Tag Archives: holiday season

The Chaise Lounge War: STRESS in PARADISE, Episode Two

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The Chaise Lounge War: Stress in Paradise. Episode Two

Dateline: The Giggling Marlin. Cabo San Lucas International Branch Bar. I don’t think the people in here are normal. I also think if they realize I’m listening to their conversations for national publication, things could get dangerous.

In order to appreciate the dangerous waters stirred up by the Chaise Lounge War, you must have joined up earlier with Stress in Paradise. Episode One: Revolution on the Beach.

Revolution is part of the vocabulary of Mexico. There are almost daily public demonstrations in Mexico City demanding better pay for agricultural and services workers. And here in Cabo San Lucas, another desperate cause has driven the oppressed to rise up. The Ultimate Supreme Superlative Fabulous Luxury (see previous confession) Hilton Resort where we’re staying simply does not have enough ultimate supreme chaise lounges in superlative fabulous locations. And the non-natives are restless.

Strictly speaking there are enough chairs so that every guest has a place to plant his or her soon-to-blistered body in the sun. There are loads of chaises—around the pools, on the overlooks, on the sand next to the water, everywhere–and the helpful guys in white will gladly adjust an umbrella to suit your needs. Each chaise is a little piece of heaven…you’d think. But here’s the rub. Some chaises are preferable over others. The ones on the overlook nearest the pounding surf are favored, unless you have children and are thus forced to set up camp nearer the many pools. Also, there are a dozen or so king size chaises, those are big ticket. The most precious are the ‘private’ king chaises with stacks of fresh pillows and surrounded by white muslin drapes. You know the kind, you’ve seen them—billowing white cotton, blue sky, turquoise water in the background–in those travel magazines hawking resorts intended for Wall Street superstars and their trophy wives. 

A day spent hanging out in a super chaise lounge suite is a day of luxury for the regular guest and a day of fantasy for a Hilton Points casher like me.

And there are not enough of these super lounges, not enough chairs on the big ticket overlook for every guest who thinks he or she should be able to dictate their life experiences. And, just as the Potato Famine of 1845 in Ireland resulted in a million immigrants and maybe the rise of unions in Chicago, the lack of premo chaise lounges has resulted in increasingly disturbed behavior.

The first acts of the revolution were harmless enough, unless you were picky about the speed with which you were served breakfast at the restaurant over-looking the waves and the jewel chaise lounges. The initial response for resort pros had been to get up early, finish breakfast first, and take chase lounge possession before those with more ordinary habits made it to the battlefield. Unfortunately, this tactic was so popular alarms were being set earlier and earlier each day until the bars were losing night time money and slackers like me didn’t appreciate the pitter patter of anxious feet and guests hollering, “Run, baby, run! I saw a couple break from the elevator! Bring six magazines!”

There was an upper limit to early riser tactic.

 Resort life was about to get ugly.

Next: Resorters Gone Wild!

Reduce Stress Instantly, The Flying Lawn Chair Incident

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Stress. The Flying Lawn Chair Incident. How to Save Time Instantly.

Dateline: DFW Airport International Branch Headquarters, chair in the corner, face to the wall.

First, I’d like to apologize to those unfortunate passengers on flights with me this weekend. If you are thinking, “Maybe I was on a plane with her and I didn’t know it,” you were not. If you recall a short blond woman, her agonized face mashed into the window, who seemed determined to cough up her lungs, or heard one side of the 737 you were in crackle and thunder, just maybe you were. I’m very, very sorry.

Want to save yourself a lot of stress and lower your personal “annoying-to-others” score? It’s really not that tough. Technically. Technically, like jumping rope for five minutes a day can change your life—technically.

To save time and stress, all you have to do is pass out a little permission and decide:

Other people get to do what they do. They do not require my agreement. My opinion is not important, nor does it make any sense for me to insist on telling people what I think of what other people do. To comment takes time and it’s annoying, except to those very few godlike beings who agree with everything I think about people who aren’t like us. Okay, enough with the sermon.

