The Anne Report, Making Friends With Money, reminds us that money can be our friend, and help us live a life we love. The Main article, Dealing With Depression, provides some ways to overcome depression and the hurts in life, so you can enjoy a healthier, happier life. The Healthy Living article, Tips for Warming Up a Cold, gives some helpful tips for sending a cold on its way.The Anne Talk is Relationships. The Featured Product This Month highlights Anne's second book, EZosophy: The art of EZ or at Least EZier Living. Click to read What is EZosophy?

The EZ Mantra: "Everything can be EZ or at least EZier." -- Anne Sermons Gillis

Living EZosophy, February 6, 2017
Published Weekly on Tuesday Mornings

Phone: 281-419-1775
Email: anne@annegillis.com

Anne's Websites:

  The Anne Report

Making Friends With Money

Dear ,

I've had a quiet week at home. I started a new yoga class. The weather flitted around like a fickle lover. I keep playing with the idea of getting my next book started, but at this point it's a game in my head. "When will I start my next book?" The whole thing smells like procrastination. My friend spent two months lying on the couch and watching TV. She then hopped up and started a new life. She was energized to move again. Maybe some forms of procrastination are simply us following a natural rhythm that we don't realize exists.

Back to the book thing. Maybe I am procrastinating and I'm using her story as an excuse. My next book is about developing a healthy relationship with money. I'm probably afraid of disapproval. Yes, many of my friends are super supportive of my contributions to money well-being, but I have heard strong disapproval from some of my spiritual friends. Some people are averse to what is now called The Prosperity Gospel, as taught by some Christians. That's the idea that God doles out financial favors and we must earn them. I call that the Santa Claus God. I see prosperity as our natural state. However, our negative thoughts and beliefs about money can interfere with our experiencing that natural state.

There are many people who think money talk is crass and unspiritual, but most of the people I meet who think this way have plenty of money. People who fall through the financial cracks need a path of restoration, and a knowing that everything is going to be okay. People who have plenty of money, yet still worry about money, are a part of my target audience. People need to understand that money worry is an addiction, and it's not so easy to shake the addiction.

Even though I haven't started putting my book together, I have started the process of dealing with money matters on the Facebook page, Abundance Affirmations. I'm putting up mimes and videos about healing our money wounds. (Here's my latest video on money: The Money Doctor.)

When I was younger, and lived on the miracle standard plan, I told the universe that if I ever got this money thing figured out, I'd share with others. I don't have it figured out, but I do understand that money issues plague our world. Fear around money creates greed and power grabs, and part of my job on earth is to heal the fear. One thing I'm sure of: the less we worry about money, the EZier our lives become. And that's it for the Anne Report.

Anne

  Main Article

Dealing With Depression

I respect anti-depressant drugs, and I've worked with people who benefited from using them. But I've also seen them offer little or no help, or the drug worked initially, but quickly lost its effectiveness. When I underwent menopause, I experienced depression and hopelessness first hand. I tried everything, and finally went to a sympathetic doctor who prescribed a mild antidepressant. It worked for a couple of months, but there were side effects. The most noticeable effect: my creativity plummeted. I could barely write, and couldn't rhyme anything. I normally would make up silly, rhyming thoughts on the fly, but the anti-depressant shut that part of me down. It was a part I couldn't live without.

There had to be a better way. So I weaned myself off the antidepressants. Maybe our hormones do get out of whack and our body chemistry gets off, but, in general, when not talking about severe mental health problems, there's usually a sense of helplessness and hopelessness that brings about depression. We can have situational depression because of a current situation, such as a loss or living in an area that gets little sunshine, or we can have chronic depression, that stems from unresolved childhood emotional trauma.

Love restores everything, but it invites us to take an active part in the renewal and restoration of our lives. When we have deep, unresolved issues, they often grow into hopelessness, helplessness, despair, depression, or anxiety. Good has always been with us, even in the darkest moments, but until we claim restoration, we are stuck in the past.

