Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
Lessons from the Ice Storm: The Power of Self-Control Over Circumstance
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An unexpected eight-day power outage following a devastating ice storm teaches us profound lessons about fear, adaptation, and the human tendency to interpret natural processes as chaotic attacks on our well-being. We explore how quickly our sense of collective interconnection dissolves when basic infrastructure fails, revealing our deep-seated fears of isolation and vulnerability.
• External events trigger emotions when we interpret them as personally meaningful or threatening
• The brain narrows focus during perceived crises, making it difficult to track routine tasks
• Bodies adapt remarkably quickly to changed circumstances, including temperature shifts
• What we perceive as "chaos" is simply nature following its natural processes
• True resilience comes from controlling our internal responses rather than external circumstances
• The Tao Te Ching wisdom: "To know yourself is insight. To control yourself is true power"
• Simple preparation and self-reliance create greater security than attempting to control external events
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To know others is knowledge, to know yourself is insight. To control others is strength. To control yourself is true power.
Speaker 1:This is Coffee with Hilary and Les a podcast about the mind. Join us by the lake as we sip our coffee and talk about the mind and how to change it. Together we explore how to break free of the past and open up a whole new future. We're on the line.
Speaker 2:We're recording. How does it feel?
Speaker 1:We're sort of laughing, because I was like what's my intro again?
Speaker 2:It's really quite complicated and long. Yeah, I know right.
Speaker 1:Oh my god.
Speaker 2:It's been a time, that's for sure. Yes, a lot has been going on, a lot Lunar eclipses. Crazy people running amok, yep, everywhere People having elections.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:We've had lots of elections, lots of distractions from the external world is drawing us out there. Get our focus out there instead of internal.
Speaker 1:I think, though, it's a reminder to go internal right. It's a. You get so messed up from looking at the external so much that, um it, it draws you internally yeah, it certainly.
Speaker 2:You know, speaking for myself, it creates. It creates an awareness that I am so externally focused that I've lost touch internally and I almost yearn for quiet, reflective time. I mean, all this stuff going on needs to be processed. It's hard not to see everything in the world as it relates to yourself, right, everything that's going on means something to me and about me. Um, it has somehow.
Speaker 2:I, I can find a way to interpret it and say this is gonna affect me, right, and that that's the stuff that generates emotions. Yeah, things that go on that have no relationship to me, I can easily ignore, and the stuff that goes on and I think that somehow it relates to me generates emotions in me. And I was trying to make a list when I thought about this. You know, we're dealing with fear, isolation, the unpredictability of others and of conditions like weather, the comparison that we make to others. You know, know, driving down the street, on our street, at one end of the street, they've all got lights on and their furnaces are running and everything is good, and on our end of the street, nothing, and then that creates, like so, emotions jealousy and anger and frustration and a sense of confusion, and then a wondering about me, why me?
Speaker 2:Why am I the one that doesn't have power?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for anyone listening, that's outside of the core of the lakes and Barry, I don't know where else did it hit? Nowhere, really, not too many places. I think we got hit the worst, but I don't know exactly what did it hit? Nowhere, really, not too many places. I think we got hit the worst, but I don't know exactly what day it was on I'm going to say two weeks. Actually, two weeks to today ago, we had about 48 hours of ice fall on us and I remember waking up that first night or second night or something, once the trees were just laid in with ice, not really realizing what was going on outside, but hearing trees breaking, falling, um, it was thunderous and anyway, we lost our power that evening before. And it was out for what? Eight days, eight days, I don't know.
Speaker 1:The word decimated comes to mind, but I mean driving down the road. You would see just trees down all over the place from the ice and lots of I don't know exactly what they're called. I think they're called like electricity boom. Trucks drove in. I saw about I'm not even joking like between 20 and 50 of them in the McDonald's parking lot Just two days ago and they drove in from Atlantic Canada, quebec to help us out here, canada, quebec to help us out here. So, but yeah, so with all that, the emotions like what you're talking about, I didn't realize how deep the emotions were. I you know. Even it took after the the lights came on again for my emotions to just let out.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, yeah, I'm still, I think, processing it. So today, you know, all my to-do list is cutting up I don't know, a couple of dozen fallen tree limbs, tree branches. You know. On the day after that that all happened, we cut our way out, took out the chainsaw and cut our way so we could go in and out of the driveway, but it's all been scattered around waiting to be cleaned up. The focus was on, you know, maintaining gasoline in the generator and trying to figure out how to keep the house warm enough yeah that, um that nothing bad happened to it yeah
Speaker 1:choosing between warming the house and keeping the fridge cold because we only had so many lines off the generator and I'm one of those people that's like if there's, if something in the fridge is not cold for you know half an hour, then it's, it's spoiled in my mind anyway, yeah, it was a lot and lots of emotion that we didn't really realize that at least for me, if I'm speaking for myself that I didn't really realize I was contending with or had in me, you know it's.
