As 2010 approaches, I am attempting to become very clear on my goals and aspirations for the upcoming year. I have learned from several reliable sources that it is crucial to be entirely unambiguous about your desires in order to actually manifest them in your life.
And no, I am not just talking about advice gleaned from the columnists in Oprah’s O Magazine.
For the past few years, several people who I trust and value as experts in the field of self-awareness and self-actualization have imparted to me the following wisdom: it is entirely possible to achieve whatever your mind can conceive and believe, however you must be very specific and consistent on what it is you are seeking to achieve.
That sounds so simple, does it not?
Do not be fooled, though. Of course, so many things in life sound simple. In fact, they often are fairly simple if the result you are seeking is merely satisfactory. When you up the ante and decide on aiming for an exceptional end-product, then those simple things become far more complicated. Scrambling eggs is a good example.
It is hard to make bad scrambled eggs. It is far more difficult to make exquisite and delectable scrambled eggs. Seriously, give it a whirl.
Anyway, as I tackle this concept of being clear on what I want, I have become very aware of how other people seem to go about achieving their version of success. Something I find impressive is when I ask people why they are doing something and they are able to provide an immediate, concise, and reasonably thorough explanation. It just makes such them seem like they have given their life and their life decisions careful thought.
I am not certain I have ever been able to answer questions about myself with succinct little elevator pitches. Not only do I have a tendency towards the verbose (hello-have you read my 1,000+ word blog postings?), but I also follow more of a “do it then reflect on it” pattern of living than I do a “think about it and then act on it” path.
Well there you have it: bingo! Root of problem uncovered.
It is no wonder I am having difficulty manifesting what I want into my life when I have no condensed and consistent idea of what it is that I want.
This problem, for me, is that I seem to want many different things and I change my mind a lot. It often seems that just as I have honed in on one specific goal, something pops up and distracts me, lures me away with a tantalizing window display if you will. And it truly is the proverbial window display that reels me in: I am taken by the surface of things, but when I actually delve deeper, I find my interest wanes. At that point I am a prime candidate to be lured away yet again. And so the pattern continues, and I hardly have enough time to be clear on window display A before I have completely chucked it in favor of window display B.
If you have not gotten the gist from my cryptic analogy-laden vernacular: I am easily distracted. I sort of have ADD in that way.
But before you get all in my grill about your thoughts and feelings on the over-diagnosis of ADD in our culture, please note that this reference is not being utilized as a way for me to shirk responsibility for my distraction-prone mind. It is just something I have noticed about myself and I am working to rectify it.
Without prescription meds, mind you. No offense to Western medicine.
So, as I was pontificating on what it is that I want, I was given the good suggestion that I ought to write out my ideal day and read it often. I have done this before and it works to some degree. I suggest you do it too. It will probably work better for you because I can be very vague. I believe that this exercise would REALLY work if you are very specific. That said, I plan to try it again too. Let’s compare notes later.
In conjunction with the writing of the ideal day exercise, I was also told that the best thing to do is to imagine people who are leading the life that I want to lead and use them as my virtual role models for achieving my ideal life myself.
After ruling out Ellen DeGeneres (I like men, and my husband in particular), one of my dogs (I enjoy being able to talk and to eat at non-mandated intervals), and Sara Gruen (I just LOVED that book Water for Elephants and wish my mind had conjured up such a beautiful story—but that is all I know about her so to emulate her makes little sense), I decided on the perfect role model. One issue, however was that I not only wanted to use this person as a role model, I want to actually BE her.
Here is the thing: I pretty much want to be Julia Child. I realize that sounds pretty darn unoriginal—in part because there already was a Julia Child and also because of the recent success of Julie and Julia and the subsequent resurgence of interest in both Julia’s memoir and her famed cookbook. I know, couldn’t I have come up with someone else, for the sake of not being one big blogging cliché at the very least?
Well no. Why reinvent the wheel, is what I am saying.
But I am not Julia, I am Maggie, and I quite like Maggie. Although I do think I could like Maggie more.
And that is a goal for 2010.
But what I like so much about Julia’s is that she was wonderfully creative, yet without those dark artist moods that often befall creative people. She had the most palpable joie de vivre. Additionally, her life is appealing because she spent almost every day writing and cooking, and that pretty much sums up heaven to me. With both pursuits she channeled her creativity into her passions and she was so clearly energized and inspired just by her own momentum. I find that amazing.
All that AND she lived in Paris for many years, and living in Paris is a big-time dream of this bird.
You also might be interested to know that I actually have a lot on common with Julia Child. For one thing, we are both Leos.
Astrology is one of those things that is extremely important only when you can immediately find direct correlations, otherwise its significance can shrink to the non-existent category. Not to insult people who live by it or anything. That is just my experience.
So now I am on my way to being clear about what it is I want. I want to live in Paris, time to indulge in the creative outlets of cooking and writing, and a perpetually positive attitude. Voila! THIS IS SO EASY!
But seriously, having a list of the qualities I admire in others, the activities from which I derive inspiration, and a bonified role model to emulate are good steps towards formulating a very defined goal.
I am telling you, the way things are going, it looks like I will be scrambling some pretty delectable eggs in 2010.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Shop and Drop
Earlier this week, I spent a day helping my friend Meg, who is a gymnastics coach, with the holiday “Shop and Drop” at her gym. If you are wondering what exactly that is, then you are not alone. After agreeing a few weeks ago to assist, it only occurred to me the night before that I had no idea what precisely was entailed. Of particular concern to me, as someone who has not entered a gymnastics facility in a good fifteen years, was the “and drop” portion of the title. What did that mean exactly?
Well, it turns out it is a day of camp basically. Since schools are on break for the holidays, parents could “drop” their kids off for a full or a half day and then spend these precious purchased child-free hours enjoying a Christmas “shop,” going to work, or doing whatever it is parents do when they manage to pass off their darling little doppelgangers into the capable (gullible?) hands of adults other than them.
