What are your three greatest concerns today?

Hi, Steve Barnes here with Life Writing Live. Hopefully I've been able to keep my word and do this more often over the last couple of weeks. And in this time of stress, when so many of us have shut in, I think that that's something that I want to keep doing. One of the things that I wanted to do is to create a theme this week, and this theme this week is challenge. I'm hoping that all of you are dealing with things effectively and efficiently, that you're able to embrace, live or virtually the people that you love, but also to pursue the things that you need to do in this time. There are certain options about the outside world that are not available, but dealing with the inside world is always available. We can always work on ourselves. And it's that line about, if I had all day to chop down trees, I'd spend the first half of the day sharpening my axe. You are the axe. You are the instrument that does that, performs. So by working on yourself in this time, you are guaranteeing that when there are additional options available to you, you'll be able to embrace them and deal with them with a maximum of care, with a maximum of efficiency. So I asked this question, I asked a very serious question. What are the three top challenges to you right now? And one of my readers said the following said, learning coping strategies to manage PTSD resulting from repeated sexual abuse as a child. Two, managing food and its connection to feelings in a healthy manner and treat diabetes. And three, not giving in to suicidal ideation. In case you had any doubt whatsoever, these are very serious times. People are dealing with really serious stress, and that stress, in too many cases is becoming strained. So if you can deal with your own issues, it's going to be easier for you to. You know, when people say to you, help, I need help, you'll be able to say, well, this is how I dealt with it. This is what I have heard. Let's look into this together. This is a time where we need leaders. We need people who have dealt with or dealing with their own problems, dealing with their own issues, and are therefore capable of reaching out to others and saying, this works. That's what people are looking for, someone who can honestly say, this works. So let's take a look. If we're dealing with challenges this week, then let's deal with the first step in the magic formula, which is mapping and modeling. So let's take a look at these three things and how that would apply. So the first one is learning coping strategies to manage PTSD resulting from sexual Abuse, repeated sexual abuse as a child, okay, everybody has been through abusive, neglectful situations. But it is reasonable to assume that the closer the map, the closer the model you can find, the more efficient and effective it's going to be. So I can talk about generalized stress. If this person were to come to me and say, what did you do? I could recommend the five minute miracle every hour to three hours, stopping for 60 seconds in deep, doing deep diaphragmatic belly breathing. That can have a fantastic effect. But the truth is you might also want to look specifically for people who've dealt with this specific issue and are on the other side of it, so that they are now reaching back and offering help. So this is one of those Google is your friend situations dealing with PTSD, dealing with sexual abuse issues. In 10 minutes, you can find a dozen websites that are addressing this and by reading through them, if this was an issue in my life, I would be researching this every day. I would read one new article every day, listen to one new video, watch one new video on YouTube every day that is dealing with this until I find someone who seems to be speaking my language. And that's the critical thing, that, that the problem has to be similar enough to your problem that you can learn from what this person is going to suggest. And their answers have to be close enough to what you would like to accomplish in your own life that you can say to yourself, yeah, I would like that result. They started approximately where I started. They've ended up in a place that I would like to be on the other side of these issues. And you might even say to yourself, I would like to be in that position and be able to turn around and help other people. So when you look, you're going to want to look for three different things. Their belief systems, their mental syntax, their use of physiology. Now, what that means is their belief systems. Okay, what do they believe about the situation? What do they believe about the actions they can take to stop the situation, to heal the situation? Okay, your beliefs will determine your perceptual filters. If a person has been abused and they think and they believe I am broken, that's going to be a very different person than a person whose belief is, I am strong enough to survive this and I'm going to learn and I'm going to fight. I'm going to teach other people how to thrive in spite of this problem. The person who believes that they can cope with it is going to take different actions over time than the person who just feels like this means that they're crushed. So that's the first thing too, is to identify what the beliefs are. The second, belief systems, mental syntax. The next thing is their specific recipe. In what order do they do things, what are the things they do, and in what order do they do them? They might say, well, I do a daily ritual. I wake up every morning, I envision this, I sit up, I do this, I get out of bed, I do this. If you scramble that order, and so first you get out of bed, it's too late to say. And also while I'm in bed waking up, I imagine certain things using the hypnagogic state, that state halfway between sleep and waking. So oftentimes the things that people do have to be done in a particular sequence. So by listening to people first learning, looking for their beliefs and then looking for the order in which they