Do you ever feel like you hold your breath through your whole work day and then come home exhausted only ready to collapse? Or perhaps you feel very irritated and you just need everybody to leave you alone for an hour? Then you exercise, go to yoga class, or have a glass of wine and you feel better only to have to face it all again when the weekend comes? You spend Friday evening and Saturday recovering from the week. By Sunday you feel better again, only to have to start the whole thing over on Monday. While at work I sometimes managed stress in ways that were usually not very healthy. They ranged from the fairly benign, such as spending time socializing with co-workers, to the more self-destructive of continuous snacking and reading things that were not contributing to getting anything done. This was my cycle when I worked a full time job. I felt like there had to be a better way, for many of us, so much time is spent at work, and I knew there had to be a more effective way of dealing with this than to just power through or drag yourself through the day. I wanted to come home and have some energy to enjoy myself and I wanted to have some energy left to play with my son.
So after much experimentation I came up with the idea of micro-checks and micro-adjustments. In Amate Growth Work we talk about being in touch with your Inner Self. That is the emotional part of you. It is also the part of you that can get stuck and not grow up emotionally, even though the rest of you has grown up. I realized that when I was at work, due to stress and anxiety, i.e., fear, I would mostly abandon my Inner Self, and only get back in touch with her when I would finish work. Since I had about a 45 minute drive home, I did find that I would use that time to decompress, relax and get myself into a better mental state. I would do this by saying relaxing things to myself, taking deep breaths and listening to inspirational and informative podcasts on my commute. I did start my morning with my Golden Morning routine (prior blog post) and that would go a long way towards making things at least bearable.
I started thinking that perhaps I could incorporate some of the really good things that I started my day off with and ended my day with – micro-checks and micro0adjustments – into the main part of the day, the part where I was at work. The first thing that I tried which I would highly recommend was a little book of affirmations. I would use it anytime something stressed me out (which was often). I would write down the outcome that I wanted to have as if it had already happened. I would read these affirmations three times a day or at any point that I started feeling nervous about the situation. Miraculously I was able to keep crossing things off this list as they were completed or resolved without any effort! This was yet more proof of the power of us as creators of our reality. I realized that this intervention was powerful and I started thinking about what else I could do to make the day flow better and to get more things done that I wanted to do.
I started to simply place my hand on my heart and check in with my Inner Self to connect, to see how she was doing and to bring myself to the only place we exist–the present moment. It was reassuring to do these things and brought me more into a state of mindfulness, at least for that moment.
So I decided to take it further. I decided to see if I could actually make her feel better, feel less tense while in the stressful work environment, rather than waiting to start taking care of her when I got out and got into my car. I started trying different micro-checks and micro-adjustments. I worked inside of a federal prison so it was difficult to go on a walk and I couldn’t see the outside from my office, but I started walking over to the greenhouse and just looking at the plants, or when I had less time, I would just step outside and look at the mountains or look at one of the last few unpaved places where the inmates would plant a vegetable garden. I would sometimes just go into the ladies room and do some yoga stretches or lunges to get my blood flowing again. I brought in a picture of our family trip to Mexico and would look at the soothing white beach, meeting the blue water, meeting the blue sky. I would talk to myself, comforting her and letting her know that I was there and that she was doing great. The environment was a difficult stretch for an intuitive empath, and though I knew I was doing good work and also had learned to overcome many fears, I was not able to fully spread my wings and do the healing work that I knew I was meant to do; I did realize that after six years of this work, I was meant to move on and do other things.
Learning the method of the micro-checks and micro-adjustments has proven super helpful and I have been able to teach this method with great success to my clients who are entrepreneurs, here in Boulder, Colorado. It is like taking a mini-vacation and coming back refreshed and ready to continue working, and best of all at the end of the day I would remain feeling pretty good. Sure there was some fatigue and need for rest and rejuvenation, but not the exhausted me flinging herself on the couch and curling up into a ball.
Some of the micro-adjustment methods that I used involved focusing on my heart-center and breathing by expanding my rib cage to the side. Other methods involve doing some Emotional Freedom Technique tapping, doing cross-body, brain hemisphere connecting exercises, closing my eyes and visualizing my Inner Self and me having a conversation on a beautiful secluded beach rimmed by blossoming hibiscus flowers.
This method does take some practice and some trial and error to determine what works, but it is so worth it and it helps you to be more mindful and aware of what is happening to you and where you are at. Sometimes you just have one of those days where you feel like you got up groggy and in a bad mood and the morning just did not go well. You might think about just throwing in the towel and starting over the next day. But with micro-checks and micro-adjustments you can literally start over again anytime you like, so, sure, perhaps the morning was wasted, but that does not mean the whole rest of the day is. You can re-start your life at any point. Sort yourself out and re-group. These techniques will make you much more effective and much more likely to enjoy your day.
For more information on how to incorporate micro-checks and micro-adjustments into your day contact me for my Spiritual Coaching Program, 303-242-7824.
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