Bust out the champagne and dance around the house naked to 80’s tunes is my guess.
But I could be wrong.
So both the “Shop” and the “Drop” components did not actually pertain to me. Unless you count when I accidentally dropped a six year old boy when he hurled himself off the balance beam into my body. Note I did not say, “He hurled himself into my outstretched arms.” I did not say that because my arms were not, in fact outstretched. It is a cruel and unusual thing to be standing innocently enough one minute, and then to be suddenly tackled to the ground by a 50 pound human cannon ball the next.
One word for you people: helmets. Not just for bike-riders or unruly toddlers.
The entire day was interesting not only because I came to the astute conclusion that six year old boys are a frighteningly rambunctious breed of little creatures, but for a whole host of other reasons as well. Perhaps it is unsurprising that a general hullabaloo ensues naturally when you take a large padded room filled with enticing equipment and bouncy apparatus and add a group of four to 11 year-olds. Adding to the fun was that this was not a “typical class,” one where all the kids would roughly be at the same level. Instead there were was a fairly wide range of age and abilities, all working together. Not necessarily a recipe for safety or kindness on all fronts, but it worked out well enough.
Generally speaking, they were great kids, and I had a fun time.
Suffice it to say, the day also acted as fairly potent birth control. It is a possibility that I came home and proclaimed to my dogs (who are, incidentally, decidedly LESS unruly than six year old boys): “Holy blue Jesums, we will never have a child in this house, ever!” And then I turned on Air Supply and danced around in my underwear with a bottle of Moet and Chandon.
But that is neither here nor there.
What I did realize, and this realization is the impetus for this posting, is that there is much to be learned from kids about honesty, about self-awareness, and about living in the moment.
There was one little girl, a five year old named Ruby, who was a very sweet and very chubby little character. Ruby was part of the first group I had on the balance beam. She had particular trepidation about traversing the beam, and it was written all across her chubby little cheeks as she watched in awe as another girl sailed right across. When it came to be Ruby’s turn, I expected some sort of negotiation to take place between us, and I anticipated, based on the look of fear I had seen, that getting her to walk across the beam would be no small feat.
Well, she surprised me. Before I said anything to her, she quietly and determinedly stated, “Miss Maggie, I am scared to go across, but I would like to try.”
There is nothing quite as endearing as a chubby little kid in pigtails who inspires a grown woman by her willingness to confront a fear. No risk, no reward, Miss Ruby. You are now my hero.
So, she went across the first couple of times on the lower beams, holding my hand. Rather than jumping off the end, I would lift her to the ground. Note here, that she did not feel the inexplicable impulse felt by that cannonball/boy to throw herself at me. Not to exercise blatant bias towards my gender or anything, but I suspect the fact that she was female had something to do with her polite awareness regarding the safety of both herself and others.
By the end of the 30 minutes Ruby was boldly traversing the highest of the beams by herself. On her last turn, she jumped off the end without my assistance. She high-fived me with gusto and asked, “What do we try next?”
In sum: she started out terrified, she confronted her fear, she conquered her fear, and she was ready for more. Did I mention that Ruby is my new hero?
It was lovely to see how she was obviously, and deservedly, proud of her accomplishments.
So proud in fact, that when I told her she could go have a drink of water and a rest on the mats for all her hard work, she ran over to her cubby and pulled an enormous sandwich out of her lunch pail. She sat down and started polishing it off in a sort of gleeful celebratory feast. The fact that it was only 10 am did not seem like a deterrent for this feast of accomplishment.
At the end of the day we were doing tumbling with the small number of children who had stayed past lunchtime (by this I mean the regular lunchtime of noon, not the Ruby lunchtime of 10 am). Ruby was one of the remaining, as was her brother. We were working on somersaults, cartwheels and backbends. At one point, her brother, who was two years older than she, was avidly watching another boy contort himself in a backbend. Her brother, who was new to gymnastics, took on a look of fear (seems to run in that family, that look). He announced decisively, though not rudely: “I do not want to do that. I will not do that. I will sit out now.”
Let me insert here that I am amazed by the fact that these two children could state their feelings so simply and truthfully, without allowing emotions or the anticipation of the reactions they will elicit to color what they say, or how they say it. It is so refreshing and simple, and yet I am hard-pressed to think of many adults who can do so on a regular basis.
After her brother’s declaration, Ruby patted him on the shoulder and said emphatically: “No! You have to try.” She added, “Mom told us that we should try everything they ask us to try, even if we have never done it before, and even if it is hard. She said to ask the people for help, and we might like the new stuff.”
I guess by “the people” she meant Meg, me, and the other coaches in the gym, and I found this reference funny. But I also love how she re-phrased or paraphrased their mother’s words. I love how she actually took the advice to heart with the whole balance beam experience and it worked out wonderfully for her.
Where I am going with this point is likely obvious: what if we all took each day and tried all that we were asked to try, even if it was unfamiliar, and even if it looked hard? What if we all recognized that we could always ask “the people” around us for help?
I bet we would find, as Ruby did, that we just might like the new stuff. We just might find we have skills we never realized we had. We just might find ourselves joyously chowing down lunch at a weirdly early hour in celebration.
Or, to take another path demonstrated today, we just might find ourselves hurling ourselves off of gym apparatus’ at unsuspecting bystanders.
And on that note, I have to share that Ruby, ever the sage little cherub, followed up her words to her brother with a disclaimer: “Well try it but if it looks very dangerous, just say no.”
So true. Or at least wear a helmet.
Well, it turns out it is a day of camp basically. Since schools are on break for the holidays, parents could “drop” their kids off for a full or a half day and then spend these precious purchased child-free hours enjoying a Christmas “shop,” going to work, or doing whatever it is parents do when they manage to pass off their darling little doppelgangers into the capable (gullible?) hands of adults other than them.
