You Are Ridiculously In Charge

I don’t remember most of my dreams, but I’ll never forget this one. In the dream I am in the third-row seat of a car traveling down a straight highway. I am content with my situation until I am suddenly aware that the car is on cruise control, and I am supposed to be in the driver’s seat! The rest of the dream is my struggle from the third row, over the second row of seats, and the center console to the driver’s seat. In the several months I had the dream, I am not sure I ever made it to the driver’s seat.

I had this recurring dream during a season of my life when I was living on autopilot. During this season, life felt more like something that was happening to me than a gift I got to live. I think all of us have had seasons, or days when we’ve felt like this. Maybe there are areas of your life right now that feel exactly like this. We weren’t given life to be a passive passenger in the back seat. In nearly all areas of life, including our relationships, our vocation, our health, our attitudes, and our personal growth we often have far more power than we think. The reality is, we are ridiculously in charge of the lives we’ve been given.

5 Ways to be ridiculously in charge of your life:

1. Let go of the need to be in control. If the last three years have taught us anything, it is that there are things outside our control. But even when we are not in control of everything happening in life, we are in charge of how we respond, our attitude and the actions we take in response to difficult people, circumstances and setbacks. Trying to control things outside of our control distracts us from the choices we can make. One of the great ironies of life is that we try to control what we can’t control and play victim to things we are in charge of.Be in charge: Make a list of things outside of your control and another list of things you can control. Be intentional throughout the day of focusing your energy on things you can control.

2. Acknowledge learned helplessness. There are many different reasons why we begin to feel helpless. Sometimes it’s because we are trying to control things outside of our control, so we begin to assume we have no agency in other areas of life. Sometimes this happens when we see what others have that we don’t (if I had their resources…, if I were as lucky..., if I were given the same opportunities..., if the world weren’t against me…, if I had more time…). This view of life may let us off the hook for responsibility, but it will rob our lives of meaning. Being ridiculously in charge means shifting from focusing energy on what is not possible to how you will find a way and taking the next step. Be in charge: In what areas of life have you learned helplessness? What one small step can you take forward?

3. Treat the past as a teacher not a master. The past becomes a master when we assume it is a predictor of the future. You do not have to be imprisoned by mistakes or failures in your past, and you do not have to repeat them. Allow those experiences to teach you, not define you. Today is a new day, a new chapter. What story do you want to tell? Be in charge: If you were to write the next chapter of your story, what would you title it?

4. Approach life as a possibility to be lived rather than a problem to be solved. The easiest way to get stuck in life is to focus on all the problems in life that need to be solved. When we do this, we start living life as a list of “should”; I should lose weight, I should read more, I should be a better spouse/parent, etc. Life soon becomes an obligation. When we shift our focus from the problem to the possibility, “should” becomes “can”; I can lose weight, I can read more, I can be a better spouse/parent. This approach to life is empowering invitation to live the life we want to live. Be in charge: What are your dreams? What do you want to be true?

5. Be intentional about yes and no. Being ridiculously in charge means we recognize the everyday choices we make are helping us move towards our desired outcome or they are not. This is true of both the active choices we make as well as the passive choices. And, because we are limited beings, every time we say “yes” to something we are saying “no” to something else. Be in charge: Once you identify what you want to be true in your life, make a list of things you need to start and a list of things you need to end.

If you would like to connect with us, you can find us at www.journeybravely.com.

Todd Craig has over 20 years experience having helpful coaching conversations with individuals, couples, and groups including 5 years experience of professional life and leadership coaching. He uses effective, strategic tools including the Birkman and Enneagram in his skill based coaching to help people move their stories and goals forward. To meet with Todd, connect here.

What is This Time For?

There was a season of life where I reached the end of the day feeling I had been a slave to my to-do list. I was busy running from one task to the next. And, even when the days were as productive as they were busy, I often felt unfulfilled at the end of the day. Though things were getting done, there was no time to appreciate my accomplishments and tasks that were being accomplished were sometimes at the expense of being present with the people that matter most to me. I was overwhelmed, tired, and frustrated.

Time is one of our most precious gifts. Time is finite, we can’t “make time,” (even though we often use the phrase) we can only spend it. Additionally, we don’t get “do overs” with our time. So, we have developed and utilize tools to help us maximize our time including watches, calendars, alarm clocks, time management apps on our phones, to-do lists, and many others. Ironically, we can allow ourselves to be controlled by these tools, which are supposed to help us stay in control, at the expense of the very moments the tools were intended to help us maximize.

