Staying Connected Even Under Stress
Comments (0) 
I leave this afternoon for a 1.5 week training trip. I’m leading a weekend retreat this weekend in Arizona and then leave for Washington State Tuesday to lead a 4-day retreat, followed by time with my elderly Dad.
I have noticed that whenever I am getting ready to leave for a trip, I feel a lot of stress and it would be easy for me to express myself in a grumpy or disconnected way.
Yesterday, I had a long list of things I wanted to get done and my phone rang way more often than usual, a couple people stopped in to see me at my office unexpectedly, and many of the things I was trying to complete weren’t getting done as easily as I’d hoped. So, by 2:00pm I was starting to really experience the pressure of it and my jackals began to howl.
This is all so familiar to me. Yet another time when if I choose to believe my jackals that I can’t get everything done, that people are interrupting me, or that there’s just too much…, I could fall into a heap of overwhelm and despair.
I could feel myself heading down this path and so I chose to give myself empathy several times in the day by saying or thinking to myself, “Ugh. I would really enjoy more ease and flow.” Followed by a few deep breaths and then reminding myself how much time I have before leaving.
Themocracy