Bust out the champagne and dance around the house naked to 80’s tunes is my guess.
But I could be wrong.
So both the “Shop” and the “Drop” components did not actually pertain to me. Unless you count when I accidentally dropped a six year old boy when he hurled himself off the balance beam into my body. Note I did not say, “He hurled himself into my outstretched arms.” I did not say that because my arms were not, in fact outstretched. It is a cruel and unusual thing to be standing innocently enough one minute, and then to be suddenly tackled to the ground by a 50 pound human cannon ball the next.
One word for you people: helmets. Not just for bike-riders or unruly toddlers.
The entire day was interesting not only because I came to the astute conclusion that six year old boys are a frighteningly rambunctious breed of little creatures, but for a whole host of other reasons as well. Perhaps it is unsurprising that a general hullabaloo ensues naturally when you take a large padded room filled with enticing equipment and bouncy apparatus and add a group of four to 11 year-olds. Adding to the fun was that this was not a “typical class,” one where all the kids would roughly be at the same level. Instead there were was a fairly wide range of age and abilities, all working together. Not necessarily a recipe for safety or kindness on all fronts, but it worked out well enough.
Generally speaking, they were great kids, and I had a fun time.
Suffice it to say, the day also acted as fairly potent birth control. It is a possibility that I came home and proclaimed to my dogs (who are, incidentally, decidedly LESS unruly than six year old boys): “Holy blue Jesums, we will never have a child in this house, ever!” And then I turned on Air Supply and danced around in my underwear with a bottle of Moet and Chandon.
But that is neither here nor there.
What I did realize, and this realization is the impetus for this posting, is that there is much to be learned from kids about honesty, about self-awareness, and about living in the moment.
There was one little girl, a five year old named Ruby, who was a very sweet and very chubby little character. Ruby was part of the first group I had on the balance beam. She had particular trepidation about traversing the beam, and it was written all across her chubby little cheeks as she watched in awe as another girl sailed right across. When it came to be Ruby’s turn, I expected some sort of negotiation to take place between us, and I anticipated, based on the look of fear I had seen, that getting her to walk across the beam would be no small feat.
Well, she surprised me. Before I said anything to her, she quietly and determinedly stated, “Miss Maggie, I am scared to go across, but I would like to try.”
There is nothing quite as endearing as a chubby little kid in pigtails who inspires a grown woman by her willingness to confront a fear. No risk, no reward, Miss Ruby. You are now my hero.
So, she went across the first couple of times on the lower beams, holding my hand. Rather than jumping off the end, I would lift her to the ground. Note here, that she did not feel the inexplicable impulse felt by that cannonball/boy to throw herself at me. Not to exercise blatant bias towards my gender or anything, but I suspect the fact that she was female had something to do with her polite awareness regarding the safety of both herself and others.
By the end of the 30 minutes Ruby was boldly traversing the highest of the beams by herself. On her last turn, she jumped off the end without my assistance. She high-fived me with gusto and asked, “What do we try next?”
In sum: she started out terrified, she confronted her fear, she conquered her fear, and she was ready for more. Did I mention that Ruby is my new hero?
It was lovely to see how she was obviously, and deservedly, proud of her accomplishments.
So proud in fact, that when I told her she could go have a drink of water and a rest on the mats for all her hard work, she ran over to her cubby and pulled an enormous sandwich out of her lunch pail. She sat down and started polishing it off in a sort of gleeful celebratory feast. The fact that it was only 10 am did not seem like a deterrent for this feast of accomplishment.
At the end of the day we were doing tumbling with the small number of children who had stayed past lunchtime (by this I mean the regular lunchtime of noon, not the Ruby lunchtime of 10 am). Ruby was one of the remaining, as was her brother. We were working on somersaults, cartwheels and backbends. At one point, her brother, who was two years older than she, was avidly watching another boy contort himself in a backbend. Her brother, who was new to gymnastics, took on a look of fear (seems to run in that family, that look). He announced decisively, though not rudely: “I do not want to do that. I will not do that. I will sit out now.”
Let me insert here that I am amazed by the fact that these two children could state their feelings so simply and truthfully, without allowing emotions or the anticipation of the reactions they will elicit to color what they say, or how they say it. It is so refreshing and simple, and yet I am hard-pressed to think of many adults who can do so on a regular basis.
After her brother’s declaration, Ruby patted him on the shoulder and said emphatically: “No! You have to try.” She added, “Mom told us that we should try everything they ask us to try, even if we have never done it before, and even if it is hard. She said to ask the people for help, and we might like the new stuff.”
I guess by “the people” she meant Meg, me, and the other coaches in the gym, and I found this reference funny. But I also love how she re-phrased or paraphrased their mother’s words. I love how she actually took the advice to heart with the whole balance beam experience and it worked out wonderfully for her.
Where I am going with this point is likely obvious: what if we all took each day and tried all that we were asked to try, even if it was unfamiliar, and even if it looked hard? What if we all recognized that we could always ask “the people” around us for help?
I bet we would find, as Ruby did, that we just might like the new stuff. We just might find we have skills we never realized we had. We just might find ourselves joyously chowing down lunch at a weirdly early hour in celebration.
Or, to take another path demonstrated today, we just might find ourselves hurling ourselves off of gym apparatus’ at unsuspecting bystanders.
And on that note, I have to share that Ruby, ever the sage little cherub, followed up her words to her brother with a disclaimer: “Well try it but if it looks very dangerous, just say no.”
So true. Or at least wear a helmet.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Amazing What a Text Message Can Do
My brother lives in California. The three hours earlier time differential, combined with our particular idiosyncrasies that he is a night owl and I am a day mouse, can result in some fairly small communication windows.
Fortunately, we both have unlimited text message capabilities.