The following account is true. A retired weatherman had an idea how he could make use of several weather balloons cluttering up his garage and change the face of aviation as we know it. First he tied four balloons to an aluminum and plastic weave lawn chair. Next he strapped himself in. Then he popped the launch cords on the balloons. Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . LIFT OFF!

Yeah, baby. We are flying now. Mostly we are tumbling end-over-end through the first ten thousand feet. “Oh, what a beautiful blue sky–whoa, there’s my house! Oh, what a beautiful blue sky–whoa, there’s Chicago!” The view went from spectacular to, well, nauseating. But the Man Who Launched His Lawn Chair (MWLLC) was having a ball. Airport radars spotted an unidentified blip on their radar screens. News syndicates were alerted. Planes were diverted. Non-believers were converted. (Sorry, like the MWLLC, I couldn’t stop myself.)

The MWLLC’s wife wrung her hands, though when reporters asked her if she was surprised at her husband’s antics, she admitted such projects on slow summer afternoons were nothing new for her husband. She also admitted the MWLLC had stopped telling her his plans since she’d taken to calling the police and asking the procedures for getting a spouse committed.

What’s the point of this tale? As you read, did any part of you think…What kind of crazy person does something like that?

To instantly reduce stress, let go and let other people have fun. Enjoy their enjoying. You’d think we’d all be savvy on this strategy, but such is not the case. At least not for me and, unless you are Dr. L from the radio who makes no wrong moves, like me, you fall into the boring trap of questioning why other people enjoy activities and possessions you do not. And, if you are like me, when you ask this question, your tone informs listeners that, unlike myself, people are crazy and not as wise as I am if they:

Get up at 2 a.m. on Black Friday. Deep fry their turkey. Don’t deep fry their turkey. Salt their food before tasting it. Buy expensive cars. Spank their kids. Don’t spank their kids. Put up an artificial tree. Spend a day finding a real tree. Watch that stupid television show. Enjoy mincemeat pie. Watch NASCAR, golf, basketball, baseball, fake-real television families, or prison shows. Try to buy love by giving expensive Christmas presents. Are too cheap to give expensive Christmas presents. Are foolish enough to take out a second mortgage to send their child to private college. Are selfish enough to refuse to take out a second mortgage to send their child to private college.

You’ve got the picture. I know. Ouch. Ouch. Guilty. Guilty. One of the elements of psychology that continuously amazes me is how hard and complicated something as simple as enjoying the moment really is.

About the promised Triple Stuffed Turkey Recipe? Next year when I can breathe like a normal person again. Coming: Unique Gifts Only You Can Give.

Anxiety, Stress, and All the Fascinating Little Drinkies, Part 2

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Anxiety, Stress, and All the Pretty Little Drinkies, Part 2

Anxiety and Thinking for Yourself

Do you think for yourself?   Are do you just think you think for yourself—and what you’re really doing is “what feels good at the moment” and expecting someone else to “lump” the consequences?  Remember our goal: To have more of our decisions, actions, and internal dialogue, more determined by our best thinking and less determined by emotional pressure from others or emotional pressures (fears and anxieties) coming from within our own minds.   A little thing called Differentiation of Self.

The “I Want It Now” feeling is one way we can know that our emotion system and not our “best thinking” is guiding our decision.  Another give-a-way is when we refuse to acknowledge the long-term downside of our actions. (Think full- body tattoos.)  The refusal to measure potential gain against potential loss keeps prisons over-occupied.  The same sort of refusal to accept the cost, also accounts for the series of broken bones I suffered on the series of show horses sucking up my time and money for years.

Teaching Your Teens to Avoid Stress

Here’s a bonus idea for teaching the “thinking for self” and “weighing the potential long-term downside” lessons to your teenagers. National Geographic has a new show, “Lockup Abroad,” (or is it “Lock Up A Broad”?) documenting otherwise straight-arrow people who “get talked into” carrying drugs on their body going through customs in foreign countries. Yeah, I know. The show demonstrates well what can happen with just one tiny bad decision.  And, yes, the misguided drug carriers are surrounded by persuasive people authoritatively pushing them to carry drugs, assuring them that “There’s nothing to it. It’s perfectly safe.”  Think James Arthur Ray giving his promise of “harmonic wealth in every area of your life.”

