The passing of Robin Williams has affected us all in some way. Mental Illness is something that affects many of us in some way or another, either we have it or a friend or family member has it. But we don’t understand it as well as we should and often we choose to ignore it. I have personally suffered from mild depression for many years and I have also supported my dearest friend Renea, who has Bipolar for the last 11 years.
My observations about Robin Williams
Robin Williams had a form of dyslexia where the letters and words and numbers were all back to front (I am curious as to how this was worked out, but the fact remains that it’s true). While at school he was teased and bullied dreadfully and had to seek out new routes home to avoid his tormentors. To gain his mother’s attention and to make her laugh he would tell jokes. He once stated that his only friends as a child were his imagination.
His father worked away and his mother also worked, he was left to be attended to by the maids they employed. Robin claimed his upbringing left him with an acute fear of abandonment and a condition he described as “love me syndrome”
He suffered from alcohol and cocaine addiction in the 1970s and 1980s and yesterday we learned of his suicide due to depression, an illness that we weren’t really aware that he had. But if you look at his childhood you can totally understand why he suffered from depression.
They describe him as a kind caring dedicated person who spent most of his life caring for people and making them laugh. People who have interviewed him say he was truly amazing to interview, funny, kind, caring. He supported Christopher Reeve’s when his insurance ran out until he died. He was a Philanthropist and founded a Foundation that raised funds for a variety of causes in the US.
Having supported someone like I have the for last 11 years I can look at Robin Williams life a bit different to other people. He truly was an amazing person and a comic genius, but how hard would it be to wake up every day and put a mask on just so you are liked. How hard would it be to not be able to go – I am having a crap day today and I just want to sit and sulk – or – I just want to be myself and people just need to accept me for who I am and love me for who I am, not for my mask that I put on every day.
Looking at his background and seeing how his childhood was, there was no way that he had any understanding of how to love himself, of how to feel worthwhile. He grew up feeling unloved and unwanted, how was he to know how to love himself as an adult? We all loved him, he was probably told a million times that he was loved and appreciated, but he wouldn’t have taken that on board, or he would have seen it as people loving his ‘mask’, his comic genius, his act that he put on every day. He would have kept telling himself how he was only loved if he was being funny or if he was making people feel special.
He would have been totally exhausted in the end. He was struggling financially, fighting mental demons, alcoholism and the feeling of being unloved. The feeling of everything being too hard would have been with him constantly.
We all need to take this on board, we all need to understand what happens to someone who has these struggles. We need to stop the bullying, we need to love our children unconditionally, we need to show them we love them, we need to teach them to love themselves, we need to teach them they are worth everything. We need to make sure our friends know that they are loved and supported and if we have mental issues then we need to seek help.
I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist, I have no training what so ever, but I do have 11 years experience supporting someone with mental illness, I have sat through many psychology appointments and many psychologist appointments. I have attended group sessions at a mental hospital and talked to many psychiatric nurses. I believe I have a fair understanding of mental illness and would love to help anyone who needs it.
Question: Do you suffer from mental illness? Do you need help? If you want to chat let me know 🙂
Do you ever get that feeling of being overwhelmed? Of having so much to do that you don’t know where to start? We all get it from time to time and we all handle it in different ways. Today I am feeling overwhelmed and I wanted to share with you how this has come about.
Sunday’s is usually my day for focusing on sonyanoonan.com or askthebookkeeper.com.au. I sit at my laptop and work for hours and hours on either or both sites. I don’t have kids to worry about on a Sunday and I don’t have anywhere to go (usually). Yesterday I entered into a different vibrational level, I could feel it. I have this feeling of wanting to move forward, its like an energy pulling me forward. I started talking to people about all my dreams and wishes and hopes. And at the end of the day I went to bed totally exhausted.
Today I woke up, sat at my computer to begin my ‘normal’ Sunday, but something happened. Instead of working on my websites I decided to do my ‘homework’ that I had from my Creating Financial Freedom course that I am doing with Julie Lake. 2 weeks ago we had to vibrationally spend $1,000, I had done this but only roughly so I did it again. Then last week we had to vibrationally spend $10,000, I had once again only done this roughly so I revamped this as well. Well I started to and them my mother came over to drop some things off. I went outside to greet her and she started asking me about things I wanted to do around my house, so we spend half and hour talking about all the renovations I wanted to do.