That being said, I often wake up to several new messages in the form of advice/spiritual musings and/or general FYI life updates. Most people use text for brief snippets. Not my family. My brother, sister, and I all use them for long drawn out epistles. It is a carry-over from our collective inability to leave brief voicemail messages, but that is an arguably genetic trait and is a tale for another time.
So the other day I woke up to six new messages. One was from my friend Dave who was concerned, at approximately 1 am on a Sunday morning, that I see too many psychics. What was more disturbing to him than my allegedly frequent visitations to seers was that this was an aspect of my life of which he was unawares. In the wee hours of a weekend morning, my dear friend, Lauren, set him straight with this (exaggerated) information.
I suspect he felt a bit gypped because had he known about this fascinating quirk he could have used such information to entertain other people at social gatherings. As in: “My friend Mags is so WEIRD! Do you know what she does? She sees psychics, like EVERYDAY!” And the audience would be hanging on his every word as he describes his bizarre friend the way some people might describe a circus monkey.
False alarm people. The truth is that I do love psychics, but I only actually see a psychic once or twice a year at most. It certainly is not a bi-weekly occurrence as Dave was informed. The bigger mystery is why Lauren was misinformed, as she knows me just about as well as anyone. But I suspect she just wanted to get a rise out of her audience, and who can blame her really? As someone who loves her enthusiasm in general, I applaud her offering exaggerated, yet innocuous, information about me for the sake of a good laugh and some minor outrage. I mean what is the point of talking to anyone at 1 am unless a conversational bomb is going to be dropped? There has to be some compelling reason not to be snuggled in your bed.
This seems like as good a time as any to proclaim my belief that everyone ought to just go to bed at midnight. Nothing happens after midnight that makes much sense, in my opinion. Isn’t that when werewolves come out? See what I am saying?
But back to the texts I woke up to: the OTHER five text messages from that morning were from my brother. The major message imparted was that he felt I needed to speak to our father more. Robert pointed out that I have a lot of judgments surrounding that particular relationship and that it was time for me to let them go and to work on patching things up with Dad.
This counsel is particularly interesting when you consider that my dad has been dead for nearly ten years.
And what really got me was not the fact that my brother was suggesting to me that I open up the lines of communication with our dead father (he is a spiritual life coach, after all, and such advice is par for the course), but that he felt I had judgments about the relationship.
Now let me tell you something about me: I have judgments about a lot of things. Part of why I am writing this blog and writing the book is because I want to hold myself accountable in my attempts at letting go of judgments. After all, if I write lengthy blurbs encouraging others about the importance of being authentic, empathetic, and fair to others, then how can I not listen to my own advice?
It is sort of like when you decide to announce you are on a diet. You better start loading up on the veggies once you have gone public with your new regime. Or, at the very least, consume your ho-hos and whoopie pies when there is no one around on whose face you will register the words "DIET FAILURE," as you wipe the whipped cream from your mouth.
If everyone knows about your goal, it can be good incentive, I think, to actually follow through with them.
So with regards to judgments: this is a habit I have been trying to kick for years. I have had multiple therapists--in addition to what you now know to be my sporadic visits with psychics, reflexologists, and holistic healers. I read so many self-help books, that a friend once challenged me to go a month without reading one.
BTW: It was torture. I know how lame you are likely thinking I am at this moment, but frankly it was like telling me to give up ice cream, and it was not pretty.
When I consider the judgments I have about my father, and about our relationship, it is very true that it is a matrix from which many of my issues with judgments seem to stem. And the truth is that I DO speak to my father, I do believe that our relationship has become better, and I KNOW that if he were alive now, we would be able to make come amount of peace in a relationship that was volatile, unstable, and, most of all, misunderstood by both parties.
Of course, these realizations are fairly easy to assert in theory. In actuality there are no guarantees and there will never be a way to truly test if I am correct in my beliefs/hopes.
And no, even I would not put that much stock in a psychic. To be clear: yes I love psychics. But I have my limits. Plunking down extra dough to have a seer speak to loved ones who are on the "other side" is just bologne to me.
But I had thought that through all of this work on myself and self examination, etc. that I had done a pretty darn good job of letting go of the judgments I had about my dad, about myself, and about my relationship with him.
And then, boom! My brother calls a spade a spade and I wonder: How is it that my own perception of myself is so very different from how those in my life see me? How can my brother believe that I am so full of judgment when he knows, as well as anyone, how hard I have worked to let go of those judgments and repair that relationship?
But he does. And he is right.
How humbling it can be to think that you are so self-aware, so evolved, so “right on” about your path towards emotional freedom and peace, and then you are unceremoniously bumped off your high horse as someone hits you over the head with a baseball bat of truth.
Or, to be a little less violent, they hold up a proverbial mirror and wow-what you see is not what you expected.
In congruence with all of these realizations/thoughts/circumstances, yesterday, my husband and I went to see the movie “Everybody’s fine” with Robert De Niro. In it, he plays a recently widowed father of four who is trying to renegotiate his relationship with his adult children after the loss of his wife/their mother.
Maybe it was the image of the Italian-looking foreboding man with the crinkly eyes and the blue collar job that rang true to me in terms of my image of a father, but I was basically crying throughout the whole movie.
The movie is sad, this is true, but it is not as sad as one would imagine when watching me blubber from the sight of this man doing everything from packing a suitcase to eating a sandwich in McDonalds.
The truth is that I watched how misunderstood this father’s love for his children was, and that is what resonated with me on a visceral level. I watched how the the children carried on, convinced they knew the truth, that they were the ones who really knew what their dad was all about, what he needed and wanted from them and who he was in general.
And they were so blatantly wrong.
He saw through all of their shenanigans. They thought: He loves me if I am this way or that way. But that was not true.
It became so obvious that he loved them no matter what, they just lacked the intersubjectivity to see that reality. How sad, as so much of the turbulence in their lives and their relationship would have been eradicated with that simple realization.