So how do we break out of this cycle? Here are three strategies that have been helpful for me and my clients:

1. Consider the different aspects of time. In our culture, we tend to think of time in a narrow and limited way. I often introduce my clients to the words the Greeks used to differentiate two ways they thought of time. The two words are chronos and kairos. The Greek word chronos is the easiest for us to understand because it aligns with the mostcommon way we refer to time. Chronos refers to the quantity of time. When we say, “It arrived at 3:07,” or “I am getting married in 18 days,” or “The cupcakes will be ready in 20 minutes,” weare talking about chronos time. Most of the tools we have for time management are built around maximizing time in a quantitative sense. The Greek word Kairos, however, refers to time in a qualitative sense. We tend to think about time in this way far less. However, when we say, “It showed up at just the right time” or “We knew it was time to get married” or “These cupcakes are taking forever” we are referring to kairos time. Our hectic schedules can challenge our efforts to maximize time in a qualitative sense. Of course, both understandings of time are important. A chronos understanding helps us recognize the limits of our time and the need to act so we can move our stories forward. And a kairos understanding helps us think beyond those limits so we move our stories forward with intentionality and meaning.

2. Slow down to speed up. With a Kairos understanding of time, we can begin to see that sometimes the most efficient thing we can do is slow down and take a breath before rushing to the next thing. When we do this, we let go of anxious mental energy in favor of focused mental energy. This also gives us space to exercise a third strategy.

3. Ask, “What is this time for?” When we are thinking about time with a chronos understanding, we will tend to ask questions like, “What do I have to do?”, “Where am I supposed to be?”, or “How long is this going to take?” In this sense, time is being spent and we can find ourselves looking towards what’s next. But, when we are thinking about time with a karios understanding, we might ask a question like, “What is this time for?” Asking this question can help us relax into the moment and consider taking in all the benefits the present moment has to offer. Asking, “What is this time for?” may save me from rushing to accomplish more tasks on my to-do list (quantitative) in favor of taking time to be fully present with my child who is asking for help with a school project or waiting to be tucked in at night (qualitative).

As you work toward making shifts in how you view time, we are here to support you in your journey.

Todd Craig has over 20 years experience having helpful coaching conversations with individuals, couples, and groups including 5 years experience of professional life and leadership coaching. He uses effective, strategic tools including the Birkman and Enneagram in his skill based coaching to help people move their stories and goals forward. To meet with Todd, connect here.

Staying in Your Lane

Do you ever find yourself feeling anxious, irritable and out of control? You’ve got that person who refuses to do things the way you think they should and it’s causing stress in your life and theirs. You believe deep down that if your child, partner, coworker, parent, sibling, random driver on the road would just do things “the right way” (your way), things would be so much better for everyone. You spend energy thinking about how you can change them. Then, you find yourself frustrated and resentful when you realize they are going to continue doing things their way. Often, you spend energy that could be spent managing yourself focused on the other person. And, all of this results in more feeling out of control and stuck.

It’s uncomfortable when other’s choices cause inconvenience, stress, and pain for you. Maybe someone in your life is drinking too much to cope. Maybe they are choosing an unhealthy relationship. Maybe they aren’t showing up emotionally for you. Maybe someone is in a self-destructive space and you can’t help them snap out of it. Regardless how much you care about the well-being of others, one thing is true. The only person you can control is yourself. You cannot control your friends, family, children or anyone else. 

So, what are you supposed to do with this tension of believing life would be better if only others would do what you say and the reality that people are only in charge of their own thoughts, feelings, and actions? Finding your lane of healthy self-control and developing the discipline to stay in that lane is the pathway to your freedom.

5 Ways to Find Your Lane and Stay in It:

1.     Accept what you can and can’t control. You can only control yourself. Your energy is best spent focusing on managing your thoughts, emotions, and actions well. Focusing on others behavior is an unhelpful distraction and a waste of energy. Try making imaginary bins for what you can and can’t control and sort things into them when you find yourself in frustrating situations with others.

2.     Notice anytime you are saying or thinking, “If they would just…” Thoughts and conversations that revolve around what others should be doing differently indicate you’re driving in someone else’s lane in which you have no control. This will result in consistent frustration and exhaustion. Try reminding yourself to get back in your lane where you have healthy power and self-control.

3.     Focus on understanding and mastering your own lane. Think honestly about how you are managing your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Notice things you might want to change such as taking better care of yourself, developing healthier coping skills, working on your relationship skills. Try choosing a couple of specific areas and intentionally focus your energy on your personal growth.

4.     Pay attention to boundaries. Often when you are out of your lane, it means you need to adjust boundaries. Instead of focusing on changing someone else’s behavior, try focusing on how you will adjust your engagement in the relationship if the other person continues with unhealthy behavior. Maybe spend less time with them, share less vulnerable information, invest less energy. Or with parenting, perhaps you reduce privileges or make electronics contingent on responsible behavior.

