What’s the solution to personal crisis during the recession?

Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor Dr. Toni Galardi

Dear Dr. Toni:
I am working in Hollywood in a technical position that does not require a formal education. For many years, I only made $60,000 a year.  Due to a stroke of luck (which may be debatable) I was promoted to a director position with a production company and now earn over $300,000 a year. I know there are many people out there struggling so my problem may not seem very important but I don’t know where to turn.
After I became a director I started using cocaine at parties, which eventually graduated to daily use. I was dating a really sweet girl and began cheating on her with a lot of different women. I worked with one of these women and when I tried to break it off with her she called my girlfriend, and now my girlfriend will have nothing whatsoever to do with me.  She has agreed to meet me for couples therapy but not to get back together. I’m not sure if that is the answer for us. I think we just need to put this behind us and move forward. I am not seeing any of the other women anymore. What do you think we should do, Dr. Toni?
Bewildered in West Hollywood

Dear Bewildered:
I agree with you. I would highly suggest that you forget couples therapy too. What is called for, however, is not to expect her to simply move beyond your transgression because you say so. If you want to regain your girlfriend’s trust and use this crisis to grow into a more expanded self, I suggest you go into individual therapy and work on your self-esteem issues.  That you began acting out through sex and drugs when your income substantially increased is very telling.
You didn’t disclose your personal family history but it might be useful to explore with a therapist the beliefs you carry about making a lot of money. It feels to me that you are self-sabotaging out of feelings of unworthiness. What was your mother and father’s beliefs about money and power? I would also suggest you go to either an AA or CA (Cocaine Anonymous) meeting. I pick up a lot of arrogance from your letter. One of the steps in a twelve-step program involves making amends. I would recommend you call every woman you had gratuitous sex with and apologize. Besides doing your own therapeutic work, humble yourself and agree to your girlfriend’s terms and attend couples counseling as well.
Every “loss” has a gift for us if we choose to see it. Good luck with your journey to real esteem of self.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I am a stay-at-home mom and my husband has been laid off from work. He has been unable to get hired and he wants me to go back to work until he does. I was a teacher before we had children. I know I cannot make the kind of income that he was making and it seems silly to get a job teaching temporarily. He wants to give up our home, sell one of our cars, and live in an apartment until things turn around.  I do not think drastic downsizing is the answer. I am afraid we are going to end up stuck in a working class lifestyle with me as the only breadwinner.
My husband and I are really fighting over this issue and I don’t know what to do.  I don’t want to go back to teaching but I don’t know what else I can do. I can’t afford therapy or career counseling so I am writing you. Can you help, Dr. Toni?
Ruth A.

Dear Ruth:
You would be surprised at how many couples have had to do role reversal since the economy crashed. In my phone-coaching practice, I worked with a guy who lost his job in corporate America and then decided to develop an internet business finding rare parts for motorcycles and now has this niche business that is international. His wife is an accountant who works outside the home while he cares for their child and runs his home-based business.
Perhaps there is some kind of teaching you can do that is not in a formal academic setting. There are all kinds of seminar businesses where they train you to teach their material in the corporate workplace. Or perhaps you can start your own business teaching stay-at-home moms something you have a passion for. As for downsizing, I would suggest that you streamline your lives and cut out all the extraneous activities or expenditures before doing something as radical as selling the house, unless you are about to be foreclosed on. Empower your husband right now. He most probably feels terrible about not being able to provide for his family preventing you from being there for your children but you never know what gift lies in you moving back into a career and him spending more time with the children as he job hunts. Perhaps he can assist you in developing a home-based business while he continues his job search. Start doing some research and get outside your box. Change is gain, my dear!
 
To submit questions for Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor, contact Dr. Toni Galardi through DrToni@LifeQuake.net (no period after the Dr). For those seeking phone coaching, Dr. Toni can be reached at 310-712-2600.

Evolutionary scientists claim that at every juncture when our species was making a major evolutionary shift, climate played a large role. Now, we can understand how primitive man became nomadic in order to find better food sources and thus a less harsh climate but how exactly is that playing out today? It seems that every time we get hit with a tsunami, earthquake, or most recently, volcanic ash, it stops mobility. People are either wiped out in large numbers or stranded from flying. When the 1989 San Francisco Quake hit, I was getting on a plane at Kennedy International in New York and it took 24 hours to get home. Rescuing Hurricane Kartrina victims was a travesty in delayed response.

