Ask the LifeQuake Doctor

Dear Dr. Toni:

I have been an international educational consultant for nine years. As you can imagine, in the last few months, many industries have been adversely affected by the economy. The university that funds us has dropped our program. At first, I wasn’t worried. I am 65 years old and I have a very impressive and diversified portfolio. I figured this was a sign that I should begin looking at retirement. That was until last week. I lost a couple hundred thousand dollars when “Wall Street quaked,” as they said. I am now dazed and confused as to what to do. Who is going to hire someone at my age now that I have to keep working?
Georgina

Dear Georgina:

First of all, my heart goes out to you. This last month has been devastating for many people. Before you can receive any intuitive guidance on your next step, I would encourage you to do some bodywork. Treat yourself to a massage. While he/she is working on you, think about the recent events and allow yourself to breathe into the place or places where there is pain and trauma around your financial losses. As you keep breathing and focusing on the body parts where there is pain, now envision a pink or green light entering into those places. Keep opening and receiving until you experience peace. Now ask to be shown a new way of looking at your circumstances so that you are no longer resisting what already is. The new perception may come right away or as a revelation when you are going about your day. Allow yourself to experience a miracle out of this seeming crisis. Perhaps your soul did not want you to retire. Perhaps there is a new vocation waiting for you. You just may need to slow down enough to see what synchronicities are trying to guide you to Act Three of your “life play.”

One of my clients who was also a consultant had a similar situation occur. She was laid off from her corporate job and had to go to traffic school on a speeding ticket. Throughout the day at traffic school, her comments clearly displayed her excellent communication skills and great sense of humor. Having mentioned her forced retirement, the owner of the school approached her to consider becoming a traffic school instructor. Through our work together, she promised herself she would look at all “divine coincidences” as a sign and not reject anything because it didn’t fit her picture.

This client had been a theater producer at one time and remembered a phrase from show business that says, “you have to play New Haven before you’re ready for Broadway.” For years she had been told she should become a public speaker. She realized that although working as a traffic school instructor was not going to adequately cover her bills, it was still giving her the practice she needed to hone her public speaking skills to become, as she calls herself, “a spiritual lounge act.”
So Georgina, when crisis hits and your ego wants to scream, This is terrible! You’re going to end up a bag lady! hold the intention that inside this experience lies something amazing for you. Train your mind to look for the gifts that this experience holds.

Ask The LifeQuake Doctor

Dear Dr. Toni:

I was laid off from my job last month and I am a single parent with two children. Christmas is coming and I feel like a failure because not only have I not been able to find another job but there is very little money I can spare for Christmas. What do I tell my kids? Christmas is a time for giving and I have very little to give them.

Distraught in Santa Monica

Dear Distraught:

I’m sure it is cold comfort to know that many people are in the same boat you’re in this Christmas but consider this: If Christmas is about giving, why not teach your children what the true spirit of giving is all about? I would recommend that you do some research and see where you and your kids could be allowed to come in and volunteer your time. Miracles get created when we become expansive. You don’t mention what your skills are or what you were doing professionally in your work but sometimes a door becomes closed like your last job, so that another can open. We cant’ see opportunity though if we collapse into fear. Stepping into an altruistic spirit and extending yourself to those less fortunate will expand your awareness and your gratitude for what you do have. In that expanded state, what I call divine coincidences can occur. Through volunteering your time, you may meet someone who provides a career opportunity or simply by feeling so good from giving your time, you attract a professional opening from another direction.

Studies have shown that humanitarianism not only lifts depression but it increases T cells. This of course strengthens the immune system. Well, can you think of any time of year when we could more use help to our immune system? Between the sugar consumption, the stress of traffic and trying to shop economically, it is no wonder that flues and colds proliferate. So, checkout the Los Angeles Mission, the Sunlight Mission that is in Santa Monica, volunteer services at hospitals that have pediatric wings and The Salvation Army. This is a great time of year to clean out closets and donate toys, clothes, and anything else that is accumulating dust and not being used. St. Vincent De Paul, Salvation Army, The Red Cross all take donations. You can make this a fun project if you take your kids with you to make the donations. One of my clients was complaining about the accumulation of toys they had in the garage. I suggested he go through them with their four - year old son and let him be a part of the process. Initially, he rejected the idea, saying that his son wouldn’t part with even the things he wasn’t playing with anymore. I suggested that maybe he had underestimated him. As it turned out, not only did the boy give his dad a bunch of his toys, he wanted to go with him and meet the kids they were giving the stuff to!

