Book Review

From Overwhelmed to Overcomer

by IAmSavvy | Aug 14, 2022 | Empowered Ethos, Wellness

Did you know that being stuck and being trapped are two different things? Maybe you don’t like your job. You feel stuck because the opportunity you’re looking for hasn’t arrived. “How do I endure this soul-sucking job until I find something else?” you ask. You work on what you can change right now. Read Maria’s true story of overcoming conflict and staying out of spiritual traps.

It was a good day

Maria had a great life. She was a manager of a leasing consultant firm, allowing her to live in a luxury apartment complex at a deeply discounted rate. She received quarterly bonuses that she used to buy lavish gifts for herself and her family. Life was perfect.

The honeymoon phase of a cycle is where people are the most complacent because they think it will last forever. The part of you that worries incessantly is quiet. This is the easiest time to exercise your spiritual muscle. Financially, this is a time to save for a rainy day. 

Practice patience when life hands you little inconveniences like being stuck in traffic. Start a journal of positive actions. This is the best time to learn meditation and advance your spiritual practices. Here are some teachers that share different processes of dealing with troubled times.

• Bryon Katie
• Eckhart Tolle
• Susan Jeffers

Making mountains out of molehills

Maria likes the freedom that money provides. However, she fixated on minor annoyances. Her boss is too demanding. Her team is always scamming ways to get out of work. The residents were constantly complaining over things that don’t make sense. “Sir, everyone’s apartment is white; you cannot paint the walls black.” Ma’am, we have no proof that your neighbor is stealing your paper. You can call the corporate office, but you can’t sue us because we won’t hire a private investigator.”

Maria is a person that struggled with negativity in her past. It’s easy to focus on good things when everything is going well. It’s a little more challenging at this stage. This is where the negative part of your brain wakes up. It’s trying to take hold of your thought process. 

Unfortunately, Maria doesn’t have a spiritual process that helps her deal with troubled times. She tries to suppress her negative feelings. Feelings always find a way to come to the surface. The more Maria complains, the more Maria finds to complain about. Her suffering is taking a life of its own and picking up speed.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire

Maria despises her job, and it shows. She is constantly battling her bosses. She has a high employee turnover rate. Her staff isn’t well-trained, so they cannot fill their housing quotas.

The quarterly bonuses stop coming. To Maria’s surprise, she got fired. She is no longer  an employee, so her rent immediately goes to market value – $2,200/month.

Maria didn’t make the best choice; she made a desperate choice. She really doesn’t want another job because she can’t stand the thought of encountering another “toxic culture.” Instead of facing her issues (dealing with conflict, life’s curve balls, and challenging people), she looks for the easy out. She hastily comes up with a plan that sets her up for failure. “I’ll be my own boss; I’ll do gig work,” Maria says. She signs up with one of the large share-ride companies, even though her instincts told her it was a mistake.

Maria is stuck in a negative loop. She is stuck because she is creating the loop. Maria tries to bring peace by controlling the uncontrollable (other people). The only way she can eliminate her suffering is by changing herself.

Be careful of the spiritual trap 

Her idealization of gig work was lost when she picked up her first passenger. Maria was an introvert who loathed driving. The share-ride experience rolled up everything she hated most in one job. Maria quickly realized that working for this company 24/7; still won’t cover her rent. It took less than a month before every credit card she had was maxed out; she was in trouble.

Should she pray? When we feel powerless, it’s comforting to think that something bigger than us controls our lives. That’s the Achilles’ heel of prayer. You put your power in someone else’s hands, which means you’ll never find your power. Now, Maria is trapped because she believes someone else is holding her in a bad situation (or unwilling to help her get out of it).

From a state of worry and lack, Maria dives into concepts like The Work, Mindfulness, and The Power of Now.

Because Maria has never practiced calming herself, she can’t quiet her mind. She explodes in rage and screams…

I could give a flying fig about this superstitious BS. God help me! I need money now!

On the first of the month, Maria received her eviction notice.

Maria starts looking for a job. She seeks organizations that can offer rent relief. In desperation, she sells a ring she’s had since she was a teenager and looks for things in her home that she can sell to come up with her rent money.

It’s too late. Calm settles over Maria as she accepts that this battle is lost. She makes plans to move on.

Hindsight is 20/20

Maria lives in her parent’s basement. It took her less than 90 days to find a job and move out of her parent’s home. After almost a year of soul searching, she was ready to take responsibility for her mistakes.

• When Maria had a job, she lived beyond her means, lived off credit cards, and didn’t put away a percentage of her salary into savings.
• She asks herself if her perceptions of her “toxic” work environment were real or imagined.
• She knew in her gut that the shared ride was a bad idea on many levels.
• Most people who live solo life are fiercely independent. They think they have to do it all, or it’s a sign of weakness.
  • She was too proud to reach out for help.
  • She wouldn’t apply for unemployment.
  • Her ego was bruised, which is the reason she didn’t look for another job.
  • She waited too long to look for a job that would cover her bills.
  • She was embarrassed to admit her setback.
  • She was too proud to ask her family and friends for help.

When we’re suffering, it’s challenging to see the reality of our situation. When Maria screamed, ” God help me! I need money now!” she wasn’t really looking for money. She was looking for what she thought money would bring her – peace.

Did Maria live happily ever after? Yes and no. Maria found a job that paid her bills. She realized until she found the opportunity she wanted; she would have to learn to make peace with where she was right now. The apartment she is living in isn’t the ideal place, but for now, she accepts that this is her home.

She faced three of the toughest years of her life. She reached out to a therapist for help. She embraced her life and learned to overcome uncomfortable situations instead of resisting them.

