The Anne Report brings you up to date with Anne’s latest activities. The Main article, Three Ways to Handle Life’s Upsets, provides some practical ways to handle some of life's challenges. The Healthy Living article, The Art of Letting Go, provides some simple, practical tips for making life EZier. In the Anne Talk, Free to Be Me, Anne reminds us that we should give ourselves permission to be ourselves. In today’s Dr. Money’s Prosperity Video, We Got This Lack Mentality From our Ancestors, Anne reminds us that although we may have inherited lack thoughts and feelings from our relatives, we can deliberately choose to break that cycle of fear and lack. The Featured Product This Month highlights Anne’s 5 Books. Click to read What is EZosophy? Click to join Abundance Affirmations. Click for Shareables From Anne.

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

Living EZosophy, August 27, 2019
Published Weekly on Tuesday Mornings

Phone: 713.922.0242
Email: anne@annegillis.com

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  The Anne Report

The Anne Report

Dear ,

Welcome to Florida. We’ve had a great time with our grandchildren, and we are finishing off our trip with a two-day visit to Destin. I am still relishing in the cuteness of my grandchildren. Thomas: “Grandmama, did you know that the biggest dog in the whole wide world is the Great Bane?” Did you know that Africa is the city with the mostest animals?” “Are there a lot of people in court?” He asks this as we are riding to the beach. “Court? What do you mean?” I replied. “The place people go when they did something wrong?” Me, “Sometimes the court might be full and sometimes there may not be a lot of people.” Thomas, “Where are the people who take the money?” Me. “Do you mean a clerk, a cashier?” “No, the people who take the money.” Me, “Do you mean robbers, thieves?” Thomas, “Yes, I’m going to call them thieves.” And the conversation goes on like this for days.

We are headed home. After all the trips from Houston to Charleston, it just dawned on me that stopping in Florida for a couple of days is a great idea. It’s only a few miles out of the way. The emerald coast is captivating. I’m in heaven when I’m around clear saltwater.

This morning I drew a card from an A Course in Love deck. It read, “Your judgments have never made the world a better place.” I’ve been using it all day as a reminder. Just passing it along. And that’s it for the Anne Report.

  Main Article

Three Ways to Handle Life’s Upsets

Last week I presented a training on self-esteem. Raising our self-esteem is an important part of growing into a happy person. Our self-esteem isn’t set at one point. It goes up and down, depending on the situation. The 12-step program has popularized the HALT theory. It means that when we are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, we are not at our best. Even when we’ve healed most of our emotional wounds, there are many situations that trigger us into our past experiences of feeling like a failure, of not being enough, or of feeling guilty.

When our wounds overshadow our ability to be present to life, it’s time to go to work. Recently I was triggered by an event. I felt like I had a vacuum cleaner sucking all the good out of my heart. I did everything I could think of to get past the fire of upset. Nothing worked. I know from experience that when I can’t get past an uncomfortable feeling, I need to relax. I remind myself that the feelings will pass in time. So, it came to pass that I was chained to this hole in my gut, and humbly I accepted my plight. I knew I could wait it out. There was an inside trust. I trusted that the upset that was coloring my life’s perception would dissipate.

On impulse, I called my friend, hoping she had returned from her cruise. I wasn’t calling to discuss my feelings, I only wanted to catch up. I dialed her number and she answered. I was eager to hear about the Alaskan waters, the cruise ship; I awaited the juicy details. She spoke of the delicious food, the perfect weather, and her voyage. Even though I had not called to discuss the sucking hole, the topic slipped into the conversation when we started talking about our current emotional landscapes. She provided an account of two events that occurred on her cruise and I talked about my befriended sucking hole. She listened and said, “I am sorry you got triggered.” We spoke a while longer and eventually ended our conversation. I futzed around a bit, making lunch for my two five-year-old grands, when suddenly I noticed that the hole was gone. My emotions felt fine. The hole was now holy. Success. My experience probably follows the tend and befriend model.

Everyone knows how changeable our weather is. There’s a saying, “If you don’t like the weather, stick around; it will change. Our emotions are like that too; if we can stick with them, without resistance, they will change. Getting to this space is a part of our maturation process. When we understand that our despair will ultimately repair itself, we can weather the emotional storms of life.

Learning to deal with our emotions is an integral part of growing up. Many people never learn to handle their emotions. They are called adult children. They either shut down who they are and sentence themselves to life in prison, walls and all, or they act out in such a way that pushes at others. Their loved ones tend to walk on eggshells when around them.

Dealing with friends and family members who are emotionally fickle or easily triggered requires compassion. It is easy to sink to their level of discontent and to enter their games of upset, but we can be at choice, even during our most trying moments. What are the choices? Two come to mind. The Use Method and the Diffuse Method. There are other choices, but these methods are worth pursuing.

The Use Method – Use the upset or emotional outburst as a training ground to become nonreactive and unattached. We can step into a witnessing mode and just let the person get it out. It’s best to say as little as possible – just give them the space to vent. This usually requires a healthy internal dialogue. “This has nothing to do with me. My friend, partner, boss, etc. does not know how to handle their emotions. They may never know how to handle them. I chose not to engage or go down with them.” This is not about giving them the silent treatment, which is an act of revenge. This is about using the event to practice being calm in the face of the storm. We might call the Use Method a call to higher consciousness. We use their outburst as a training ground for equanimity.

