Archive for Healing Codes Coaching
Getting through a “Long Siege”
Posted by: | CommentsEleven months ago from the time of this writing, I lost my mother, and became co-executor of her estate.
It was the beginning of a challenging season in which this unwanted, intrusive, part-time job of settling a very messy estate gobbled up time, energy, and resources, and triggered a lot of apparently unhealed “heart issues” concerning my family.
I think of these past months as “the long siege” during which I was fighting to keep as much of my own life as possible from being devoured.
Perhaps you can relate? Maybe you’re going through, or have gone through, a season of illness (your own or a loved one’s), or unemployment, or divorce, or the loss of a home, or a bereavement, or . . . just this global pandemic, for instance?
The life you once knew is gone, and you are scrambling to move ahead, not just tread water.
How do we get through such times, which can amount to both a trauma and a crisis, and come out not only intact, but perhaps even somewhat healed on the other end?
One thing that turned out to be completely necessary for me was learning to let go of my high standards for certain things.
To get through any crisis or “long siege,” you need to let some things be “good enough,” or even to die, so that other things can live and flourish.
So I did an audit of the different areas of my life. What was most important to me, that needed to be prioritized in order to be preserved? (My morning and evening rituals, healthy eating, healthy relationships, my business.)
What could I let go of, or adjust the standards of? What does “good enough” look like?
Also: Was there any area in which I needed to raise my standards?
Turns out, there was: Self-care. I had to let go of the self-neglect that came naturally from my upbringing, and really instill in my heart that if I didn’t take care of me, there would be no “me” to take care of everything else.
I also made my spiritual and healing practices a priority. The two or three days I missed them, I really felt it.
I evaluated my resources and the current reality of what I was dealing with. I adjusted my housekeeping standards, and my expectations of my husband, myself, and my business.
In each area, I defined what would be “good enough” and let go of my former standards. (Or tried to; I tend to be an idealist and perfectionist, so this was not easy. The alternative, though, was my old pattern of pushing, which I knew would destroy my health.)
It was a painful but necessary process. It’s humbling to admit that you can’t do everything you thought you could or should be able to, that you have actual limitations, some of which weren’t there before but now must be acknowledged.
The gift from my long siege was it helped to clarify my true values, showed me patterns from my past that still needed healing, and clarified the boundaries that needed to be in place.
One of the most helpful things was to remind myself that this is “just for now, not forever.” There will come a time when the crisis will be over, and then I can reassess and re-calibrate. Lowering my standards “for now, not forever,” for a good reason (to preserve my health, relationships and business), helped me feel proactive and in control of at least something.
I also knew I couldn’t get through this without the support of other people.
I leaned on my husband, grown children (who were all wonderful), best friend (the only one who knew all the gory, blow-by-blow details that I spared even my husband), and several support groups of friends who prayed for me.
Are you going through a particularly challenging season, even a “long siege” of your own? (In some ways, who isn’t these days?) Perhaps doing an audit of your resources, redefining “good enough, for now not forever,” and reaching out for support from others will help you get through it as well.
Next time, I’ll talk about “when the long siege is finally over”–how to heal and reclaim your life. (Because, thankfully, that’s what I’ll be able to do as of next week, I hope!)
And if you would like help in any of these steps, I’d be happy to come alongside you for that support. Check out my coaching at HealingCodesCoaching.com.
The Prayer God Always Answers
Posted by: | CommentsThere is a prayer I pray a lot, and have for years.
I believe it may be one of God’s favorite prayers to answer, because he always answers it.
Often in surprising ways.
Which also makes this a very fun prayer to pray. You never know how he will answer it.
So what’s the prayer?
God, shine your light into _____ [name the situation].
Elsewhere I have invited you to pray a variation of this for the world:
“God, shine your light into this dark world, to expose evil, reveal truth, and point the way to the path of peace.”
When I read (never watch) the news, I look for evidence of this prayer being answered. When I see answers (for instance, when evil is exposed or truth revealed), I rejoice. It gives me a different perspective on what’s going on, and reminds me that God is in control, not human beings.
In my personal life, I can point to many times when God answered this prayer.
Sometimes, when he shines the light, it is to expose evil. We don’t always get a hoped-for answer, as in things working out the way we want. But if you can see that light was cast into the situation, it reassures you that God is working in that situation, and that ultimately good will come from it.
Case in point. For the past almost 11 months, I have been the co-executor of my mother’s estate, in a situation that will go down in the annals of lawyer history as one of the messiest and unnecessarily prolonged cases. (Our lawyer threatened to quit several times; another refused to take us on when he got even an inkling of the situation.)
