HOW YOU LINK TO CHAOS

It is what it is…. OR IS IT?  Ask yourself this question and depending on where you sit on any given day, your answer will be different.

Chaos – it’s sometimes considered a bad thing for those who get overwhelmed and life becomes unmanageable and most would like to UNLINK from their lives.

For others, chaos has been a ‘positive coping mechanism’ of productivity that the brain has learned to accept and excel through despite its presence.  For this group, they consider it a LINK that helps prevent them from stagnancy in life. 

For another group, chaos is a LINK that just is and it is examined as something that is unavoidable unless they avoid it altogether through mere escapism. 

Does this have to do with different types of personalities? YES.  Which one are YOU? 

First let’s take a look at what YOU define as chaos.  Do you know?  

Take a step back and define it.  Write out a sentence that tells you YOUR personal definition of what that is.  For some, it’s a huge life altering thing.  For others it’s much smaller daily life issues or inconveniences which are only considered chaos based on the issues of controlling order in one’s life!

Ah ha!  Yes.  Is this becoming clearer to you?  Do you see how you relate to chaos and how others might and where MISCOMMUNICATION about what chaos is can create conflict?

You have to remember, not everyone views life the way you do.  We are all individuals.  How we define things and how we relate to things is going to be different, therefore the approach in how we handle it may be different.  There is not any ONE right way to solve a problem or find a solution or cope or deal with chaos. 

If you are finding that most of your key and critical arguments with another person at home or work or within your circles are based on your viewpoints – it’s time to re-examine the idea that people process circumstances, events and occurrences very differently. 

Being able to deal with chaos has both a beneficial as well as destructive pattern based on one’s method of working with it vs. working through it or detaching altogether and it is based on mere perception and application of how you choose to examine it within your own life.

For the manager types, they examine chaos as something to be ‘organized’ or ‘compartmentalized’ within a structure of daily life.  It is something specific to contain and isolate in order to effectively manage and deal with its presence.  

• For the creative visionary types, they wish to look at the chaos in a way where they turn it into something positive like making it as a way to bring others together.

• For the healer types, they wish to examine chaos like a disease to overcome and heal with dissolution of its negative impact on the human body and psyche.

• For the leader types, they wish to walk through the chaos process pulling others through it by following through an example of strength.

• For the warrior types, they wish to conquer chaos as something to survive.

• For the analytical/philosophical types, they wish to pick apart all the pieces of chaos to understand it so they no longer fear it.

• For the task-mastering types, they wish to examine chaos as a to-do list to tackle piece by piece instead of as a whole, to thoroughly and efficiently get through. 

Chaos is not insurmountable.  If it feels like it to you, then perhaps you are not quite sure which ‘type’ of personality you have and have been addressing it as one personality when your strengths lie in another arena! 

Eureka?  Yes. 

You were born with the ability of ‘survival’ instincts.  But sometimes because of life circumstances and how you were brought up to ‘deal’ with chaos is a transferred and learned behavior (because that’s how your family or friends dealt with it) – so you think you have to deal with it in the same way.

The truth?  You can handle it and get through it if you tap into the method that is more compatible with how you like to show up in your own life. Why chaos may seem overwhelming or impossible to cope with and why you may wish to escape it, has more to do with how your brain has been trained to look at it.

Confronting chaos may seem like a difficult thing to do. However human behavior will show you that it is not as scary as you think it is – it just may be scary to the ‘personality type’ of transferred learned behavior you’ve been used to in how you’ve coped with it.  For all you know, all this time you’ve been coping with chaos in a way that is NOT WHO YOU ARE.  

This is why it is important to connect to your own instincts … which may not always be logical to how your brain has examined the method in coping with the set of circumstances you’ve been dealt. 

Is this a LINK that can be changed?  YES, ABSOLUTELY!

You can choose how you take a look at chaos and switch how you handle it.  Sure, flipping the switch is not easy.  It most certainly won’t come over night either.  Yes, you have a choice... did you know that? Release the blockages which tell you that you don't and embrace the idea that you can change what doesn't work for you within your own life in how you cope, how you deal and how you manage every circumstance you're dealt.

Therefore, taking the time to journal for yourself daily to see how you handle situations and get through them, gives you an front and center view at what has worked and what hasn’t.

It is here you get to focus on your strengths and weaknesses in a chaotic situation. Take a look at what seemed easy versus what seemed challenging and more difficult and you will soon see over time that some of your weaknesses become strengths.   

Those weaknesses that remain are not really weaknesses at all – but rather those are the very key LINKS that can be altered in perspective and a new chosen method of how you handle chaos becomes clear and evident.

This is where your LINK to chaos is a positive LINK in how you’ve learned to adapt, adjust, change and tweak a LINK so that it works for you and LINKRONICITY can now flow freely in what used to be an obstacle you once thought was difficult to overcome. 

Namaste. 

