Lighten Up (Episode 49)

Brent and Janis talk about practical ways to offset the heaviness of our modern world.

The podcast is produced by ⁠Clayton Creative⁠ in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The content should not be considered or used for counseling but for educational purposes only.

This podcast should not be considered or used for counseling but for educational purposes only.

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Transcript:

Welcome to Life & Love Nuggets, where Licensed Therapists Brent and Janice Sharpe share how you can thrive in your life, your love, and your relationships. Hello friends, welcome back to Life & Love Nuggets. We're going to kind of take a shift here and talk about how do we lighten up, how to find calm in a crazy, chaotic world. Yes, so after a couple of very serious podcasts, we decided it was time to lighten up. Being true to my Enneagram 7 personality, we want to look for some ways to not only cope with what's going on in the world, but really helping ourselves find lightness in the dark and in the chaotic world that we're seeing right now. So it doesn't mean we're going to go into denial or unhealthy denial. We are going to go into denial somewhat, and we always joke that we're going to write a book called Embrace Your Denial, because there are times that we do need to have a little bit of denial, not a denial of reality or a denial of suffering, but we want to take the time and the steps to keep ourselves from falling into despair, and to look for things that can help us have some relief and some lightness, rather than being overwhelmed by all that's going on in the world. I talk to so many people, it seems like, every other person I talk to, I hear things like, I just don't know what's happening in the world, I just don't recognize it anymore.

Things are so bad, and what a place to live. It seems like so many people are there. It's hard. They just feel so heavy, so overwhelmed, and everything feels so bad. It feels like the world has just so totally changed. And so I think part of this is because it's easy to focus on and be connected to all the really bad news instantly. Just scrolling in our phone, just for moments, any news feed you hit is going to have some kind of sensationalized title, and this is what I always remind people of, that news doesn't sell if it wasn't sensationalized, if it didn't have this two-sentence title that's like, what? This happened? Oh no.

But I'm always amazed as you read on, it's always nuanced. It's always, okay, it's not quite the way they were saying it, not quite the way it sounded like. Or even, this is the same article that I read several days ago, but they just changed a little bit and put a really dramatic headline on it.

Yes, to sell. And so people are operating off of these sensationalized titles, and instead of taking the time to really look at the whole broad picture. And so I think it causes them to just get into that fight or flight response, and they're hyper-vigilant then, and this creates anxiety, it creates stress, it creates fear in our lives, and absolute exhaustion. So we thought it'd be helpful to look at some ways that we can counter that, because we're all going to be bombarded with that.

How can we counter that during these times in our lives? And so we're looking at some coping strategies, actually. Some coping mechanisms to bring light to our life and to those around us, in spite of everything else that's going on. So many of them we've talked about before, but we want to go over them and probably add some other ones. Hopefully we're adding some other ones in. The first one is take a walk, or more specifically, take a hike. There's something about getting off the beaten path, getting away from the noise and the sound of everything, to take a hike. Now the interesting thing is, if you're taking a hike in a hiking area, it probably is a beaten path, instead of getting away from the beaten path. So when we were in Colorado this summer, we decided that we were going to go for a hike. And we had several people tell us that, oh, you've got to go on this one.

It's not that long, and it's pretty easy to do. I just think you'd enjoy the views, and it would be really great. So we drove to where they told us to drive.

Here's where you park your car. We felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, but here's where you park your car. So we got out of the car in this little parking area, and we started looking for the path. Where's the trail to go on this? So we looked, and finally we found this little trail, and it was like, okay, this is it.

We'll just do it. Like a foot and a half wide, or two feet wide, but it was beaten down. It looked like it was a path. It was beaten down, and it looked good. And so we went down it.

