You name it, they have the answer!
I don’t know about you, but I am not in the market for any more Know-It-Alls in my life. I have had my fill of them. They were irritating then, and they are irritating now!
The difference in me is now I have the courage to leave and not CARE what they think of me.
I do not care if that woman thinks that she is JUST the thing I need to make my foundation reach one million people.
I will take my time, surround myself with people I admire and respect and LIKE, and I will reach the right amount of people in exactly the right time.
There is a KNOW-IT-ALL lurking around every corner, waiting for us to show the slightest interest in the wealth of knowledge and then…
They latch ON!
It is harder to extricate yourself from their clutches than it is to just leave them alone the first time you meet them.
I hope you meet some of these people soon and you can begin to practice the strength of believing in yourself.
These individuals give us the opportunity to stand firmly in our knowledge and allow them to expound to someone else.
If you meet one of these individuals at a party I recommend faking a bad stomach and getting the hell outta there.
I don’t know about you, but I believe that life is too short to waste precious time on people who just LOVE to hear the sound of their own voice.
Love & light,
Indrani
Hanging on to the buoys
When I was 49, I decided to learn to swim and to participate in an Olympic Distance Triathlon.
Yes, you read that right…learn to swim!
Even though I had grown up on an island, what I used to do in the ocean was not swimming. It was simply not drowning.
So on the day of the triathlon, I looked out over the lake at Disney World and I counted the buoys that marked the swim course.
The idea is to swim as close to the buoys as possible and use them as a guide to swim the distance of one mile.
My strategy was VERY different.
Since I had only learned to swim properly six months prior, I could not swim one mile in a single go.
I had practiced “buoy to buoy” so to speak.
I had also heard that swimmers were so eager to finish first that they kicked you in the face, kicked off your goggles and pretty much ignored that you we also trying to finish a race.
I remember the night before I left for Disney World I had a neighbor who had done many triathlons and I asked him for advice.
He said, with a smile, “So when’s the Tri?”
I smiled right back and said, “In two days.”
He shot up from his relaxed seated position and said, “WHAT?”
He seemed to think I had waited too long to ask for help.
So I asked him for just one piece of advice.
He said, “Be careful of the other swimmers. Wear two swim caps and sandwich your goggles between them, you may hold on to them longer. Swim away from the buoys and this will lessen the chance that you’ll get kicked in the face.”
I said, “Ok, see you in a week.”
He looked at me like I had lost my mind.
Well, I took his advice and I wore two caps, I sandwiched my goggles and I swam WAY away from the buoys (even as an amateur I know that this may have doubled my swim distance).
I was NOT kicked in the face.
I added my own bits of advice.
I swam buoy to buoy!
The WHOLE way!
Want to know what else I did?
I imagined that a childhood friend was standing on each of those buoys and they were TAUNTING me like they usually did.
I imagined them saying things like, “Indrani, you’ll never make it to the next buoy!”
I imagined myself cursing them and saying, “Watch me!”
I did this for about seven buoys.
The last two buoys were different.
All of a sudden all of my childhood tormentors were piled together on the last remaining buoys and they were screaming things like,
“You GO!”
“Don’t you DARE give up!”
“We BELIEVE in you!”
I even caught myself laughing out loud as I clung to the final buoy.
At that buoy, a young man in a canoe, came up and asked if I was tired and asked if I needed to hold onto his life float.
I told him I was tired and I was worried that I was swimming in zigzags so I was really using more energy than I needed to use.
He told me that if he saw me zigzagging he would slap the water with his paddle, I would hear it and look up and see how to correct my course.
He then said, “Ma’am, please don’t give up. All of us out here on the lake want you to finish. We are all rooting for you.”
I laughed at him and said, “I am from Trinidad, I turned 50 two days ago, I learned to swim six months ago and I am like the Jamaican Bobsled Team… I will never give up!”
He laughed and said, “Ok, see you on the beach.”
Dear readers, I finished dead LAST! But I finished.
Love and light,
Indrani
The FULL COURT PRESS… You CAN stand up to them!
Do you know what the phrase “full court press” means?
My novice understanding of basketball tells me it’s when the opposing team exports most of its players to guard your players the whole length of the court. Especially the greatest players on your team like the one who scores a lot or the one who is the 3 point expert…the player most like a young Michael Jordan. I think that Michael Jordan was the recipient of many a “full court press”.
