I have a close relation—very close. Let’s call her miserable, I mean Miss E. Rable. For a period of time before I received THE BEST ADVICE ON THE PLANET, Miss E. Rable frequently visited her misery on me. I can just hear Dr. Phil now, “We teach people how to treat us.” These days I get that, but before I received THE BEST ADVICE ON THE PLANET, I didn’t understand that I had any way to stop Miss E. from making her frequent visits and otherwise ruining my day.

Do you have people like this in your life?

Miss Rable is the type who constantly turns to you for advice, but doesn’t actually want your help. All she really wants is someone to listen to her complain—the “misery loves company” type. You know the ones I mean, they can be male or female and every time caller ID shows up with their number, you cringe or secretly pretend you can’t find the phone. Don’t deny it, I know I’m not the only one who has these callers on the line. I’m talking about the person whose voice sounds like fingernails on the chalkboard in your otherwise quiet and peaceful life. And to make matters worse, on those rare occasions when they do actually ask for your advice…they listen only briefly, before butting in to tell you six ways from Sunday how your approach just won’t work. This sort of scenario used to drive me NUTS!

Then one day a wise advisor (okay, she was my coach) gave me THE BEST ADVICE ON THE PLANET. She said “When this person, begins her diatribe about how miserable her life is and cries, ‘Whatever shall I do?’ instead of wringing your hands along with her, just say to yourself, ‘Her baby is crying.’” At the time having just had a baby myself, this was an easy concept to grasp. For as a new mother, I wouldn’t have considered handing my precious baby off for someone else to care for. And that was just the point. Miss E.’s latest tale of whoa was just that…her baby/problem and she needed to tend to it herself.

What an epiphany for me!

All of the sudden I realized that I was no longer responsible for making everything okay for Miss E. Rable and by having this clear thought in my head, “Her baby is crying.” I could walk away in peace, giving my relative time and space to care for her baby as only she knew best how to do. Mind you, I didn’t actually get up and walk away from said close relation, but rather I did a mental dash right back into my own business and out of the role of being her savior.

This trick also works when you encounter folks who repeatedly like to make you the responsible party for all things wrong in their life. Maybe for you it’s also a relative, or a co-worker, one of your children, or maybe even your spouse/partner (heaven forbid!) The same internal dialogue works perfectly.

Your precious child says, “You didn’t wake me up in time, that’s why I’m late.” His baby’s crying.

Your sister complains, “It’s not fair, you’ve always been Mom and Dad’s favorite.” Her baby’s crying.

Your co-worker huffs, “Well, if I wasn’t the only one who worked in this place”…say it with me now, “His baby’s crying.”

Try it the next time someone is complaining to you for the one hundredth time, but refuses to actually make any changes in their own behavior. Don’t get me wrong, obviously there are many times when our friends and loved ones really do need our comfort and care and a shoulder to cry on. That’s not the situation to which I refer. I’m talking about someone who, like I said earlier, complains and complains with no intention of doing anything to change their circumstances or better yet change their thoughts that created the circumstances in the first place. It’s perfectly fine if they want to keep creating the same misery over and over again in their own life, it is after all their life; but I was making myself miserable right along with her.

I’d be driving along in my car on my way to the grocery store and thinking about poor little Miss Rable…what to do, what to do to help her? Get out of her business, I say to myself now.

As Byron Katie likes to say, there are 3 kinds of business: mine, yours and God’s. After receiving THE BEST ADVICE ON THE PLANET and realizing that my relative’s “baby” crying did not have to create a crisis in my life, I firmly stepped out of her business and planted my feet squarely back in my own, exactly where I belong.

And the funny thing is, when I stopped trying to handle her “baby” for her, Miss E. Rable had no choice but to learn to handle her “baby” herself or find another babysitter, like the old me to hand it off to. But either way, I was free. Free to think about my own baby–both the literal one I’d just birthed and the many figurative ones still left crying in my own head.

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As I began my meditation practice this morning, my mind was drawn to clients I work with who are struggling with issues of anxiety. You see I know this struggle well because for many years, I too suffered from anxious thoughts over things both large and small. While I believe there are numerous contributing factors to anxious thoughts and patterns of behavior–caffeine, TV news, hormonal imbalance or as they classify it in Ayurveda “too much vata,” I know from experience that what it most often boils down to is “stinking thinking” and that working on your thoughts can provide instant relief.

There are several methods for addressing your anxious thoughts such as Bryon Katie’s, The Work or Wayne Dyer’s version that he describes in his new book, “Excuses Be Gone” and I’ve used various forms of these methods on myself and my clients with “great success,” to quote Borat. But my new favorite method for dealing with anxiety and perfectionism, which I find seem to go hand in hand, is to ask, “In every moment am I choosing what energizes and excites me?” I can just hear those anxiety prone ones among you saying, “Oh if it were only that easy.” But stay with me and maybe you’ll see that it is.

As I mentioned earlier, this topic of dealing with anxiety was on my mind this morning as I sat for my morning meditation, which by the way is a great exercise for quieting anxiety. It is my practice to use quotes, inspirational passages and the like as a focus point each day. Today I pulled a card from a Law of Attraction card deck  “Ask and it is Given” created by Abraham-Hicks.

This is what it said, “My Slightest Improvement Is of Such Great Value: There is tremendous value when you are able to deliberately cause even the slightest improvement in the way you feel for even in that small emotional improvement, you may have regained a measure of control. You no longer feel powerless. And so, your trek back up the Emotional Scale is now not only possible, but it is relatively easy.”

So how does this relate to “In every moment choose what energizes and excites you”? Well, it’s like this…the more you choose to focus on things that energize and excite you, the more the things that energize and excite you will show up in your life rather than the things that make you feel anxious. Again, I realize that there are many factors that can contribute to the monkey minded state of those plagued with anxiety, but this is a method you can use any time, any where to bring yourself some relief. And I’ve found that the more you use it, the better you get at it and the better you get at focusing on things that bring you joy rather than things that make you feel anxious, the more joy producing things will begin to show up in your existence. But don’t take my word for it; try it.

Here’s how it works:

Situation: OMG! My house is a wreck! I’ll never get it in order. STOP and ask…

Q: Do I mop the floor first or wash the dishes?
A: Whichever feels more exciting in this moment.

Situation: How can it be bedtime already, I still have a million things on my “To Do” list. STOP and ask…

Q: Do I read a bedtime story to my child or get to that paperwork still on my desk? (Or maybe just tuck myself in as well as my child and let’s all get some rest!)
A: Whichever feels more energizing and exciting right now.

Situation: I’ve been working on this project all week and I don’t seem to be accomplishing anything. STOP and ask…

Q: Do I sit at my desk and work through lunch again or do I ask a co-worker whom I enjoy to join me for a bite?
A: Whichever feels the most exciting.

In the end, you’ll probably be more productive because you’ve allowed your mind to relax and quiet, which will help you to focus and work better when you really need to.

If you are struggling to choose, go inside and ask your body. It never lies, but that’s a whole other blog post. Stay tuned. (But only if it feels energizing and exciting. LOL!)

Above all be easy with this process and remember as the card says, “even a slight improvement is of great value.” You may not get to choosing only “energizing and exciting” at every turn in one day, one week, or even one month; but moving even a slight bit away from feelings of entrapment and powerlessness is a move in the right direction. Celebrate that!

get more info about Ayurvedic medicine from an expert,
Dr. John Douillard www.lifespa.com

experience instant thought relief at www.thework.com

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