It did go straight down. It did, and I was sliding and grabbing onto trees to keep myself from just falling on my tail and going down. And then we walked up the other part, the other side of the little gully, and then we started going down again. And then the next one, it's like, I think you had to get behind me and push me to get me up. And we stopped, and we went, you know, if our heart rate's this high, and we're having to grab onto things, this might not be the path they were talking about. So we were able to go and get back over those same gullies, or whatever you want to call them, and find the path that was actually a pretty wide path. And it wasn't paved, but it was definitely a good and positive path. But hiking, getting out in nature is good for us. Yeah. There's something about walking or hiking out in nature that takes us out of our thoughts, it takes us out of our concerns, and it connects us to ground, connects us to the earth, to the physical, and to the beautiful reality of all around us. And so when you're walking on a path in Colorado, and hardly anyone around, you feel a greater sense of solid, a greater sense of safety and security, that it's not just constantly changing, but it's solid.

And so without even saying that to ourselves, we feel freer, we feel more stable, feel more grounded. We love walking on a beach. It's one of our favorite things to do in the world, and we've gone all over the place. So we go out on that Oklahoma beach and just walk.

Walk and walk and walk. So we have to travel to do this. But we've found some all over the world, and there's something big and sane about it. These waves going in and out every day, they've been doing this since the beginning of time, in and out. There's a sense of safety, a sense of security. The thing that captures our attention with the news is change. That's what, just from being bored, and yet it causes us to get hypervigilant, and it leads to kind of this stressful feeling out of control, what's gonna happen next, anxiousness.

And so we've gotta have both of these. Yes, the world, there's a lot of change that goes on, a lot of things that happen, but we've gotta find a way to ground ourselves to things that are secure.

So grounding is relaxing, it's peaceful. Now like all of these habits, we don't go do it one time. If you're feeling this sense of hypervigilance, oh good, just go take a walk, and it'll fix it now for a month. Hypervigilance is my definition of a cat over a bathtub. Yes. Yes. Yes. And so I'm like, what's gonna happen here?

Don't drop me. And so it's about doing this consistently, finding that we can't go to the beach, because we live in Oklahoma, we can't go to the beach every weekend or every few days, but it's finding a way to find that expression somehow. We found going to a museum is really significant. It gets us again out of our normal. Not only is it out of our normal, but it's soothing, it's quiet, there's not a lot of activity in museums. Everything stays the same while we're there, and there's not a lot of change in movement. There's a sense of peace there. And even being loud is unusual in a museum.

Museums are always quiet and peaceful. There's usually a focus on history, reminding us of how the world has been here for centuries and how these people, they were born and then they begin to use their artistic expression in the world and to speak to their own lived experiences. It's inspiring. It reminds us of beauty and diversity in the world. And so, now that is not necessarily my natural go-to. I don't wake up every morning going, oh, let's go to a museum, but again, it's something that gets us out of the norm, it gets us out of the fast-paced quick, and there's a place to find peace there.

We did that randomly last week, and it was. It was a really refreshing, peaceful place. It kind of reset us to go on and do the other things that we have to do. Another thing that I do is I create or I recreate a mental, excuse me, or spiritual happy place, a picture in my mind of someplace that's peaceful. I don't know if you remember, but many years ago when I was in a really stressful place in my life, I kept hearing this song on the radio, and I don't even know the name of it today, but I did find the lyrics. I guess I should have found the name, but anyway, the lyrics went, I'm Rosemary's granddaughter, the spittin' image of my father, and when the day is done, my mama's still my biggest fan.

Sometimes I'm clueless and I'm clumsy, but I've got friends that love me. They know just where I stand. It's all a part of me.

That's who I am. And then it goes on to say, so when I make a big mistake and when I fall flat on my face, I know I'll be all right. Should my tender heart be broken, I will cry those teardrops knowing that I will be just fine, because nothing changes who I am. Well, I kept hearing that everywhere I was going.

It was weird. One of those times where all these different shops I went into, it was playing the same song, and I'm not even sure it was like a number one song or anything, but I kept hearing it. And during that time, I had this dream, and in the dream, I was, I woke up remembering it very clearly, but I was sleeping on my grandmother's sleeping porch. Now old houses used to have porches that were screened in, and in the hot summer, you know, you would go out there and sleep because there wasn't air conditioning. Well, I remember sleeping and it was cold. It was just a little bit frosty, but I had piles of quilts on top of me. And I could hear all of my family in the room next to me, I'm cooking breakfast and I could smell bacon and I could just hear them chattering with each other.

Coffee was brewing. And I felt this incredible sense of peace, of, ah, this is where I belong. I'm safe.