Speaker 2:It's a an isolating thing. You feel alone. It's funny how one of the things that makes us subconsciously anyway for some people consciously but subconsciously aware that we're all connected is just the hydro supply and one great big system that people will, you know, call the grid, this great big system that we all rely on for so many things. And then, once the grid is gone um and there's no electricity easily accessible, then it's sort of every person for themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really was. Really there was fights at gas stations, there was just crazy things that I heard about people just feeling isolated and like I need to take care of myself.
Speaker 2:It's such a symbol and a demonstration physical demonstration of how we function as a collective, how people are Sort of interconnected in this passive, non-conscious way and that when these connections start to feel like they're broken and we start to really, really fear and I think that's the big thing is we start to fear that me as an individual, I am at risk. And it's not just, I am at risk.
Speaker 2:And it's not just I'm physically at risk because really, you know, I think there's a lot of value. One of the things, one of the thought patterns I would turn to while we were going through this was we've only had hydro for 100 years. Human beings have been around for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
Speaker 2:We might have lost some of the obvious methods we use to care for ourselves and become reliant on electricity, but we're more than capable of surviving these kinds of things. And it also wasn't even the worst of the winter, I mean it was cold. We had one night that was really really cold, cold. I think our house went down to below 50 that night and and I suppose that it wasn't easy what we went through, but it wasn't as hard as it could have been no for sure, and um and yeah, and we, we did survive, people did survive, people were able to get through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it reminds us how unprepared we are every time we have a power outage. I think I've got to figure out how to wire that generator into our, into our home system, so that things like our, our pump and our refrigerator are just automatically taken care of. And yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, first world problems right.
Speaker 2:But still problems. Well, it's just interesting to see how we fall back into fear and we fall back into isolation and we do a sort of a comparison thing. You know well, you have it better than me because you have a generator. You know our poor neighbor. She just sat there in the cold, in the dark, by herself and and essentially refused her daughter, who lived in a place where there was no power outage. I'll just come and get you. No, no, I can't go.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I wanted to take a um a cord over to her, an extension cord, so she could at least have a heater and make a coffee and stuff. No, no, I can't have the door open. That's, that's just dangerous, yeah. So yeah, it's funny how um fears multiply when, when something like this happens, when you find yourself out of your normal systems, out of your normal way of being, and then a whole bunch of ancillary fears kick in, and then you're comparing yourself to others and then frustration and anger kicks in, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think about I don't know if it's something you can avoid happening internally. Obviously we can't control the external, what happens around us exactly but I think about how, if it were to happen again mentally, what I would do to feel better. The funny thing is, is I what I was storing, you know? So I think more meditation would be good. You know, meditating or just searching for emotions, maybe internally, to to let go of well, yeah, like it is a truly a learning opportunity right some simple things.
Speaker 2:That that that I learned and I think that we can, we can build on because there's so much to be learned. So I learned that my body adjusts. So yeah, at first I was cold the house. We got our house pretty steadily at about 62 to 64 degrees. We could run heaters and get the house up to about low 60s and at night it would always drop into the 50s because we wouldn't run the generator at night just because we couldn't feed it gas and we just thought well, we'll get through that.
Speaker 2:So my body adjusts. So after after more than a week of sitting in the cold, I was tired of feeling cold. But it's amazing how just a sweatshirt and wearing something on your feet changes how cold you feel and how easy it is to adapt to cold. And then, when the power came back on, I felt hot.
Speaker 1:Yes, I remember that, Because now we were back to the regular temperature in the house and it was like, oh, it's so hot in here.
Speaker 2:So I think the first thing is that your body will adjust Right to the regular temperature in the house, and it was like, oh, it's so hot in here, yeah. So I think the first thing is is your body will adjust right. Um, we found ways.