The recent chaos that ensued from a lack of coordination of European airlines cost them $1.5 billion dollars and kept 9.5 million people on the ground.
According to the Wall Street Journal today,http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704133804575197363596504510.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLTopStories
“Airline-industry officials said the initial response of regulators across Europe was haphazard and created confusion for airlines and passengers, illustrating the urgency of implementing the European Union’s “single sky” project, under which air traffic and oversight will be coordinated across the 27-country bloc. Currently, airspace closures, airplane movements and most aviation rules are handled independently by national governments. Mr. Schulte-Strathaus said efforts by EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas and his team over the weekend that led to Monday’s decision to reopen airspace showed the value of close EU cooperation on aviation regulation.
Journal Community

Mr. Kallas’s spokeswoman said that if the new rules—planned for 2012—had already been in place, Monday’s decision could have been taken on Friday, avoiding four days of disruptions and financial losses.” This marks the biggest disruption in global aviation since 9/11.

Ok, so let’s go back almost 9 years. We now know there were many warnings the government was given that an attack was imminent. We were warned about the levies in New Orleans. So, it is seductive to blame governments for not implementing policies or strategies that would prevent massive crises like these. We could make a case for asking, “why does it always take a crisis to get change in the world?”

We could do that or we could do the harder thing and look into our own lives and ask the same question, “how is it that I wait until a crisis hits in my life before I move forward and make changes?” In my book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive not Just Survive in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval I assert that the evolutionary mandate at this juncture is surely not the one that Neanderthal man had to face: those who ran the fastest tended to survive. No, the evolutionary mandate now is how quickly do we assess that the ways we have been doing our lives are now defunct and make a change before it reaches crisis levels?

Mother Earth is doing her best to wake us up, for sure. If we continue to rely on devastating crises to implement change, we will be living out Darwin’s survival of the fittest. Those who are hearty enough to survive climate catastrophes, plagues, and continuing economic contraction will be the ancestors of a newly evolving species. Adaptation to a crisis driven world is one vision for this evolutionary shift. There is however, another vision. If Gandhi and a myriad of quantum physicists are correct and we individually take on healing our addiction to crisis as a catalyst for change, our dear Mother, the planet may not have to “quake us up”.

Here’s a vision: Individually, our LifeQuakes start to show up as mere awakening to the next level of our consciousness. We no longer hold the belief that change means loss. Change now is informed by a developed intuitive mind that creates a vision for one’s future that embodies thriving. We actually slow down long enough to notice when a chapter of our lives is coming to a close and we prepare for it, not resist it. The whole world then makes an evolutionary shift that eliminates scarcity.

If I just choose to face what I need to change today to make my life thrive a little more and not just be in survival, just today, it starts to feel attainable.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist/career coach, noted public speaker, columnist, and author.

We live in rapidly changing times. The beginning of this decade and century has brought many sudden, sometimes devastating crises to which we’ve had to respond instantly. Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, the earthquake in Haiti and Wall Street quaking all came, seemingly without warning. And it is predicted that we will continue to see devastating collective happenings, such as climate catastrophes and economic contractions (economists predict until 2011).

On a more personal level, there are also massive LifeQuakes that many of us are experiencing. Given this, it is no wonder that addiction, in all its manifestations, continues to skyrocket. But these seemingly catastrophic events can be a guise for something better. Through the eyes of evolution-oriented psychotherapy, it can be seen as part of a vast evolutionary shift.

Fear has always been an adaptive, evolutionary mechanism for getting our adrenaline pumping. But survival of the fittest no longer indicates who can outrun nature’s predators. Today’s survivors are those who can maintain grace under fire. For the addict, who often comes with a rigid personality structure, learning to adapt to these times of personal and global upheaval without relapsing is the true challenge.

Part of responding to crisis without hysteria is preparation. It is actually possible to intuit the signs that radical change is coming—if people in aboriginal tribes can have this instinctual nature, so can we. In fact, there are documented instances of people who intuited not to get on United flight 93 on 9/11, who sold their home before the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and who got out of the stock market shortly before September 2008.

The key to preparing for change depends on a new belief that change is gain, as opposed to loss. When you choose to change the negative association with change, you are more apt to listen for the signs that a cycle is completing and change is coming, even if you don’t know what that specific change needs to be.

In your childhood, if change always brought crisis or pain, you may have a deep subconscious resistance to major transitions and turn to addiction to cope. The irony is that if you hold onto the belief that change will be negative, it can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. If your coping strategy for adapting to change is to avoid the warning signs by numbing yourself through substances or other distractions, you actually create crisis-driven transition. Even for those who are going to meetings and are not actively using, there are other subtle ways of avoiding dealing with the fear of change. A slew of parking tickets may be a wake-up call that you are over-parked in your life. If ignored, a major accident could be around the corner.