5.     Ask for what you need directly with kindness. When someone else’s behavior is negatively impacting you, it is more effective to have a direct, kind conversation than to try to control their behavior. Try saying, “When you ______, I feel _______, what would work better for me in our relationship is _______.” Once you’ve had the conversation, you can observe whether the person responds with openness and intention to respect your needs. If they do, great. If they don’t, stay in your lane by changing your boundaries in the relationship.

Staying in your lane is not selfish. In fact, it’s one of the most healthy, loving things you can do for others. By staying in your lane, you provide space for others to learn the healthy practice of staying in and managing their lane.

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 19 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

How Are You, Really?

How’s your stress level? How are your relationships? How are your physical and mental health? Are your current coping strategies moving you closer or further away from a sense of peace and direction? Often, we skip these questions and move straight to goals/resolutions at the beginning of each year. What if this year, you slow down and take a soul inventory now? What would it look like to reflect over the last several months of caring for yourself and ask “what’s working” and “what’s not working?” 

One of the beautiful things about being human is your ability to change and adapt based on new information. Once you reflect and understand what’s working and what changes are needed to be in a healthier, more balanced space, you can begin taking steps to better care for yourself. Change initially causes discomfort, but you are capable of change even when it’s hard.

So, how are you supposed to figure out what needs to change and what you’re supposed to do about it?

5 Self-Assessment Questions for Mapping Better Self-Care:

1.     How are you tending to your energy level? Maybe you’re exhausted, lacking sleep, noticing in your face/body that you’re pushing too hard. Take 10 minutes to reflect and write your observations about your energy level. Note activities you’re doing that create positive energy you’d like to continue or increase. Note energy draining activities that you’d like to let go. Try sorting these activities into categories of “must keep” (be careful that you aren’t putting everything into this category) and “could let go.” Write one shift you could make to improve tending to your energy level.

2.     How are you tending to your spirit? Maybe you’ve prioritized other important things over taking care of yourself spiritually. Maybe past emotional baggage makes it hard to prioritize spiritual practices. Engaging spiritually often results in increase connection, hope, and joy in life. Take 10 minutes to reflect and write about past spiritual activities that have helped you. Reflect on how you felt when you engaged those activities. Reflect on why you stopped doing those activities. Write one shift you could make to improve tending to your spirit.

3.     How are you tending to your physical body? If you will listen, your body will provide you with valuable information about your well-being. Maybe you’ve been putting off going to the doctor. Maybe you’re avoiding moving your body. Maybe your relationship with food has become unbalanced in some way. Maybe you’re using substances to self-medicate and your body is paying the price. Take 10 minutes to reflect and write about physical practices that create balance for you. Reflect on the barriers you have to engaging in these practices regularly. Write one shift you’d like to make to tend better to your physical body.

4.     How are you tending to your emotions? Your mood and management of emotions can make or break your daily life experience. Allowing space for emotion and having effective strategies to cope and calm when emotions get large can completely revolutionize your emotional landscape. Take 10 minutes to reflect on which feelings create the most discomfort for you. Note unhealthy coping skills you currently use to suppress or avoid feelings (drinking, shopping, eating, raging, avoiding). Note healthy ways you’ve coped and calmed in the past that have worked for you without causing extra problems in your life (walk, talk to friend, art, deep breathing, podcast, ocean). Write one coping shift you’d like to make to tend better to your emotions.

5.     How are you tending to your relationships? Maybe you find yourself being defensive, not listening well, or pushing away those you love. Take 10 minutes to reflect on how you are experiencing and showing up in your most important relationships. Note relationships that feel unhealthy and why. Note relationships that feel positive/supportive and why. Note your behavior patterns that are causing problems in your relationships. Write one shift you’d like to make to tend better to your relationships.

Making changes to prioritize caring for yourself can feel challenging. Try remembering that you must take care of yourself consistently to show up well in your family, work, and community life. All aspects of your life suffer when you are at the bottom of your life “to do” list.

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 19 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

How Is Christian Counseling Different?

While all counseling addresses your mental health and helps you improve your life experience, Christian counseling incorporates your Christian beliefs and values as an important lens through which you work toward positive change. Whether engaging in counseling or Christian counseling, you are in charge of your experience. You decide how you will talk about your faith, how often, and to what extent you wish that to be part of your counseling. As a Christian counselor, it is not my role to tell you what to believe, but to ask questions to help you clarify how your Christian beliefs are influencing your decisions and relationships.