When she had left I came back inside and sat at my computer to start again, but I was too worked up to sit quietly and work, my mind was running overtime with all the things that I want to do around my house. So I got out a notebook and pen and started to write all my idea’s down. Got halfway through and started feeling really overwhelmed by things.
Things that I want to improve in my life that are making me feel overwhelmed
- Dynamic Bookkeeping
- Ask the Bookkeeper
- sonyanoonan.com
- Renovate my house
- Landscape my yard
- Improve my finances
- Lose weight
- Get Fit – run a marathon & ride the Tour de Cure
- Be able to travel extensively throughout the world
I feel that for me to be able to achieve all this I need to do the following:
- Work full time on Dynamic Bookkeeping
- Work full time on Ask the Bookkeeper
- Work full time on sonyanoonan.com
- Spend hours reading and learning about renovating
- Find $100,000 for renovations
- Spend hours reading and learning about landscaping
- Find $20,000 for landscaping
- Take control of my finances
- Learn how to be financially free
- Count calories
- Learn to cook healthy meals
- Run everyday
- Overcome all injuries that I have to be able to run
- Ride my bike every day
- Get a passport
- Plan my travels
- and anything else that I have forgotten
Blocks that are making me feel overwhelmed
I have so many areas of my life that I want to ‘improve’, there are so many changes I want to make so that I can ‘move forward’, but I have so many blocks around these areas. Let my tell you about a few.
Dynamic Bookkeeping
Dynamic Bookkeeping is the bookkeeping business I have with Renea. As you read from my post Friday, I am working towards improving this and making it a business that is self sufficient so that I am not feeling so overwhelmed by it. But blocks I have around this are:
- I am not good enough to run a successful business
- I don’t have the time
- Its all really hard
- My clients control me instead of me controlling them
Ask the Bookkeeper
The plans I have for Ask the Bookkeeper are huge. I know that it will be a really successful site once it is up and running, but it is going to take time and I really don’t have the patience for taking time. I am teaching myself as much as I can about web design, social media marketing, blogging etc etc. But I still have blocks around it:
- I don’t know where I’m going to find the traffic to send to the website
- I don’t value my knowledge enough
- I don’t have the time
- I don’t believe people will want to know what I have to share
sonyanoonan.com
This site was set up as I kept ‘hearing’ that I had to do it, that I had to share my knowledge, my passion, my journey with people, so that they could connect with me and either start their own journey to happiness or help me on my way. The blocks I have around this are very similar to Ask the Bookkeeper:
- I don’t know where I’m going to find the traffic to send to the website
- I don’t value my knowledge enough
- I don’t have the time
- I don’t believe people will want to know what I have to share
House Renovating
Over the years I have started renovating many areas of my house., but nothing has ever been completed. Every room of the house has been touched in some way on the renovation bug, but non of them have been completed. My house actually looks worse now than it did 18 years ago when I moved in. Here are my blocks around renovating.
- I don’t have the knowledge to renovate
- I am not physically capable of renovating
- I can’t afford to pay someone to renovate
- I have no idea where to start
- People will judge my choices
- I don’t want to be cheap with my renovations, but can’t afford to buy expensive either
- My dad should be doing this for me, he helped my sister build 2 of her houses
Landscaping
I hate gardening – well that is what I keep telling myself, although if i was asked to renovate the house or landscape the garden I’d take the garden any day. My garden is very much like my house, lots of areas of it have been started, but none have every been finished. Here are my blocks around renovating.
- I don’t have the knowledge to landscape
- It is to physically hard
- Its too hot
- Its too cold
- I can’t afford to buy anything I need
- I can’t afford to pay someone to do it
- Paying someone to do the gardening is not right when you should be able to do it yourself
- Gardening is a man’s job, I shouldn’t have to do it
Lose weight
My weight has been typical of most women, up and down like a yoyo for years. I have established that there is a direct connection between my weight and my emotional/mental health. I will be beginning my next journey of weight loss real soon, but I will not be concentrating on losing weight but instead on improving my emotional/mental health. The blocks I have around weight loss are:
- Its to hard
- I have to starve myself to lose weight
- I have to work out two to three hours a day to lose weight
- I have done it before and put it back on, who says it will stay off this time?
