Tag: mental-health

Posted in Family, Faith and Fitness

Create your own joy

Posted on by Lucretia Cahill

Lenten Reflections #22

Every day, I see kids shine, as children do.

Today, in particular, I saw two first-grade girls riding tricycles slowly around the playground, chatting like senior citizens on a Sunday drive. Then, a group of boys dribbled a soccer ball past them, heading toward the goal and yelling at each other to pass and shoot. Finally, I glanced over to a corner of the playground and saw a few girls digging in the dirt, laughing. To all of these kids, it was just another recess, but to me, it was extraordinary to watch the simplicity of how they manifested their happiness.

With my stellar computing skills, I broke it down to a basic equation:

FRIENDSHIP + PLAY = JOY

What I learned…AND Quotes on joy–

So, if we stick to the simple things in life like connections, kindness, time, and play, we will be that much closer to the joy we all seek. Better head out to the playground.

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.
When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”
-The Buddha (Dhammapada)

“Sadly, many of the things that undermine our joy and happiness we create ourselves. Often it comes from the negative tendencies of the mind, emotional reactivity, or from our inability to appreciate and utilize the resources that exist within us. The suffering from a natural disaster we cannot control, but the suffering from our daily disasters we can. We create most of our suffering, so it should be logical that we also have the ability to create more joy. It simply depends on the attitudes, the perspectives, and the reactions we bring to situations and to our relationships with other people.”  –Dalai Lama

Here’s to Another Good Day!

Thanks for joining me,

Lucretia

Posted in Family, Faith and Fitness

Do we get do-overs for our bad reactions?

Posted on by Lucretia Cahill

Lenten Reflections #16

CBS News had a story about a girls’ high school basketball coach in Northville, NY this evening. During their last game, the coach who appeared angry at the time, reached out and yanked the ponytail of one of his best players who was visibly sad about their loss. Following this he appeared “to berate her following an emotional loss” at which point another teammate stood up to the coach, in support of the girl.

The school district fired the coach. The regretful coach said he apologized and wished he had those moments to do over again.

I thought about this horrible situation and wondered why we have knee-jerk reactions like the NY coach did, and how we can control our responses. Here are five tips on how to react without a ponytail tug:

  1. Know your triggers – listen to your emotions and know what makes you nuts
  2. Don’t be too judgy – once we make judgments, these become permanent triggers – uh oh
  3. Understand your emotions – know yourself, will you fight, flee, or freeze?
  4. Avoid emotion suppression – this is super unhealthy…embrace your feelings
  5. Make plans NOT TO REACT – be positive and respond with good intentions and respect

What I learned:

As I read further about this NY coach, I discovered his son was also a girls’ basketball coach, the player who defended her teammate was the coach’s great-niece, his wife had died from cancer the previous season, and the reason he started coaching again after his retirement was that his wife thought it would be good to keep him occupied during her illness.

Was he wrong? Yes. Did his emotions dictate his reactions? Yes. Did he regret it? Yes. Have we all been in similar situations? Yes.

Does he get a do-over? Nope.

Did the girl deserve it? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Emotions are drivers to our reactions. My initial reaction to reading this story was anger which turned to saddness and then compassion. I’ll pray for all of them.

Here’s to Another Good Day, especially since the Pope was released from the hospital.

Thanks for joining me,

Lucretia

Posted in Family, Faith and Fitness

What lies under our piles of worry?

Posted on by Lucretia Cahill

(Spoiler Alert: It’s Love)

40 Reflections – #11:  40 days of raw recollections during the Lenten Season

Lately, I’ve been worrying about stuff. Mom stuff, kid stuff, work stuff, parent stuff. As a cock-eyed optimist, I try to focus on only worrying about 8-10 things at once. It’s not easy when my mind spins like a kid on a Ferris wheel who just ate 3 funnel cakes. A little joyful a little nauseous. I worry about retirement, Medicaid, cholesterol, my parents, taxes, heaven, hell, you name it. A new worry is what if it’s my time to go and God is in a cranky mood and brings up that trigonometry test I may or may not have cheated on and still got a C?

At work, first graders are constantly worried about equal turns, cheating, and name-calling and think if they holler “It’s not fair!” all things will go their way. Maybe if we voiced our qualms like kids and yelled our fears into a megaphone the world would nod aggressively in agreement, give a thumbs up, and you’ll say “Aha! I knew I wasn’t alone!”

What I learned:

Worries are valid, but after all the worrying, you move forward, listen to John Lennon sing about everything being okay in the end, take one step, then another, and breathe. You slow down.

You find that when the wall of worry falls brick by brick, underneath it all sat love waiting patiently…and you saved it from being smothered.

Ending with a favorite…

Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, is not pompous,
it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own
interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood
over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but
rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 12:31-13:8a

Here’s to Another Good Day.

Thanks for joining me,

Lucretia