When faced with the wrath of the opposing team, one must use all of one’s wiles and wits. One must pull every trick out of the hat…make any move, even if it seems counter intuitive. It’s either make a move (a swift move), find someone to pass the ball to or just go for the shot anyway, before the ref blows the whistle that you’ve held the ball too long.
Ok, big deal, why should you care about the theory of the full court press?
So glad you asked!
Let’s use our eagle eyes to zoom out from the basketball court and soar way above our lives and take some close looks at the predicaments that we have gotten ourselves into.
When you were a kid and another kid hurt you, did you want, even long for, your parents to come to your rescue? If the answer is yes, then you longed for the full court family press to save you because you could not save yourself. You wanted your team to surround you and help you to navigate the challenge at hand.
Did your parents ever go to your school to stand with you against an unfair accusation by a teacher? If so, you were the recipient of the Full Court Press. You see the full court press does not always work the way you want it to. You may not get the teacher to admit that they were wrong BUT you will have seen that your family came to your aid and that may be all that you needed. You were NOT being blamed by your people, only by the opposing team. Your people had your back!
The full court press can work in the exact opposite way.
Take for example, your spouse hits you, so bad that you had to go to the hospital. The doctor BY LAW must report alleged domestic violence. The police begin to question you and you finally break down and all the secrets come tumbling out. The secrets of many years can no longer be held in.
Be aware that the Full Court Family Press is about to be UNLEASHED on you. The press will probably be from the side of the battering spouse, maybe even the battered spouse side may jump in.
You may be pressed and pressured with words like;
He didn’t mean it.
What did you do to upset him?
What kind of mother are you to put your children’s father in jail?
What kind of wife are you to not know how to make your family happy?
What will the rest of the family say?
What will the priest/imam/rabbi/guru/scientologist say?
When you start being barraged by the Full court press, whose only goal is to get you to go back to being abused in silence, you MUST find someone on the outside that you can “send the ball” to.
This will be someone who wants to help you live a life of JOY.
This will be someone who understands your pain.
This will be someone who has your back.
The Full Court Press to repress your rights to a peaceful life may NEVER go away.
They may vow to make your life miserable and spread rumors about you throughout the town/village/Internet.
You cannot control their actions. You can only control your own actions.
So suit up and look around. Identify those on YOUR team and give them a heads up that you may be calling on them.
Gather your team slowly and purposefully. Don’t accept people who make you feel bad even when things are good. These people may not be able to hold your pain and be a part of your full court.
I hope this got you thinking about who is REALLY on your team.
You deserve a wonderful team.
Love and light,
Indrani
Bricks are for building….NOT throwing at people!
I was having a lazy morning the other day and as I flipped through channels I came across one of those Judge shows.
I don’t remember who the judge was BUT I do remember what the case was.
Woman: He threw a brick at my car and broke my windshield.
Man: She made me do it, because she makes me so mad.
Judge: Tell me exactly what happened, Sir.
Man: She is always running around and makes me so jealous and she is always going out at night……
Judge to woman: Tell me Ma’am, do you go out a lot at night?
Woman: Yes your Honor, I am a party planner and I have to stay at the event. I have been doing this for 3 years and I keep telling him that I am not fooling around….
I could not believe what I was hearing…right in front of me was the unraveling of a relationship because of raging jealousy and out of
control anger. This woman was lucky that this man had not already maimed or killed her.
The woman said she had seen this out of control anger but kept trying to reason with him.
She kept telling him how faithful she was and he just never believes her.
SHE GOT LUCKY!
SHE GOT OUT!
All of the signs were there and she did not add them up, UNTIL the shit hit the fan…the BRICK hit THE CAR!
Thankfully the brick did NOT hit her!
Abuse starts and ends the same way:
1. Incident sets the abuser off
2. The act of abuse
3. The honeymoon phase.
Yes, it is that easy… there is always a trigger, the actual violence and the “Oh baby, I am so sorry”…
It is not so easy to leave, and that makes the abuser gain strength.
The longer you stay the more strength the abuser gains.
If someone is throwing, hitting, slapping, raping, dragging, cuffing, etc…try to get out.
Call the National Hotline…1-800-799-SAFE or visit http://www.thehotline.org/
Love and light,
Indrani