- I love eating food
- I just need a cook to cook for me and I will be right
Get Fit
I would love more than anything to run in fun runs and ride around the bay or in the Tour de Cure. But I really don’t enjoy being out there slogging it out and being unfit and out of shape. The blocks I have around getting fit are:
- I am too fat
- I have knee troubles
- I have shoulder issues
- I can’t run properly
- I’ve never been able to run
- I’m not very good a sticking with it
- I am a people person and so want to share this journey with someone, but no one wants to get fit with me
Travelling throughout the World
Travelling is something that I have always dreamed of doing, but have never believed I would ever do. Here are my blocks around travelling:
- I don’t have a passport
- I don’t have the money
- I don’t have anyone to do it with
- Its a waste of money
- I don’t have the time
- Its a waste of time
Conclusion
It keeps coming to me that in order for us to have things we want we need to go and get them, they will not come to us without some type of movement forward. I feel that I am a genuinely lazy person and the main struggle is that I have to actually get moving so that these things will come to me. I am convinced that you have to work hard at things and that it will always be a struggle. I am needing to let go of this, things can come easy, you don’t always have to work hard at things, just work at them.
While typing this it has also come to me that it all comes down to Self Love, if I loved myself enough all of this would come to me easily and I wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed.
Question: Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed? What are your blocks around moving forward?
This week has been a tough week for me. My dear Renea has been suffering quite badly with her Bipolar this week. She is struggling with not wanting to live. I know that one of the triggers for this is the pressure of our business, she denies it, but when we were talking earlier this week the tears just flowed and she poured out all the things that she either needed help with in the business or things that were causing her the greatest stress. To have what I already know confirmed by Renea herself was not only heartbreaking but also enlightening…
So on more than one occasion during Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I begged the Universe to give me the answer to my problem. I know that me begging the Universe to make Renea better wont work unless Renea wants to get better (and when your are on a Bipolar Depression you really don’t want to get better, I understand this), but I begged the Universe to give me the solution to making our business less stressful for her.
The summary of our business is:
- I just want to work part time in it as I have other interests (sonyanoonan.com and askthebookkeeper.com.au)
- Renea just wants to do the work
- Renea struggles with staff management
- Renea struggles with dealing with clients issues
- Renea is feeling overwhelmed with the work load
- We both want to keep the business and not sell it.
After begging the Universe for a solution I sat with myself and established what I believed needed to happen, this is what I come up with:
- We need a Part-time Admin Person
- We need a Part-time Business Manager
I wrote out what I thought we required those people to do. Then I sat with Renea and asked her specific questions around what tasks she thought we needed someone to do. Then Renea and I talked about my thoughts and she asked me how we were going to come up with the money for these positions and how we were going to find the people to fill those positions. In the past I would have worried about her concerns and probably even agreed with them. But I am learning and although those thoughts briefly crossed my mind I let them go and told Renea that we had to trust in the Universe to provide us with the solutions we needed.
I was then talking to a friend and telling him my situation. This friend of mine, I respect so much. He is a phenomenal business man whom I have learnt so much from. He asked if he could have a coffee with me so we could go over some things. I never pass up an opportunity to have coffee with him as I learn so much from such short conversations. So today we had coffee and I wasn’t disappointed.
We sat down and went over what I had worked out this week with Renea, myself and our business. He helped me summarise it and then helped me sort out a plan of action. He agreed with my observations and he also added a few of his own. We worked out an action plan for the next 3-6 months and also a starting point. At the end I sat there looking at what he had typed (I’m very impressed with his typing speed 🙂 ). I can’t remember if I said it out loud or to myself, but I can remember thinking/saying – Wow, if I implement this I will be a REAL Business Woman…
Then something else happened to truly blow my mind – he offered to help me implement it, to be my Business Manager until it was sorted and we had found the right person to take over. At the time I went – Oh, ok cool. But later when I was telling Renea about the meeting I said to her, could you imagine how awesome our business would be if we accepted his offer to help us? I mean he is such a phenomenal business person, to me its like Steve Jobs or Richard Branson or Bill Gates offering to be our Business Manager.
The more I thought about it, the more I got excited about the idea, then the excitement turned to fear – what if he seen how bad I have actually been at running the business, what if he realised I wasn’t a very good business person. So I sat with that for a while and realised it was just myself judging myself and he wasn’t the type of person to judge or think poorly of people. I have also had to do some work around the fact that this is big time now, if I make this decision to put a Business Manager on (even if it isn’t him) then I am making a commitment to myself to step outside my comfort zone and become what I consider to be a TRUE Business Owner, a TRUE Executive. Am I up for it? I’d like to think I am. Am I scared? Most definitely? Am I going to do it? YEP!!!!