And so it was with my dad. My brother’s text message prompted me to reexamine what I thought was a fairly closed up issue.
The endless tears at the movie obviously prove it was not.
So, ten years after my dad passed away, and I still have a lot of work to do yet on letting go of judgments. I have a lot of work to do on releasing the idea that I know what it was all about and how things went down, when I could have been wrong all along on the most crucial of components.
This epiphany is wonderful in many ways, but also extremely stressful. What if I am never able to really see my relationship with my dad for what it was and is? What if, in another 10 years, I am still hanging onto these judgments?
Oh, geez. Maybe I need to consult a psychic.
Fortunately, we both have unlimited text message capabilities.
That being said, I often wake up to several new messages in the form of advice/spiritual musings and/or general FYI life updates. Most people use text for brief snippets. Not my family. My brother, sister, and I all use them for long drawn out epistles. It is a carry-over from our collective inability to leave brief voicemail messages, but that is an arguably genetic trait and is a tale for another time.
So the other day I woke up to six new messages. One was from my friend Dave who was concerned, at approximately 1 am on a Sunday morning, that I see too many psychics. What was more disturbing to him than my allegedly frequent visitations to seers was that this was an aspect of my life of which he was unawares. In the wee hours of a weekend morning, my dear friend, Lauren, set him straight with this (exaggerated) information.
I suspect he felt a bit gypped because had he known about this fascinating quirk he could have used such information to entertain other people at social gatherings. As in: “My friend Mags is so WEIRD! Do you know what she does? She sees psychics, like EVERYDAY!” And the audience would be hanging on his every word as he describes his bizarre friend the way some people might describe a circus monkey.
False alarm people. The truth is that I do love psychics, but I only actually see a psychic once or twice a year at most. It certainly is not a bi-weekly occurrence as Dave was informed. The bigger mystery is why Lauren was misinformed, as she knows me just about as well as anyone. But I suspect she just wanted to get a rise out of her audience, and who can blame her really? As someone who loves her enthusiasm in general, I applaud her offering exaggerated, yet innocuous, information about me for the sake of a good laugh and some minor outrage. I mean what is the point of talking to anyone at 1 am unless a conversational bomb is going to be dropped? There has to be some compelling reason not to be snuggled in your bed.
This seems like as good a time as any to proclaim my belief that everyone ought to just go to bed at midnight. Nothing happens after midnight that makes much sense, in my opinion. Isn’t that when werewolves come out? See what I am saying?
But back to the texts I woke up to: the OTHER five text messages from that morning were from my brother. The major message imparted was that he felt I needed to speak to our father more. Robert pointed out that I have a lot of judgments surrounding that particular relationship and that it was time for me to let them go and to work on patching things up with Dad.
This counsel is particularly interesting when you consider that my dad has been dead for nearly ten years.
And what really got me was not the fact that my brother was suggesting to me that I open up the lines of communication with our dead father (he is a spiritual life coach, after all, and such advice is par for the course), but that he felt I had judgments about the relationship.
Now let me tell you something about me: I have judgments about a lot of things. Part of why I am writing this blog and writing the book is because I want to hold myself accountable in my attempts at letting go of judgments. After all, if I write lengthy blurbs encouraging others about the importance of being authentic, empathetic, and fair to others, then how can I not listen to my own advice?
It is sort of like when you decide to announce you are on a diet. You better start loading up on the veggies once you have gone public with your new regime. Or, at the very least, consume your ho-hos and whoopie pies when there is no one around on whose face you will register the words "DIET FAILURE," as you wipe the whipped cream from your mouth.
If everyone knows about your goal, it can be good incentive, I think, to actually follow through with them.
So with regards to judgments: this is a habit I have been trying to kick for years. I have had multiple therapists--in addition to what you now know to be my sporadic visits with psychics, reflexologists, and holistic healers. I read so many self-help books, that a friend once challenged me to go a month without reading one.
BTW: It was torture. I know how lame you are likely thinking I am at this moment, but frankly it was like telling me to give up ice cream, and it was not pretty.
When I consider the judgments I have about my father, and about our relationship, it is very true that it is a matrix from which many of my issues with judgments seem to stem. And the truth is that I DO speak to my father, I do believe that our relationship has become better, and I KNOW that if he were alive now, we would be able to make come amount of peace in a relationship that was volatile, unstable, and, most of all, misunderstood by both parties.
Of course, these realizations are fairly easy to assert in theory. In actuality there are no guarantees and there will never be a way to truly test if I am correct in my beliefs/hopes.
And no, even I would not put that much stock in a psychic. To be clear: yes I love psychics. But I have my limits. Plunking down extra dough to have a seer speak to loved ones who are on the "other side" is just bologne to me.
But I had thought that through all of this work on myself and self examination, etc. that I had done a pretty darn good job of letting go of the judgments I had about my dad, about myself, and about my relationship with him.
And then, boom! My brother calls a spade a spade and I wonder: How is it that my own perception of myself is so very different from how those in my life see me? How can my brother believe that I am so full of judgment when he knows, as well as anyone, how hard I have worked to let go of those judgments and repair that relationship?
But he does. And he is right.
How humbling it can be to think that you are so self-aware, so evolved, so “right on” about your path towards emotional freedom and peace, and then you are unceremoniously bumped off your high horse as someone hits you over the head with a baseball bat of truth.
Or, to be a little less violent, they hold up a proverbial mirror and wow-what you see is not what you expected.
In congruence with all of these realizations/thoughts/circumstances, yesterday, my husband and I went to see the movie “Everybody’s fine” with Robert De Niro. In it, he plays a recently widowed father of four who is trying to renegotiate his relationship with his adult children after the loss of his wife/their mother.
Maybe it was the image of the Italian-looking foreboding man with the crinkly eyes and the blue collar job that rang true to me in terms of my image of a father, but I was basically crying throughout the whole movie.
