Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Ann O'Hare, and this is The Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host and today we will be talking about the call of the time. And I bet you're wondering what that is. So we will discuss it in a moment. But before we get started, please consider like sharing and subscribing. As you know, that helps us to get this content out to more and more people. And of course, please consider sharing with your friends and family as well. So today the call of the time I'm going to say is it's time to get better. And what do I mean by better? Well, I'm going to share my experience and I'm hopeful and I, I'm pretty sure, but of course I can't be positive that many, many, many, many, many of you out there are feeling the same thing. So I grew up in the seventies and eighties here in the United States. I grew up in a household where education was encouraged and as a woman, as a young girl, I was encouraged to get a job and take care of myself and don't be dependent on a man if necessary and so forth and, brought up by baby boomer parents and that was great. On one hand. It really helped me. I was able to take care of myself and get a career and, I wasn't really ever dependent on anyone externally, which was wonderful. But when I talk about getting better, what I mean is the mind and the heart getting better. For me, externally, I was successful. I was able to get a job. I was able to make money. I was able to live in the world, have respect of my profession and so forth. However, internally and in relationships, I wasn't that happy. So I'm going to be really honest. So, psychology sometimes looks back and says, well, this is what you went through as a child and this is what, and that's valid, It's all valid. So here's the thing. It's all valid. Whether it's I went through this and this is why I'm this way or I'm struggling and this is why I'm this way or I went through this as a child and this is why I'm this way. What I want to say today is take all of that and say, yes, it's valid. Because it is. But my mind and my heart are having trouble feeling better. And I was the one that was always trying to study something new or learn something new. Maybe I'll find out something about myself. Maybe I can help myself. Maybe I'll, I'll try this. I'll try that. My relationships were still not the greatest. And I had a lot of sadness in my heart As I'm talking to those of you out there, I mean, I would never have admitted that before. So I, I had sadness in my heart, let's say, or I never felt really fully self expressed or really fully connected to others, even in my own family, I didn't feel that way. Now again, like I said, in the past, if you would have asked me that, I wouldn't have admitted it. I would have said, yeah, everything's fine, you know, working, yeah, everything's great, whatever. Or I would be making somebody wrong, whether it's my family or work or whatever, and I'd be making them wrong so that I could feel a little bit better about myself. And that cycle of either, everything's fine, everything's fine, or they're all wrong and I'm just trying to, deal with life here. That thing went on. until I was about 40 years old. So 40 years of that. When I say today, time to get better, I mean that it's time to listen to yourself. It's time to discover yourself. It's time to care about yourself. I'll share something else. One of the other things that was very Disheartening was that on the surface, I thought I was a very generous person, like I would do anything for anybody and I would always be available to help and so forth, but I never felt like I could be honest about how I felt. The people around me, I always felt like I was helping them. They weren't helping me. I, I'm bet some of you can relate to that. What I found when I started doing spiritual practice is that all of that, whether it was the saying everything is great and it's not, or blaming everybody else, or keep on giving and keep on trying and keep on ignoring myself and take care of everybody else and somehow it'll be okay. I'm being a good wife. I'm being a good daughter, I'm being a good friend, I'm being a good worker, I'm being a good nurse, I'm being a good whatever. If you would have asked me then, are you happy? I probably would have said something like, yeah, everything's great and blah, blah, you know, again, focusing on the outside. But in my heart. I was not satisfied. I mean, you hear psychology and spirituality too saying, Oh, you're, the answers are within and so forth. I heard so much of this, positive affirmations and I went to therapy, I did the, you name it, I did it. And I know there's a lot of you out there like me. What I'm talking about now is authenticity. Really making yourself a priority. And I'm not talking about the body, although the body is part of it. If I'm meditating every day, but then eating ice cream all day long and getting sick, that's not going to help me either, right? So for those of you who are like, well, meditation is too kind of abstract for me, I like the healthy stuff. I hear people say, I like to work out. I like, that's great. Use the body. The body is our friend. The body is honest. It's going to give us honest feedback. At least that's a friend. It's honest. But for me, the soul, my mind, my heart, I need some help. I needed some help. In the last episode, we talked about the needs of human beings. The need for companionship. The need to be seen and heard. The need for belonging. And then contentment to feel content in my life, so I wrote here time to get better and then I Wrote outside trying inside crying and for some of you are rolling your eyes right now. I know that