What are you Seeking – What do you Offer?

sylas-boesten-1253897-unsplash Photo by Sylas Boesten on Unsplash

My dog barks at the other dog. Strong but not ferocious.

‘Good girl!’ I confirm quietly as I give her a quick pet.

The other dog walker at 6 pm in the park doesn’t really get it. Actually seems insulted like I thought she was a security risk and needed to be intimidated. I was merely appreciating my dog following her protective instincts. I guess I am worth protecting:)

I do admit sometimes she can go overboard. Many of the dogs in our condo and neighbourhood are harmless. That is if you don’t take into account that they might not make it to the sidewalk and pee in the hallway from the elevator to the outside door. Still our Retriever is a fabulous family member and if she is known as a young woman with no fear of speaking her mind then I am totally on board with that!

That can make making friends problematic as other owners won’t want to coordinate play dates out of fear. Likewise for us two leggers, making the right friends is crucial.

Choosing a life partner is not easy.

That’s why knowing yourself to some deeper degree goes a long way towards to growing a sense of peace over time. Developing good habits makes life into an experience of proactive adventures (as opposed to reactive drama). Both of these, self knowledge and good habits, can attract or repel a potential mate.

So too can clarifying what you want. To be on the path of getting what you want in order to become what you want.

What 3 things do you seek in a relationship and what 3 things do you offer?
A simple tool that is reproducible for several aspects of your life.
‘Wait for, want, need, expect, look for’ are all different approaches to life. Some will yield better results than others.
When you ‘seek’ something you are being proactive. It is like pursuing or even hunting. It is more than searching because we can ‘do a quick Google search’ once and come up with nothing in relation to what we are looking for. Or if it is something you really want, you seek it out.
That’s why we are specifically using the word seek.
Seek is partnered with Offer. Offer because the other person has the option whether they think what you offer is what they seek. Is it the level they want to live at for the reasons they want to make their life decisions?

‘Let your standards do the hard work for you’. With Seek and Offer you have a simple tool at hand to help absorb life, extract meaning and move on.
What do you seek: 1. 2. 3. and what do you offer: 1. 2. 3.

The heart seeks the blood the venal system has to offer, discard the CO2, to then marry with oxygen and immediately turn around and offer the red arterial blood that the body seeks. We are just like the heart, this processor that learns what to seek and offer how, when, why.

In your relationships
seek – don’t settle; seek something else or someone else or the same thing a different way or with different people or in a different place
offer – what makes you happy to offer in a way that makes the receiver happy to receive.
Seek someone who wants to be loved and offers you love
Offer someone who wants to love and be loved
Seek to grow
Offer them the person that they will love 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now.

In your professional life
seek – recognition, teamwork, challenge
offer – feedback, support, creativity

In your partner life
seek – their best, what they mean, them in the stress
offer – my best, me in the moment, a future

in your community life (friends, family, neighbourhood)
seek – friendship, companionship, laughter
offer – help, service, difference

In yourself:
seek/offer: the answer to one’s complaints
seek/offer the willingness to be loved and the generosity to love
seek/offer humanity/humility

Soul life:
seek – meaning, peace, connection
offer – sincerity, continuance, responsibility

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Photo by Bence Balla-Schottner on Unsplash

Calm After The Storm

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Photo by Justin Novello on Unsplash

Everyone came out onto the street while the storm water was still flowing down to the sewer grates at the end of the block. We picked up the balls of hail, then looked for bigger ones.

Even when Paul Henderson scored the goal to beat those Russians in ’72 people, at least my neighbourhood, didn’t flood out onto the streets. Election Day – no one gets this excited.

The closest thing would be Halloween at 6:30 when the parents are taking the young ones to trick or treat and the street is a hive of activity – this 30 minutes is one of the best feelings of Halloween.

The storm was quick – 25 minutes from start to finish on a mid September afternoon around 6 pm. We were home from school and my dad was home from work but we hadn’t eaten. It got dark fast as if the storm had pulled down the window shade. The hail pelted the roof like a bully’s snowballs on the back of your head. Hard and relishing in their own nature.

I was scared. I was 10. I was still out of sorts when everyone slowly leaked out of their houses into the street, as if on cue in a sci-fi movie.
The air was super clean having been zapped by the biggest, closest lightning in years. So clean of the smog of the day, of the dust balls of neighbourhood history that parents and children chatted with cocktail party buzz.