The movie is sad, this is true, but it is not as sad as one would imagine when watching me blubber from the sight of this man doing everything from packing a suitcase to eating a sandwich in McDonalds.
The truth is that I watched how misunderstood this father’s love for his children was, and that is what resonated with me on a visceral level. I watched how the the children carried on, convinced they knew the truth, that they were the ones who really knew what their dad was all about, what he needed and wanted from them and who he was in general.
And they were so blatantly wrong.
He saw through all of their shenanigans. They thought: He loves me if I am this way or that way. But that was not true.
It became so obvious that he loved them no matter what, they just lacked the intersubjectivity to see that reality. How sad, as so much of the turbulence in their lives and their relationship would have been eradicated with that simple realization.
And so it was with my dad. My brother’s text message prompted me to reexamine what I thought was a fairly closed up issue.
The endless tears at the movie obviously prove it was not.
So, ten years after my dad passed away, and I still have a lot of work to do yet on letting go of judgments. I have a lot of work to do on releasing the idea that I know what it was all about and how things went down, when I could have been wrong all along on the most crucial of components.
This epiphany is wonderful in many ways, but also extremely stressful. What if I am never able to really see my relationship with my dad for what it was and is? What if, in another 10 years, I am still hanging onto these judgments?
Oh, geez. Maybe I need to consult a psychic.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
No Risk No Reward
A subject that has been on my mind a lot lately is that of taking risks. As you probably know, more often than not, I am a huge endorser of risk-taking, and will readily adopt the role of cheerleader for anyone in my life who goes out on a limb, leaves their comfort zone, and/or tests new waters.
Along this theme, the best boss I ever had is a wonderfully intelligent person who possesses a real joie de vivre. A few years ago, when I announced my imminent departure from my secure job and comfortable life on Cape Cod to move to South Carolina, Mark proclaimed with enthusiasm: “Great news! No risk, no reward.”
I love this expression and I use it all the time—on both myself and virtually everyone in my life.
But then I was thinking that there are many sides to this Rubik’s cube of a situation, and a valuable lesson emerged as I recalled a personal experience regarding the issue of risk.
My first semester of college was spent abroad. I lived in London with 30 other students, all of whom were also college freshpeople who would begin classes as usual in the states in January. At one point during this period, a group of six girls took a trip to Wales to go on this sort of outdoor adventure trip. We went rock-climbing, cliff jumping, and coasteering (rock climbing where you are in the water for half the time and out for the other half). We were also meant to go surfing, but the weather turned very stormy and awful before that activity came to fruition.
Missing the surfing was quite a bummer because you know of my former hope and dream of being a super cool surfer girl. That might have been my missed opportunity right there. Oh well, spilled milk.
The trip was wonderful in the sense that it was a great bonding experience with a group of women, three of whom would remain some of my closest friends—in college and beyond. Other perks to this adventure included the fact that we drank lots of really delicious hot chocolate (not to discredit the country I live in and love, but it is my experience that Americans are simply incapable of making quality hot chocolate) and saw some of the beautiful Welsh country-side.
But in spite of those advantages, it was actually a truly miserable experience.
The major snafu was that I learned that I am petrified of heights while in Wales.
If you would like to go back and refer to the list of activities included on this trip, you might come to the astute realization that being afraid of heights would render the trip utterly miserable. You might also ask with a mixture of wonder and confusion: “What was this girl thinking when signing up for this trip?”
It makes about as much sense as a diabetic signing up for a weekend of pastry classes.
One might have thought I would have realized this whole “fear of heights” issue earlier in my life, but I actually was not afraid of heights when I was younger. I grew into my fear of heights the way some people grow into their noses. Or how people develop food allergies in adulthood. I am sure you have heard about someone who was eating peanut butter sandwiches with relish and glee for years on end, and then zam! one day they contract cauliflower ear, and their throat closes up because they take a bite of Pad Thai at an Asian Fusion restaurant.
No?
Well it happens. I saw a 20/20 on it once.
And it happened in my life that I developed a fear of heights that was crippling and horrifying, and it only came to the surface when I was dangling from a rope held in place on a precarious embankment during a thunderstorm as I tried, for the first time in my life, to rock climb.
How inconvenient.
To add insult to the injury I was positive I was about to incur, waves were crashing below me on jagged rocks and I had zippo trust in Bev, our instructor, who seemed inappropriately nervous and distracted.
I recall vividly that in that moment I was cold, sad, and paralyzed with fear. Not to sound too self-pitying or anything, but I was hanging over the side of a cliff, so a little self-indulgence seems warranted.
The really unfathomable thing to me was that the five other girls sailed through the activities with gusto and verve. Even my one good friend, who confided that she too was terrified, quickly changed her tune as her fear turned to exhilaration and determination.
When it came time to jump off the cliff—different cliff, mind you, no visible jagged rocks (though I was certain they were there, lurking under the surface). Everyone lined up and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, hopped off with shrieks of delight in varying decibels.
I managed to creep to the edge of the cliff, mentally preparing myself to jump, stopped short, and just about barfed.
I have a stomach of steel, so this was unusual.
Bev, wretched being that she was in my admittedly biased mind, eventually convinced me to jump off with her, holding her hand. In retrospect, this gesture, though presumably kind, makes little sense to me. If I were to hold someone’s hand for comfort, it would have made more sense to hold the hand of one of my friends as opposed to this virtual stranger whose capabilities as an outdoor instructor were suspect at best.
And frankly, I felt in that moment a little too coerced. As if it would make a crucial difference to her if I did not jump (maybe she was nervous I would demand a refund?). I also felt to not jump would be to detract from the enjoyment of my new friends, and I did not want to do that as I had just met these people and was fairly reliant on them at the time for any semblance of a social life.
So I held Bev’s hand and I jumped.
