Making a Big Decision

So You Have  a Big Decision to Make...

Where do you begin? Psychotherapy is largely about insight into your thoughts and feelings leading to appropriate actions. While psychotherapy often looks at your whys and why-nots, and your psychological obstacles to making decisions by exploring the emotional back story, guidance assumes you know what you want and works with you to get there, or helps you make changes to your goals if somehow they keep being out of reach. Guidance is about action.

With guidance you state your crossroads and what you hope to achieve by making your best decision. You may opt to start with the most compelling option and start planning out that path. If the projected route brings up problems for you, we may examine the second most compelling option and talk that through. Eventually you make a working decision (which can be changed by you at any time). 

Here are some steps you can expect to take with guidance:

• You establish the goal. You may need helping putting it into words, so that's a guidance issue
• You explore ways of achieving that goal and select the route that fits your motivation, risk tolerance and time frame best
• You break down the tasks you'll need to accomplish to get there, with guidance helping you identify and define them
• You commit to taking step one (or more) by a certain time frame, with encouragement to aim high, but not impossibly so, in a short time
• In the next session you account for your efforts and report on your progress

The Whole Point of Guidance is Getting to the Point Where We Can Say

Paralyzed By A Fear Of Old Age or Death?

Your assignment,
should you choose to accept it, is to go right away to see this movie, "Unfinished Song (Song for Marion)" playing in theaters now. Why? Because if the idea of getting old scares you, and the thought of dying is so terrifying you can't even think of it, or if the fear of losing an older loved one such as a parent or life partner devastates you, you need to get over it! 

My uncle, age 85, is currently in rehab recovering from a massive heart attack, and we spoke on the phone today. When we spoke of his desire to leave a meaningful" legacy" and his new awareness he may not have much time to do it, I said to him, "Life is not a permanent condition." It isn't.

The Buddhists sometimes say, as an affirmation, "I might die today." Does that sound negative to you? Does it make a chill run down your spine? If so, those reactions suggest it's time to face the truth and live more fully in the now. The now is really all we have. Rarely do living beings seek death over life, and if they do it usually stems from brokenness of body or mind. The will to live, regardless of our uncertainty of what may lie ahead, is powerful. If the thought of life ending is frightening, we face a crossroads. Either we can remain paralyzed by fear and resist change, or we can embrace the change and let it teach us. I don't mean giving up and fading away. I mean accepting the wrinkles, graying hair or beard, age spots, creaky joints and other reminders we are no longer young as just so many badges earned by living life fully. Not there yet? God bless, because if you're lucky, you'll get there in time.

"Unfinished Song" features the wonderful, seasoned British actors Vanessa Redgrave and Terrence Stamp as they come to grips with her terminal illness. Sound grim? It is anything but. Oh, you will be wise to bring tissues or a hanky, but truly it's a feel-good movie. My aunt is 88, and when I told her about the film, she said, "Sounds like something we need to see!" I agreed.

If you enjoy this movie, don't miss "Quartet," made by the same people, also featuring elderly Brits struggling with the changes and vicissitudes of growing old. And both films feature amazing music that will bring a smile to your face and joy to your heart.

Colors

Union Square Farmers Market, New York

The colors of summer offer tasty variety and nutrition

Color is like food for me. It brightens my existence as much or more than many other sensory joys. A panoply of color is a feast for the eyes. If that luscious array happens to be edible, like fruits and veggies, what beauty! Head to your farmer's market, like the one above near me at Union Square, to feast your baby blues on the gorgeous plant-based goods.

Health experts tell us that eating the rainbow is far healthier than sticking to the white foods: choose whole grain breads, brown rice, yams and sweet potatoes, berries, tomatoes, melons, etc. The chlorophyll that greens up kale, broccoli, lettuce and celery enhances their nutritional value. The antioxidants in red, blue and purple fruits help protect against cancer-causing free-radicals. The betacarotene in carrots and other orange foods helps our eyes, the brown outer covering of grains such as wheat, rye,  and rice, as well as the ancient grains such as kamut, farro and  amaranth, contain the most vitamins and minerals, as opposed to their blander interiors.

Visit TodayIAteARainbow.com

Try to add two or three different colored foods to each meal (natural colors, not commercially colored foods). For example, breakfast can be a smoothie, green or otherwise. Lunch can be a big salad of greens with red tomato, brown beans, yellow-green avocado, red onion, purple olives, and whatever other good stuff you want. Go easy on the dressing because oils weigh it down.