Anxiety Over the Border

All the Pretty Little Drinkies is the tale of a lazy Mexico afternoon when two teens who hadn’t learned the lessons of “Lockup Abroad.” Many bad decisions were made that lovely afternoon at the fabulous Mocambo Hotel (built in 1932, once the hide-a-way of Hollywood types) on the beach in Vera Cruz, Mexico. My brother and I, both young teens, had been at the hotel for several days with my father. During the afternoons, while Dad honored the siesta tradition, my brother and I lounged around the pool cooling off periodically in the water topped with fresh hibiscus blossoms tossed in every morning. There were iguanas. There were accommodating waiters. There were Galiceno horses, said to be the first breeds of horses arriving in the Americas with Cortes when he invaded Mexico from Cuba in 1519.

There was a drink menu with pictures of exotic mixtures of fruits and alcohols, each in differently shaped sophisticated glasses. Of course, we were going to order just one each, just to test the flavor and see the colors. Then, as is often the case when emotions are rolling, we decided to check out every refreshment that looked exciting. Key to our decision was the waiter’s lack of concern about our ages coupled with our unfounded belief that, since we’d been at the Mocambo awhile, when Dad was handed the bill for the hotel stay, our little afternoon research project would go unnoticed.

Ah, the stories we tell ourselves when we want what we want. As is so often true when we behave without fully considering the possibilities, the end result was less than perfect. My brother and I were waiting in the lobby as we readied to head for Mexico City when we heard a ruckus going on up at the front desk. Oh, yes. My father was stressed out and face-to-face with first the clerk and then the manager insisting the bar bill was not his. Oops. Bro and I slunk up behind him carefully and suggested that just maybe the charges were correct.

Next.  Thinking for yourself driving in Mexico City.

The Crouton Lady Incident

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  Yesterday, as I walked up to the fancy “to go” window at Mimi’s Restaurant to buy a gift certificate, I noticed flying food.  The lady ahead of me, on receiving her to go salad with a clear plastic top, was screaming, “I said NO croutons!”  She picked off each one (and it was big salad) and threw it into the air.  The little chucks of toast landed in a scatter pattern around her.

I mention the Crouton Lady not to point out how “unevolved” she is next to me, but to say, I can go from cool to food-tossing just as easily.  I’m bringing this up because i still carry some guilt for last week’s “Let’s all just be happy” post.  How flip.  How easy it sounded.    Just smile already.  Someday I may confess my “contract negotiations” on the phone last night with T-Mobile.  Let’s just say for now, during the “conversation” my husband came downstairs because he thought someone must have broken into the house.  And before I hung up, I told the young lady she deserved a gold star and T-Mobile should use the recorded conversation as a training exercise.  That girl was cool in the line of fire  and made the sale. 

We are all working on taking more charge of our lives, working on having less of our lives determined by shear, raging emotions.  But it’s hard.  And we can’t always be successful.  I think of my efforts in terms of the migration of the wildebeests. 

You’ve seen them on Discovery or National Geographic.  There they are thousands, all running full out (I don’t know why they have to migrate at full speed ahead?).  Dust is everywhere, their eyes are wild. Then comes the voice-over of the narrator:

“If you look carefully in that clump of trees off to the side, you’ll catch a glimpse of the lions lying in wait for their prey.  A wildebeest is a good meal.  The lions choose the stragglers, the weak, the slow, the old, the sick wildebeests on the outside edges of the herd.  The easy take-downs.” 

What I’m going for as far as being able to manage my emotions, to not let my feelings, primarily my desire to avoid anxiety, run my life–I just want to work my way a bit into the herd.  I don’t need to lead the pack, I just want to be a tad less vulnerable to my “lions in wait.”

