Inspirational: Ride the Rollercoaster; Not the Merry-Go-Round



Another in my series about new ways of looking at the world, not just the paranormal one, but the one in which we must travel every day -- life.

My mother white-knuckled it through life. She wanted to know exactly what was going to happen, every outcome, even if she had to imagine them to prepare herself for some "awful-awful" that would surely present itself. She had high blood pressure, smoked like a chimney, constantly watched the news, and read the newspapers, combing for signs of impending doom. I'm not sure what preparing her mind for these scenarios did, because she never once prepared physically for such events. There was no hoarding of canned goods, purchasing of guns or storing of duct tape and plastic. She simply entertained her mind with these scenarios and, consequently her body.

The body doesn't know the difference from a thought or reality? You don't believe me? How many times have you startled during a scary movie or felt your palms sweat watching someone walk a tightrope between high rise buildings? How about this exercise: Close your eyes, imaging plucking a lemon, feeling its waxy bump surface and the nubs at each end, put your lips to the surface and now bite, letting the juice spurt. Did your mouth salivate? No real lemon. Real body production of saliva. Hmm....

So, if life is a rollercoaster and we can't control it's up and down on the hills, what keeps it on the tracks? What keeps the ride safe is knowing that you are competent, you have support from those you love, you have intelligence and are capable of evaluating situations and making decisions. When you know these things about yourself to be true, then whatever life might throw your way, you will cope. There is no need to practice mind scenarios and frighten yourself, producing adrenaline and wearing down your vessels for something that is not even occurring in real life.

Yes, life is a rollercoaster! Throw your arms up in the air, knowing that it can't jump the track, feel the wind, feel the highs and lows, be scared, be unsure, be thrilled, be exhilarated and know that you can't stop the ride from happening, but you can learn to accept its patterns.

You cannot smooth out the surf, but you can learn to ride the waves.

Here's one thing I know about rollercoasters versus Merry-Go-Rounds: The rollercoaster, because of its highs and lows gives you reward and relief, tension and excitement and, most importantly, perspective. You can see your world from up there. The Merry-Go-Round shows you the same thing over and over and over again safely, but with no ability to have a perspective, no joy, no plummets, no anticipation because you already know what it's going to do--go round and round and round and round....

(For over 20 years, I've been sponsoring people with anxiety disorders. At one time, I used to run an anxiety disorder self-help group, wrote articles printed around the world, helped to work on recovery programs, gave workshops and lectures. To this day, I still sponsor people through recovery. It is 100% curable and no one should have to suffer. Above is one of many lessons I like to impart.)

Comments

  1. To a great extent, Life really is a circular flow diagram... maybe the exact same things don't repeat, but there is a great deal of repetition to Life... and for what it's worth, I felt the taste of the lemon... :oD

    ~shoes~

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  2. I swear, its like you read my mind and write what I need to see some days! Thank you!

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  3. Glad to help, Melanie. I will admit, I am often tied to my readers and I have in the past done some large-scale psychic connections with them. A subject bugs me until I finally write about it and it's the very day one dear reader needed it. Perhaps I should try the psychic experiments again--I do miss that! See, you just inspired me. Karma.

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  4. I love to worry I can't help it I just always think the worst, I wish I was more like my sister she is so relaxed about everything, when I told her Gaddafi had gone mad and I was worried(we live in Malta only 300 miles from Libia) she just said I won't worry till they bomb ST Pauls( where she lives) It must be nice to go through life without a care lol.

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  5. Lisa; it's probably not that she doesn't care, but that she focuses on the glass half full instead of half empty. She sees there's still more to drink--yahoo! And, your view might be that half your drink is gone and you have less. What you focus on, you become. Everything we come to daydream about happening, doesn't occur the way we imagined, whether it's a man falling madly in love with us, our boss praising us, or a concrete truck running us down on a sidewalk. President Bush certainly had us all scared with his colored alerts and talk of buying duct tape and plastic. We were focusing on the entirely wrong thing--the thing that had less chance of happening than lightening. We could have been focusing on our relationships with our allies and keeping the world strong enough to make it impossible for the nutcases to get through. I've found most often that when folks focus on something not likely to happen, they're really avoiding something in their life they don't want to deal with. This other thing, terrorists, bombings, disease seem like legitimate concerns--they explain why we feel insecure. The real insecurity is something in our life we don't feel we have the right or ability to deal with. When you find out what the real issue is, you no longer need the imagined ones. Hope that made sense.

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  6. I think I harbor on both sides at times. Sometimes I.ll worry about weird things but most of the time I am very laid back. I try to put things in perspective. I do worry about paying bills and people I care about but smaller things can be handled and don't need to be a huge burden in my life. You wrote before about conspiracies and one that I thought was going on was when Bush was using all those red alerts and alert yellow. Keeping everyone scared and paranoid when the economy was going down the drain. Every time I listen to Go with the flow by Queens of the Stone Age there is a line that goes, But I want something good to die for, To make it beautiful to live. It has always stuck with me and I try to enjoy life and I don't worry what people say or think about me because I'm okay with myself and my faults. It took a long time but I feel some level of calm. :)

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  7. Damn, SD77--very insightful. Yeah, even us laid back folks backslide. I remember one day recently having a moment of hopelessness that I'd ever see a man's eyes light up when he sees me, never know what it's like to have a man in love with me, thrilled to be with me. Then, I stopped and thought "you're a loving, sweet, passionate woman, who wouldn't want that?" It seemed like a logical assumption, but when you have moments of insecurity, you forget the basics that are always true about your life, like your health, intelligence, wherewithal, and other things that get you through the challenges. Oh, and as for Bush--100% right on. It was a shell game. Those of us who still recall the Cold War and childhood dives under our desks in practice for the "The Bomb," fell for it. During anthrax, they told us to microwave our mail. I did in a moment of stupidity and gullibility and my TV guide caught fire--it had metallic page inserts. Haha! Sometimes, it's better to be an independent thinker and not let the powers that be make these decisions for us.

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  8. Glad I could help!! (I really gotta email you soon!)

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  9. Loved the analogy - although that's largely because I LOVE roller coasters.

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