Can you see what has happened here for me? I put it out to the Universe to help me solve my problem, I let the plea go and although I put the request out a few times, I didn’t focus on it. And a few days later the Universe has provided for me. Thank you Universe, thank you phenomenal business person 🙂
Now its your turn. Find something you truly want and connect with it, ask the Universe for it and see what happens 🙂
Question: Has there ever been a time when you have made a plea to the Universe and it has responded in a way that you would never have dreamt of?
We all have emotional baggage, sometimes we have baggage around stuff that we didn’t even realise we were carrying around with us still. Over the last 2 years I have been addressing all my baggage in many different ways. With my Life Coach, through Kinesiology, Theta Healing, Meditation, Positive Affirmations, the list goes on. And I cannot tell you how much better I feel because of it. More confident, happy, excited about life. Then one day I was introduced to Tapping. For me Tapping is like the icing on the cake (and I love icing :))
Tapping was introduced to me by my Business Coach. I was really struggling with a decision I had to make because I had a lot of emotional baggage attached to that decision. After one of our training sessions he told me that he wanted to try a technique ‘on’ me that he has found useful in the past when dealing with emotion baggage. At this stage I was up for anything, so I said ‘why not’. He took me through this technique called Tapping and it just blew my mind. By the end of the session I had let go of the emotional baggage and within 4 weeks I had made the decision I needed to make and had moved on.
What is Tapping, I hear you ask.
Well if you go to Amazon and read the review on Nick Ortner’s book The Tapping Solution, it describes Tapping as – Tapping, also known as EFT, is a powerful tool for improving your life on multiple levels: mental, emotional, and physical. It has been proven to effectively address a range of issues—from anxiety, chronic pain, addiction, and fear, to weight control, financial abundance, stress relief, and so much more. It’s also one of the easiest and fastest practices to learn. You can learn it in minutes, do it anywhere and on virtually any issue, and oftentimes experience immediate results.
How does it work? Based on the principles of both ancient acupressure and modern psychology, tapping concentrates on specific meridian endpoints while focusing on negative emotions or physical sensations. Combined with spoken word, tapping helps calm the nervous system to restore the balance of energy in the body and rewire the brain to respond in healthy ways.
What do I Tap on?
Every time I get angry over something, or feel sad, or something upsets me I have a process that I work through. I sit with that feeling, connect with it, try and sort out in my mind what is going on, what is being reflected to me, or why I reacted the way I did, then I tap on it. Tapping helps me release those feelings so they don’t keep coming up time and time again. Just recently I have tapped around my ex-husband not paying maintenance; I had to do a presentation in front of a group of business women and I was over the top nervous; I had to go and meet with a client whom makes me nervous as he is so nasty all the time, I had been putting it off for ages but it got to the point where I just had to do it. Those are just some examples of how Tapping has helped me.
Who can Tapping help?
I was talking to a friend the other day and she was telling me about a young girl she know who suffers from Anxiety and it was preventing her from getting a job as she was too scared to do the interviews. I can tell you right now that Tapping would help this girl. Tapping would help her connect to her fear and over come it.
Then I was talking to my sister about how a young girl she knows was told by her teacher that she couldn’t do a certain type of sport as she was too fat and too unfit. This is such a horrible thing to tell a young girl and the Teacher should not be teaching. But what is worse is that the young girl will carry this criticism around with her for a very long time if she doesn’t deal with how it made her feel right now. By Tapping on the feeling those words make her feel and the words themselves she would be able to overcome any negative effect the experience has had on her.
I am going to use Tapping to assist me on my weight loss journey, I will be sharing this with you all in future blogs.
But basically anyone who has emotional, physical and mental issues (so everyone), the use of Tapping, combine with Self Awareness would be of benefit to them.
Question: Have you heard of Tapping before? Do you use it? How has it helped you?
Have you ever noticed that most people are really negative? When you ask them how their day was or how things are going in their life, they will automatically reply with a ‘yeah good’ or ‘not bad’. But then within a short time they start to tell you about all the things that are going wrong in their life – they don’t have enough money – they are sick – this person is upsetting them – their car broke down – their kids are always naughty – their husband/wife is doing things wrong.
The list will go on and on and on and the more you let them talk about it the more they will live in their misery. Then you start comparing ‘hardship’ stories with them like its one big competition. All this is doing is putting negative vibrations out to the Universe so that the Universe will supply you with more negativity in your life.
