December 20th, 2016
My husband is now officially off for the holidays. I spent all of yesterday cleaning up various parts of the house and by the end of the day I had to go to bad at 6:30pm from the exhaustion. It feels like I have been de-cluttering and cleaning for months.
Today, as I was cleaning the refrigerator, a thought kept popping into my mind. Somewhere out there, someone is feeling discouraged and hopeless. Someone will commit suicide before the end of 2016. The statistics on suicide are staggering. It makes me sad and frightens me all at once. I am sad that so many people feel alone and helpless. I feel sad for parents who have lost their son or daughter in such a senseless way. It frightens me because I have two daughters. What if this happens to me? I can't imagine I would survive. One thing is for sure, I would never be the same. Which brings me back to the topic of this post.
If you want to kill yourself and you are reading this, please give me a moment. I know you are in pain. You can't imagine that anyone would care if you were gone. Consider this. Your thoughts are not helping you right now. You feel an urgent need, a desperation to end the pain. However, if you end it all right now, there will never be a better moment. This is as good as your life will ever get. I have met many people who once considered suicide. They are now in a much better place and so grateful that they did not go through with it. Things can only get better if you hang on long enough.
As for the people you leave behind, they will be in pain, riddled with questions, racked with guilt. They will go on with the hole that your death has left in their heart, wondering why you didn't talk to them about how you were feeling. They will be haunted by your absence. Your pain will never go away, it will just be passed on to the people who survive.
So, what can you do about your pain? Reach out to people, those you know, or just compassionate strangers. Go somewhere where you can be surrounded by people. Seek out the company of friends or just head over to a sports game or a movie and see if you can bump into people you know. Sit with your pain. Pain comes in waves. If you choose to ride the wave, know that it will end. When it does, you will have options. Killing yourself leaves no choices.
If you feel nothing but self-loathing, try treating yourself as you would a stranger who is suffering. Be kind and gentle, taking care of your needs (feeding, bathing, sleeping, hugging, calling on others for help). If you can't tell people how you feel because you fear that you will cry and "lose it", write a letter about your pain and share it with someone you trust.
Are you feeling helpless? That means you can't see your power to make your life any better. You may be right. You may not be in a place where you can make the right decisions for yourself. That is why you ask for help. If nothing else, you have the power to choose life, to live on another day and open yourself up to the possibility that life will get better, not just because you stayed alive but because you faced your pain and survived, because you reached out to a friend or stranger and they helped you, because a therapist or health worker shifted your perspective just enough to give you hope.
If you think no one will mourn you, imagine that I tell you I want to die. You don't know me. However, you will be moved by my desperation and you will want me to live because my story isn't finished, there is another chapter right around the corner. I just can't see that right now. Strangers and acquaintances will be hurt by your death. Your family is more than just parents and siblings. Think about your aunts, uncles, grandparents, nieces and nephews, all the people whose lives are connected to yours. If you have children, know that your children will always blame themselves. They won't understand. Their lives will be traumatized. Get yourself some support so you can be around to watch them grow and blossom.
Whatever pain you are going through right now will pass. It is temporary. Death is permanent. If you have read this and have a plan in mind to end your life, please dial 911 and ask for help. Once the crisis has passed and you can see your life as filled with possibilities, please write to me and let me know you have faced your wave of pain and come out the other side. I will be happy to hear from you.
Anne Walsh
www.artnsoul.org
Showing posts with label how. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 December 2016
Thursday, 20 October 2016
Multiple Sources of Income
October 20th, 2016
Ever since I decided to leave my full-time position as a College Professor, I have been searching for ways to make money from home. I got to work building a work space in our barn and marketing my services through local networking groups. Working for myself means there are times when money comes flooding in followed by periods of idle waiting for my next client or opportunity. I know there are ways to make my money work for me.
When I heard the expression, multiple sources of income, I was imagining people who own buildings and businesses, those who own condos in gorgeous faraway places, rented most of the time, enjoyed during peak months. I keep remembering all the Monopoly games we played when I was younger where the name of the game was to gain assets and dump liabilities.
However, what I have come to understand is that multiple sources of income doesn't mean you necessarily need to buy real estate or storage facilities, own pinball machines or car washes, you can develop different streams of income based on how you make money right now. This was a revelation to me. As a matter of fact, I discovered that I was already moving in the right direction.
