Power of Your Personal Energy

Oh those little bundles of joy that come to us full of love, innocence and utter amazement for this new world they just entered. And as they grow - boy are they packed with what seems like limitless energy. As any exhausted parent knows - It's like their little engine is always on full throttle! That's why at the end of the day when their sweet little faces hit the pillow and they drift off to sleep we breathe one huge sigh of relief, and maybe pour a glass of wine or two for ourselves.

That's how I used to define energy. Did I have enough to keep up with a spirited toddler? After a long day was there enough gas in my tank to go run a few miles or was I on empty and really needed to lay on the couch and watch some recorded Bachelor episodes (Why oh why am I addicted to these crazy shows)? It wasn't until after the birth of my son Cole and his diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder that I began to alter my definition of energy. My first foray into the science behind energy began the day I met my son's new Occupational Therapist. Well let's just say I initially thought she'd be working with my son; however, I soon realized her actual effort was going to be with me. I had sat down to discuss the ways Cole's sensory disorder was affecting his life. One specific item I mentioned was how hard it was to go anywhere with him. The ride in the car, followed by the large amount of sensory input in a store (people, lights, sounds) always led to sensory overload; which ultimately resulted in a red faced, fist squeezing, screaming child. His fight or flight button was on overdrive and my goal was to get in and out of this store before we illicit the "you must be a bad mom" stares or worse - he is so keyed up he throws up while we are in here. I looked at her, desperate and praying she would be able to sprinkle some magic fairy dust that would awaken me from this nightmare, or at a minimum respond with some miraculous remedy no other doctor or therapist had been enlightened enough to yet offer. However, instead she simply asked me "How do you feel when you know you have to go somewhere and you are getting ready to leave?" Well (this seemed like an obvious answer to me) of course I feel like a bundle of nerves - anxious, worried and like I'd pretty much rather poke my eyeballs out instead of walking into Target (my once favorite store - sniff..sniff)! She then responded with "We have to clean up your vibration first before we work on helping Cole. If we take a step back and align your energy you will be in a better place to help him. He can read your energy to a tea and how can you possibly help lower his anxiety if you too are now on high alert?" Ok - definitely not the magical answer I was looking for. I am pretty sure there was a long quiet pause as I sat there wide eyed and processing her response. I wanted to respond with "I am only anxious because of him! I never used to have anxiety when shopping at Target - so fix him!" Prior doctors and therapists, at this point in the conversation, would have started writing down various activities we could work on and the amount of time to devote to each. Nobody had stopped and looked at me and stated "Let's work on you first." Even though I instantly had the urge to blame my anxiety on the circumstances, something clicked inside of me. I remember thinking about one of those quotes I had read in the past that went something like - "There are a lot of things that happen in life that we can't control, but the one thing we can control is our response to it." It's just so hard. I know we've all been there when going through hard times. We want to fix the problem, circumstance, or person - we want to shout - "No, fix this and then I will feel better." However, I didn't say anything except "You have my attention!"

It sunk in that the gist of her lesson was that it is more of an upstream battle to try and help someone when we ourselves are sitting in a toxic pool of emotions. My son may be dealing with his own issues but he is also going to reflect back my energy (no matter how hard I try to hide it). I know we've all put on the fake smile, the fake laugh, and said the fake "everything is great" words. But we can't fake out the universe as to how we feel deep inside. Eye opening for sure! Now, if I could somehow figure out how to make myself actually FEEL good (tune my energy correctly) in the middle of this chaos I could help him in a much more productive way. I remember thinking, I've tried everything else so why not work on my own emotions - it's definitely worth a shot. The worst thing that could happen is that it doesn't help my son, but I can now walk through Target and look those "bad mom stares" in the face with a happy heart and smile. Too me that was a win!

The journey of learning about the power of controlling your thoughts and beliefs to emit a higher energy has been a tricky one to say the least - one I have to continually work on. But our brains are amazing mechanisms and I learned we can neurologically change our wiring. Now bare with me for a few seconds because I am going to get a little "sciencey" here. I personally may have understood what the therapist was saying but I wanted facts to back this up - so my research began into the whole quantum physics aspect of this. The short story is that everything in the universe is made of matter, which means everything is made of atoms. And the startling fact is that an atom is 99.99999 percent energy and .00001 percent physical substance. Which in reality means, WE are energy! We are more nothing (stuff we can't see) than an actual something. We are emitting energy even though we can't see it. But we can feel it! For example, I know we have all had experiences where we come in contact with another person and before you even start to talk you immediately sense their mood. You may walk away from them and feel better and more uplifted even though you can't pinpoint why. Of course there is the opposite end of the spectrum too, where you walk away from someone and you think, "Whew...glad I'm not around them all the time." That is energy! Animals are always in tune with this. We can too, but we've just buried this gift under layers of "being human."

This first day of being introduced to this new way of thinking was such a gift to me. The biggest shifts that happen with my child occur when I have taken the time to align my personal energy. For he is a reflection of what I have going on inside of me. We are all connected here on earth and the power we have to uplift others lies in our connection to ourselves. We have to take care of that first and the biggest indicator of where we stand energetically is how we FEEL. And really - who doesn't want to feel good? I mean, I think everything that a person wants is in an effort to feel good (and that's OK). Because when you feel good you are happy and happy people do more GOOD things. It's a momentum that we must get started if we want to make changes in the world. It all starts with us - each of us beginning to take the responsibility to connect to our inside source (I call that God but you can call it whatever feels right to you) and feel good emotions (even when it's so freaking hard). Just imagine what would happen if we all started tending to our emotions and trained our brain on how to actually FEEL more happy, free, loving, and for a lack of better words - more good! That wave of good emotions and energy would trickle out around us. Then for once we may have a chance - a chance to bring more joy, more laughter, more positive change, and more togetherness into the world we share. Now wouldn't that be something to feel good about!