Don’t Forget to Breathe - Entry 1

You can’t turn on the radio, pick up a newspaper, watch television or surf the Internet without being hit by a barrage of bad news.  The continuing recession, dwindling 401K’s and massive layoffs, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and now the swine flu…and those are just the top stories.  Depending on which town or suburb you live in, there are tax issues, zoning controversies, school funding and matters of public safety.  So, how do you handle it all?  You breathe.  Just breathe.

Listen, l’d be the first to tell you—there are an extraordinary number of things that can happen to any one of us that are outside of our control.   Sickness and death, broken families and broken hearts, job losses…forced relocations .  But we do have control over how we choose to respond.  While you’re in the midst of playing tag with your schedule, trying to get your children to behave, coping with an illness or trying to gather the courage to hit the pavement just one more day to search for a new job…just get quiet.  That’s when answers come to life’s puzzles.  In the quiet, you can think better.  Your vision is clearer.  You may find there’s an exclamation point to that unanswered question.  In stillness, solutions don’t seem so elusive.  Breathe.  You owe it to yourself.  There’s no guarantee any of us can turn calamity into calm, (some of life’s storms we just have to ride out) but you might be surprised now and then to find, when you choose focus over frenzy…the outcome is much better than what you expected.