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STRATEGIES FOR THE NOW AND FUTURE CHANGES
Cultivate a BIG picture perspective. Look for what is positive in the
challenges, in the changes.
As the world is changing, we have the wonderful opportunity to
change our perspectives:
• from the personal and local concerns to being a global citizen
• from isolation to connectedness
• from using or destroying nature to being nourished by nature
• from waiting on others to solve the problems to self responsibility
• from helplessness to making a difference
• from looking outside ourselves for answers to looking inside
ourselves
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Remember the importance of ATTITUDE and practice GRATITUDE.
Consider your intentions for the moment, for the day, for your project, for your life. Intentions are more
important than actions. Be conscious of being the director of your life, not just an actor.
Avoid making decisions or taking action when you are feeling afraid or angry. Practice breathing, timeouts,
physical exercise, meditation or prayer, etc. to lift your spirit. Then when you are peaceful, take action or
make your decisions. The intentions are more important than the actions.
Heart Math offers the freeze frame technique for changing your emotions:
When you feel fear, anxiety, anger, practice the freeze frame technique:
1. Recognize the stressful feeling and freeze frame it. Take a time out;
2. Make a sincere effort to shift the focus out of the disturbed mind or feelings to your heart area.
Breathe into your heart for at least 10 seconds;
3. Recall a positive, fun feeling or time in the past and re-experience it. Fill yourself up with the positive
feeling/memory;
4. Using intuition, common sense, and sincerity, ask your heart, “What would be a better response that
would minimize future stress?”
5. Listen and implement your heart’s response.
Cultivate an attitude of reverence for yourself, your loved ones, for nature, for everyone and everything
including the plants, the animals, the air and water, the earth.
Find ways to celebrate the present: dance, sing, tell stories, play together.
Spend time in nature: it helps with the reverence and helps reduce stress.
Visualize happy futures, open to new possibilities, give more attention to what you really desire for yourself
and your children and their children.
I am available to offer this topic as a presentation and as a workshop or ongoing group. Please contact me
if you have an interest in this material.
PRACTICAL TIPS FOR THE NOW AND FUTURE CHANGES
Do an inventory of your gifts, skills, talents that could be exchanged in the market place for money or other
goods and services. Realize how many skills you already have.
Consider doing trades for goods and services whenever possible.
Reduce what you spend on superfluous “stuff” and focus on using your money for the priorities in your
family’s life.
Re-use and recycle everything you can. Wash out plastic bags and use them again. Use cloth bags when
shopping to reduce the amount of plastic that has to go into the land fill.
Make friends with neighbors and share resources.
Grow any food you can, even if it is herbs in a window box. Plant a garden if you have the ground or share
a garden with another family. Make friends with a farmer.
Teach your children to respect the earth, each other, and all others.
Develop ways of playing together as a family that don’t require money, driving, or electricity.
Most of us have lived through winter storms or spring floods without services. Prepare in a similar way by
storing food, medicines, batteries, candles, flashlights, water and containers. Best of all purchase a portable
water filter in the event water supplies are compromised.
Be sure to have on hand extra medicines and supplies for people in your family with special needs, such as
insulin, oxygen, etc.
Be sure to have plenty of blankets and sleeping bags.
Have large plastic bags for garbage and buckets for carrying.
Actively engage in conversation with your family and friends about how to improve the quality of your family’
s life and how to contribute to the community. Taking action from a peaceful heart brings more peace into
the world and eases the feeling of helplessness.
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The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake
Rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the presence of the still waters,
And I feel above me the day blind stars
Waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in grace of the world, and I am free.
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