Dinner can be a vegetarian chili, rich with tomatoes and their awesome lycopene, punctuated by black beans, garbanzos and pintos, chopped or grated zucchini, peppers, onions and garlic. Serve this colorful main dish on a bed of quinoa, corn, brown rice or tortilla chips (or even Fritos, once in a while). Another day you can make it Chili Mac by adding some cooked rice elbow macaroni.

Evening snack? Last night I fixed a bowl of fresh berries: blackberries, blueberries and strawberries. Delicious! So here's your challenge: see how many different colors you can eat in a day. We adults will feel healthier than ever, and our kids and grandkids will learn from us that colorful natural foods, as opposed to fake colors in candy, cake, cookies and other prepared foods, are great!

Plant-based eating is healthy and delicious, too!

A Zinger of a Beginning

What do these goals have in common?

• You'd like to shed a few pounds
• You want a clearer head at work
• You need to bring down your cholesterol
• You'd love to have energy in the morning
• You wish you felt clean and bright inside

The answer? You need to start your day with a green smoothie! If this is the only dietary change you make for now, your body and mind will thank you. Replace that heavy breakfast of eggs, fried meat, buttered toast or sugary cereal drowning in cow's milk with a breakfast bursting with energizing, clean nutrition, high in fiber and whole food deliciousness. 

What? You don't usually have breakfast? You are hindering yourself from the get-go by starting the day with low blood sugar and an empty gut just waiting for that first cup of joe to start churning out the stomach acid. So, give this a try and see how you feel. 

Caution: if you have a digestive disorder, before trying a green smoothie, please check with your MD to be on the safe side.

Your Good Garden Life Guide enjoys this amazing morning bell-ringer as often as I can, using any fruits and greens I have on hand. I still enjoy coffee to start my morning, and I don't teach against it, but some people report feeling even better if they cut out all caffeine.

Basic Green Smoothie

• 1 cup cold water (use 1/2 if you want it thick)
• 2 or 3 servings of fresh fruit (e.g. 1/2 banana, cup of seedless grapes, cup of strawberries, half a peeled grapefruit, a peach, a cup of mango)
• 2 handfuls of spinach, or cup of chopped parsley or kale (stems removed)
• 1 cup of ice cubes (less if you use frozen fruit)
• 1 TBS of chia,  hemp or flax seeds

Put these ingredients into your blender in the order given. This is important for best blending. I use a high-powered blender and set it on high for as long as it takes to clean up the counter and put stuff away, a couple of minutes at most. If you have an ordinary blender, you may want to soak your seeds overnight or plan on blending longer. Or use flax seed meal.

Pour into a big glass and enjoy. Notice my quart-sized mason jar fitted with a special drinking lid called a "Cuppow." 

You can find this awesome jar adapter at The Grommet to fit regular and large-mouth jars. I love filling my antique store jar with almost a quart of wholesome morning goodness. It tastes just as good filling your favorite glass, a couple of times or more. By the way, The Grommet has many more amazing new inventions, most made in the USA.

So, are you ready? Let's Go Green today!

Tools of the Trade

What Are Your Tools of the Trade?

• Are they honed, clean and ready to use or are they rusty and dull? 
• Do you know where they are?
• Did you share them with someone else and never ask for them back?
• Have you forgotten how to use your tools?
• Have you concluded those tools are obsolete and useless?

Asking these questions is just one way we get started with life guidance. If we're talking career guidance, the tools will be specific to what you do, or what you once were trained to do if you've left that career area.

Whether or not you want to work in the field for which your tools were obtained, they may just come in handy in a new field. Let's take a look in your toolbox and see what we can find there that will translate into use in the area you hope to move into.

Here's an example. You went to culinary school and were trained as a chef. For some reason you gave it up. Let's say you got married, had a couple of kids and stopped working. You have a nifty German knife bag filled with knives in the basement. You have a toque and smock. So we begin:

You: I'm sick of staying at home. I need to be productive again, but I don't know where to start.

Shielagh: if you could do anything in the world, what would you do?

You: I have no idea. That's why I need your guidance. I was a chef--no, I was a cook--in a big restaurant, seriously hectic and on my feet all day. All I know how to do is cook, and to be honest, I'm sick of cooking for my husband and my picky kids. Okay, he's picky, too. I hate cooking for picky eaters. It gets me really mad! So what good is it if I can whip up an amazing stir-fry of julienned root vegetables with aioli reduction on a bed of quinoa if I'm the only one who eats it? They want hot dogs and tater tots. I don't even eat hot dogs anymore.