Another way to create a few extra dollars for Christmas is a garage sale. One man’s trash is another man treasure! And you might find amazing buys by going to thrift stores and consignment shops for Christmas gifts yourself. While we are on the subject of gift giving, another creative idea might be for you to suggest to your children that they think of something they want that you can’t buy that is more like a service you could each do for one another. Then create a coupon book. For example, Mom will make your favorite meal, you can have 5 extra hours of television or computer game time. If you can’t afford to take the whole family to the movies anymore, rent a couple DVD’s and make gourmet popcorn with different seasonings tailored to each kids palate. I would definitely suggest renting “It’s A Wonderful Life” this year. Get out the board games and play together instead of sitting in front of your respective computers in separate rooms.

Teach your kids how to cook or bake holiday treats as gifts for friends. There is an opportunity for you to spend more time together during this time. A dear friend of mine lost her home in a divorce and she and her two kids had to share a two - bedroom apartment and she swears they grew much closer over the three years they were there.

I would offer to all of you my readers to challenge yourself to make this holiday season the one you remember having felt the greatest spirit running through your heart and out into the world! We have so much to be thankful for.

To submit questions for Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor, contact Dr. Toni Galardi through DrToni@LifeQuake.net (no period after the Dr). For those seeking private consultation, Dr. Toni can be reached at 310-712-2600, 619-819-6400 or through her website, www.LifeQuake.net

Post-election anxiety

It is 73 days until the inauguration.

What I find interesting about this election is that the key concept that both candidates campaigned on was who was going to bring change to America and yet we are a country that, for the most part, fears change.

Take a poll. Ask a dozen people on the street what feeling gets evoked when they think about making personal changes? Two will most probably say they get excited. Five will probably say they feel a low level of anxiety and then another five will admit to all out panic.

So what is at the bottom of this fear and how will it play out in the coming months?

For most of us, the fear of change involves the fear of loss. And, more specifically at this time, economic loss. In conversations with certain wealthy friends, most of whom voted for McCain, the fear is that their taxes will go up and the country will go red.

It is funny how the party that is associated with the color red is accusing the opposing party who they say are communist of ‘going red’. The color red has sure changed its interpretation in American politics. Red used to mean commie or socialist. Now it’s the blue people who are being accused of wanting a socialist state by the very people who refer to themselves as part of the red states.

We’re a very confused bunch here in America. But I digress.

Getting back to this fear of loss, I think what we most fear right now is the fear of the unknown. Anyone who has a brain in his head knows that one man cannot fix the economic crisis we are in. One man cannot stop climatic catastrophes. And one man cannot appropriate funds to fix the decaying and in some places dangerously decaying physical infrastructure of our country’s roads, dams, and bridges.

So we will resort to what we have always used to exact change: CRISIS. What we need to prepare for in America in the next 73 days is an ability to adapt to crisis-driven change. As the LifeQuakes unfold in the coming years, those who will thrive will have strong ‘emotional retrofitting’ to see opportunity where others see loss. Like a house that has appropriate retrofitting, in spite of the earth beneath it erupting, it can bend and adapt to the movement without being destroyed. It is my sincere hope that when my book comes out in early ’09, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: Your Definitive Roadmap Through Seismic Change, it can provide a useful tool box for building a mobile yet grounded inner foundation while we move toward the future on a road that is fraught with fault lines.

So how do the red and blue states come together to support effective change? Well, if you merge the two colors they become the color purple. Perhaps the first step in preparing for this next administration is to bring the color purple back in vogue. Milton Erickson, the psychologist who pioneered modern day hypnosis was color blind except for the color purple. Maybe, we all need to see the world through the prism of the color purple and develop some color blindness so that we do see each other as part of a whole, the Wholy Self called humanity.

US Presidential Election 2008

Tomorrow I will be traveling 125 miles to vote.

I have been on a kind of self-imposed sabbatical the past six months so that I could finish editing my book The LifeQuake Phenomenon: Your Definitive Roadmap Through Seismic Change, which is on its way to my publisher as I write this.