CC BY by paulius.malinovskis
My friend and I have several names for this soap opera I’ve been living: The Edge of Hope; Almost—Not Really; and Speeding toward a Standstill (I do the speeding, then certain others involved bring it to a standstill).
I’ve had several people praying for resolution of this. I’m convinced prayer is the only way anything (good) has happened. I’ve even seen God blast through the blocks others put up, to work for good.
A few weeks ago, there was a probate court hearing. I of course prayed that God would shine his light into the courtroom.
Well, he did. He exposed evil (a lie someone told, which I had to reveal by speaking the truth), and ultimately, as I continued to pray this prayer, he pointed the way to the path of peace.
It was not the outcome I had expected or wanted, but he did shine his light.
I regularly ask God to shine his light on my day, and I seek to walk in that light. I call it being Aligned. I listen for the small whispers of guidance.
Just a few days ago, I had an intuitive hit (I believe it was from God) to call a certain person concerning the estate. I had 10 minutes between clients to do so. The person answered (miraculous), and after asking her a question, I realized she was missing a key piece of information that was causing the whole estate closure to be delayed. I clarified what had happened at the hearing, and in just a few minutes, she reported back via email that she would expedite what needed to be done for the closing. Just this morning I got word that the closing will happen next week.
The moment I had been awaiting for almost 11 months finally happened . . . only because of prayer.
Living Aligned(TM) means living in the Light. It means praying this prayer as a way of life. It means being receptive to the “small, still voice” inside, which I believe is your human spirit, aligned with God’s Spirit, sensing God’s guidance.
CC BY by barryskeates
And when your spirit is aligned with God’s Spirit, his life flows through your spirit to body and soul, and brings healing, peace, and right relationships with God, self and others.
It’s fun, exciting, and peaceful to live this way. I can’t claim I’m doing it perfectly, but I am practicing it.
I invite you to start praying that God will shine his light into your world, especially into situations that feel dark or heavy. Light is not only the opposite of darkness, it is also the opposite of “heavy.”
Let me know what miracles follow! Comment below and encourage others.
And if you would like personalized help with living more Aligned, check out my coaching programs at HealingCodesCoaching.com.
A Way to Clarity and Peace
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Healing the “Dark Energy Cloud” of Emotional Inflammation
Posted by: | CommentsI don’t know about you, but the events of the past few weeks–no, months–have given me quite a case of “emotional inflammation.”
I’ve been writing about “emotional inflammation” and how these troubling times can literally affect us physically. The negative energy is all around us, and we can’t escape it.
Polarization on so many levels, uncertainty on so many levels, job loss, the pandemic and everything that goes with it these days, social media nastiness (which I avoid totally), natural disasters, the fall of Afghanistan, the loss of freedom on so many levels in so many ways. Even if you limit your news intake, as I do, you still can’t avoid the negative energy all around.
For some of us, especially if we have the trait of High Sensitivity, the energy is palpable: we feel it in our bodies.
One client said recently she sensed a “dark energy cloud” around her. Yep, that’s a good way to describe Emotional Inflammation.
Authors Dr. Lise Van Susteren and Stacey Colino say in their book, Emotional Inflammation, that it’s a state “not unlike post-traumatic stress disorder, but one that stems from simply living in today’s tumultuous world.”
That book was published in March 2020–right before “all this” became worse. It’s even more relevant now. Read More→
Overwhelmed? Try These Steps to Peace
Posted by: | CommentsDo you ever feel overwhelmed by all that’s coming at you, all there is to do?
I know I do. As someone with the inborn trait of High Sensitivity (or Sensory Processing Sensitivity, its technical term), I take in a lot more information than non-HSPs, and process it more deeply. Understanding this has hugely helped me to understand what’s going on, but I still have to deal with it all.
On top of that, there’s this tendency to “overthink” things. One of my gifts is that I can often see down the road to just how something will play out, for me or others. I’m usually right. However, I’m finding that you still have to walk through all the steps to get there. (I just want to leap frog to the end that I can see so clearly.)
So what do you do when you have to make decisions and move ahead, when there’s so much to sort through and it’s difficult even to know what’s most important to do so you can set priorities?
Remember that famous quote by Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind? (“I’ll think about that tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day.”) That’s what we feel like doing, isn’t it? There are times when we do have to just take a break, but you know the “mañana” attitude doesn’t get you very far in life.
Here’s what I’ve found helpful.
Step 1: Pray. I pray for wisdom, knowing that God desires to give it and to guide me.
Prayer also reminds me that it’s not all up to me, that there’s a lot I can’t control, and that a loving God desires to help me.
One of my favorite verses is, “For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I am the one who helps you’” (Isaiah 41:13). Such tenderness and kindness in that Word!