The Diffuse Method – This method is tough to enact but rewarding when we can pull it off. The goal is to allow the person to be heard and to pull out their upsets by asking questions, while offering no defenses nor getting hooked into the drama. The person who is upset gets center stage. They are the star of the drama, and regardless of how they act, we don’t take the stage away from them. Let’s say someone calls me a bitch. I can get angry, set a boundary, or retaliate. It’s okay to do those things, but there’s another way. I can ask questions that pull put out the fire of their upset. “You think I’m a bitch. Besides being a bitch, is there anything else I do that upsets you?” They may respond, “You don’t respect me.” The response, “You think I am a bitch and I don’t respect you. Is there anything else bothering you?” “You micro-manage me.” “So, you think I’m a bitch, that I disrespect you, and that I micromanage you.” I keep asking questions to keep pulling out their undelivered emotional upsets until they reach an end. Then I say something like, “That sounds heavy. Is there anything I can do or say that might help?” or I just remain silent. When people can deliver all their upsets without being attacked, it diffuses their emotional intensity, and they return to their normal selves.

No one is perfect. We make glaring mistakes, but we have great capacity for kindness, empathy, and loyalty. We need those traits, and even though they will be tested in our relationships, it is those very traits that give us the capacity to handle life with care. We are the care takers of life, and when we respond to less than kind behavior with generosity, everyone wins, and our lives become EZier and EZier.

  Quotes

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  Featured Product This Month

The Living Book  -  Words Make a Difference

Standing In The Dark  -  EZosophy

Offbeat Prayers for the Modern Mystic

Click here to learn more about Anne's 5 books.

  Shareables From Anne

The World's Best Weight Loss Secret

Thought Freedom

40 Days to Abundance

EZosophy Vows

Vows of Seriousness

Anne's Conscious Carols

  What is EZosophy?

Click the image to learn more about EZosophy.

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

  Healthy Living

The Art of Letting Go

There are generally three health to do’s: eat healthy, exercise regularly, and handle our minds. It’s a winning combination for health, though there are no absolute guarantees. Wayne Dyer healed himself of leukemia but passed away at 70 from a heart attack. I’m not sure of the cause of the heart attack, but he did have a congenital heart defect that may have contributed to his passing.

Just because we can’t predict or control all aspects of our health, doesn’t mean we should collapse into the irresponsible “You have to die of something” position. It is our responsibility, to our bodies, our most valuable possession, to take care of them.

There is no doubt that our emotions affect our bodies. Anger and chronic irritation are linked to heart disease and high blood pressure. Depression suppresses our immune system. Our cells eavesdrop on our inner dialogue and take ques from our emotions.

Surrender and acceptance are effective tools for calming our emotions. Both acceptance and surrender are about letting go. The directive “Let go and let God” is built into our cultural narrative, but how do we let go?

The answer is simple, though maybe not easy to carry out. The way to let go or surrender is to stop talking about it. Stop recounting the dilemma to our friends and use thought-stopping to silence that inner dialogue. There are stages of dealing with problematic situations in our lives, but once we’ve thought it through, done what we can do about it, and discussed it with a trusted friend or counselor, it’s time to STOP THINKING ABOUT IT! It's simple: we have a choice to stop thinking about it. This is not the way to handle immediate grief or current catastrophic losses, but it is an effective way to deal with much of our emotional drama.

Suppose you paid $35.00 for a shirt and the next time you visit the store, it is on sale for $10.00. Though you might feel a tiny pull in your gut, this is a situation that should be EZ to let go of. This is a simplified example of something that we should be able to let go of. Our emotions need our support. Our culture runs on a drama generating machine; from politics to weather reports, we are fed daily drama. Learning to recognize our need for this drama is the first step in turning our lives around.

I suggest you write this on a piece of paper: “I chose to let this go. I can’t do anything about it. I am willing to let go of the drama.” Carry this paper on your person for a week, and any time you feel the drama rising, touch the paper and resolve to stop thinking about it.

The more we allow ourselves to let go, to stop thinking about things that are either in the past, or beyond our control, the EZier our lives become, and who doesn’t want a little more EZ in their lives? Letting go is simple, safe, and healthy.

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

  Anne Talk

Free to Be Me

Today's Anne Talk is Free to Be Me. Anne reminds us that we should give ourselves permission to be ourselves. Time: 3:08

  Anne Art

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  Dr. Money’s Prosperity Vids

We Got This Lack Mentality From our Ancestors

Today’s Dr. Money’s Prosperity Video is We Got This Lack Mentality From our Ancestors. Anne reminds us that although we may have inherited lack thoughts and feelings from our relatives, we can deliberately choose to break that cycle of fear and lack. Time: 6:33

  Abundance Affirmations

Click to Join Anne’s Facebook Group

This group is a place to post uplifting affirmations and thoughts about prosperity and abundant living. Let’s create a right relationship with money so that we feel comfortable about money. Let’s use money as it’s meant to be used, and not as a way to accumulate power or to fill a void. We don’t need money to buy more stuff. We need it to create a world that works for everyone. We want to cast off old beliefs of lack and reclaim our natural state of abundance. Anne, AKA Dr. Money, posts a nightly goodnight for the prosperity team, and everyone who watches them becomes a part of the prosperity team.

You can also join the Prosperity Team by watching Anne's Dr. Money channel.

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Interested in getting ongoing support? Try life coaching with Anne. Anne offers both short-term and long-term coaching. Contact her for details. Click here to contact Anne by email or Click here to view information on Anne's One Year Seminar and other training too.

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