When I find myself feeling depressed or anxious, I go to work on myself. I know that there are situations and antiquated decisions and wounds holding me back, and I deal with them.

The following steps can be helpful, healing, and restorative if you are dealing with depression or anxiety:

• List the five most upsetting things that have ever happened to you: for example, betrayal, sexual molestation, or rape, physical abuse, loss of a parent, major illness, or divorce. The early childhood traumas usually have the most effect. They include things like neglect, parents being emotionally dead, and therefore not present with us. Their bodies may have been there, but their focus was elsewhere.
• Write one page about each situation: that includes what you lost, how you wished things had gone, and how this situation haunts your current life. Include any resentments or upset you might feel about the situation. Address these questions during your introspection. What did I decide because of this event? Am I perpetuating this event or experience by abusing others the way that I was abused or by imitating other parental behaviors? (The first two steps could take days or even weeks to complete.)
• Find a friend, counselor, loved one, or sponsor to listen to you. It should not be someone on the list, nor your parent. Approach them and ask, "Will you listen to me. I need to share some things with someone who will not judge me or try to fix the situation or the way I look at it. I just need to get it out. This is emotional surgery. Can you be a bystander in the operating room? I will be the patient and my higher power will be the surgeon. I want to heal my past." When you find someone who allows you a safe space to speak, share your findings with him or her. You don't have to fix anything. Just share. You don't have to read everything, just share the highlights. After you share, ask them to tell you this, "It was not your fault. This was about them, not you. You are innocent, and you have the power to never again let anyone hurt you like this." Imbibe this, and when you are ready to move on, thank your friend for listening.

At the request of an HMO, Dr. Vincent Felitti studied overweight people. He found that when a person sustained childhood trauma, the likelihood of their being depressed exploded when the abuse or trauma was severe. They were 3,100 times more likely to be suicidal, depressed, chemically addicted, or overweight. Fifty-five percent of the overweight people who completed his questionnaire were sexually molested during childhood. He helped several people lose a significant amount of weight, but, at a certain point, they all started overeating and regaining weight. He discovered the reason: the weight served as protection, so they would be sexually unattractive. He asked the HMO doctors, working with patients who were overweight, to ask about childhood trauma in their initial intake. If they indicated they had trauma, the doctor would ask if they would like to talk about their trauma, and if they would, the doctor took uninterrupted time to listen to them. The people who lost weight, but were able to voice their stories, were much more able to maintain their weight loss than the patients who just lost the weight, but did not choose to talk about their trauma.

Our good cannot be restored unless we release past upsets, traumas, betrayals, and tragedies. This is called doing the work. Sometimes it involves working through problems that we had with our parents. Often people don't like to be disloyal to their parents, so they are unwilling to look at the pain caused by their parents. It is important to acknowledge things our parents did that hurt us, even though it may have been unintentional. A parent could run over a child with the family car and the parent would be innocent, but the child still would have been hurt. There are many things in our lives that were done to us unintentionally, but we were still hurt. We must acknowledge these and work through them so that they will no longer trip us up in our current lives. We cannot go forward, when we live backward.

The above suggestions are for when we are stuck, depressed, or anxious. When we are happy, we need to celebrate, not work on ourselves. When we are in a bad space, it's best to work through it, rather than living in denial or numbing the pain with addictions. When we focus on love, it will eventually heal us, but when we help remove the obstacles, love works inestimably faster. You may not need to do an extensive inventory like the one I've suggested. Sometimes just a few good questions can take us out of a situational funk, but sometimes in our lives, we have to face the pain, and when we do, our lives become EZier and EZier.

Anne

  Quotes

Anne Quotes

"The eastern trinitarian concept highlights construction or creation, sustaining life, and destruction or tearing down. Brahma creates, Vishnu sustains, and Shiva destroys. What does your mind keep tabs on? Is it the constructive or the destructive nature? Are you mentally affixed to the negative side of Shiva's nature? Life is always falling apart. That's the Shiva nature, but focusing on that aspect alone will bring despair. Things need to fall apart, but watching the fall may not be the best use of your time!"