One technique to begin to transform the fear of change is to spend a few minutes every day with your eyes closed. Ask yourself, “Is there some area of my life that has become defunct, no longer functioning for my greater good?” It could be your job responsibilities, the form of exercise you do or even your sex life.

Now focus inward toward your body.

When you think about changing that routine, what feelings surface? Where are those feelings located in your body? Now, take five minutes to simply breathe into it by placing your left hand (this is governed by the side of the brain that elicits our intuitive, creative self) directly over this area. Allow your hand to get warmer. Now send an intention of unconditional love into your hand. Think about all the times you have used your hands to express love toward family members or a pet, and then transfer that same feeling of complete acceptance you have toward others you love to the place in your body where you hold the fear of change. Love the fear as it is by directing energy through your hand as you would if you were reassuring a wounded pet. End this practice by repeating to yourself, “I am safe and secure. Change now brings me gain.”

Allow yourself to either visualize or feel into your body a future life in which this change has brought peace and in which you are thriving. The key is to practice experiencing feeling the inner security of moving through change completely supported emotionally, physically, and financially, so that you can thrive after the change comes. To reprogram your body to do this, repeat this exercise as often as you feel the fear arise—for as long as several weeks—until there is no more negative charge associated with making a life change.

Spring is here! Have you done a spring cleaning at the body, mind, and soul level yet? What is flowering in your life this season?

Dear Dr. Toni:
I have been in a long distance relationship with a man for the past six months who lives in Minnesota. I have made most of the trips to see him because my ailing father lives nearby.
On the last day of every trip, he closes down and disconnects. Then he gets critical in his comments to me. I have mentioned this to him and on my last trip he took some time to examine his feelings. He shared with me that he doesn’t feel he can have a relationship at a time when his son is in crisis at school; his company is in peril, and he is about to lose his home.
The problem is that once there is distance, he starts to warm up again and I get hooked back in. Should I cut off the relationship altogether or maintain a friendship by phone? I feel this deep connection with him and I know he feels it with me when he lets himself, but I cannot take this roller coaster ride when I’m with him.
What should I do?
Deborah

Dear Deborah:
It sounds to me that you have your answer. He has told you he isn’t available for a relationship. Can you be just his friend? Only you can answer this. If not, tell him you need a break to make the transition to a friendship and that you will call him when and if you can. Then, be your own best friend. What kinds of activities do you like to do? Make a list of 50 and start doing them. Make your life a joyful experience that any man would love to be invited into.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I have been a medical professional for 20 years and my practice has virtually dissolved in the last year. I don’t know what to do. I am going further and further into debt and I can’t get a 9 to 5 job that will cover my overhead. I am going to bed scared every night. I would ask my colleagues to send me business, but most of them are in the same boat.
I have a feeling there might be something else for me to do with my life but I haven’t the faintest idea what that is. What do you suggest I do, Dr. Toni? I feel like I am running out of time and will be facing bankruptcy if I don’t act soon.
Desperate in Brentwood

Dear Desperate:
I hear your fear and it probably is very little consolation to know that many people are in the same boat with you, and it might feel like that boat is sinking. There are a couple of things I would like to recommend. On the physical level, I suggest that you include a multi-mineral supplement with your breakfast or lunch and add some extra magnesium. This does two things: it supports the immune system in that it alkalinizes the body when you’re under stress (and the body becomes acidic), and it feeds the nervous system. Magnesium is especially good for this. The most absorbable magnesium is magnesium glycinate. Eating lots of leafy greens helps too. Secondly, make sure you are exercising four to five times a week at something that is not depleting to your adrenals. You can tell this by how you feel when you are done with your routine.
Next, incorporate what I call emotional pulse checks, three times a day. Set an alarm on your computer or cell phone to go off and remind you to notice your breath. Take five minutes to consciously breathe down into your gut and set an intention for releasing all muscle tension from your body.
Before you go to sleep, do my evening download technique of scanning your day and consciously releasing all events that registered stress in your body. Forgive yourself or anyone else who might have been a catalyst for that stress. Both of these techniques are on my CD, The LifeQuake Method and can be obtained by going to my Web site and clicking on http://www.lifequake.net/products.
Next, if you go to the very bottom of the media page, there is a free video to view called “Connecting the Dots” which will give you an exercise for observing your life and discovering what gives you energy now. The gift inside your practice is the opportunity to reinvent yourself. As this chapter is ending you are entering what I call in chapter four of my book, “The Cosmic Barbecue.” Transition is never easy, but if you get in touch with disowned parts of yourself it can lead to your life purpose and more meaning in your career. Change is good. We just need to be calm enough first to recognize the clues to journeying on the path that is meant just for us!

