The LifeQuake Blog

Ask the LifeQuake Doctor
Jan 2011

Dear Dr. Toni:
As the new year is approaching, I am filled with fear that my life is never going to change. I am not in a relationship and my career is going nowhere. I know I am lucky to have a job but I’ve been getting sick lately a lot and I dread going there in the morning. I work long hours and have no time for a relationship even if I wanted one. I feel trapped and my life feels like it is over.
I don’t know if you can help, but you seem to give good advice to others so this is my last ditched effort to save myself from dying of boredom!
Frustrated in Sedona

Dear Reader:
As we enter this new year of 2011, instead of writing resolutions, perhaps another way of starting the year might be to look at what needs revolution. The word resolve has such a somber quality to it. According to the etymology dictionary online, the word revolution was first recorded in the English language in 1799 and was said to mean “to change a thing completely and fundamentally.” The word revolve comes from the Latin derivative, revolvere, to turn or roll back.

So, perhaps you need to go back to the past to see what beliefs you are holding which need to be reconstructed. Resolution may only approach this at the surface level of the mind and may be why we often don’t keep resolutions because the unconscious fears are never excavated.
You have bought into a mass consciousness that if you have a job, you should just thank your lucky stars. Sometimes the greatest grace people receive is getting fired so they are forced to think outside the box. The media only shows you the people who keep doing the same thing in their unemployment. They send out resumes only to have them rejected for two years and then end up in bankruptcy.
If your job is boring you AND you have no time for a personal life, getting sick is a wake up call. If you keep getting sick, you either need to reinvent the work you are doing or begin volunteering at a non-profit organization while you have a job. Find an issue you really care about and give time to an organization that supports change around that problem. The key is to have passion about something in your life. Step into 2011 as a revolutionary in your own life, who, like our founding fathers, can stand for both personal and global change. As trite as it sounds, your becoming authentic in your life before a crisis hits catalyzes change in the world.

The word LifeQuake means whatever is awakening you to the next level of your evolution. If you take a stand for revolution, your evolution doesn’t have to mean losing it all first to move forward.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I am contemplating moving to a new city. I saw your newsletter and column on your facebook page a few months ago and know that you made a big move up north so I thought you might be a good person to ask how to make a transition like that. I am self employed, my work has practically dissolved in Los Angeles and none of my usual tactics for marketing are working to drum up business so I figure I have nothing to lose.

My biggest fear is making friends at this age. I am 45. I do love my long time friends here and am not sure how to go about meeting people in a new place. What do you suggest?
Richard R.

Dear Richard:
I would begin building a bridge from where you are to where you are going. Ask people you know for names of people to contact and then make several visits before moving. You don’t indicate what your work is but you might want to find networking groups oriented toward your work and plan your trips to accommodate them.

Write to the people you were recommended to and ask them about any social or business functions they might invite or recommend you attend and then coordinate your schedule to get the most bang out of your trips. Given that friendship is clearly important to you, evaluate how community focused the people are in the area you are interested in moving to.

Being clear about your values and interests, always pick a place to move to whose culture will support them and you will encourage the smoothest transition and long term satisfaction. Marin County, for example, is very community focused and dedicated to environmental concerns. This was important to me: living in protected nature and having a spiritual community whose beliefs predominantly mirrored my own.

Dear Readers:
Making a point to take one authentic risk every week will revolutionize your life and accelerate your conscious evolution in 2011. Write to me and share your bold adventures!

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. Her book The LifeQuake Phenomenon is available online through Amazon.com.

This is my third blog on the shadow side of social communities.
I read an interesting article on the marketplace blog, see link below about how social communities may be infringing on the writer's life, in terms of productivity. The author of this article took a break from her internet addiction and found she was meeting her deadlines more effectively. I would have to agree with her. For me though, it is not about the distraction so much as a style change. Taking the time to go on facebook or twitter seems to dilute my creative focus because of the change in one's voice and orientation. You begin to sound very clipped and superficial in your attempt to be pithy enough for the characters allowed. Between texting and tweeting, how lazy does it make us as writers?

BR>

A few weeks ago I wrote about this new burgeoning addiction to social communities and asked a lot of questions to help you assess if it’s a real problem for you. In today’s post I want to talk about solutions.

I think at the heart of social community addiction is the avoidance of loneliness. Whatever we run from will have power over us. If you have a need to be connected to people through twitter 10 times
a day, you don’t have a healthy relationship with yourself or with the joy of solitude so before you go on the internet, even email, take 15 minutes, close your eyes and breathe into your diaphragm deeply. Then place one hand over your heart and send love to yourself. corny maybe, but it works. Taking time out to center yourself before you start your day may bring you into deeper relationship with yourself and your connections to others will be less desperate. another tip I gleaned from another blog I want to share here as well.
There actually is a website for people who need assistance in getting clean from their facebook or you tube fix.
This is from dailyblogtips:
You basically add the URL of the site that is consuming your time, and then the service will provide you with another URL that you should use to access the service (ideally you should bookmark it and always use it). If you try to access the site more than once within a specific time interval, say 60 minutes, they service will block you and remind that you should wait some time before you can go there again.

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/keepmeoutcom-solve-your-internet-addiction-problem/

And if that doesn’t work, start your own 12 step program for cyber junkies!
Dr. Toni Galardi has just offered her first newsletter. go to www.LifeQuake.net and subscribe on the contact page.

Yesterday I was contacted through Facebook by a guy from Torino, Italy who has the same last name as me. I accepted his invitation to be his friend given we have the same name. I was slightly amused by the fact that although he’s married, he listed one word under the “Your interests” category: women. But if you understand Italian culture, you don’t judge.

Anyway, he contacted me again today inviting me to be a part of the Galardi Family where 30 people all named Galardi were listed. At first, I almost didn’t accept.  Although I do business under the name Galardi, my legal last name is Gagliardi but people don’t know how to pronounce it correctly in this country (phonetically it is pronounced Gaul-yar-dee).  When  I started doing media appearances twenty years ago I shortened the name so it wouldn’t be pronounced Gag -liardi.

But in looking at all these pictures of people with my current last name, it made me think about how the word family is changing. Now with Facebook, we really are connecting with each other all over the world every day and the idea of a global family is no longer just an ideal concept. We are meant to transform our definition of family as we make this global leap in evolution.  The evolutionary biologists tell us that we are all connected to ancestors in South Africa. So I decided that whether my name is Galardi or Gagliardi, I am connected to these people in Torino. The irony is that my grandmother’s second husband John Sorgini was from Torino.  Although we were not blood related, he was the only paternal grandfather I ever knew. Six degrees of separation…

Dr Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist and Change Expert.  Her new book The LifeQuake Phenomenon is available through her website www.LifeQuake.net or the online bookstores.  To contact Dr. Galardi for a consult, call 310-712-2600.