The Cycle Continues

Maria accepted a job making more money than she’s ever had in her working career. She paid off her debts and moved into a stunning apartment she loved.

Maria finds herself in the honeymoon phase again. Her spiritual journey over the past three years will help her overcome obstacles quicker when they return.

“God” is not a magic genie here to solve our problems, and spiritual maturity does not absolve us from the hardships of our mundane life. Don’t run from or resist difficult times; embrace them. Our spiritual practice helps us navigate difficult times without experiencing the extreme suffering we cause ourselves. Suffering is the spiritual teacher that transforms us from victims to victors.

Welcome to the Empowered Ethos. Learning your path to spiritual maturity and using spiritual principles to solve practical challenges. The empowered ethos is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s doing the hard work to change our lives for the better.

If you think you may hurt yourself or attempt suicide, call a Crisis Counselor, the Suicide Prevention Life Line, or dial 911 immediately.

Journaling – from Powerless to Empowered

by IAmSavvy | Jul 10, 2022 | Empowered Ethos, Wellness

It’s common practice to keep a diary as an adolescent and continue journaling in adulthood. Maintaining the writing style you had in your teens can be debilitating. Does your journaling style mature with you? Does your writing style free you or keep you stuck in the past?

The Dangers of Keeping a Daily Journal

In our teens, we may keep journals entirely based on our hormones. We write about the people we don’t like or our feelings of rejection. We complain about how unfair life is and our feelings of powerlessness.

As teens, the things that cause us stress often are out of our control. Since we cannot eliminate the stress, we find ways to deal with it. Keeping a diary is a coping skill we learn early in life. It releases pent-up stress.

Unfortunately, the very coping mechanisms we learn in childhood can prevent us from growing as adults. Finding ways to cope as a child was a matter of survival because, in many ways, we were powerless.

That was then; this is now – are you still powerless?

Using our journals like we did when we were kids (blaming, shaming, and complaining) can keep us stuck in perpetual powerlessness. Repeatedly re-visiting uncontrollable bad events during childhood can become a perceived lack of control as an adult.

Keeping a Journal Focused on Negative Events Can Re-Wire The Brain

A journal is a method of communication; it’s a form of self-talk. Some experts say to read your journal to see how far you have come or how much you’ve grown. If your journal is a perpetual record of every perceived failure, slight, and injustice, it keeps you stuck in the past. Continuously writing (and reading) about painful events can lead to chronic complaining.

Instead of finding solutions to change situations we don’t like, we stay in a state of learned helplessness – convinced we are incapable of meeting challenges.

Morgan grew up in a family that struggled financially. Her parents promised her an allowance for taking care of her younger siblings and doing chores around the house. Frequently, Morgan would not get her allowance as her parents needed the money to pay bills.

Morgan’s needs were not addressed as a child; she used her diary to vent how unfairly she was treated. She wrote about how unappreciated and undervalued she felt. Those feelings and ideals followed her into adulthood.

Morgan spent time journaling about her money struggles. She perceived money was hard to come by, feared what she worked for could be taken without her consent, and people in authority were unfair and did not keep their promises. She stayed in a cycle of self-fulfilled prophecy; she spent five years job-hopping to positions where she was underpaid and overworked, and her voice was unheard.

The coping mechanism that saved Morgan as a child crippled her as an adult. The problem with keeping this type of journal is that it’s based on venting instead of finding solutions.

1. It keeps us stuck in the past where there are no solutions.
2. It maintains the habit of looking for every perceived failure, slight, and injustice.
3. We remain in our childhood state of powerlessness instead of transitioning into our adult state of empowerment.

Let’s Try a Practical Exercise

Morgan is a Savvy Solo; she is 100% responsible for paying her bills. Morgan can use her journal to complain about the injustice of our current inflation. Unfortunately, that will not change anything. As an adult, it’s pointless for her to spend energy venting about things beyond her control.

Morgan can brainstorm her options, like making plans to find another job. It seems it would be a snap to replace a job amid the Great Resignation; it can take 3 – 6 months for Morgan to replace her current job. Even gig work has minimum requirements, onboarding processes, and a waitlist that can take weeks before she is accepted.

Here’s an option that will get Morgan immediate results. It’s a choice that many people who invest in journaling overlook – TAKE ACTION. Do what you can with what you have and see what happens.

The Journal of Positive Aspects Actions

As said before, journaling is a form of communication – it’s all talk. If we don’t transition our journaling practices, we never come into our own power.

Morgan needs to get back/forth to work. She believes her best option is to commute using her vehicle. Therefore, she needs gas – the decision is clear, she has to purchase gas.

Did it break her bank? No. Did Morgan make it to work and earn a paycheck to pay her rent? Yes. Did paying for the gas bankrupt her or cause her to lose her home? No. She acted, succeeded, and wrote about her victory in her journal. Morgan now has proof of her success that will build her confidence the next time she encounters a challenge.

Morgan may have limited choices for now, but her new way of journaling will re-wire her brain to her advantage. She will learn to trust her decision-making. The more choices she makes will help her open up to a broader range of possibilities.

Fear is a thought you keep repeating to yourself; it’s a theory. You don’t know what will (or will not) happen until you put your theory to the test. It’s time to re-wire your brain by moving past the stage of thinking that you can’t and embracing success by taking action.

If Edison just “thought” about inventing the lightbulb and never put his theory into action, we could still be sitting in the dark.

Did you know that 85% of the things we fear never happen? Click the link, read this inspiring story, and get more tips on overcoming fear. Maybe we can do a 30-day challenge on releasing fear. Please share your thoughts below.