I am excited to announce that my book The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval is available April 14 in paperback through Amazon and Barnes & Noble online book stores.

To submit questions for Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor, contact Dr. Toni Galardi through DrToni@LifeQuake.net (no period after the Dr.) For those seeking phone coaching, Dr. Toni can be reached at 310.712.2600.

© 2010 Vision Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Vision Magazine is a ® Registered Trademark of Vision Global, Inc.
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Phone: 619.294.2393 • Toll Free: 866.804.8444 • Fax: 619.296.1910 • Email: comments@visionmagazine.com
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According to a report in National Public Radio, there’s a plan afoot among evolutionary scientists to launch a big new project – to look back in time and find out how climate change over millions of years affected human evolution. http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_climate-change-may-have-driven-human-evolution_1363244

In the first three months of 2010, we’ve had earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Japan, Indonesia, and Turkey in addition to other minor quakes in states such as Hawaii, Alaska, Oklahoma, and parts of California. The largest quake in recent months has been the 8.8 earthquake in Chile. The quake is reported to have been strong enough to move the earth off her axis.
This series of earthquakes has brought the subject of global warming and all its controversy back into the media. Much of the news about the ecology of our planet focuses on grim statistics and the crisis state we are in. Now that this is no longer a red-hot story with the focus on the tragic and tremendous suffering of those who survived, it seemed to me that now might be a good time to revisit this subject in its imminent pertinence to each of us personally.

In my new book The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval, I talk about how environmental crises are linked to economic contraction, the increase in immune related illnesses, and the incidence of addictions skyrocketing. When understood, they can really be seen as just symptoms of an awakening process taking place for us humans. Scientists who study evolution might concur with me that the change in our environment and its fallout on humanity may have a silver lining. For those who choose to adopt a healthy diet, work on our addictions, and be more discerning in our spending practices without fear may be the group who adapts to evolutionary mandate and survives.

I define “The LifeQuake Phenomenon” as an extraordinary, unprecedented leap in our current evolution … one that catalyzes a critical mass to learn how to adapt and thrive in the face of accelerated change. The planet itself will go on no matter what we do to it. It has survived many environmental crises throughout its history but it often brings on major climactic changes when we as a species are in need of evolving. This one controversial issue, global warming is pulling us all together no matter what our political affiliation, racial background, or even religious belief system. Through these global crises we are moving from our sectarian, tribal mentality to an identity as “planetary family”.

However, if you are anything like me, by now, you have taken on some environmentally friendly practices like recycling, using environmentally friendly light bulbs, and maybe you even have or aspire to own a hybrid car but words like green initiative, carbon footprint, and sustainability are not a part of your every day language. In fact you might even feel pretty uneducated when it comes to “green intelligence.” As someone who feels pretty moronic on the subject of living green, I have pondered what I the average person who doesn’t really like to make changes that might involve discomfort can really do to contribute in a positive way to the environmental LifeQuakes™ taking place on the planet. There are plenty of people who can give you much better guidance on how to reduce your carbon footprint. There is however a way to live more greenly if you will that has nothing to do with your outer ecological habits. Picking up trash is great but there’s a lot of trash in your own head. It’s called, your thoughts. Thought pollution probably does more damage to the planet than something as unconscious as littering the left over paper refuse from today’s lunch on the neighbor’s lawn (shudder the thought).

What might happen if you decided to start recycling your thoughts? What I mean by that is that as a thought comes up you think of a new way to use that thought. For example: You gained ten pounds last year and keep criticizing yourself because you haven’t stuck to a diet or exercised. Instead of the endless recording that goes around and around, what if you found a new way to think about that weight gain? You aren’t getting anywhere with the self judgment so what if you decided to tell your body that it was ok to have this extra weight because you actually need it right now and when you don’t need it anymore, it is just going to fall off. Yea, every time you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see, you will affirm, this weight is helping me feel more powerful and when I don’t need it to feel powerful, it is going to just come right off. And you can apply this to any unproductive habit or addiction.

If thoughts create your reality, all those negative judgments about what you should be doing in your career or any other part of your life are just contributing to pollution, too. We all want clean air but how many of us think about a clean air space in between our ears? What if all it took for us to “save our planet” was to stop seeing ourselves as being not enough? There might be so much more room in our brains for creative problem solving. If we stopped polluting ourselves with toxic thinking, maybe the collective consciousness will shift. A massive but not crisis driven, planetary LifeQuake might quite naturally shift our ecological practices so that all the information we are being bombarded with in terms of green practices could be integrated into our lives without a lot of resistance.

