With heart and mind working together, we can heal inner hurts, meet the challenges of everyday life, and go forward with wholeness and strength.
Exercises
Exercise 1
Remember a time when you felt overwhelmed because you had too much to do. This pressure could have been due to a school project, the demands of work, or trying to balance parenting and work. Besides feeling overwhelmed, how else did this make you feel? Did you enjoy such pressure? Did these feelings help you get through?
Exercise 2
Think of an activity you fully enjoy, or one you used to enjoy — a craft, a sport, or a creative endeavor. Do you take lessons? Does practice make you better? Do you value your practice time? Does it increase your enjoyment of the activity? Do you wish you had more time for this activity? Pablo Casals, one of the world’s great cellists, was asked why he still practiced at age 90. “Because I think I’m making progress.”
Exercise 3
Think of the work that goes into healing old wounds, into forgiving yourself for your mistakes, and into living in the moment. Episode 15 describes this as a process of letting in light, developing self-compassion, and learning to feel good about ourselves. The work involved, even it’s a lot of work, makes us feel better about ourselves and our lives. Does this make sense. If so, does this work more closely match how you feel when facing an overwhelming burden, or does it seem closer to the work involved in getting better at a favorite activity?