Sometimes along your faith journey, you may find the way you’re viewing yourself, others, and your life circumstances feels out of balance with your Christian beliefs. Maybe you know God loves others but you see yourself as unlovable. Maybe you know God is forgiving but your belief that you or someone difficult in your life is beyond that loving forgiveness is keeping you bitter and stuck. Maybe you’ve heard that God loves you and wants good things for you, but the way your parents talked about God leaves you seeing God as someone who wants to punish you.

When life stress and pain invite you to forget what you know to be true, I can help you identify, return to, and clarify the Christian values from which you want to be living. Whether you’re an adolescent, teen, adult, parent, or couple, your Christian values can be seamlessly incorporated into your counseling experience.

As a Christian myself, I understand that God’s love, grace, and forgiveness play a major role in healing and working toward a more whole and healthy life. Additionally, as both a therapist and a pastor’s wife for 18 years, I have extensive experience understanding and helping people work through uncomfortable or unhealthy situations you may have experienced in relation to your faith upbringing and church life. I look forward to connecting with you along your journey.

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 19 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

What's Your 2021 Story?

2020 is over and yet you may continue to face many of the same challenges as you enter the new year. It can be easy to feel resentfully stuck in survival mode and to view yourself as a victim of the pandemic and other major stressors of 2020. Isolation, financial challenges, racism, political change, value debates on social media, and missing the way things used to be. It’s all a lot to carry and work through as you hope for recovery and continue to walk in the mess.

Resolutions may feel trite and impossible this year as we limp along and try to hold it together. Honestly acknowledging our personal and collective discomfort and suffering is a healthy practice. However, getting stuck in bitterness and hopelessness only feeds the negative energy we are all hoping to escape. 

What if instead of writing resolutions, you were to ask yourself what you want your story to be at the end of 2021? 

While there are many circumstances in life that are often out of your control, you are in control of your behavior and choices. You get to decide how you’ll treat others, how you’ll talk to yourself, how you’ll live out your faith, how you’ll engage with your values, how you’ll take healthy risks, how you’ll respond to challenges, and how you’ll step into personal growth. These personal practices will largely shape your story this year.

What if instead of carrying the weight of victimhood from 2020, you were to step into the practice of writing all of the parts of your story that are within your power?

5 Ways to Move from Victim to Writer of Your 2021 Story:

1.     Acknowledge struggle while looking for redemption. Honestly admit to yourself when you’re experiencing grief and hardship. Feel the feelings associated with the difficulty. Watch for short and long-term ways you see suffering in your life create opportunity for growth, connection, and comforting others.

2.     Create a mental or written list of 3-5 big ideas within your control you want to be true of your story at the end of 2021. Examples: I want to have been a loving, connected parent, friend, partner. I want to have given generously from what I earned. I want to have expressed a grateful attitude regularly. I want to have faced challenges and pain with grace and dignity. I want to have spent time on things that matter most to me. I want to have said encouraging things to myself and others most of the time. I want to see progress in this specific business skill. I want to have engaged a spirit of adventure.

3.     Create a more detailed story for each of your 3-5 big ideas. Big idea: I want to have lived generously. Detailed story about living generously: I want to look back over 12 months and see that I intentionally set aside money, time, and other resources as a monthly practice rather spending all of my resources on myself. I want to see that I used those resources to give to people and causes I value. Some of the people and causes I value are my church, Caring & Sharing of South Walton, Compassion International.

4.     Take steps to make your story real. If I’m going to look back and see that I gave generously this year, I’m going to: set up auto-giving for my top 3 valued organizations, set up a specific auto-transfer savings account designated for generous giving, set up regular monthly volunteer hours.

5.     Read and edit your story as you go. Check in monthly on your story and determine if you’re living into the story you want to be true at the end of the year. Be gracious with yourself, determine where you’re struggling, and make edits when needed. For example: I planned to auto-give to 3 organizations but I had a financial change. I’m going to reduce my amounts to all 3 or I’m going to choose one organization instead.

The healthy way to engage your 2021 story is to face the circumstances outside your control with acceptance and focus on writing what you can control with hope and determination. As you move from victim to writer of your 2021 story, remember that Journey Bravely has coaching sessions available to help move your story forward. Connect with us at journeybravely.com.

Todd and Stephenie have been helping people find hope, clarity, and clear steps forward toward a meaningful life for 19 years. Todd provides life and leadership coaching for young adults and adults to assist in clarifying values, goals and generally getting unstuck from the overhwhelm of life and relationship. Stephenie provides professional counseling, specializing in emotional/relational health for teens, adults, couples, and families. Read more about how we can help you move toward the life you want here. To schedule an initial, free consultation for counseling with Stephenie call 918-221-9987 or email here. To schedule an initial, free consultation with Todd call 918-740-1232 or email here. For more general information about Journey Bravely Counseling & Coaching, look here. We look forward to connecting with you along your journey.