Healing Through the Ground Zero Moments.
Preparedness. Life offers infinite education and cliché to respond to opportunity’s knock. Intellect, street smarts, coaching, careful planning, laughter, prayer and more offer a means towards solution. But when the fan decisively breaks loose from its hinge, which tactic converts to empowered cover?
I call these times, the “Ground Zero Moments.” They make or break us. They cause time to cinematically slow down or flash in a nanosecond. Ground Zero Moments throw preparedness to its knees, to a place where doubt and fear suffocate the most confident.
One author continues to inspire my personal journey, Dr. Maya Angelou. She wrote, “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”
So when all knowledge goes out the window, into a “flight or fight” response, what becomes a better go-to response during these Ground Zero Moments? My personal healing journey and practice focus on Compassion in thought, feeling and action.
Many schools of therapy and spirituality note that thoughts create feelings and feelings generate behavior. In difficult times or circumstance, inner dialogue resembles a motorboat that causes seasickness in full-on need of a cure.
I offer and practice an easy solution for healing the Ground Zero Moments. This 3-step solution helps even in lesser challenging times: quiet the thoughts, empower the feeling, create the action. When choice springs from a conscious platform, efficient solutions emerge.
Recently, my senior dog quietly walked out the open front door of my friend’s new home. Lost in conversation, I missed seeing her leave. Intuitively, I soon felt her absence and we all took action to find her. The dynamic tragic, “What if” stories overlapped in my head as I walked briskly in pursuit for several blocks. With each fearful imagined summary of what happened to her, I consciously stopped these projections by chanting my personal mantra. I noticed my ability to get quicker and quicker in stopping each negative thought. This practice helps stop obsessive, negative thoughts. Sometimes the negative started as I inhaled and ended before I exhaled. Here, solution meets the behavior.
I encourage my clients to inwardly chant, “I’m loved and protected,” or “I’m grateful.” It’s super easy and immediately shifts the inner vibration from lack to full. This does not endorse illusion. This creates empowered awareness to make better choices.
One friend asked if I was ok and I said, “No.” And yet I was. Both responses felt interestingly accurate. My inner practice to quiet my mind brings my focus to the now. My friend later commented on how together she thought I was during the search. I honestly and purposefully stayed out of the negative thoughts.
Gratefully, my doggie walked back up the driveway at my friend’s home. She wasn’t lost nor hurt. I see that she actually helped me work through those feelings within myself. Cheeky little four-legged master.