Things are good. Everything's wonderful.

And I woke up, and it was the funniest thing because I've never had a grandmother. My grandmothers died before I was born, and we don't have a house like that in our family anywhere. But I was just reminded that that's how God wants us to feel, that there is a safe place. We are being taken care of and provided for, and we can rest in Him. So occasionally I'll just take my mind back to that dream and go, I can take a deep breath because I'm okay and everything's okay. That's good. And so being reminded, I think for a lot of people, probably music, certain songs, takes them back to a safe place or a secure place. And so having a thought, an image in our mind of a place that we can go back to. Now we're talking, you talked about spiritual happy places here. This is what I'm going to talk about here, it's not necessarily spiritual, although it was kind of a spiritual experience, but one of my happy places.

We all find God in different ways. I guess so. One of my happy places is we're blessed in our city to have one of the top 100 golf courses in the world. And it has been in that listing since the beginning. It's pretty amazing, Southern Hills Country Club, and now we don't belong there. We'd have to have sold a child or something to it. Or all of them.

And our house. But we've had some friends that invite us, invite me over the years, and several years ago, I was playing out of my head. I mean, I had one of the best rounds of my life there. Out of your head in a good way. Out of my head in a good way, yes. And above and beyond my natural golf score. And so, it just was such an incredible memory, when I was playing with these guys, and they're very, very serious, and so we counted every single stroke. But I just was surprising myself. And so, I can literally today, and this has been 15 years ago, I can literally today go back and remember every single shot, and remember every single hole. It's just beautiful, by the way, I mean, it is just one of the most beautiful places on the planet, perfectly manicured, I've had several major PGA tournaments there. And so, there's times, stressful times, where I can, if I have a hard time falling asleep or whatever, I can go back to that, and just, even though it was 15 years ago, be there, and feel this sense of peace.

And again, because I played well that day, it's a positive feeling. And so, there may be something like that, that people have, that they can go back to, or stir up in their memory, these places that are safe and secure. Yeah, and you know, I really believe, when we feel peace, when we feel like everything's okay, it really is recognizing God. Even if we don't put the word God on it, it really is recognizing that He is with us, and He is all around us. Yes. I read a quote last week, and I can't remember who it's from, I think it was either Richard Rohr or Now and One and the Jew, because I've read both of theirs a lot, and it said, just as Jesus makes His home in our heart, our hearts are most at home with God. Yeah. And it's recognizing He is all around us, and we can find peace with those pictures, the pictures we create in our minds. A dear friend had written a book recently, she calls Thin Places. It actually comes from some of the ancient church fathers and mothers, this idea of thin places. The idea is, these places that we've had experience, a certain, it might be out in nature, it might be in a cathedral, it might be in a certain landscape of some kind, where we felt like we encountered God, where the distance between heaven and earth collapses, that's why it's called a thin place, where there's not much distance between heaven and earth, where heaven truly comes to earth in those moments, and we feel more connected to the eternal.

So we had this incredible opportunity a couple years ago to go to the Isle of Iona in Scotland, which is known as a spiritual retreat, and it has an abbey there, it's just this little two and a half miles long by maybe a mile wide, and you have to take a ferry to get there, after a ferry you get to the other island to go to that one, and so you've got to really be going there. Right. You don't stop by on your way. Yes. And peaceful, some of the scenes in the North Atlantic there, just looking over the ocean, these beaches, these rugged beaches that were just amazing. Very small, little quaint town there, just a few hundred people that actually lived there. Now we can't go there all the time, I mean it takes a lot of effort to get there, but we have some pictures from there, we have some pictures of the scenery, we have some pictures of the abbey. that we have brought, put in our house, and sometimes just going and looking at one of those scenes, you can actually find yourself there and feel that, again, that place of peace, that place where God is close. And so something like that is what we're looking for, for everybody to be able to capture in their life and have something that helps them go back to those moments. Helps them feel safe, helps them feel secure. You know another thing that we can do is write thank you notes or text to let people know how much they mean to you.