Yes, it’s true, I don’t know anything about carbon footprints but I do know that we can change our psychological blueprint from the one we inherited simply by paying attention to out thoughts and refining them so that pure, energy conservation replaces negative, obsessive chatter within our inner conversations. The cleaner the thoughts, the more agile the mind becomes in traveling through our neural-pathways. The more agile the mind, the less toxic and more creative we are. The more creative we are, the more likely we will come up with solutions for our world. Since this is the season of change, perhaps our pre-frontal lobe is a good place to clean house so that we can hold a consistent vision of our planetary future as one where every human being is thriving. Imagine that…

Dr. Toni Galardi is a psychotherapist, public speaker and career coach. The soft cover of her new book The LifeQuake Phenomenon™ will be released in mid April. Her website address is www.LifeQuake.net and for phone coaching, she can be reached through her office at 310-712-2600.

Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor Dr. Toni Galardi

Spring is coming! March 20 marks the Spring Equinox, bringing blossoms and new life. For those of you who have already reneged on promises made to yourself, this is a great time for getting back on the horse and initiating change. Take one habit that is holding you back from becoming the “best you” possible. Expect your destiny to change—in fact, declare it! Then write to me about your progress or any questions concerning what may be holding you back.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I have been an artist for almost 20 years. I am told my work is good but I have trouble with the PR part of the business. I hate having to show at gallery openings and talk about my work. I would rather just do what I do and have an agent market for me, but I am told that you have to be part of the selling end of things.
I am writing because I think part of it has to do with the fact that my father does not approve of me being an artist. He maintains that because I didn’t go to a professional art school, I lack credibility, so I always feel like a fraud when I have to promote my work publicly. Do you have any suggestions as to what I can do to get out of my own way?
Hiding Out in Encinitas

Dear Hiding:
Ah, yes. This is a common dilemma for many artists. The personality of the individual who can spend long days creating in isolation is often quite introverted. Public openings in galleries can feel downright painful. In your case though, I think that more is at play.
I would like to suggest that you use writing as a healing tool for releasing the beliefs you inherited from your father. One way for you to do this is to speak to your “inner father/judge” using your dominant hand and respond to this critic using your non-dominant hand. What this does is open the channel to your intuition and your “wholy” self.
For example, ask this question from your critic using your right hand if you’re right handed: “Who are you to think that you have what it takes to be taken seriously as a painter?” Answer the question with your left hand. Keep asking questions from the critic until you feel enough support from the answers given by your “wholy” self that you feel more at peace and you can surrender your resistance to promoting your work. Get in touch with the part of you that has experienced joy from your art and let that be your intention for what you want people to feel when they have one of your pieces in their home or office.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I’ve started a relationship with a man who lives in a part of the country I will never move to. I work from home and could live anywhere, but I don’t want to live in a hot, humid climate. He claims that he wants to move back to California, but not for 18 months—until his son graduates. It is really hard having long separations and I am questioning if I am wasting my time on someone who may never move back.
How does one decide whether to invest in something that could end in a year?
Lonely and in Love

Dear In Love:
My dear, love is a risk no matter where it shows up. If he were here, it would come with other risks. You don’t mention how often you see each other. You also don’t mention whether this is an exclusive relationship or what has been decided regarding a future with each other. Let’s presume you see each other once a month. If you don’t, by the way, I would insist on those terms if you need more contact. Secondly, I would not make it an exclusive relationship until there is a commitment in place. What will allow you to be more patient with the process of discovery is if you continue to date others and have a social life where you let it continue to evolve. If he wants exclusivity, define what the relationship is and what each of you expects over the next 18 months.
I have one last suggestion, should things progress. If there is a way for you to work anywhere, negotiate with him what you need in order for you to move to where he is. What kind of compromises do you need from him for you to relocate: Do you need a plan? Do you need a ring on your finger? Do you need him to accommodate your heat sensitivity by providing you with constant air conditioning at all times? Perhaps extracting a promise that he will never wear flip-flops and Bermuda shorts when he takes you to dinner will be comforting. The point is, be clear but do it with humor. You will get further in your negotiations, irrespective of whether you move there or not.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker, and author of The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (Not Just Survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. She can be reached through LifeQuake.net or for consultation at 310.712.2600.

© 2010 Vision Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Vision Magazine is a ® Registered Trademark of Vision Global, Inc.
1281 University Ave., Ste. G San Diego, CA 92103
Phone: 619.294.2393 • Toll Free: 866.804.8444 • Fax: 619.296.1910 • Email: comments@visionmagazine.com
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