Shielagh: Okay, I get the picture. Here's where we start. Have a smartphone? 

You: Yeah.

Shielagh: I want you to gather all the tools of that trade together. Get everything out and take a photo with them all in one spot, on a cleared counter, dining table or even your bed. Arrange it different ways and take more photos. Put on your toque and smock and take a selfie. Before our next session, I want you to email these photos to me, and then write a page or less about how you felt handling your tools, and how you felt wearing the uniform. Send me that, too.

So that's how we might start trying to get at the root of the problem. You would get out the tools of your trade, handle them and ideas would pop into your mind. Memories, old dreams, good times, bad times, deferred goals, what you miss and what you would never want to do again. All of it. And then we take a good hard look at it together. One of my favorite tools in my work as a guide is the "pros and cons list."

You're standing at the crossroads. You, the erstwhile chef (or cook), might decide to take a nutrition course online or at the community college and branch out into becoming a personal chef preparing healthy foods for someone with the money but no time. In fact, you might add an accounting course for the entrepreneur so you could handle the business end of working for yourself.

What are the tools of your trade?

Merrily We Roll Along

Along the Obed River, Tennessee

Do we go with the flow or fight the current?

The current often says, You have no say in the process so just roll along with me. Sometimes that's the right choice, but at other times we need to step ashore, get our bearings and consider another path to our goal.

Let's say you want to earn more money in your professional life. The flow in which you move pushes you along toward more responsibility and therefore more stress. They want to promote you at the firm, but then you must sleep with your cellphone on your chest, ever available to the powerful client. Some will say, Bring it on. I can do this! This in fact is what I have trained and sweated for, and I am willing to sacrifice some of my down time to move up.

But, perhaps the thought of the firm owning any more of your time, energy and peace of mind is unacceptable. The mere thought of the big client reaching into your nights, weekends, vacations and even holidays is enough to make you feel physically sick. And angry. You say to yourself, This isn't what I worked so hard in grad school to do with my life. I wanted to help the downtrodden, or soar in creative flight to change the world, or opt out of the rat race to become an activist with my degrees.

And thus you find yourself at the crossroads. Again. Wasn't it enough to chose the right college and suffer through work study and the weight of loans? Wasn't deferring your work life to fine-tune your skills in graduate school with the additional debt it brought sufficient? Shouldn't you be there by now, easily moving along in the stream of your life? So why doesn't this feel right?

These questions are similar and yet different for each of us. My path to this spot upon which I stand was unique to me. Yours is unique to you. But if you don't like the view from that place, and the stream as it flows on seems to be going somewhere you have no desire to visit, you have the opportunity to make another crossroads choice right now. Step out of the stream, if even for a few minutes a day, to get your bearings and consider your options. Disconnect from the constant communication with the world and listen to the energy within. 

You have a right to feel you are exactly where you are meant to be. And now, what next?

Why Life Guidance?

Each one of us needs some guidance. 

Maybe we aren't sure which of several options would best meet our goals. Or we aren't sure we have what it takes to try something new. Or we question our very values, wondering if we need to find and live by other stars than the old tried and true we used to guide us along the way thus far.

People seek guidance for these and countless other reasons, and we have a variety of people from whom to seek it. Nowadays many use therapists to try out their ideas and explore their motivations. Some use bartenders, hairdressers or best friends to air their issues and express their concerns. Those lucky enough to be in recovery from addiction may use sponsors and program friends as sounding boards. Rabbis, priests, ministers, shamans, godparents or other wise teachers might fit the bill.  Quite a few choose family members for guidance, such as mother, father, grandparent, sibling or even an adult offspring. Some turn to their children for guidance, and while many kids have wisdom beyond their years, it can be a burden to try to help a parent cope with life.

So if you don't need a therapist (been there, done that, have the t-shirt), and you don't have a sponsor, a spiritual adviser, or a family member you can trust to guide you wisely, utilizing a life guide can step into that place in your life. 

My experience providing guidance comes, in part, from many years of working as a psychologist. Now, what I offer guidance clients is not psychotherapy. When people contact me for guidance services but have mental or emotional disorders requiring treatment, I refer them to the American Psychological Association to get names of licensed psychologists in their geographical areas. Guidance is not about digging into the psyche or unearthing traumatic material to free someone from a cycle of dysfunctional behaviors. Guidance is about suggestion, feedback, and making and working towards goals, however small or large they may be. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog. I will be posting to it regularly in the days and weeks to come. Come visit my website at The Good Garden Life Guidance if you'd like to contact me.

Bloom where you are planted.