Here’s another one of my favorite promises: “The LORD himself goes before you, and is with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be discouraged; do not be afraid” (Deuteronomy 31:8).
And finally, this: “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Acknowledge Him, in all your ways, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
Reminding myself of these promises from God’s Word helps me to trust that he will guide and help me as I step out in faith.
Step 2: List out all the things that I’m dealing with, all the decisions to be made. This is how I mind map. I do this on paper usually, to get things out of my head, where it can feel overwhelming. Seeing it all written out helps me look at everything more objectively.
Step 3: Triage the decisions. When I’m facing a lot of decisions and not sure what to do, I look at the probable outcomes of acting now, acting later, or not acting at all. The decisions that have the worst outcomes if I don’t act now get priority. The trick here is to make sure you take into account the not-so-obvious, and/or longer-term consequences.
Conversely, you can ask the famous One Thing question: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
Between looking at the worst outcomes and the one thing that will yield the best results, it should become easier to prioritize. But there are other factors to consider.
Step 4: Clarify what I do and don’t want. I have a tool for this that I use with some of my clients, which helps tremendously to clarify my real desires and fears. It’s important to take these into account as well, because fears can block you and desires can fuel you into getting what you want.
Step 5: Tune in to my Heart and intuition. Having gathered all this information, I then pray again and tune into my Heart/Spirit. I know there are factors of which my spirit or subconscious may be aware, that my mind is not. I have learned to trust that vehicle of transmission from Spirit to mind, my intuition. I wait to things to “jell” into a Clear Next Step.
Once I get that Clear Next Step, I then have peace. All I need to focus on is my own Clear Next Step. Everything else is up to God and perhaps other people to do their parts.
Another important thing: I don’t proceed until I get that Next Clear Step. I continue to pray, and wait. I only act when I have a Clear Next Step.
This is a process, a continual process.
Often when I take one Clear Next Step, the next clear step presents itself. If it doesn’t, I wait and pray, or go through the above process again.
Try this with any decisions or tasks that tend to overwhelm you, and let me know what happens.
And if you would like help with this or any other “heart issue,” check out my coaching at https://HealingCodesCoaching.com.
When God Flips the Switch
Posted by: | CommentsThe voicemail was less than two minutes long. It was intended to hurt and to arouse guilt and fear.
For a few hours, it succeeded. In that time I felt, thought, and prayed my way through it all.
Then God stepped in and “flipped the switch,” giving me the miracle of several shifts in perspective.
(I wrote before about how we can deliberately “flip the switch” from positive to negative. But sometimes we need God to do it, because we don’t know how or we’re too upset to remember to do it. That’s the time to pray and ask God to open your eyes to a different way of seeing.) Read More→
Flip the Switch
Posted by: | CommentsI was talking to my friend the other day, telling her about the two current big stressors in my life.
With one, there is an end in sight, though when exactly that will come about is uncertain.
With the other, there is no end, at least not a good one, unless some miracle happens. (Which I believe is entirely possible.)
I told my friend that what produces the most anxiety is that I never know what’s going to happen–when some unexpected thing concerning either of these two things will hit me. Seems like I’m derailed daily by things out of my control.
But then I remembered some of the unexpected good things that happened to me in the past week. And it hit me: Instead of living in dread of the unexpected bad things, I could “flip the switch.”
CC BY-SA by Marcus Q
Many mornings these days I’d wake up feeling anxious, with that sense of dread over “what might I be hit with today?” Some of it is no doubt “emotional inflammation“: me as a Highly Sensitive empath picking up on “what’s in the air.” But what if I could counter the automatic response with something deliberate?
What if I intentionally switched the “I wonder what will hit me today?” to, “I wonder what unexpected good thing will happen today?”
(You may recall that I wrote about how the same circuit in the brain where anxiety and fear reside, curiosity also dwells. You can’t be anxious and curious at the same time.)
Intentionally activating curiosity, and anticipating that good things will happen unexpectedly, totally shifted things for me. I become very excited about the day. My mood, my creativity and productivity skyrocket.
I’ve already been in the habit of ending the day by looking back at what went well, keeping a “gifts journal.” It is a good way to end the day.
This new practice provides a great way to begin the day as well. It’s done wonders to decrease anxiety levels.
It’s not just “positive thinking,” either. It’s based on truth and initiates a shift in perspective. God does give us many gifts in a day, if only we open our eyes to see and receive them. (I published a whole book on this, Abundant Gifts.)
Try it, I think you’ll really like it!
And if you’d like a custom Healing Code and some coaching to help you heal those things that stress you, and integrate this practice into your life, check out my coaching packages at HealingCodesCoaching.com. Also my Abundant Gifts blog, where you can find instructions on how to keep a “gifts journal” and a couple of ways to do it.