That helps us get outside of some of the worry and the stress that we have. Or you could write down and share with somebody close to you, somebody that's made an impact or a real difference in your life in a small way. Like somebody that's not a huge part of your life, but they've done something in a small way that has really changed the course of your life in some ways. I asked Haley, our daughter, if she would give me permission to share this, and I can't. When Haley was going into kindergarten, first grade and second grade, she got in sports and her team always lost. Like she was on teams that lost every single game for the entire season. And she'd go from soccer to softball to basketball, and they were just terrible teams. And so by the time she got to, oh gosh, probably third grade, she was ready to just quit sports.

It's like, oh, I'm not any good at this. But we had a wonderful PE teacher, an athletic director of our school, and he pulled her aside one day at recess and he said, Haley, you are an athlete. You have been on a series of bad teams, and you've had some coaches that haven't really helped you or haven't taken advantage of your athletic ability. So I want to work with you at recess a little bit, but I want you to keep going on in sports because you are good at this. And so sure enough, she practiced a little bit with him. She went on into school sports instead of the recreational, and she ended up being a good athlete and continued in doing athletic things. If he hadn't intervened, she would have just said, well, I'm not very good at this, so I'm going to give that up. And it ended up being a really satisfying part of her life. So it's letting people who have done little things know that they did make a difference, or at least thinking about those things. And it's reminding us again of the good, reminding us of those special things that we sometimes forget and overlook. And so many of the things that we need to bring us peace are little things, just the tiny things of life that help bring joy.

I like to come home and light a candle. Not just for the light, but for the scent. I like having a house that smells really good. We like to watch funny shows. Yes. So we keep some funny shows in mind every so often. Our current one is the new Frazier, which if you've watched Cheers and the old Frazier, you'll get a lot more of the jokes. But it's just a fun, light, silly show that helps us get away from things and really enjoy some good things. The other thing that we do is we practice mindfulness. You take deep breaths, you let your body relax, and you just notice what's going on all around you. All of your senses, what are they taking in?

So we might say now, like the temperature is just right in here, maybe a little crisp, but that's what the temperature is like. And there's a candle burning that smells like coffee. It's two of our favorite things right there, candle burning and coffee. And I'll be sitting upstairs and I'll be reading or just sitting quietly and I'll feel like that. And then maybe you walk by and I'll get a little bit of your cologne mixed in with the candle.

And I'm aware of that. And then I think about I'm sitting on this comfortable couch surrounded by pillows and my body feels relaxed and it feels good. It's being present where you are. So it may be listening to the sound of birds. We have one room in our house where we can hear birds much more clearly. It's listening to the sound of birds. And it's the idea of right now, no one needs me. I'm safe, I'm relaxed, and I'm in a good place. And I can just rest and I can be at peace. And when the busyness of the day comes to mind, we just go back and center on here's what I'm feeling right now. And this is good.

And that's mindfulness. It's being aware of the positive present little things that are going on in your life. Also having some what we consider grounding statements. Like, you know, one of the most powerful that I think is all of us ought to wake up with every morning is the serenity prayer. People are trying, we say trying to change something you have no control to change will drive you crazy and it will create incredible anxiety and fear in your life. But if you know the serenity prayer, it says God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And so being able to go, I can't do anything about that. And being able to really let that go. Now I can do something about this, about helping my neighbor here or whatever, but I can't change the conflict in Israel. And so it's letting go of that, being able to say, what can I do something about? And so having something like that, and maybe other statements like that, that we keep around our house or we keep close to us that take us back to a place of being able to be lighter and more free.

We found the benefits of having a fixed time of prayer each day. Several years ago, we started a practice called The Daily Office. It's a series of scriptures and prayers that are kind of put together and it has an Old Testament scripture, it has a psalm, it has oftentimes an epistle, and then of course the gospel section in it. And so it's just something that you kind of go through each morning. Also has a variety of different prayers from some of the church fathers and mothers, and we would say the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer, and just a combination of those kinds of things. But something about doing it each morning gives us this sense that when we're done, it's I've left that in the hands of God. That we've brought these, not only do we read these prayers, but we also then pray our own petitions.