Now, you might say that’s a lot of effort for nothing given the fact that I am voting for Barack Obama and the electoral votes in California already go to him. Besides the fact that I have voted in every presidential election since I was nineteen, there is something else.

Today, the day before the election, while I was meditating I felt a tremendous energy shift coming onto the planet. Change is definitely in the air! Big, humungous changes are coming. And I don’t mean just that we may be electing our first black president. Our country I predict, is going to go through such massive changes over the next five to seven years that we will not be recognizable on the other side.

It will be tempting for people to perceive what is coming as doom and gloom: a recession or depression, climactic catastrophes, government fraud exposures, and more disasters in the decaying infrastructure of our highways, dams, and bridges.

However, believe it or not, we will rise like the phoenix bird out of the ashes. This rebirth will take us to a higher vision of who we can be. As we collectively restructure our lives and spend our energy on what really matters – each other – a great ascension will take place in America and we will lead the world from a humbler place that brings inclusiveness of all nations.

There is a long road ahead and Barack Obama, if he is elected, has a perilous if not downright dangerous role to play as our leader. I reach out to any and all who are reading this to surround our next president in light tomorrow night. Supporting whoever becomes president with good intentions has the power to support change that will evolve us all as a people.

The world is watching, America!

Ask the LifeQuake Doctor

Dear Dr. Toni:

I am currently a financial analyst and very successful at it but have been having physical symptoms of extreme fatigue. I have been to two doctors about this. One was an endocrinologist who found that although my thyroid tested slightly overactive, he thinks the problem is that I am not coping well with stress. I don’t really enjoy my work anymore but I find when I’m not at work, I am still very tired so I am confused as to how this can be purely psychological. What do you think, doc?

Tired wired

Dear Tired,

First of all, if there is a thyroid issue—even if it is has been induced by stress—it will still affect you even when you are not in the stressful situation because your entire constitution starts to wear down. Also, traditional endocrinologists do not look at blood work the same way that holistic MDs or naturopathic physicians do. Andrew Weil, the famous holistic doctor, asserts that he treats the thyroid on the basis of symptoms rather than test results because the thyroid often shows irregularities long before they actually show up in the blood.

The American College for Advancement in Medicine (www.acam.org) is one resource for finding a holistic doctor in your area. I would also suggest that you begin to notice when you experience joy or interest through the course of your day. This is both at work and in your personal time. Pay attention to when your energy is better. Who are you with? What are you doing? I would spend three weeks jotting down data of when you find yourself feeling most alive. Your dreams are also clues to a possible transition you may be entering. If your thyroid is off, from a body psychology point of view, we would look at what is it you are not expressing. The thyroid is in the throat so when we are not expressing our authentic voice or saying what we really think in life, it can have physical effects. I would urge you to work with a coach or therapist on the psychological aspects of your fatigue as well.

Ask the LifeQuake Doctor

Dear Dr. Toni:

I am currently a financial analyst and very successful at it but have been having physical symptoms of extreme fatigue. I have been to two doctors about this. One was an endocrinologist who found that although my thyroid tested slightly overactive, he thinks the problem is that I am not coping well with stress. I don’t really enjoy my work anymore but I find when I’m not at work, I am still very tired so I am confused as to how this can be purely psychological. What do you think, doc?

Tired wired

Dear Tired,

First of all, if there is a thyroid issue—even if it is has been induced by stress—it will still affect you even when you are not in the stressful situation because your entire constitution starts to wear down. Also, traditional endocrinologists do not look at blood work the same way that holistic MDs or naturopathic physicians do. Andrew Weil, the famous holistic doctor, asserts that he treats the thyroid on the basis of symptoms rather than test results because the thyroid often shows irregularities long before they actually show up in the blood.

The American College for Advancement in Medicine (www.acam.org) is one resource for finding a holistic doctor in your area. I would also suggest that you begin to notice when you experience joy or interest through the course of your day. This is both at work and in your personal time. Pay attention to when your energy is better. Who are you with? What are you doing? I would spend three weeks jotting down data of when you find yourself feeling most alive. Your dreams are also clues to a possible transition you may be entering. If your thyroid is off, from a body psychology point of view, we would look at what is it you are not expressing. The thyroid is in the throat so when we are not expressing our authentic voice or saying what we really think in life, it can have physical effects. I would urge you to work with a coach or therapist on the psychological aspects of your fatigue as well.