That’s the spirit! After the storm to be full of life and community. Life has many a storm that we need to live through, even if we start it ourselves. What is being said here is who we are after the storm can be programmed in before the storm. If not, we may end up at the whim of the day. We can’t control the day but we can decide what we want for today, relationships and situations without micro-managing. Situations are meetings, conversations, jokes and disagreements…

Going into anything we need a game plan: marriage:), a new job, shopping. This can help to manage our energy, our emotions so we get more of what we want without being exhausted and unhappy. Because we are learning how to manage our energy (and why) we usually end up being our own worst enemy. Often we argue because we can’t find it in ourselves to agree or apologize or ask for clarity. If we can know how we want to be in this and the next moment, and communicate it, then we might be able to maintain calm before, during and after the storm.
When we argue we need to have something good to think about when we finish otherwise we can think stupid thoughts because we are in an angry place. Like going to the supermarket hungry, you buy to stuff to eat now and not to cook.
Like a negotiation – ask yourself what you want to walk out with. Also how do you want to walk out – happy, with dignity? Some negotiations can be really tough when you stand up for yourself or good things you are in service to.
Stress and the storms of life are inevitable and there are some of the best personal growth vitamins in actual fact. Personal Storm management is the basis for lots of personal and interpersonal well being plus providing a foundation for further growth.

The Healing Gap

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Healing and Treating doesn’t have to be an either/or situation.

Have you heard the story that the mother repeatedly brought her son to Gandhi to be healed from his eating a lot of sugar. On these visits the doctor reviewed the patient but gave no remedy or course of action which became frustrating for the mother. Finally on the last of many visits, Gandhi looks the boy in the eye and says directly and with compassion, ‘Stop eating sugar’. As the story goes the boy’s sugar eating problem disappeared in that moment. Leaving the office the mother looks over her shoulder to ask why it took so long. The doctor replies, ‘I had to stop eating sugar myself first before I could ask your son to do so.’

Is this story true?

The point is find out how to grow oneself and heal and be on the journey of one’s life that makes us responsible. Then we can look to see if there is a healing gap in our life or profession where technology or terminology usurps human contact and connection. What is a first step and if now is the time to take it?

Another report this week states that interns in hospitals are exhausted because they have long shift work over night.

12 – 24 hour shifts. A quick Google search shows that these reports come out every 2 years in the media locally.

Truck drivers are allowed a maximum of 13 hours in Canada. The reason for the limit is that they won’t have all their faculties to be aware of themselves and others.

A person, a young doctor may have the energy to want to help people and this can give them an extra boost so they do not notice the long day’s demands. They are fed by this sense of purpose and thrive on more opportunities to learn and get experience so they can be of use when a patient has a question or looks with worry and need at them – the doctor.

Photo by Zach Vessels on Unsplash

This need (of the patient), to be taken care of, to be healed, is an important aspect of people feeling good. Of being fixed, cured, ‘all better now’. It pulls energy from the doctor to the patient. Despite the abundance of advances in medical treatments and developments in medicine that have greatly minimized intrusion for surgeries and deaths or suffering due to various diseases, the need for healing will never diminish. That is ok, natural, to be expected. The need to be healed is human. Some people love healing and some of them become doctors. The healing capacity is a part of the doctor that needs to be present, active, trained and supported.

Long shifts at the hospital require energy. Healing requires energy. Both requirements of doctor energy need to be managed. How is that going these days in our state of the art medical centres?

There is a gap between treatment and healing.

That gap will be different in each doctor, dentist, massage therapist, nurse, psychologist.

Gaps in healing accompanying the treatment will be created and impacted for a variety of reasons. Reasons like culture of the person, the culture of the workplace or industry, confidence of the person in themselves as a medical professional, level of personal development, understanding of healing, physical health, emotional health, relationship health, financial and spiritual well being, training, education and mission in life.

It makes sense there is a gap because the machines and chemicals we insert into the medical process between doctor and patient for getting us back to health. You could say, pills and devices work on the physical while healing takes on the person occupying the body.

Do we know the gap exists?

Do we think it is bad and there is someone to blame for it?

Can it be addressed in medical school curriculum or does it have to be on an individual basis?

Is it relevant in our new moment of virtual medicine and AI.

The gap is inevitable with the growth of technology and maybe not a bad thing at certain times to have a distance between the doctor and patient as long as the patient is directed along a healing path because the gap made them more proactive about their own health.

The gap could be necessary for geographical reasons, money, health of the doctor etc.

Photo by Ramdan Authentic on Unsplash

The efficacy of placebos tells us we can heal ourselves with the power of the human mind and emotion so why do we dump that responsibility onto the doctor?

Identifying and dealing with the healing gap is not a blame game but a call to responsibility and actions and learning and community.

Big Pharma is not evil in its existence but their ways are the equivalent of the fertilizer/seed conglomerates in the agricultural sector by using a business model that destroys, quite often, growth.

So what can be in done in the face of billion dollar government health budgets, massive profit seeking companies plus a mix of sincere health professionals and self satisfying business people?

Heal.

Healing is a power that responds in the moment of the injury or sickness. Healing is already happening before we even know it.

Healing power is there for doctors to connect to. Therefore to be able to manage their own energy without reducing their role in the healing process.

Healing is fast – can we catch up with it?

Healing is precise – do we know when it is to start and finish?

Healing is to be understood for its many facets or expressions and the human acts it can permeate .

What else?