do things. So the third thing maybe should have been the second thing, that syntax thing again. Belief systems, mental syntax, use of physiology. What do they do? How do they use their bodies? If you were to look at that, at what behaviors they do, because any behaviors are going to be external using your body, maybe you want to identify what those behaviors are before you look at the order in which they do them. So maybe it should be belief systems, behaviors and syntax. So what are they doing, what do they believe about it, what do they think and feel, what are they doing, and in what order do they do these things? You learn those three things and you can get the same results that other people get. The idea being that if you follow somebody around in a kitchen for one day to the degree that you can imitate their actions, you can learn how to bake a cake. It took them years to learn how to bake in a single day just by looking at the order in which they do them and the resources that they use. So that's the first thing. I would start by doing a Google search for PTSD and surviving sexual abuse so that you can talk to people who are either experts on this thing or have actually experienced this thing and have come out the other side of it, joyful, healthy human beings looking to share their wisdom with you. So the second thing deals with managing food, food and emotion. Food does not equal emotion, does not equal love, does not stop. In other words, not eating to satisfy the emotions, to eat in a healthy manner. To manage diabetes, again, I would look at the same question. There are lots of people out there who are dealing with diabetes, and many of these people have learned how to manage it or are dealing with it in healthy ways. The notion that food equals love or food can be a palliative, that if you're feeling depressed, if you're feeling unhappy, if you're feeling angry or whatever, or lonely, you can eat. So what you want to look for is alternatives to that. What people have survived this situation, have thrived in this situation, have overcome this situation. Look for them. You can barely think of a human issue that someone has not overcome. If you start studying the people who have overcome the issues, look on YouTube, use Google. There are books and articles and audios. There's so many different resources. Find one of them. Find one of those resources and use it. Experiment with it. Find the things that work. For instance, if you need to change your mood, if you've been using food to change your mood, find other means of changing your mood. Your mood, your emotions are controlled by three things. What you think about, what you focus on mentally, the way you use your body and the language that you use. So maybe every hour we talked about the five minute miracle. Maybe every hour you're standing up and stretching and deliberately putting a smile on your face so that you are starting to deal with your emotions in a healthier way. Now food is no longer medication. You can start separating the food that you eat for nutrients from the food that you eat or the things that you do to adjust your mood. Those things need to be in separate piles. You want to be happy, you want to stop using food to do that. If the dietary patterns, eating patterns are hurting your body, that's the diabetes long term happiness would suggest. How else can I be happy? And how can I eat in a way that does not conflict with my goals of being happy? Who has dealt with this situation? Once again, what is the roadmap? Who has dealt with this? Who has dealt with diabetes and food? Who has dealt with eating disorders and emotions? Look for those people, find out what they say. Find someone who seems to be speaking your language, who has been through what you have been through. Look for their belief systems, their behaviors and their syntax. Do that. And the third thing is not giving in to suicidal ideation. Deep depression. Deep depression is basically fear where it feels like there is nowhere to run and nothing to fight. And right now we are dealing with that. A lot of people feel this way. What do people dealing with suicidal ideation do? They find ways of feeling that life has hope, life has joy, life has meaning. They reach out and tell people, listen, I need to talk. They feel isolated. They use zoom, they use Skype, they use Facebook messenger, video. They talk to people. Look at them, they find someone they can pour out their hearts to. What is the easiest way of establishing this kind of connection? Offer it to someone else. Look for somebody you can help, help other people. It is the fastest way of achieving the kind of rapport such that one day you'll be able to say, listen, I could use a quick conversation. Can you please talk to me? I'm having problems. But once again, if you don't have that resource, then you need to have that resource within you. You need to find someone who has had suicidal ideation and gotten out of it and read enough different people who have been successful at this that you find someone whose approach appeals to you. When you find that, then you look for what do they believe about life and death, what behaviors did they use and in what order did they do these things? Don't trust me if I have not been through it. I have to generalize from other things and I can be as sincere as I want to, but I cannot speak to you the way someone who's actually been through it can speak to you. Short today. Just wanted to give you resources, give you some ideas about how to move forward. If you want more information about the five minute miracle, then please go to www.diamondhour.com. there's a lecture there for you specifically on that. But other than that, please love yourself, take care of yourself and tomorrow we'll be talking about challenge from the position of taking constant action. You take care and this is Steve Barnes. If you like this talk, please share it. Take care, love somebody, maybe even yourself. Bye bye.