The first step to turning this around is to be grateful. Finding 1 thing that you are grateful for is the first step to being positive and putting into the Universe positive vibrations, so that positivity is given back to you. I remember when I started doing this, it was so hard. What positive was there to be grateful for? Then it started to flow…
- I can afford to buy food to feed my family
- I have a job/business
- I can afford a car
- I can afford the petrol for my car
- I can afford my mortgage
- I have great friends
- I have great staff
- I have a wonderful family
- My children have grown to be awesome, loving, caring individuals
- I have a great Life Coach
The list could go on and on and on. At the start it was just little things like, I woke up today or I got a hug from my grandson. Once I started finding one thing a day I started finding 5 things a day to be grateful for. Once that was happening I started spending time with my list and actually being grateful for them, I would sit, think about my list, connect with each item and feel my gratitude for it. This is such an amazing feeling, to truly be grateful for 5 things a day. This doesn’t have to take up a lot of your time, 2 or 3 minutes a day is all it can take.
At the moment on Facebook there is quite a few of my friends doing this find 3 things to be grateful for, for 5 days. I challenge you to find 5 things to be grateful for, for the next 100 days. Who is up for the challenge?
How to start being grateful
- Get yourself a notebook or journal and a nice pen
- Make the commitment to yourself that for the next 100 days you will list 5 things you are grateful for that day
- Don’t put it off – Start NOW
- Choose the best time of day to do it. 1st thing in the morning? Last thing before you go to bed? In your lunch hour?
- Set a reminder on your phone/computer – until you get into the habit, it may pay to set a reminder on your phone/computer so that you remember to do your 5 things
- Get present and feel your list – when you have written down your list each day, sit with each item and feel the gratitude
- Share your list – Its great to share your list with either a partner, friend, child, friends on Social Media or even share them with me on this blog or on my list each night
- Don’t give up – once you’ve started and you get into the habit, don’t give up, your life will change so much by doing the list, why stop the change
- Be OK if you miss a day – most habits are hard to form and even once they have formed you sometimes need to miss doing it. If you miss one or two days don’t stress about it, it is all perfect just the way it is.
So lets do it, starting tomorrow (Friday 25th July 2014) for the next 100 days, lets list 5 things you are grateful for today.
Question: Do you keep a gratitude list? How has your life changed by starting your list?
Have you ever meditated? Most people have, for the ones that haven’t they picture someone sitting with their legs crossed, wrists resting on their knees, thumb and middle finger held together, eyes closed and ‘ummmm’ coming out of your mouth.. This is not how I do meditation 🙂
Wikipedia describes Meditation as a practice in which an individual trains the mind or induces a mode of consciousness, either to realize some benefit[1] or as an end in itself.[2] It goes on and explains Meditation in-depth, I would suggest all of you go over and have a read.
Last night I started a new 8 week Meditation Course with Jackie White at Being Divine. There were 6 new people and Jackie was talking to them about how she runs her meditation and how it works etc. This got me thinking about my first time I did meditation with Jackie. I remember it was a cold Thursday night and I was running late (as always), stressed out of my mind.
When we started Jackie got us to write down everything that was running through our mind at that time, our stresses, our to do list for when we had finished meditation that night, tomorrow’s to do list. We had to write down everything so that we could relax during meditation. I did this and I had so much running through my mind that I think I could have kept writing for quite some time.
Back before I started Meditation my body would ‘hum/buzz’ with everything that was going on, it was like I was running on adrenaline all the time. Life was so busy and so out of control and I just had to keep pace. I didn’t really feel stressed, but I felt that constant buzz of adrenaline all the time.
The first night we did mediation I remember thinking, I don’t think I’m doing this right, I just seem to be sitting here. But the more I have done Meditation, the ‘deeper’ I go and now doing meditation feels so awesome and so relaxing and it lifts your vibrational energy up so high.
After a few weeks you can see the change in your mood, feelings, energy levels. I was no longer humming/buzzing and running on adrenaline. I was calm and peaceful and I would often catch myself quickly shutting my eyes, taking a deep breath and connecting to my heart space when things felt out of control. Don’t get my wrong, my life was still crazy busy and I still had to keep the pace, I just didn’t feel stressed or have the adrenaline running through me.
If you have ever thought about doing meditation, or even if you haven’t. I would love for you to take the first step and start, just 15 minutes a day is all it takes. You can go on YouTube and find guided and unguided mediation clips, or iTunes and get the same. Or you can find someone like Jackie White and physically go to the mediation classes.
Question: Have you ever done meditation before? Do you enjoy it? What benefits have you got out of meditation?
