The bills aren't all getting paid.  The love affair has turned into a nightmare. You have twenty million things on your to-do list, a friend or family member has developed a challenging illness, your car won't run right unless you purchase a brand spanking new thingamaboberator. When WILL things lighten up?

When one exasperating challenge piles on top of another or challenges drag on and on and on, most people find it hard to keep cheery when things are looking dreary. Long term stress creates a lot of wear and tear on the system, so it's no surprise if your energy and sense of well being might dip a bit when the going gets rough.  It helps to have some strategies in place to help cope with long term stress. Here are a few of my favorite ways to stay centered when life is a bit off kilter:

Take One Step at a Time.

One of the fastest ways to make yourself crazy is to try to hold all of it at once.  When we view all of our troubles from a global perspective it's really easy to get overwhelmed. It's super important to just try to deal with what is in front you at the moment. If there are things you can do about the situation, prioritize what to do when, and steadily do what you can to make the situation better. Do your best to step back and trust that everything will work out as it should be. Don't keep trying to problem solve while you are doing other things.

Don't Over Think.

Over thinking will not solve your problems. It will just dig you into a negative rut faster. Do what you can, and release the rest. Practicing non-attachment to outcome can help reduce emotional stress. When you aren't able to practice non-attachment to outcome, at the very least try to give that outcome over to the Divine. Sometimes that's the only thing we CAN do. If you find yourself in tape running mode, try bringing your attention back to the breath or to your heart. Do some sort of physical movement so you can move your energy and awareness back down into your body to help release you from that mental swirl.

Slow Down, Cowboy.

"Ackkk! There is so much to do! Maybe if I race around doing everything, I can stay on top of it!" Sometimes, when the going gets rough the tough kick it into high gear. While this may get more done, it can also be more of a drain on your energetic systems. Be sure to stop and do nothing from time to time. Stop what you are doing.  Don't think about it for a little bit and just breathe. Be sure you are getting good rest at night so you are having some potent recharge time as well. It's a lot easier to stay emotionally balanced if you are rested and take time to re-charge.

Do Good Self Care.

When life is challenging, it's time to do more self care, not less.  Exercise; eat well drink a lot of water, rest. We know things are a good idea, but why aren't we doing them?  If you find you are not doing proper self care, you might want to ask yourself why. Are you punishing yourself? Is the care of your body and soul a lower priority for you than what is going on? What is it?  Maybe it's time for a perspective overhaul. How can you put yourself back near or on the top of your priority list?

Meditate.

One of the best things you can do to recharge is to take some time to meditate. If you don't have a set way to meditate, you might just focus on the sensation of breathing, or on one word, like "peace" or "love." Use any word that helps you to connect with the state that would most help you. When you say it, bring it forward in your emotional state as well. It's more than a word. It's medicine. Meditation is an opportunity to reconnect with experiencing yourself as a human being instead of a human doing. For some, it can seem as though nothing is happening. I like what living saint Ammachi has to say about this. "Meditation is like flying in an airplane. It can seem as though nothing is happening, but you are moving along very quickly."  There are more benefits going on than can be easily discerned.

Get Help.

If you are feeling over wrought physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually, don't feel as though you have to carry it all alone. Allow friends or family to help you or seek professional help. Sometimes trying to be brave and manage it all yourself is a silly idea. We are tribal beings. Reaching out when things get overwhelming can be a big help. Just knowing your not alone is a great comfort.  

Change Your Perspective.

Sometimes just getting outside or taking a little vacation can do a lot to help you get a bit of perspective. Yes, it may FEEL like the world is falling down around your ears, but likely, this is just a phase you are going through. This too will pass. You have made it through challenges before. You can make it through this too. I believe you have all the resources you need with to weather this storm as well. Trust yourself, trust the process and let it all pass through you.

If you would like to learn more about how you can become more centered in your truth and be clearer and freer no matter what is going on around you, my energetic clearing course can help.

Sylvia Brallier

What we resist persists. Enjoy this funny video where Sylvia talks about how aversion tends to make us manifest things we don't actually want into our lives.

Do you throw it around? Do you hide it away? Is your anger appropriate?  In this addition of How to Stay Cool When Things Get Hot, personal growth catalyst Sylvia Brallier shares what appropriate anger might look like, and you even might get a few laughs along the way.

These days, the self help world says, "Think positive and everything in your life will turn out simply rosey."  Positive thought is definitely a step in the right direction. However, it's just one step, not the whole journey to creating the life you want. Until you transform what is held in the deep unconscious as well as your conscious thoughts, life will generally give you more of what it's been dishing up thus far.

So how can you shift what is held in the deeper recesses of your psyche?
The subconscious mind does not respond to logic. You can't tell your subconscious what to do. Positive actions and emotions definitely help, but if your psyche believes something like "Success is hard to achieve", "Love never comes my way," "Life is a struggle," or some other negative belief about reality, it will require more than just thinking positive to get that miraculous shift you are after. Likely, it will also mean shifting your relationship to those things that have shaped the very fundament of who you are based on what has happened to you. One of the most effective ways to reach into the depths of the psyche and transform how your beliefs are held is through the vehicle of trance.

The subconscious mind is like a remarkable library of everything that has ever happened to you and everything you've felt and thought. It doesn't choose which thoughts are "right" or "wrong"...it just accepts everything as real, no matter what the logical mind thinks about it.

We are profoundly affected by events in our lives. We can't change what happened to us, but we can change our relationship to those events and what we think and feel about them. In order for those changes to occur, the change has to be more than skin deep. We not only need to think differently, but we must feel differently as well. Einstein once said, "Knowledge is experience, everything else is just information." By creating a living experience, we connect with the deep psyche, and in so doing we can rewrite the code of our life.

The great news is, a lot of the most effective techniques look and feel suspiciously like playing, and not very much like work at all. Over the years I have developed a number of body centered transformational methods that bring about these core shifts to fruition via living experiences using hypnotherapy combined with shamanic healing practices. The results are astounding. Some of the methods involve breath, some are dance or movement oriented. Some use singing or chanting to change things up, while others involve actively engaging your imagination.

Trance states are similar to meditation. We are constantly dropping in and out of trance. For example, have you ever been driving somewhere and find you are at your destination without remember much of the drive? That is a form of trance. Some of these trance states can be restful and helpful, and some are more like psychically "checking out." What makes trance states effective for transformation is a form of trance work that directs the flow of consciousness to a specific intent. This can be done on one's own, but it is much easier to stay on track when the experience is being guided by a skilled shaman or hypnotherapist. When that trance state is directed towards a transformational goal, people can achieve physical and emotional healing, mental peace and deep spiritual awakening with almost no effort.

Trance is one of the main techniques both traditional and modern shamanic practitioners use to acquire information and produce profound healing of body, mind, and spirit. As they say, there is nothing new under the sun. What worked for our ancestors still works today. By applying both spiritual awareness and a bit of psychological know how, we can transform our consciousness, and thus change our lives for the better.

On August 29th and 30th I'll be offering an experiential workshop on Trance and Transformation in Massachusetts. In it, we'll be working with shamanic and hypnotherapeutic approaches to trance and transformation. Gonna be amazing! You can learn more about it here: http://bit.ly/ZBVG3