Speaker 2:There are so many ways to fill your time yeah right, we, we have habits of, you know, maybe simply sitting scrolling on our phone or watching TV, or, you know, eating as a habit and to become aware that this is, these are the habits we've become reliant on and they're they're certainly not necessary. Yeah, and we can change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our eating habits over that time period were. They weren't you know the best, but, um, you know it's. It's interesting to me how we, how our brain, even though it wasn't you know the worst disaster in the, even though it wasn't you know the worst disaster in the world you know it wasn't, it wasn't terrible but still I found my brain was just focusing on just a few things, Like it was just it's like everything consolidated. It's like everything consolidated and I was just focused on staying warm, keeping myself occupied. Right, I cleared my schedule because there was no power and, honestly, when I look back at that time, it was a whole week and I can't hardly remember it.
Speaker 1:It's so weird and I remember thinking I was putting stuff down, like I would put something down or have my slippers off somewhere and I would forget immediately where I put the thing. And it was like my brain was just, my mind was just like okay, no, you only have to, you only have. You know we're in, we're in fight or flight mode or whatever, and you're, you're, you're just focused on these few things. Obviously, I'm alive, Like I. I wasn't like life or death, but it's like my brain went into a way of just keeping things in order so that I could get through. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's really about how we perceive circumstances and how we perceive ourselves within them within them. So if we see ourselves in the circumstance that is endangering us, we see ourselves as capable or incapable. For me in hindsight I look at it and think it really wasn't all that hard.
Speaker 1:It really wasn't all that difficult.
Speaker 2:It really wasn't all that difficult. It was frustrating.
Speaker 2:There were many aspects of our life that just had to continue um as they were, but it was an incredible um distraction, I think, uh, like a a constant idea in the back of your head that you had to pay attention to Things that you wouldn't normally pay attention to. You put things in the fridge and they are kept cold. So now we have to pay attention to what do we have that needs to stay cold. We live in a world with a furnace and we think, oh well, we don't ever have to worry about keeping the house warm and keeping ourselves warm. And now it's something we have to constantly pay attention to and we are constantly moving around and plugging our phones in and unplugging our phones and charging our phones and charging our computers, and it just sort of happens naturally, and now it's something we have to pay attention to.
Speaker 2:We have to deliberately make sure we keep things charged up. Um, you know we have to. We light candles for light and now we have to pay attention to those because there's that built-in fear that you're going to burn your house down right and and you've got this thing that's now taking your attention constantly and all of that is shifting inside you. You know your base, your most simplistic fears of your well-being, which, in hindsight, I got to say we were never at risk.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:We were inconvenienced, we were frustrated, we were jealous of the people down the street, yeah, yeah, but we were never really at risk.
Speaker 1:I think too. I thought about I don't know all the terminology for it or what it might be linked to exactly, but I think the idea of looking out into the yard and down, and into the neighbor's yard, and down the street and in town, like just yesterday I was driving through town and a huge tree, I don't know what kind of tree, but it had fallen on a house and basically like went through half of them. So you know, perceiving these things is not generally normal to us and for me, I had this reaction internally of feeling like my environment was suddenly out of control. Right, I was sad for the trees, I was sad for, uh, the environment, I was uh, you know, I was, I was dealing with these emotions that I, you know, basically hadn't really ever had to deal with before.
Speaker 2:It's interesting you say that because, as you're talking, I write down the word chaos. And there really, was a sense of chaos. There was sort of a base vibration of chaos.
Speaker 1:And as I think about it, chaos, just interpretation.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, chaos is normal. What? What we really do as as beings, as we try to impose order on that which is naturally processed, naturally processing, naturally following? You know, nature has its processes. Yeah, you know nature. Somehow we live in a part of the world where there's this thing called freezing rain, and freezing rain is just simply that the air above the ground is warm enough that it's creating rain and the water doesn't freeze. And the air down at the ground is warm enough that it's creating rain and the water doesn't freeze and the air down at the ground level is below zero. It's so cold that the the water turns into ice the instant it falls, and then that ice just grows and grows, and grows, and that's, that's not a very common phenomenon in the world.