The LifeQuake™ Doctor

Here is a recent excerpt from my column, "Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor," which is applicable to many people who are currently searching for new lines of work. Rather than pigeon-holing yourself into a particular job title, explore other opportunities to use your skill set.


Dear Dr. Toni:
I am a 65-year-old woman who has a passion for teaching foreign languages but no one will give me a job. I moved 3,000 miles away to care for my dying daughter and since her death seven years ago, everything has gone wrong for me. I go on countless interviews, but to no avail. I hate where I live and am barely making ends meet. I am ready to give up. I have completely lost faith in myself.

Can you help?

Hopeless

Dear Hopeless:

My heart goes out to you on the passing of your daughter. Losing a child is probably the most devastating thing that can happen to an individual. Having said that, I would encourage you to do some grief counseling if you can and release all this pain. Perhaps you are not getting a job because you are not meant to express your gift as a teacher in a formal academic setting.

There are plenty of students outside the classroom who struggle with learning a foreign language and parents today get a tutor for everything. You might consider going on craigslist.org and posting an ad. Also, there are many private language institutes that could use retired teachers. What is most important to manifesting your desire is to visualize yourself teaching with all that passion every day. Create an affirmation such as, “I am now teaching in the perfect environment where my skills are effortlessly supported and well remunerated.” Speak it out loud everyday.

Good luck and don’t give up. A change is just around the corner if you keep the fire of your passion burning in your heart.

The LifeQuake™ Rx for the Real Bailout

“Bail out.”

Webster defines this two ways: “To obtain someone’s release” and “to post security.”

Recently, a client came back to see me who had bailed her parents out by taking care of them both physically and financially for several months. The net effect of this was that she had practically bankrupted herself physically, emotionally and financially.

This got me to thinking: what does it mean to “post security or obtain someone else’s release” at the expense of your own and how prevalent is this as a sort of national personality tendency in the U.S.? I mean, after all, the Statue of Liberty’s mission statement (if she had one) set us up over 100 years ago to be pretty co-dependent, don’t you think?

Listen to these words – “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Aren’t we Americans constantly bailing out somebody in the world?

So what would it mean if we made a daily practice of bailing out ourselves?

Now, I don’t mean just eating right and actually using your gym membership. I mean what would it mean to actually check into your gut when someone asks you for a favor? What would it mean to check in with your heart when the school wants you to volunteer one more time when you are already overscheduled at work and church? What would it mean to check in with your bank account when your kids want to go out to eat and it’s Friday and you don’t want to cook anyway?

If the quantum physicists are correct and everything that happens to one effects the whole, then when we abandon ourselves to peer pressure, or guilt from our kids, there is a kind of emotional bankruptcy that translates into a national phenomenon. It is a well known fact that we are a sleep deprived nation so what is the effect of borrowing from the night and putting ourselves into long term energy debt? Is this a metaphor for the energy shortage of gas and fuel?

So my prescription for us all if we want to stop being forced to bail out the Wall Street titans is to stop overextending ourselves in our own lives first. That Reagan slogan for youth drug prevention - “ Just say no” - is fitting as we go into another recession. Say no to your kids, say no to your boss’ 70 hour work week demand, but, most importantly, say no to the voice in your head that is constantly pushing you to do more, more, more. Perhaps the gift inside this economic LifeQuake™ is that in cutting back our expenses, we’ll gear down the hyperactivity and actually be more present to life. I’m sure our nervous systems will be eternally grateful. And then maybe, just maybe we’ll get more sleep too…

To learn more tips and techniques, visit www.lifequake.net or email me at DrToni@lifequake.net.

Preparing for Autumn

As I was sitting at my favorite café reading my newspaper, the Italian owner shared with me that he was going to Italy for the first time in two years to celebrate his 40th birthday. I had just been reading of how the economic earthquake on Wall Street had started to reverberate in Europe. I asked him to report back when he returns on what the political climate is there and how they feel about us.

But he already knew.

He launched into a rant about what a super power America once was and now we are seen as lacking leadership and judgment. I know that since Bush was elected, we have steadily lost credibility with our European allies so this is no revelation, but perhaps there is another way to look at this.