You might be a stay-at-home mom, reading this, thinking it doesn't apply to you but it does. Jot down the activities you do every day. Which ones do you enjoy? Are you really good at something that always impresses friends and family? You may be one of those people whose home is decorated for each season. I love having my house decorated for Christmas and Halloween, Easter and Valentine's Day but I never do it. I don't have it in me. Every year I am daunted by the idea of placing Christmas lights all around the house. I don't do it. What if you decorated other people's homes? People like me would pay you for it. Perhaps you make incredible Halloween costumes for your children or grandchildren. That is a skill. There is usually a handful of popular costumes each season. You take orders and prepare entire batches of them, selling them online or through a local school/day care. Do you spend a huge portion of your week buying groceries? There are plenty of people who are not able to get out of the house: the elderly, moms without cars, individuals recovering from an injury etc. Get other people's groceries and deliver it to their home. A lot of people hate shopping. Advertise your services in time for Christmas. Are you great at getting just the right gift for your loved ones? Apply that skill for others and get paid for it. If you are a mom, you talk to other moms and hear them complain. What are they complaining about? Is there a way to invent a product or service to make a profit by solving their problems?
If you are not a stay-at-home mom and are already employed outside the home, think about the skill set involved in your existing job. If you work as a chef, can you create individualized meals to sell to your neighbours? Is there a secret recipe that your family loves? You can sell it at a local shop. Are you a mechanic? What if you offered courses, Car Care for Dummies on the weekends? If you work as a real estate agent, write a guidebook to help regular people understand the pitfalls to avoid when buying a home. Educate people regarding what to look for during a house inspection. See your knowledge. Perhaps you organize group trips to foreign locations for people who want to invest but have no idea where to look. Regardless of what you do for a living, you can focus on the skills and figure out: 1) Who could benefit from this skill set? and, 2) How can I communicate with this target audience in a way that turns my knowledge into profit?
As I mentioned before, I am an art therapist. I offer workshops, one on one sessions, I speak about my work or its applications with various populations, I write books to use in my workshops and I am developing a digital version of my workshops. In this way, I am expanding the reach of my business by catering to different populations via a variety of mediums. You don't have to be rich to develop many streams of income, you just need to know your worth, find different ways of sharing it with others and get paid for it.
Anne Walsh
www.artsnoul.org
Ever since I decided to leave my full-time position as a College Professor, I have been searching for ways to make money from home. I got to work building a work space in our barn and marketing my services through local networking groups. Working for myself means there are times when money comes flooding in followed by periods of idle waiting for my next client or opportunity. I know there are ways to make my money work for me.
When I heard the expression, multiple sources of income, I was imagining people who own buildings and businesses, those who own condos in gorgeous faraway places, rented most of the time, enjoyed during peak months. I keep remembering all the Monopoly games we played when I was younger where the name of the game was to gain assets and dump liabilities.
However, what I have come to understand is that multiple sources of income doesn't mean you necessarily need to buy real estate or storage facilities, own pinball machines or car washes, you can develop different streams of income based on how you make money right now. This was a revelation to me. As a matter of fact, I discovered that I was already moving in the right direction.
You might be a stay-at-home mom, reading this, thinking it doesn't apply to you but it does. Jot down the activities you do every day. Which ones do you enjoy? Are you really good at something that always impresses friends and family? You may be one of those people whose home is decorated for each season. I love having my house decorated for Christmas and Halloween, Easter and Valentine's Day but I never do it. I don't have it in me. Every year I am daunted by the idea of placing Christmas lights all around the house. I don't do it. What if you decorated other people's homes? People like me would pay you for it. Perhaps you make incredible Halloween costumes for your children or grandchildren. That is a skill. There is usually a handful of popular costumes each season. You take orders and prepare entire batches of them, selling them online or through a local school/day care. Do you spend a huge portion of your week buying groceries? There are plenty of people who are not able to get out of the house: the elderly, moms without cars, individuals recovering from an injury etc. Get other people's groceries and deliver it to their home. A lot of people hate shopping. Advertise your services in time for Christmas. Are you great at getting just the right gift for your loved ones? Apply that skill for others and get paid for it. If you are a mom, you talk to other moms and hear them complain. What are they complaining about? Is there a way to invent a product or service to make a profit by solving their problems?
If you are not a stay-at-home mom and are already employed outside the home, think about the skill set involved in your existing job. If you work as a chef, can you create individualized meals to sell to your neighbours? Is there a secret recipe that your family loves? You can sell it at a local shop. Are you a mechanic? What if you offered courses, Car Care for Dummies on the weekends? If you work as a real estate agent, write a guidebook to help regular people understand the pitfalls to avoid when buying a home. Educate people regarding what to look for during a house inspection. See your knowledge. Perhaps you organize group trips to foreign locations for people who want to invest but have no idea where to look. Regardless of what you do for a living, you can focus on the skills and figure out: 1) Who could benefit from this skill set? and, 2) How can I communicate with this target audience in a way that turns my knowledge into profit?
As I mentioned before, I am an art therapist. I offer workshops, one on one sessions, I speak about my work or its applications with various populations, I write books to use in my workshops and I am developing a digital version of my workshops. In this way, I am expanding the reach of my business by catering to different populations via a variety of mediums. You don't have to be rich to develop many streams of income, you just need to know your worth, find different ways of sharing it with others and get paid for it.
Anne Walsh
www.artsnoul.org
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