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REMEMBERING COURAGE – The Breast Cancer Message From My Alzheimer’s-stricken Mother

By Stacey Kumagai

On the day my father was grappling with just two weeks left to live after a battle with pancreatic cancer, my mother was having a mastectomy. It was a devastating week in 1992 after having just lost my grandmother the year before and my aunt the year before that. 

For two people who survived the U.S. Japanese Internment camps... losing everything, starting over and never uttering a word about how tough they have it, cancer for both my mother and my father in the same time period was pretty mind-blowing.

My parents are two of the strongest people I have ever known.

Their inspiration, strength, tenacity, and will are part of my core foundation.  I only had my father for the first twenty-six years of my life.  And while my mother was alive physically - I had started to lose her to Alzheimer's when I was just fifteen. 

The lessons I learned from both of my parents in the battle of cancer was that a positive attitude is everything.  And while most people would think that was just a very obvious default, for them, it was a courageous choice. 

I believe this is where I get my strength from...and why I choose to try to provide insight and shine a light on what I can to create change and embrace life... RIGHT NOW... FOR RIGHT NOW IS ALL WE HAVE.

Being diagnosed with breast cancer was something that was new for my mother with no previous history of it in the family.  What would be most traumatic for any woman to deal with, my Alzheimer’s stricken mother who started to fade in an out of memory lapses for ten years at that time said...

“Oh, I have breast cancer?  I forgot.”

This was not a TV show script. This was an ironic scene from real life. 

But somehow my mother would come up with these lines of award-worthy gold on the fly, and they would fly out of her mouth like she was channeling something.

The truth is, she didn’t see what she was saying because of her Alzheimer’s disease, as she would often remind me with another award-worthy line...

"I have Alzheimer's.... Remember?" 

For any woman struggling with breast cancer, they NEVER FORGET the experience.  It was from here, I would never forget her crushing blow and every year I remember what that journey was like.

Because of my mother's courage, I can honestly say I wouldn't be here doing Linkronicity as my 'destination' from my long journey through all of the work I've done. It is because of her 'hanging on' - I see the correlation of what it means to rise through adversity.

What an example of rising through adversity, huh?

Humor was unexpected... one does not say "I will be diagnosed with cancer and laugh about it."  However my mother, would laugh at herself and find baudy ways to find humor in missing a breast and for her, laughter was the best medicine.

The miracle?  She went 100% into remission.

The doctors think it was because of the Alzheimer's... because she didn't sit in an emotional whirlpool of fear or worry or anxiety or even thinking about the cancer coming back.

This mind-over-body battling is pretty powerful stuff.

It is the same tool my father used before his first surgery with pancreatic cancer. This man read my 'creative visualization' list before going into surgery and remarkably after being out of the ICU took his IV bag and started jogging around the hospital floor in his hospital gown.
If the doctors had not opened him up a second time for it to metastasize, I believe things might of turned out differently. 

For my mother, breast cancer wasn't necessarily a battle to be won as much as it was something to forget she uttered or had, not recognizing it even happened until she would look down her blouse to see something was missing. 


My mother's battle with breast cancer was different than any other woman I know who has gone through it because she had Alzheimer's.  Most battling breast cancer have the very 'conscious' daily challenge of taking a deep breath to warrior onward with their own confrontation with the disease.  She didn't, however also in the non-traditional sense.... daily grief was "NEW" - therefore, it's like getting handed the news you've just been diagnosed with breast cancer over and over again, then forgetting and then being shown it again and she went on like she didn't have it.

I've been told by others in some sense she was luckier to have actual moments of forgetting and that oddly Alzheimer's was a blessing in the face of cancer. 

For other survivors, it is the endurance trek, the fighting spirit and proactive fight to warrior onward.   

There were conscious and fleeting moments my mother recognized she felt blessed in a way to have Alzheimer’s because she didn’t dwell on her body and what she lost, but rather forgot about it and focused on what she had in the present moment because with Alzheimer’s Disease this is all you actually have.  You forget yesterday, you don’t know what today actually is, but all you know is that you have TODAY.  

This is all any of us truly have. TODAY and living TODAY. 

For a moment, she took a deep breath and recognized she was lucky to catch it early. She was having this mastectomy one month before Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This was something she did remember noting that she was early for the mainstream awareness recognition of it and that it was early detection itself was a blessing. 

Meanwhile, as a woman about to lose her husband in just two weeks, she often floated back and forth wondering why she was surviving him. 

For my father who had complete awareness of all that was happening depleted his energies in dealing with his own fate simultaneously dealing with the woman he was leaving behind with two double whammies of Alzheimer's, Breast Cancer and left with one breast.

But my mother threw out one more golden liner...

 “I may have lost my breast, but I did not lose my heart.” 

AH… resting in that line was a miraculous and magical thing.  Basking in that wisdom was a truth she believed that was able to shine through her darkest moments. It is this enlightened statement that gave her the courage to live sixteen years in remission, and a total of twenty-six with the Alzheimer’s disease. 