And it's I've left that now with God. He has it now. I can go on with my day and know that he's with me. I'm not alone in this. And he is with me, he's with that person, my family member across the country that I'm praying for that's been sick, he's with them right now. I just prayed for the conflict in Israel and Palestine, he's with them right now.

Those are things that are bigger than me. I can't do anything about, but now I've left them with him. And it gives me a greater sense of, okay, now what can I do something about?

And I go about my day. It gives an opportunity to really let go of anxiety, again, let go of fear. Even in the midst of chaos and conflict in the world, we can find that place of peace because we've left those things with God.

Teresa McElhaney Yeah. And by using the daily office, you can also pray at other times during the day. It's also got prayers for different times in the day and before you go to bed at night. So, it's got that rhythm to it that helps us feel, okay, this is the rhythm and yes, I can release these things at this time and trust that God knows what's going on. Oftentimes, we have things that we've done in the past that have brought us peace or helped us forget things for a little while, give our brain a mental rest. That's what I always call plan denial. Give our brain a little bit of rest that we've given up on when things are really stressful. So, maybe it's getting your bike out and going for a bike ride.

Maybe it's doing a jigsaw puzzle. It could be doing something, excuse me, artistic or creative. Dr. Justin Marchegiani I do have to make a comment about jigsaw puzzle for a minute.

I know you love them. They actually are stress producers for me. And so, I'm not sure that one would work for me. The bike would work, other things would work, but I'm going to leave that with the jigsaw puzzle with you.

You seem to really enjoy it. Dr. Debra Pinkney Thank you very much. It is a time where I do forget everything, which you do with like woodworking or doing some things around the house. You forget everything where I consider that work. So, it's a difference in different personalities. But going back to when we feel like things are out of control, when we recognize that there's many things out of our control, then as you said, we look for something that we can do to control. And one of the best things is to look at how to help people. I go back to the prayer, Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, St. Francis. Where there is hatred, let me bring love.

Where there is offense, let me bring pardon. Where there's discord, let me bring union. Where there is error, let me bring truth. Where there's doubt, let me bring faith. Where there is despair, let me bring hope. Where there's darkness, let me bring light. There's a lot of darkness right now. So, we look for ways that we can bring hope and light to the people around us. You know, I think we can go to Quick Trip or your local convenience store and buy gift cards that you can hand out to people that are on the streets, that are homeless, just so they can go get something to eat in a place that is nearby, that they don't have to have transportation to. If you know somebody that's stressed, either making a meal for them or door dashing a meal to them. I really love some of the conveniences we have that have developed even more since the pandemic of ways to really bless people.

I love sending people things through Amazon because I know they'll get it quickly and it's the very thing that they need at that particular point. We can do something creative, as I said, paint, draw, but also finding order. This is more along your lines, Brent. You know, some people find that if they can just bring order to a small area of their house or their life, it brings them a sense of peace. Now, I tell them, don't start with the worst closet that you have because you'll get overwhelmed. But if you want to start with your bedside table, do something and organize that and then let it go. Don't do any more, but just know you can look at that and that's something I can control. That's something that I do have some control over.

So it's a chaotic world. We're living in a crazy time right now, but we all have to remember that God is bigger than everything that's going on and whether we understand, whether we can make any sense of it, he's good and we can trust in him. I was reading Nouwen, of course, last week and I had this quote from him. Every human heart longs to belong, to feel connected, to experience safety and a sense of homeness.

None of these desires can be fulfilled on our own. God has given us a heart that will remain restless until it has found its place in him. It's what God wants and what we want. God created in our hearts a yearning for communion that no one but God can and wants to fulfill.

I love that. So the wonderful thing about God is he accepts us where we are. So if there's anybody that feels like, or if we ever go through a time where we feel like, I've been too far away from God. I haven't done some of the disciplines that I should be doing. I've gotten so caught up in my own stuff. So important to remember that he's the father that always welcomes us. There's no shame, there's no guilt, there's no condemnation. He welcomes us in and we can invite him into our lives to be at rest no matter what's been going on around us. Very good. So for today, we hope that you'll be able to grab a hold of something here that can help you move towards a place of peace and steadiness and security and hope in your life in the midst of some of the chaos around us.

So for today, go in peace. Blessings as you go.