"Cameras capture the panorama. Minds capture the drama-rama."

"The egoic mind is bossy, reactive, controlling. Below is the expanded mind - wise, expansive intelligence. Look there - look now - look often."

"If there's only one path, it's probably the one to take."

  Shareables from Anne

The World's Best Weight Loss Secret

Thought Freedom

40 Days to Abundance

  Featured Product This Month

At last, the reprint of EZosophy: The art of EZ or at Least EZier Living, is out. If you've been wanting an EZier life, this book provides a clear path toward EZ.

EZosophy:The Art and Wisdom of Easy or At Least Easier Living is a simple philosophy that radically changes lives. It is a book for the spiritually-based reader who no longer values the ego driven struggle of contemporary life.

EZosophy will help readers:

• Give up Hard Attacks. Hardaholic no more.
• Drop the drama.
• Make your life EZier. Ease is not indolence. Rather, ease is the art of accomplishment without struggle.
• Learn to identify ego driven suffering (EDS).

Click here to learn more about Anne's book, EZosophy.

  What is EZosophy?

Click the graphic above to learn about EZosophy.

NOTE: If you are viewing this on a cell phone, be sure to scroll to the right to see the other column.

  Healthy Living

Tips for Warming Up a Cold

It's cold and flu season. I believe in mind over body, but I take precautions, because I know my mind is malleable, and when I'm tired or stressed out, I am apt to get sick. Recently, after spending time in North and South Carolina, and watching my grand twins come down with a cold, my throat was scratchy. I could feel myself losing energy, and it wasn't the vapors; I was courting a cold. I went to work, and returned to health. Here's what I recommend when you feel a cold coming on. (This is not intended as medical advice. Please see your doctor for that.)

• Drink plenty of hot liquids. Give up your cold drinks for now. The body seeks warmth. One of my favorites is one squeezed lime with herbal tea and sweetener. Try stevia or real maple syrup. It's yummy. My favorite is blueberry.

• Stay warm. The body uses heat to fight infection. Put on those wool socks and sit by the fire. Even though I don't have a wood-burning fireplace, I enjoy my gas fire. Some health advocates think that sitting with the fire is an act of healing. We are said to be made from earth, air, fire, and water. All these elements play a unique role in our health.

• Don't be a fever phobic. Treat the body, not the number. A fever is the body's way of killing bacteria and viruses. When we treat the fever, the body thinks the bacteria has receded, but when the medication wears off, the fever has more work to do. It will usually come back higher than before. Fevers may make us feel bad, but to suppress them, is a poor choice. It takes a fever of 108 degrees to do brain damage. This rarely occurs. I once had a fever of 106 degrees. My husband had a fit for me to see an MD. I went to my chiropractor. He told me to take a hot shower, get in bed, cover up to stay very warm, and turn on the overhead fan. He said my body was working to heat me up, so why not help it out. I followed his advice and did some emotional clearing work (it was heavy work). I was completely well in less than 24 hours.

• Get plenty of rest and avoid stress. Watch some sitcoms and laugh.

• Take vitamin C. I take 1000 mg several times a day.

• Do The Lion's Posture several times a day when coming down with something. Stick your tongue out as far as possible and then clench the back of the throat. It brings oxygen to the throat and kills unhealthy bacteria. It is truly amazing and will fix a sore or scratchy throat right up.

If you have any healthy living tips for the newsletter, send them to me at anne@annegillis.com.

  Anne Talks

Relationships

In this short video, Anne provides some helpful insights on the importance of  Relationships in our lives. Time: 4:27

  Anne Art

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  Anne's Schedule

All times here are Central Time
unless otherwise specified.

Sunday, February 11, 2018
11:00 AM, "Synchronicity"
Unity of Brazosport
507 S. Brooks St. (Hwy 36)
Brazoria, TX 77422