sounds Cringe or what it's kind of silly in a way, but if I really take off the reaction and look at that That's how I was I kept trying on the outside to stop the upset on the inside. Also determination to fix, right? I want to fix it. I want to figure something out. I'm going to keep going. And every day you get up with a new determination. But I had anxiety. I had acid reflux. I was having chest pain. The body was reflecting the upset that was going on in my mind. Many of you I'm sure can relate to this. Maybe you're trying to get help. Maybe you're trying to fix it. So my hope is that this talk that I'm giving right now can be part of your journey or maybe have some value that yes, I used to think that I'm just gonna pull up my bootstraps or I was in denial maybe, or I'm scared to face the fact that I feel lonely or I'm scared to face the fact that I'm failing, I'm failing to take care of myself or no matter what I do, I still feel sick or no matter what I do, my relationships are terrible. What am I supposed to do? So, I wrote here, there's always more and more situations in life and I'm never really happy and you hear, the years go by and that's true, but don't look at it, don't look at it as a punishment. Look at it as an, an inspiration. That time is going by and I really can get better. If I turn it around. And start getting better, then I've got the rest of my life to be, to feel better, right? So what do I mean when I say it's time to get better? I mean that it's time, like I said before, to put yourself first. To put your feelings first. To put your needs first. To start paying attention to them. To find a friend who you can talk to about this. Who's not going to take advantage of you or be critical or be negative or abusive. And what does that mean? Well, at first, if I say, I'm going to put myself first, the first thought that might come is, Oh, that's selfish. I had a, we have a, another podcast called the spiritual relationship that I do with my husband, Ken. And he gave a really great quote the other day about independence. And he said, the way to make sure that independence doesn't become selfishness is to make sure that it's going to help others. And I'm going to say that the two go hand in hand. I have to take care of myself in order to actually help other people. One of the other things I was sharing with a friend years ago is that let's say I'm trying to be the best, like I said, the best wife, the best friend, the best daughter, the best whatever, and I don't take care of myself. How is that good? How is that good? Is there any way that I can justify in my mind logically that I'm taking care of everybody else but I'm not paying any attention to my own needs, my own desires, my own feelings. Can I logically say that that is correct to do? It doesn't really make sense, does it? So how do I begin to start paying attention to myself? Now, for those of you who are in the camp of, I'm barely having time for this. I'm barely listening to her. You know, but I, I, I'm really hurting inside and I, I got to look for something for those of you that are like that. I'm going to say meditation is actually the access to this answer to getting better. Now, meditation, you may hear it and he may be like, oh great. Another thing to do. Well, we brush our teeth every day, right? We brush our teeth every day. I comb my hair. I put on clean clothes. I pay my bills. Remember all that trying I was saying all that external trying. We do and do and do and do and do because we have to try to keep it up. We have to try to maintain the external. Now we have to do something to try to work on the internal. So just like I spend all that energy and time to take care of everything on the outside. I'm not taking care of my mind and my heart, my feelings. So meditation, first thing in the morning when you wake up in the description below there's release your wings meditations. There's a whole bunch of episodes where I did meditation on the class here in the podcast, and you can follow along and use that. Sit quietly for 15 minutes and say to yourself, I'm a soul. My nature is peace. I want to get better. I want my mind to get better. So I'm going to pay attention to it. Now what happens when we do that? What happens when we start observing the mind? When I'm sitting in meditation, what I'm doing is I'm observing my mind. Maybe I never did that before. Think about if anybody is sick, right? If somebody's sick, eventually they need help. They need attention. When I'm sick in my mind, when my mind is full of racing thoughts, negative thoughts, self critical thoughts, and my emotions are running and with moods and anxiety and depression and all this stuff, and it's raging, it's like a storm of thoughts and feelings. I'm calling that like sick, like I'm sick here. I'm not well. Well would be calm, self respect, content, in control, but also able to be generous when needed, right? So that would be well. So I'm calling this sick. So how do I, if I, if I'm sick, I need help. I need help. What do I need? I need attention. I need to assess the illness. Meditation is like assessing the illness. Now, when you sit down to meditate, so for those of you who are like me, super overachieving external overachiever, you may sit down for meditation and you say, okay, I'm going to try this thing. And then for 15 minutes, your mind goes absolutely crazy. And I'm going to say it's fine with the disclaimer of if you have an extreme situation, extreme anxiety, extreme depression, suicidal thoughts, obsessive compulsive to the point of where you can't function in life. You need to get help for that. That's psychological or psychiatric help. