Happy Spring!
Happy Spring? At the Way of Life store in Capitola Sheryl's Mama Love best sellers this month were "Releasing Worry & Fear," "Trusting Inner Guidance", and "Restful Sleep." Feeling anxious, anybody? Paul wrote an article about "How to Stop Worrying" in this month's newsletter but first we have a couple of announcements to make.
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WE'VE GONE WORLDWIDE!
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We recently signed up for Skype and did our first Voice-Over-Internet call a few weeks ago. It worked great! And the price is so low (free to call other Skype users) that we can absorb the cost of the call into what we charge for sessions. No long distance charges for our clients anymore! Yippee!
And here's something even cooler. If you have a video camera and microphone attached to your computer -- our Mac has one built in -- we can do face-to-face video sessions with you no matter where you live all over the world.
We went nationwide with our sessions via telephone many months ago after much worry and discussion about whether it would work out. We had an out-of-town person INSIST on having a session with us long distance. She knew we were the ones for her and didn't take our hesitation and concern for an answer. It was great and we've done sessions with lots of other people that way as a result.
If you want to try a video or telephone session with us check our website to find out how at http://www.healingcommunication.com/phoneandvideosessions.html .
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TIME TO GO TO A FLAT RATE FEE
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Because a significant amount of our business now involves payment over the Internet our sliding scale approach seems to be out of date. We've experimented A LOT, moving the scale up, down, moving the bottom, moving the top. Some people always pay at the top; some people can't afford our bottom. But no matter what we have done -- even when we did sessions by donation -- the vast majority of our clients and the average of all payments over time has always stayed in the same range:
$100/ hour, $150/ hour and one half
We believe "THE TRIBE HAS SPOKEN."
This is our new flat rate fee. Different length sessions are available to accommodate your budget.
We want to thank everyone who has used our services. We appreciate you for participating in our growth as healers in this community and for letting us be a participant in your life journey.
We look forward to working with you in what we hope will be an easier, more straight forward fashion for now on.
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SHERYL'S NEW BOOK IS NAMED "BOOK OF THE MONTH"
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The Spiritual Journey of Family Caregiving was named "Book of the Month" by the Parkinson's Association of San Diego. Isn't that nice? And it's also available now at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and Borders Books online. Pretty cool! Still she makes more of a royalty if you buy it directly from Healing Communication Press at Lulu.com. The url is http://www.lulu.com/content/1767517 .
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THIS MONTH'S ARTICLE
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This month's article entitled "How to Stop Worrying" was Paul's gift to me earlier this week. Incidents in our personal lives had put me into a tailspin and I got caught in a cycle of worry that I knew was out of proportion to what was really going on. I tried everything in my toolbox -- reading inspirational texts, meditation, breathing, herbs, flower essences, energy healing, counseling with Paul. Everything worked for a little bit and then the old anxiety would come crushing in, even harder than before. Then I realized one night that even when I meditate I never seem to achieve what others call a state of bliss. Paul is able to drop into that place whenever he gets into a meditative or healing space so I asked him if he could teach me. He did his best, told me what he could relate, and it just sounded like nonsense. The words went flying over my head.
So Paul sat down the next day and wrote this article for me. And it worked! It woke me up! The brutal reality of the talk I had internalized from my childhood hit me like a ton of bricks -- I almost forgot to notice how funny Paul's writing really can be. But the truth of it hit me, too. Bull's eye! It popped me out of my mental state and I've been calm, happy and sleeping like a baby ever since. -- Sheryl
HOW TO STOP WORRYING
by Paul Hood
How to stop worrying.
Dale Carnegie had some good ideas, but the story isn’t over yet.
It’s not as if there aren’t thousands, maybe millions of positive examples out there. So many mentors, so many shining examples of how to live life more joyously in the present moment. No, all you have to do is ask-- and even sometimes when you don’t ask, somebody you know will send a truly inspiring video directly to you via the magic of email.
But all those uncountable resources, they don’t always get through, they don’t work on the the tough cases. I recently figured out why. The brilliant, shining examples are speaking the wrong language. For people who worry, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and other motivational speakers may as well be speaking Martian. You have to know your audience.
So let’s make a fresh start.
If you worry, it’s because you’re bad, wrong, and in all likelihood, stupid. Now, it’s not as if anything I say will change the fact that you fill your life with useless worry. No, you will continue on, day in and day out, running through your same, tired old internal rhetoric. You always do that. I’m so sick of it I could scream. I knew you would turn out this way. Why can’t you be more like your sister ? You’re supposed to be the smart one. Go clean your room.
Now I’m getting through, aren’t I ? If you worry obsessively it’s because you were taught to do so, either by example or by drilling into your brain that a certain world-view is in fact, reality. Of course that world view isn’t true. It’s a vicious lie. The world is filled with lies and deception. And you fell for it. God, you are so gullible. I can’t even believe it. Who raised you? Trust me, you can’t trust anyone. Look at me when I’m talking to you.