I’m Absolutely Sure this is Right; Or NOT

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  That woman who was all platitudes and blind optimism from yesterday?  I can’t stand that chick.  She just pops out now and then all Holier-than-Thou making all sorts of weak-kneed suggestions.   And then . . . The first publisher edit comes back on “TOO RICH AND TOO THIN, Not an autobiography.” 

The suggestion was made . . . that the manuscript wasn’t already perfect.    That maybe I had a ways to go before my precious words hit the big press.  No, that’s not the truth.  The truth is much too disturbing to reveal here.  Yikes.  I took that all-smiley-look-at-me-I’m-so-mature-psychologist from yesterday and bounced her off a few walls.    “I can’t write.  Who did I think I was?  I’m such an obvious sham.  This whole writing gig was a big mistake!  The pretty man in the director’s chair sitting in front of the ocean on the info-mercial on at three this morning is right.  Buying cheap real estate is the road to happiness. Or maybe that “bullet” thing that turns a ten sack bag of potatoes into soup in one minute?

Nothing but Nancy Grace and pizza last night. 

But the ONE SURE THING we know about EMOTIONS, is that they CHANGE. 

Today, I’ll all back into building that world  . . .   in which the only losers are the people who don’t try.  And try.   And try.

Just Stop with the Negativity

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“What’s more important in determining our life?” 

“The world of facts, the world we can touch?  Or the world as WE HAVE DISTORTED it?  The dangerous, and maybe even mean world, we are responding to in our head?”

Each of us has a chance to grow whatever parts of our world we want to grow.  By paying attention to a piece of our experience, that piece takes up more and more space.  Whatever we waters, grows.

I’m sitting in a restaurant booth, my roving office, and, as usual, the space behind me is filled, emptied, and refilled with more normal customers.

  At least, I guess it’s normal to talk and talk and talk about what’s wrong with the world, what’s wrong with all the people in our world.  But then, what am I doing here?  Being negative about other people being negative.  

Recognizing the negative: 

“Why would anyone . . .?  I can’t stand . . .  What kind of an idiot votes for . . . Don’t they know how stupid . . . What’s wrong with someone who’d . . .  I hate it when . . . I can’t believe anyone’s that . . . Jerk . . . Stupid . . .

I’m watering some positive today.  Growing some grins.     I’m going to be ridiculous.  I’m turning laughing cartwheels (and I mean this in the most metaphorical way).

Compassion

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  First, thanks all of guys for your good words on the news that Murray’s now “traveling” as they say in Jamaica.  What kind of self-esteem must that boy have had.  Everyone who met him loved him.

I’ve been thinking some about that.  Murray wasn’t the brightest or most playful.  He wasn’t the first to meet me at the door.  So what was it?  Murray was kind.    Always kind.  He let anyone who wanted a pat or even a squeeze to take their turn.  If someone in my office cried or even shouted, he’d hop up (back when he could hear) and move over close to them.  He forgave all human emotions without pushing himself on you.

I’ve been thinking about the Holidays and all the anxious pleasing we do in our “togetherness.”   What if we could be the gift of providing for others a “non-anxious” presence?

Notice the word “presence.”  We do not provide the gift of “non-anxious” caring when we are not fully in the presence of others. 

What does a non-anxious presence look like?

A man sits down with a friend and     asks what he thinks about the football rankings.  We women like to make fun of this scene.  But what we have is one man saying to another.  “Hi. I’m ‘in here’ for you.  Are you ‘in there’ for me?”

Your spouse (a friend, family member, co-worker) comes in complaining.  You ask them TWO questions about what’s bothering them.  You resist giving your opionion of what she should do or what you are just “so sure” you would do in her shoes. 

Oh, and to be with yourself with passion, compassion, dump your scales (no one needs that kind of detail) and if you find yourself in one of those hotels with three-way mirrors in the bathroom, well closing your eyes, is not only your option, it’s the thoughtful choice.  The way your clothes fit is the only guide you need.

At the gym, the slip of a girl at the front desk is always inviting members up for a free body fat percentage study.  What is she nuts?