The Nature of Things
Posted by: | CommentsI planted my flowers and plants a few weeks ago, and I’m amazed at how they have grown so quickly.
This was a tiny parsley plant just a few weeks ago.
As I look at how life busts out all over every spring, I’m struck by this truth:
It’s the nature of things to grow.
When connected to the Source of Life, as nature is, what happens is growth. And as you get more in touch with that Source of Life by healing the heart issues that block this flow of Life, growth is inevitable.
As inevitable and natural as an apple tree producing apples once the blossoms have been pollinated.
However, there’s another thing about “the nature of things.”
That is: it’s the nature of things to fall apart as well.
This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Everything decays. Disorder always increases.
Without a gardener to tend the weeds in the garden, enrich the soil, water as needed, the weeds tend to take over. Or the other plants take over, as sadly happened in this garden.
Yes, things grow, but they need to be tended to reach their full potential.
And so, of course, do we. We need to expend energy to restore order, create beauty, and foster growth.
The key to your growth is commitment to “tending your garden.”
Then growth will happen naturally. You can’t force the growth, you need only create the conditions for growth to happen naturally.
Doing Healing Codes regularly, praying often about everything—these two things are the cornerstone of my own healing and growth.
When someone confronts me about how I’ve hurt them, I need to acknowledge that “weed” and pull it out by the roots. This is painful, but when I do, I receive the blessing—and so does the other person. There is now space for new growth to happen.
How well are you “tending to your garden” these days?
Do you want it to look like this:
Or this?
It’s your choice.
And if you’d like some help in “tending your garden,” check out my coaching packages at HealingCodesCoaching.com.
What to Do When Your Day Gets Derailed
Posted by: | CommentsHave you ever had a day like this?
You start out with a plan, and high hopes of getting something important accomplished.
Then you get a notice of some kind. Let’s say it’s a low balance alert from your bank.
You go to fix that, and notice that there is a charge on your account that is way more than it always has been for like, the last 10 years. Like, more than 10x the amount. Of course, it’s an automatic charge.
You go to the vendor in question, to see if there’s any notification or explanation of when or why this suddenly exorbitant charge came about.
What you find: There’s no way to post a support ticket, no clue as to why suddenly this charge was made or was more than 10x as much.
You open what looks to be a support chat. The bot says they’ll be with you, and the window will remain open for you to keep checking back. (Like, I have all day to keep going back to check.)
You get an email saying, “For the fastest response possible, please do not update this ticket until you hear from one of our advocates.”
The next thing you hear from them is an email saying that you left the chat.
Case closed, apparently.
As you can guess, this happened to me. It reminded me of one of my favorite children’s books.
The incident I described was the first of about 5 things that attempted to derail me from the task I meant to get to first thing in the morning (which was this blog post).
I started to deal with the low balance alert at 10:30am. I finally got back to it at 4:30pm. And by the way, I disputed the charge on my debit card, and stopped automatic payments with that vendor. I don’t want to do business with a company like that.
Seems like modern life is full of such frustrations, doesn’t it? At least, if you have to deal with technology of any kind. (And who doesn’t, nowadays?) Especially, they tell me, when mercury is in retrograde as it is now–whatever that means.
So what do you do when you have a day full of interruptions, frustrations, and technological glitches?
What I did today: I kept re-returning.
I know that seems like a redundant term. But it reminds me that I can come back, again and again and again, to where I want to be.
I can shake off the frustration and refocus on my initial goal. (My Release & Infuse Technique really helps here.)
So that’s what I did. I released “anger, frustration, derailment, lashing out, and giving up. “
I infused “productivity, patience, peace, joy, and focus.”
And I got this written.
If you’d like this tool that allows you to clear negative energy is less than 3 minutes, and re-return to the state of mind you want, just go here. It’s free.
This technique is especially helpful if you’re a Highly Sensitive Person and/or empath who tends to take on other people’s energy.
A client told me yesterday she had one of her headaches come on, and she used the Release & Infuse Technique, and the headache went away right afterward!
Side note: The good that came from this day, which seemed wasted in so many ways, was that I got to write this piece. Perhaps for YOU. I am learning that when I roll with the changes (accept and adapt) and trust God to bring good out of the seemingly bad, I do see good.
The other day my friend told me her whole family was sick with stomach flu or perhaps food poisoning, yet it turned out to be a sweet, peaceful day of being together, despite the yuck.
God can bring good out of any “yuck.” If we re-return to trust and surrender, that is. The Release & Infuse Technique shows you how. My gift to you.
And if you would like personalized help for healing your heart issues, releasing old beliefs and infusing new ones to transform your life, check out my coaching packages at HealingCodesCoaching.com.