So, obsessive worry is caused by a faulty thought process, and that process is fueled by having been immersed in a world view skewed by excessive concern for safety, security and familiarity. That world view is ruled by fear, an emotion. Emotions aren’t bad or good, they just are. But it’s a useful thing to be aware of which emotions you’d be better off making a habit of feeling. Even more useful if you’re aware that your thoughts have a very direct effect on your emotions, and you can certainly learn to think useful thoughts which result in a more pleasant emotional state. Interestingly enough, more pleasant emotions tend to spawn more useful thoughts, encouraging a more positive and productive world view and that becomes a cycle which is self supporting. I’m losing you, aren’t I ? Like pearls before swine. I might as well be talking to a brick wall. Look, if you don’t pay attention you’re going to miss all this good stuff and then where will you be? Screwed, that’s where. I should have known. I could have predicted this. When will you ever learn ? What’s so funny, damn it ? Use your indoor voice.
Worry is, in fact, oppression. It was probably taught to you by people who meant well, as it was taught to them and so on. Don’t blame yourself for that, and there’s no need to blame your teachers either. Engender forgiveness in your heart-- for the fact that everything in this world is meant to change and grow. You learned one world view which has useful facets, but it was unbalanced and now you’re going to learn a new one. It’s not hard, but it might be scary. The whole reason for that fear to appear is because the new world view contradicts the old one which was based on. . . right, you guessed it, Fear with a capital “F”. Fear in this case does not indicate danger. Fear in this case indicates change, and your previous world view was constructed to sound the alarm whenever change appeared imminent. Again, be forgiving. Your friends, relatives, neighbors may have experienced very unpleasant changes. Those changes became associated with fear, and then equated with fear, and finally any change gets viewed as bad, wrong, or even “evil.” Whoops, that’s a stretch. Only an idiot would believe something like that. An idiot like you. You and the horse you rode in on. Mercy me. Stay with me now, remember; a stitch in time saves nine. I want you to turn over a new leaf. I’m just trying to help, and there you go again, flying off the handle like always. Now don’t go off half cocked. You could put an eye out. All I’m saying is, be careful.
So worry is a habit whose emotional basis is fear. When someone is afraid, the first instinctual thing we do is tell them “everything is all right,” “you’re safe now,” “you’re home”, essentially that they are in a quiet, protected, PREDICTABLE environment. Worry, interestingly enough, is the mind trying to predict the future, and all possible variations of it. It’s an attempt to achieve readiness now, for what might occur later. That’s impossible, if you look at the sheer number of things which might happen in the future and that you can’t mathematically prepare for all of them. On the other hand, nearly every creature on this earth is a living example of being prepared for everything. You are too, I’m telling you, you’re prepared, you’re worthy, you’re a high functioning individual-- the product of millions of years of evolution and a perfect child of God. And yet you think otherwise. I could slap you. I swear, right now. Oh la -dee-dah, you think you’re so special don’t you? That you have to stay up nights running scripts in your head because you’re the one individual in history who can mentally catalog every possible future event-- not just for you but for everyone and every thing in your life. Wow. Get over yourself.
Worry is oppression that is taught, and learned, based upon the idea that fear equals readiness-- that feeling bad is a good idea. Maybe it’s even a responsibility. Worry embraces the concept that the one constant in the universe, change, is something to be avoided at all costs. Worry can’t exist very well in an individual unless they are living in a state of constant fear. Interestingly enough, fear can’t be upheld in an environment of faith. Oh, ye of little faith. Oppression means that you were taught that you aren’t ready for anything, that you’re inferior. That really cracks me up. I’m laughing at you right now. Pointing and laughing, and doing a little dance which is rather uncoordinated but is reminiscent of the Bossa Nova. It looks totally silly and I don’t care. You have no faith at all, you sorry bastard. Even a little child knows that he can walk around in the world and be totally joyous. Hell, baby goats know that, puppies and kittens know that. Even flowers bloom, grass grows automatically, the sun rises and sets without writing a business plan every night. Point of fact, if you worry you are dumber than dirt.
Even though change is constant in the universe, on a day to day basis a lot of things do stay the same. Our civilization is built upon a certain degree of predictability. When we want to direct specific changes, we theorize based upon past observances, we try new things and observe the results. We innovate, and innovation is faith based. We have faith in our abilities to bring positive change, and we generally know that when we try new things we aren’t usually risking much. There’s a certain amount of inertia to reality, we can’t help but be aware of that. Little mistakes do not cause the fabric of the universe to unravel. That’s another reason not to worry. Most change is incremental, not revolutionary, or to put a negative spin on it, disastrous. This is what you should forgive your oppressors for: for knowing that much of life is about balancing inertia (tradition) with incremental risks to bring about positive change. They weren’t wrong to teach you this, maybe just a little out of balance. And because they loved you so much, they may have taught you to worry, thinking they were helping you to be ready for anything. So forgive them now and know that you are ready. Peace be with you.
Ok, I hope I was speaking your language and that this helped.
If it didn’t, don’t worry about it.
I know I won’t.
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WANT MORE OF OUR LATEST WRITING?
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Visit our blogs. We both have lots of new stuff up this month.
Sheryl's blog is at http://healingcommunication.blogspot.com/
Paul's is at http://paulhood.blogspot.com/
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR REFERRALS!
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Interested in a session? Send us an email or give us a call at (831) 325-4076.
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