Consistent with my LifeQuake™ philosophy - inside chaos lies the possibility of emerging a new system or structure - I speculate:

What happens here, so goes the world in some fashion. Imagine if we did have a financial LifeQuake™ here and used it as an opportunity to make life a bit more simple...

What if people figured out that eating high calorie low nutrition fast food was not the way to go as a steady diet, given the cumulative cost? What if we spent more time with our family at home watching a DVD instead of blowing $60 for a movie at the mall? And mostly, what if we discovered that what we need versus what we want is to focus more on giving than getting? Sounds utopian, right?

But, if it is true that the American value system has permeated European culture, than maybe what it means to be the leader of the free world is to step out of greed and show the world that we can best be represented by someone who doesn’t have 12 houses and whose skin color is more representative of most of the world. No matter who becomes President of the United States in November, we are going into difficult economic times.

So, let’s lead by example and use the metaphor of Autumn to shed the dead leaves in our own lives and get back to what is essential. True, winter is coming, but if we sow the seeds of the original values this country was built on – equality for all, freedom, and humanitarianism – Spring in a few years could be a garden where flowers occupying the same soil are blooming in many different colors!

I urge each of you that is experiencing the economic crisis to, instead, experience a LifeQuake™. Wake up and smell the opportunity! For more tips, visit my website at www.LifeQuake.net or email me at DrToni@LifeQuake.net.

Thriving, Not Just Surviving, an Economic LifeQuake™

The recent events at Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns have dangerously mirrored the historic market crash of 1929. The economy is in a sad state and it’s no secret: the dollar continues to suffer overseas while Americans keep their wallets tight domestically, real estate continues to plummet and the unemployment rate is affecting all strata of Americans. Loaded words like bankruptcy and financial crisis have been thrown around by the media. Keeping optimistic and viewing this unstable time as an opportunity for positive transformation is a challenge for most.

Dr. Toni Galardi, aka "The LifeQuake™ Doctor," has developed seven steps for preparing for and adapting to economic loss and, ultimately, using this as an opportunity for evolutionary change in your life. You can also learn more by visiting the LifeQuake™ website at www.LifeQuake.net.

1) Mastering the first stage of a LifeQuake™ requires developing the power of observation. Greed blinds people from seeing when a bull market is beginning its decline.
Developing keen observation allows you to anticipate when the tide is turning in the market.

2) Take an inventory of what is now ‘DEFUNCTIONAL’ and get rid of it. What aspects of your life are you spending money on that are no longer life giving?

3) Detach. What are you holding on to that could bring loss or crisis to your life? Let go of unneeded things before you are forced to.

4) After your life has gone through the radical change you feared, there is an opportunity to examine what security means to you. What beliefs do you hold about yourself that are being challenged by economic loss?

5) Design the new blueprint. We need to design our psyche so we have emotional retrofitting that helps us adapt to the rapid changes of 21st century. Create a lifestyle that has simplicity in both good and bad times.

6) Develop a fertile mind that views an economic LifeQuake™ the way a farmer looks at seasons. Before you go to sleep at night, come up with three things from that day that you are gaining out of the crisis you are in. This trains the mind to cultivate opportunity inside every loss. The cow manure of your life really can be fertilizer for manifesting a future harvest after the winter cycle.


7) Give back. Altruism pays off in the economic long term. It has been shown through numerous studies that charitable giving increases your immunity and overall health. The best way to pull out of an economic slump is to give of yourself. It actually feels good to do your part to make the world a better place and executing a practice of giving creates an expansion that draws positive thing to you.

Dr. Galardi was recently invited on Fox News 5 in San Diego to discuss her suggestions for surviving a LifeQuake™. Below is footage from the interview:



Dr. Toni Galardi is a columnist, public speaker, and licensed psychotherapist who coined the term LifeQuake™ to help individuals reframe crisis as an opportunity for rebirth. Her book The LifeQuake™ Phenomenon is due out in the Spring of ’09. Her website is LifeQuake.net She is available for phone consults and public speaking by calling 310-712-2600.

Visit the LifeQuake™ website at www.LifeQuake.net.

© 2008, Dr. Toni Galardi