Basically, I was afraid to refuse to go. I jumped because I was more afraid of being the one singled out non-jumper than I was of the turbulent feeling in my stomach and the vision in my mind of my crumpled body pierced in two by an unseen jagged rock below.
After I surfaced, I was physically intact—much to my surprise. Mentally, however, I was more messed up than before. I had hoped that the jump would inspire a feeling of wanting to immediately jump again, to have a newfound addiction for the rush of adrenaline and freedom of hurling myself through the air. Everyone else seemed to feel that way.
What was wrong with me? What was wrong with me that these thrilling activities from which my new friends derived so much pleasure and excitement, made me want to hurl? Why was I so very different?
I am not sure why, but I was, and I am still. But the major problem was not that I was different from the other five members of my peer group, but that I lacked the courage to stand by my truth.
Here is my point: most of the time, I think risks are worth taking. Most of the time, the risk, whatever it may be, will reap huge rewards—mental, physical, emotional rewards. And often they will only be able to be appreciated in retrospect.
And I do talk a lot of about leaping and the net will appear and I tout my “no risk, no reward” philosophy all the time. And I believe in all of it.
But what I believe in above all else is that your own sense of intuition trumps it all. Following your own instincts is the most important thing you can do. Some things you just KNOW are wrong, though that feeling may make little or no sense to anyone else. But if you know it, then have to have the courage of your convictions. It is just as courageous to say no as it is to say yes if what you are doing is following your own truth.
So here is the thing: I wish I had not jumped, and I wish I had not suspended myself down a sheer rocky cliff. True, these were risky moves, and therefore logic may indicate that I deserve a hearty: "Good for you, you stuck your neck out there!"
But it would have been more of a risk to go against the grain of the group, to squelch the desire to fit in, and to merely say: "That is not for me, sorry." The real risk would have been honoring my own internal voice in spite of the external circumstances. The real risk, ironically, would have been to stay on terra firma.
Interesting when you think about it. It is all about perspective, isn't it?
Along this theme, the best boss I ever had is a wonderfully intelligent person who possesses a real joie de vivre. A few years ago, when I announced my imminent departure from my secure job and comfortable life on Cape Cod to move to South Carolina, Mark proclaimed with enthusiasm: “Great news! No risk, no reward.”
I love this expression and I use it all the time—on both myself and virtually everyone in my life.
But then I was thinking that there are many sides to this Rubik’s cube of a situation, and a valuable lesson emerged as I recalled a personal experience regarding the issue of risk.
My first semester of college was spent abroad. I lived in London with 30 other students, all of whom were also college freshpeople who would begin classes as usual in the states in January. At one point during this period, a group of six girls took a trip to Wales to go on this sort of outdoor adventure trip. We went rock-climbing, cliff jumping, and coasteering (rock climbing where you are in the water for half the time and out for the other half). We were also meant to go surfing, but the weather turned very stormy and awful before that activity came to fruition.
Missing the surfing was quite a bummer because you know of my former hope and dream of being a super cool surfer girl. That might have been my missed opportunity right there. Oh well, spilled milk.
The trip was wonderful in the sense that it was a great bonding experience with a group of women, three of whom would remain some of my closest friends—in college and beyond. Other perks to this adventure included the fact that we drank lots of really delicious hot chocolate (not to discredit the country I live in and love, but it is my experience that Americans are simply incapable of making quality hot chocolate) and saw some of the beautiful Welsh country-side.
But in spite of those advantages, it was actually a truly miserable experience.
The major snafu was that I learned that I am petrified of heights while in Wales.
If you would like to go back and refer to the list of activities included on this trip, you might come to the astute realization that being afraid of heights would render the trip utterly miserable. You might also ask with a mixture of wonder and confusion: “What was this girl thinking when signing up for this trip?”
It makes about as much sense as a diabetic signing up for a weekend of pastry classes.
One might have thought I would have realized this whole “fear of heights” issue earlier in my life, but I actually was not afraid of heights when I was younger. I grew into my fear of heights the way some people grow into their noses. Or how people develop food allergies in adulthood. I am sure you have heard about someone who was eating peanut butter sandwiches with relish and glee for years on end, and then zam! one day they contract cauliflower ear, and their throat closes up because they take a bite of Pad Thai at an Asian Fusion restaurant.
No?
Well it happens. I saw a 20/20 on it once.
And it happened in my life that I developed a fear of heights that was crippling and horrifying, and it only came to the surface when I was dangling from a rope held in place on a precarious embankment during a thunderstorm as I tried, for the first time in my life, to rock climb.
How inconvenient.
To add insult to the injury I was positive I was about to incur, waves were crashing below me on jagged rocks and I had zippo trust in Bev, our instructor, who seemed inappropriately nervous and distracted.
I recall vividly that in that moment I was cold, sad, and paralyzed with fear. Not to sound too self-pitying or anything, but I was hanging over the side of a cliff, so a little self-indulgence seems warranted.
The really unfathomable thing to me was that the five other girls sailed through the activities with gusto and verve. Even my one good friend, who confided that she too was terrified, quickly changed her tune as her fear turned to exhilaration and determination.
When it came time to jump off the cliff—different cliff, mind you, no visible jagged rocks (though I was certain they were there, lurking under the surface). Everyone lined up and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, hopped off with shrieks of delight in varying decibels.
I managed to creep to the edge of the cliff, mentally preparing myself to jump, stopped short, and just about barfed.
I have a stomach of steel, so this was unusual.
Bev, wretched being that she was in my admittedly biased mind, eventually convinced me to jump off with her, holding her hand. In retrospect, this gesture, though presumably kind, makes little sense to me. If I were to hold someone’s hand for comfort, it would have made more sense to hold the hand of one of my friends as opposed to this virtual stranger whose capabilities as an outdoor instructor were suspect at best.
And frankly, I felt in that moment a little too coerced. As if it would make a crucial difference to her if I did not jump (maybe she was nervous I would demand a refund?). I also felt to not jump would be to detract from the enjoyment of my new friends, and I did not want to do that as I had just met these people and was fairly reliant on them at the time for any semblance of a social life.
