4: STRESS POWER SKILLS > DO YOUR ABC'S

Part 4: Stress Power Skills > Do Your ABC’s > Developing Your Ability To Respond – Heart Health > Mental Strength

Managing Reactions In The Moment / Reactions To Our Problems and Issues / Unprocessed Reaction From Our Past

Now let’s look at exercising our stress power skills, learning to do our ABC’s. Managing negative reactions in the moment, to our problems and issues, and unprocessed reactions from our past. Developing and improving your ability to respond over time. Remember you are not your thoughts and feelings, and our emotions are energy in motion, life’s a journey and a process. 

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Exercising Your ABC’s: Reactions To Problems or Issues

Learning to exercise our ABC’s, when dealing with a problem or an issue can be a great challenge. Learning to stay in your power and not get lost in the reaction, control is key. Here are some stress power topics we may be able to relate to.

Being a Good Listener: Conversation > The Art of Conversation Is Converting Information! When it comes to having a conversation, the art of conversation is converting information. However, staying open and in response can be a great challenge when our views clash. Experiencing an uncomfortable intense negative charge, many of us can be taken over by the freeze, flight or fight reaction. Struggling to listen or exercising cognitive dissonance, the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude to change. The challenge is to stay open, more in the rational right brain, bright and in response, exercising our critical thinking. When somebody could potentially be sharing some valuable information that could change our perspective and bring new truth. Learning that conversation is the art of converting information.

When The Uncomfortable Seeds Of Truth Are Planted: As we grow and develop relationships, the dynamics of being around close friends who can offer wisdom can sometimes be uncomfortable. They can get to know us more than we know ourselves, offering an outside looking in perspective. It may be something you need to hear, to change our actions, a conflict of interest, needing us to deepen in to the conversation. When the uncomfortable truth is unfolding before our eyes, when the seeds are planted, deeply nourished, we can learn, develop and grow.

An Emotional Washing Machine – It will All Come Out In The Wash! When life’s stress and pressures build-up or when we are experiencing challenging times. The truth is we all need an emotional washing machine, a good friend on speed dial, or people we can trust around us. Giving us the opportunity to be open and vulnerable, off-loading things on our minds, sharing our thoughts or cleaning out some dirty laundry. Having a heart felt conversation that can free our deepest feelings, shaking things up, moving our emotions, our energy in motion, going through the process, knowing it will all come out in the wash.

Exercising > A – Accept / B – Be Emotionally Aware / C – Control > C – Communication

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Dealing With Unprocessed Reactions From Our Past

Exercising Your ABC’s > A – Accept / B – Be Emotionally Aware / C – Control > C – Communication

Dealing with unprocessed reactions from our past, we can use the same ABC’s we would when experiencing a problem or issue but this time it’s about going deeper, like peeling the deeper layers of the union or clearing old data off our internal hard drive and operating system. Creating the time and space to process, there are many healing modality tools, professionals, therapists, councilors or energy workers and healers we can access,. Releasing trauma, deeply distressing and disturbing experiences from our childhood or shifting old patterns of behavior and attitudes than no longer serve us. We can take the steps to accept past circumstances or events, exercising our emotionally aware of what we need to process through. Letting go, peeling off those deeper layers of emotions, lifting and shifting our past. Here are more stress power topics we may be able to relate to.

Our Inner Child – The Wounded Soldier In An Invisible Battle: When our inner child experiences separation and disconnection through family troubles, trauma or difficult life circumstances, our reactive past can control our future. Like a wounded soldier in an invisible battle field we can be constantly in survival, but learning to take control, we can heal old wounds, growing stronger. Looking back at our past, we may have lose a few internal battles but inside we will win the war.

Challenged Youth: Past – Preoccupied About Spent Time: Working with challenged youth at a school for alternative learning, I would guide them individually through the process of tracking back through past life experience to a time and place that impacted their behaviour and led them to come to the school. I remember working with a boy who was around the age of 14. He had played rugby league for school and had stopped playing for over a year, losing his release, energy and confidence. This had effected his behavior  and was the reason why he was at our school. I asked him what stress he had experienced before this period of change? He sat and thought about it, and then he got emotional, expressing how he had lost his grandad, who he loved dearly and was a strong role model in his life. I shared my experience of losing a dad I had never met, and the process I had to go through. His realization of being stuck in the grief of this period and the past, allowed him to start the process of getting his life back on track. Getting him in the gym and teaching him to BoxWize, learning to focus his energy positively, developing his energy and confidence, he was inspired to get back in to fitness and playing rugby league.

Managing A Broken Heart – Heal, Grow and Love Again: I know experiencing a break up and a broken heart can be a deeply  hurtful process. Growing up, experiencing separation, a model of reaction when we don’t see the model of response, seeing our parents or loved ones developing intimate and successful relationships. The domino effect of repeating the same old reactive patterns of behavior, we can build a heart wall of protection, seeking relationships based more on pleasure than true happiness. Couples therapy is more popular than ever before, with many people seeking to develop deeper intimate relationships, even if it means going through the pain of heart surgery to heal, grow and love again.

Small Fires Become Inferno’s- The Cost Of Parenting After Separation: I remember being on a parenting after separation course at the court house in downtown at the Court House, Edmonton, Canada around 2014. The first session was all about parents, behavior, fighting and struggling to manage all the moving parts. Then looking at the potential negative reactions that could impact a child growing up experiencing a broken home, going through the finer details to help navigate through the process. Then in the 2^nd session, an experienced lawyer started an introduction by sharing his perspective on parents who can’t work their differences. Expressing, if not dealt with, how 2 small fires can become one great big inferno, leading you to the very place you are sat in right now, this court house. I was blown away at the statistics of how many couples go through the system and the cost of breaking up, when situations can only be managed and not resolved. The cost of parenting after separation when we can’t put out the small fires, when children can get caught up in a great inferno.

Illness: When Fear Can Take Over – Staying In Our Hearts: I’ve experienced the process of seeing cancer take over the human spirit, observing illness, suffering and life slowly deteriorating with  inevitable death coming anytime. Seeing invisible force of the fear, loved ones who can feel deeply taken over, and the great challenge to stay strong, loving and open in the heart. Holding light, love and strength for loved ones going through the process.

Processing Grief – Living In Our Hearts Forever: Death comes to us all,  graduation for many of us living our best life and unfortunate circumstance for those of us  taken by unpredictability. Our inner world can turned upside down, going through the process loss and grief. The memories, maybe regrets, things we could of said or done, being able to internalize and let somebody go. A deep loving connection to a loved one, who has had a positive and powerful an impact on our life. Memories of deep meaning, gratitude and joyful experiences. When we go through the process, loved ones are no longer just in our memories, they are with us every day, we can feel their love, giving us power, they live in our hearts forever.