This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni s Fountain of Youth Summit, which can be found at http://fountainofyouthworldsummit.com. In this excerpt, Dr. Maria Grace shares more on maintaining your health through transitions.
The Fountain of Youth World Summit with Dr. Maria Grace, psychologist, psychotherapist and author of Reel Fulfillment.
Kevin: And you mentioned transitions before and let’s go back to that. You start to get on a path that you feel is good for you regardless of what anyone else thinks. You’re eating in a way that you feel makes you feel good and you’re healthy and then bam something happens and you know maybe you lose your job or something happens or you know three things happen at once. Like how, it’s inevitable that happens to everyone at one point...
Dr. Grace: Absolutely.
Kevin: ...what can you do to maintain your health and maintain your sanity, too?
Dr. Grace: Absolutely. Well, after you eat your first bag of chips, which you will, let’s assume again, yes, you will eat your first bag of chips and you may buy a 6 pack with it, too, and you will do that. Then you pick up the phone and you call a support group. You call a therapist. You call a counselor. You call a hotline. You call your sponsor. You call your trainer. You call your gym. You call your aunt. You call your friend. You call your family.
There’s so many people you can call and you say, “You know what? I need help. I need help because I lost my job and my girlfriend left me and my cat died and my basement flooded and I need help because I’m sitting on my couch in front of the TV eating chips and drinking beer and I’m doing that after I was able to maintain a healthy eating program for 3 months and get my body in shape and feel really good about myself and I feel really rotten right now. I need help.”
And if the other person on the other end of the line says, “I’m sorry. I can not help you” you hang up and you call the next one and then you call the next one and then you call the next one and you know I’m painting a really grim scenario here because chances are that the first person you’re going to call are going to help you, is going to help you, because people love to help.
Kevin: Yes.
Dr. Grace: Do not be alone and then hold onto what is steady. Hold on to what is constant. In times of transition and loss we need to hold onto what is constant. For me, these days, and I’m talking about me now because I am going through tremendous transition, what is constant is to know that I have a place, a safe place to sleep, I have a few people to talk to on the phone, and I have the food interestingly enough. I have food to eat, but it’s not junk food. I eat well and I then make, I start making lists of things that have to be addressed and I go, when I have a problem I try to think of the solution. Thinking of what will resolve the problem takes away about 80 of the stress of thinking about the problem itself.
Kevin: Okay.
Dr. Grace: So focus on the solution and then take steps to resolve the problem. The other thing that we’re going to have to pay attention to when we go through transitions or experience failures is to pay attention to all these voices in our heads that say, you know, “You’re a loser. You should know better. You should have let this happen to you. Life stinks. You’ll never get ahead” etc. Well, a lot of those voices are interjected from early on in our life. We heard them when we were kids. We believed in them. We interjected them and they’re not ours.
Kevin: Okay.
Dr. Grace: They’re not ours. So instead of believing the voices we should just allow them to be and then turn them around.
Kevin: How can you do that?
Dr. Grace: This is the whole essence in meditation. Mediators learned to observe their thoughts and let them be. They don’t really take them for granted and they do not give power to them. Now this is an art in itself.
Kevin: Yes.
Dr. Grace: This is a spiritual practice and I am working on it day and night and that is in fact as true and powerful a spiritual practice as changing our eating habits is because they’re so interconnected. So not placing judgment on our fault is an amazing way to free ourselves from all this negative self talk that gets exacerbated when we go through painful or challenging life transitions. So let the thought be and continue being regardless of the thought because just a thought when we give it power it takes a life of its own and thoughts inform actions, you see? Thoughts inform actions. We are not aware of it, but if I keep saying to myself, you know, “I’m a bad person. I’m a bad person” and it keeps believing it then whatever I do will be a bad action.
Kevin: Yes.
Dr. Grace: Even if it’s good. Even if it’s good I will say it’s a bad action. So don’t give power to your negative thoughts.
Don’t feed them and don’t judge them either. Don’t have judgment about your thoughts. Turn them around. Now turn them around means what? It means that when we go through transitions not only about ourselves but about the world, too, you know?
Kevin: Yes.
Dr. Grace: You hurt me. She ripped me off. They did that to me. Well, or you know they should be better. They should be better. That is the complete opposite. I mean, we get 2 things when we go through transitions. One is all those interjected thoughts take a life of their own and the interjected thoughts we should not pay attention to, the negative thoughts and the other thoughts are about the world. What the world should be or how it should have behaved. This is projected thoughts. Not the projected thoughts we should turn them around and apply them to our self. Okay?
Kevin: Okay.
Dr. Grace: So instead of saying, “The world should be a better place” or “They should have never done this me” okay? We should turn this around and say, “I will be a better person. I will not let this happen to me.” This should is always about something that they should have or should be is a, belongs to time that doesn’t exist. Right?
Kevin: Explain that.
Dr. Grace: It doesn’t exist. If I say, “Kevin, you should have been smarter.” What is this? What am I saying? That doesn’t exist. Okay? You should have been smarter about buying a better car.
Kevin: It just can’t happen again.
Dr. Grace: I will refer to a time and space that doesn’t exist.
Kevin: It’s an amazing distinction.
Dr. Grace: But if I say or if you say, “I will be smarter about the car I will buy” this is how you assert, actually you assert your intention. I will, we talked about willpower before. I will assert intention. So I will be smarter, assert intention, and it also informs yourself about the action that you are going to take. So when we go through transition, you know, I should have never left that, said this and if I had said that then she should have done this and then it would have been different. That doesn’t exist. None of this exists.
Kevin: It’s just wasting your time almost.
Dr. Grace: Completely. Completely. So we turn those thoughts around into “I will do such and such. I will,” it does not necessarily refer to the future. This is not about the future tense. I will means I assert my intention.
Kevin: Okay.
Dr. Grace: I will be self loving means I assert my intention to be self loving or caring about my wellbeing.
Kevin: If there was just 1 last thing that you could leave everyone with what would that be?
Dr. Grace: Take time to appreciate the moment because now is all we have. So slow down and be fully present in your life in the here and now and tell the people you love that you love them because you’re here to leave memories and that’s our legacy. Good memories is our legacy and therefore memories happen through our presence in the here and now. So don’t postpone a good deed if you can do it now.
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