What I learned through all of it was how much being present matters. I know you hear me talk about this A LOT in all of my Linkronicity videos and all of my blogs here.

NOW you know where this comes from and WHY I keep sounding like a broken record trying to drive this home. My pure heart intention is to wake this up within you to add a few more present moments TO YOUR LIFE by my repetitive encouragement.

The example that my mother left behind with those words she spoke were more golden than she could have imagined.

She may have forgotten she had breast cancer, but I haven’t. She may have forgotten all the memories Alzheimer’s took away, but through it all – never once did she ever forget COURAGE.

Breast Cancer IS LINKED in my life chain... in more ways than you know, even beyond my mother. Losing both of my parents inspired my work which shaped me into being what you see now. Was I being groomed, shaped, inspired and driven to understand every nuance of the mind-body-soul-spirit health & wellness?  Yes.

Throughout my Media Monster Communications career, as you will read in my other blogs randomly peppered throughout this site, my entertainment work has always had a benefactor.  Susan G. Komen, L.A. Breast Cancer Alliance and many other cancer organizations, http://mwne.ws/1TRziVL,  http://prn.to/22ufU4E  and many more. 

With these opportunities, I was most inspired by Olivia Newton-John, the proactive icon who keeps fighting the breast cancer fight inspiring millions of others with her strength, gentleness, advocacy and using her energy purposefully to help others fighting this battle.

Two other amazing women I was fortunate to have as PR clients I lost the same year - both took their diagnosis and decided to STEP INTO THEIR OWN POWER to help others.
I not only feel humbled and honored to have been their publicist, but chosen to be part of their journey to make a difference in the face of adversity.

Selma Schimmel (RIP 2014) launched North America's very first-ever cancer radio broadcast show for cancer victims and their families called The Group Room through Vital Options.  http://thegrouproom.tv/selma-ruth-schimmel/2014/05/21/

She was a fearless and feisty maverick who demanded her own second opinion from medical professionals when she listened to her own body.  In her late twenties, she had to fight the fight to get an early detection... YES, FIGHT.  She kept being told she was 'too young' to have breast cancer and she knew in her right mind, she had to keep fighting to get a second opinion.  Which, if you think about it really something... where you have to try so hard to get the care you need to be sure you can survive.  She knew something had been missed and she was right.  It was this gut instinct that would give her many more years of life to link her to more opportunities to inspire so many more lives through her work. She did a lot of good in her Earth journey... and I celebrate all she did to help as many people as possible.

Lou Gideon (RIP 2014) best known as an actress from Nickelodeon's Secret World of Alex Mack and is still seen in reruns of Seinfeld as the only woman to ever call Jerry, "Jerome," was more than just an actress, cheery optimist and multi-talented writer, singer and spirited creative.  She became the author and "Wrap Artist" for head-wraps for women facing chemo http://bit.ly/2hsY5WW . She saw solutions in improving a woman's self-esteem after losing her hair - with headwrapping demonstrations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udSLCHxHIoc

The first thing she wanted to do was a bald photo shoot after losing her hair.  Which you will see in this video with the song she wrote (and sings) for her breast cancer journey.
https://youtu.be/udSLCHxHIoc  Her vulnerability summed up even what words from her book and her music not only convey...but her spirit takes beyond to help others through her choice to embrace her journey.

All of these amazing women are inspiring for their strength, courage and warrior spirit and I celebrate them and their courage along with my own mother's as they all rose from the depths of it to make a huge impact to become warrior women of strength and take on the fight by bringing about even more awareness, displaying their own bravery and being pillars of inspiration for the fight.

• LIVE TODAY. 
• LIVE IN THE PRESENT HONORING THE HEART THAT STILL BEATS. 
• LIVE IN YOUR TRUTH. 
• DON’T FORGET YOUR COURAGE.  
• HAVE YOUR BEST OUTLOOK ON LIFE

And whether you have Alzheimer's or not.... or whether you or someone you love has it or is battling breast cancer or some other disease or hardship - sometimes forgetting the dark stuff, so you can focus on what matters most (your breath now) - in order to replenish your own light to shine, heal and strength to fight to survive is key.

Whatever positive energy you can bring forth like all of these amazing women and the millions more across the globe - know that the positive energy is a gift that you can give yourself and to others facing challenges, too.  

I share this with all those in the fight for their life, battling diseases, mustering up all the strength they have and send you this courage, this light, this message with the hope that you know just how very brave and courageous you are in all you’re doing by surviving and being the example of what all of that represents.  

You’ll never be forgotten and your courage remains an inspiration.  I celebrate each and every one of you with all that you give, share and inspire everyone with - your heart.

THANK YOU.  BLESS YOU.  MAY COURAGE AND STRENGTH BE WITH YOU.

Namaste.  
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