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the middle. I'm talking about people who are functioning. Those of you who are able to function but have racing thoughts, negative thoughts, critical thoughts, and emotions and moods that are going crazy and affecting your health and affecting your life and affecting your well being and affecting your relationships. That's what I'm talking about. Sitting down first thing in the morning when you wake up. We get up very early in the morning. We get up at between three and five in the morning and meditate. Now for those of you who already get up that early, great. For those of you who don't, it's fine. You don't have to get up at three o'clock in the morning right away and let, you can work towards it if you like, if you're serious about meditation, but you can set your alarm for 30 minutes earlier. So, like, let's say I get up at 6 a. m. I can set my alarm for 5. 30. Why do I do that? Because I want a window of time before the habits start. The habits of thinking, habits of feelings, habits of maybe complaining inside or negativity or resistance. Wake up 30 minutes earlier go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, sit down. Put on a release your wings, there's, it's in the description below. Five minute video. Watch a couple of those. As you're watching, your mind may go crazy. Remember what Dr. Anne said. It's okay. Sit there. Fifteen minutes. If you sat for fifteen minutes, you won. You're watching your mind. Sometimes I say, in order to clean the house, you have to face the dirt. In order to get better you have to look at what the situation is. And what's happened is the world will continue to give unlimited things to do and focus on other than my mind and my feelings and myself. And I have fallen into that trap. You could call it selling your soul. Whatever. We all did it. It's not even a matter of calling it bad anymore because we're all there. What's the point? If we're all sick, what's the point of saying, Oh, this is how you got sick. This, no, we all have to get better now. And what do I mean by better? Okay. I mean better, like internally, but also that my self respect feels better and I'm not thinking and behaving like I did before. Like let's say I have anger. I shared this many times on the podcast that I started this Raj yoga meditation and two weeks after I started anger completely left. I was very surprised. I was like wait a minute, I'm not angry anymore. I still had impatience and frustration and irritability and things like that occasionally because I say those are anger's little friends, anger's little children. But anger was gone after two weeks and believe me, I was not having peaceful experiences in meditation. I was sitting there watching what I call the three ring circus. There's another episode that we just had that, I put a short together called Americans Can Handle It. I want to say that if you're like me and you have a determination in your spirit, you have a determined spirit and you want to get better, sit down and face your mind. That's courage. Sit down and try to be quiet or try to follow and be able to tolerate your mind going absolutely nuts. For 15 minutes, do that. Why? Even though I have a freight train of, of, uh, what's the word? A freight train of momentum behind all the pain and all the sorrow and all of that. Even though I have a freight train of momentum behind all of that, it's not too late for me to start something else. Observing. Sometimes I call it merciful self observation. No judgment. I'm just watching. Don't try to change anything. Just watch. Watch yourself. Tell yourself, I'm not changing anything. I'm just going to watch. Why? Why do we do that? It's like I'm creating like a, an unaffected self and unaffected me that's now watching to see what's happening. I'm going to say that in my experience that is essential. Essential. Meditation, observing the self, observing the mind is essential to get better. This whole podcast is geared toward people who are like me. People who may not even resonate with the word meditation. May not even think that spirituality is worth it at all because we're so focused on practicality, doing something, fixing something, and that's fine. But now let's do something to fix something. Let's start watching my mind. Be brave. Be courageous. Everything in your mind, you created it. So it's not like there's an enemy, although the mind may feel like an enemy because of the negativity. So but I'm here to say to that have hope because as you practice meditation and as you keep observing and as you have little experiences here and there of peace and your life starts to change and your personality starts to change, you'll start to feel like, wow, this is working. And then there'll be, it'll be a reinforcement. In my experience, I've been practicing this for almost 14 years and in 14 years I can share with you that I have transformed every single aspect of my life, my relationships, my family relationships, my health of my body, everything transformed and been able to learn how to use my thoughts and everything in a worthwhile way like I'm doing right now. This is to me is worthwhile. I'm sharing my experiences with the, with the heart of helping. All of us can do that in our own unique way. So it's not just, Oh, my mind is going to get quiet, but my personality is going to change. My situations will change. I'll feel better and I'll be able to do service, heal, empower, serve. That's the slogan. So I'll leave it there. There's no better time than now to start getting better. Start healing. So I'll leave it there. Like I just said, our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And so, until next time, take care. You