Speaker 2:In fact, you know, there's a lot of places in the world that can't even understand the idea of freezing rain, but it's simply coating everything in in literally pounds and pounds and pounds, tons and tons of ice, and then everything breaks. You look at the trees and the number of tree tops that are just snapped off, the number of tree limbs that are just broken and lying down on the ground, the old trees that appear to have been pruned. All the branches are off them. This is nature's way. This is nature's way of building strength in the trees. It's nature's way of clearing out and replenishing in so many ways. The volume of water when the ice melts is unbelievable, unbelievable. Yeah, so everything was just soaked for a long time, which, of course has its impact on on um the flora
Speaker 2:and the fauna. Um, and this is just nature and this is just natural and this is just going to happen. Um, and it's human beings that impose the idea that this is chaotic, human beings that interpret these conditions as somehow problematic and somehow dangerous, and it's human beings and their infrastructure for all intents and purposes. I mean, we've learned now, when you build new subdivisions, you put all the hydro underground, but we still have all the infrastructure of hydro that's all above ground wires on poles, running down roads that have trees that have fallen down on top of them, and it really is that simple. It's the systems that we've imposed on a world and then called the world's natural processes chaotic.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it's just an interpretation. It's not. There is no chaos, there's just our expectations that aren't met. That results in us interpreting this as chaotic. Yeah Right, our. It, I think, think, just amplifies it. Um, it puts in a very, under a very bright light this natural human tendency to want to control that. Our response to fear, um and I think this is huge and maybe this is a good reframe our response to fear is to reach out to the world and change it and control it, to lock it down, to tie it up, to change its shape, to change its shape, when the truth is we were never at risk.
Speaker 2:Right, we were without electricity. It was inconvenient, it was frustrating, it was kind of cold. We could build a house, we could control ourselves and build a house that can accommodate a power outage. Right, make sure you have a source of heat within your house that doesn't require electricity. Make sure that you have means of light, a supply of candles. I went to Canadian Tower about the last package of candles. That's, that's the thing. Right, you can have this stuff on hand. We simply got a bucket, right, yeah, our pump wasn't working, we didn't have water, but we just walked down to the lake and get a bucket and we could use our toilet then Just to have these simple kinds of systems. And I guess what I'm getting at in a long winded way is you're safer when you have the ability to control yourself than if you try to control external forces, than if you try to control external forces. That's a virtual impossibility.
Speaker 2:Nature is way bigger than me and it's going to do what it needs to do in the long term for itself, and I just need to learn how to control myself and have for me the simplest of tools and skills, and then something like this is just a non-issue yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, all of this is reminding me of part of the Tao Te Ching, one of the oldest books in the world and it's certainly one of my favorite, and I can, couldn't count. I mean, I'm talking hundreds, if not thousands, of times I've read it because it's not very big and you know it's uh, it's a book of aphorisms and paradox and it's beautiful and it causes you to think. But yeah, there's a paragraph in it, for some reason. I think it might be section 64. That's the number that's coming to me.
Speaker 1:But, anyway.
Speaker 2:to know others is knowledge, To know yourself is insight. To control others is strength. To control yourself is true power.
Speaker 1:Hillary and Les offer both in-person and online hypnosis services for clients around the world. If that interests you, visit our website psalmhypnosiscom and sign up for a free consultation, or send us an email at info at psalmhypnosiscom and sign up for a free consultation.
Speaker 2:Or send us an email at info at psalmhypnosiscom Story of the student who was walking down the rocky road saying it hurt his feet and told the master geez, we should just cover the roads in leather. And the master said or you could cover your feet in leather, and then it doesn't matter what the road is. And I really think that there's real safety and real strength in being focused not on controlling the external, but strengthening and controlling the internal. And to see that so much of what we go through in terms of our emotions is a function of how we're interpreting something that has nothing to do with us. Nature was just doing what nature does. Nature wasn't doing it to me, but to see that I'm interpreting it as if it's an attack on me and that's going to trigger fear, that's going to trigger anger, that's going to trigger my lack of ability to cope with what I call chaos.
Speaker 1:And everybody's interpretation of chaos would be different, absolutely Subjective.
Speaker 2:I wasn't really terribly concerned about the temperature of our coffee cream.
Speaker 1:I know, but that's chaos to me, oh dear. So yeah, I think that was a good little topic for today to get us back into the swing of things.