So I held Bev’s hand and I jumped.
Basically, I was afraid to refuse to go. I jumped because I was more afraid of being the one singled out non-jumper than I was of the turbulent feeling in my stomach and the vision in my mind of my crumpled body pierced in two by an unseen jagged rock below.
After I surfaced, I was physically intact—much to my surprise. Mentally, however, I was more messed up than before. I had hoped that the jump would inspire a feeling of wanting to immediately jump again, to have a newfound addiction for the rush of adrenaline and freedom of hurling myself through the air. Everyone else seemed to feel that way.
What was wrong with me? What was wrong with me that these thrilling activities from which my new friends derived so much pleasure and excitement, made me want to hurl? Why was I so very different?
I am not sure why, but I was, and I am still. But the major problem was not that I was different from the other five members of my peer group, but that I lacked the courage to stand by my truth.
Here is my point: most of the time, I think risks are worth taking. Most of the time, the risk, whatever it may be, will reap huge rewards—mental, physical, emotional rewards. And often they will only be able to be appreciated in retrospect.
And I do talk a lot of about leaping and the net will appear and I tout my “no risk, no reward” philosophy all the time. And I believe in all of it.
But what I believe in above all else is that your own sense of intuition trumps it all. Following your own instincts is the most important thing you can do. Some things you just KNOW are wrong, though that feeling may make little or no sense to anyone else. But if you know it, then have to have the courage of your convictions. It is just as courageous to say no as it is to say yes if what you are doing is following your own truth.
So here is the thing: I wish I had not jumped, and I wish I had not suspended myself down a sheer rocky cliff. True, these were risky moves, and therefore logic may indicate that I deserve a hearty: "Good for you, you stuck your neck out there!"
But it would have been more of a risk to go against the grain of the group, to squelch the desire to fit in, and to merely say: "That is not for me, sorry." The real risk would have been honoring my own internal voice in spite of the external circumstances. The real risk, ironically, would have been to stay on terra firma.
Interesting when you think about it. It is all about perspective, isn't it?
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The Monkey Bars
At the end of the yoga class I participated in the other day, the teacher read to us from a book written by a person she very much admired. The excerpt she selected was about monkey bars.
More specifically the person whose words she read had made a rather astute correlation between traversing the monkey bars and navigating life in general.
The author revealed that when he was younger, he possessed no natural aptitude for swinging across the monkey bars. A sort of paralyzing fear would grip him, and he would be unable to let go of one bar in order to reach out for the next. As he allowed his fear to overtake him, his body would just hang, and become like dead weight. When he finally mustered up the courage to attempt to grab the next bar, it would prove too difficult as he had lost any momentum he may have had—momentum that would have inevitably made his passage from one bar to the next smoother, more graceful, perhaps even possible.
His overall point was that, during those moments on the monkey bars, he very much feared the time when he would have to let go of one bar and before he had gripped the new bar. He dreaded this transitional period, this unknown, this “space between.”
What an apt comparison for life! For it can be truly frightening when you know the only way to move forward is to release the grip you have on the past, and yet there is no assurance that you will have any more solid grip on the future; if you even make it that far. After all, you may fall or you may tire.
Or, perhaps worst of all, what if you hurl yourself forward with as much gusto as you can manage only to find that the journey you made was ultimately not worth your while after all?
This analogy may seem a bit trite considering the relative safety of this childhood recess-time activity is being juxtaposed with the very real difficulties inherent in navigating life itself. But I like it for its accessibility. And because if you know me at all, you are well aware that I feel about analogies the way I feel about ice cream treats–that is to say, I look for them absolutely everywhere I go and I very nearly love them all.
Incidentally, I always liked the monkey bars. Yet I also remember those moments of panic as I swung my ten-year-old body from bar to bar, only to discover that the next bar—the one I trusted to be as secure and reliable as the last—was unexpectedly loose, especially slippery, or ungraspable in some way.
When you think about it you wonder: how can you be certain that if you take that leap of faith the net will, in fact, appear?
And the truth is, of course, that you can never be certain.
How terrifying.
And how amazing, liberating, and exciting.
As we all know, to make any progress whatsoever—in life or on those monkey bars—you have to let go of the grip you have on your past in order to move into the future. The more resolutely you white-knuckle that which you are leaving behind, and the more time it will take you to move forward, the more momentum you will lose, and the harder the journey will be.
Our society, being very “future-focused,” does not encourage us to embrace the transitional periods, the liminal space between “here” and “there.” We live in a culture that is very much defined by where we have been and where we are going. We are not taught to be present. We are not encouraged to “stay in the question.” Rather, we are trained to have answers, plans, solutions, and destinations.
Ironically, and as the monkey bar story author pointed out, it is only when in the transitional space that you are the most aware, the most present, the most, well, you. It is in those spaces that true creativity thrives and blossoms. It is those spaces that make growth possible.
Personally, I am someone who has always struggled when the next step in my life is not clearly defined and mapped out for me, or by me. Dichotomous as ever, I am also someone who has regularly launched myself into new situations without giving them the appropriate consideration (umm, anyone remember when I enrolled full-time in woodworking school?). Basically, my modus operendai was to either sit around and wait in my comfortable space of the known until I could clearly see the next stair onto which I would carefully step, or else I would hurl myself forward just to feel I was doing something.
If you are reading between the lines, I historically have done about all I could to avoid having to spend any time in that middle, transitional area.
Right now, I feel a lot of my life is up in the air. Among some of the more pressing issues are the questions: Will I ever feel the urge to have children? Will I ever be truly excited and satisfied with my professional pursuits? And, of course, the answers to those questions would be able to add perspective to the larger, looming, question: What do I want my future to look like?
And the truth is that I do not currently have the answers to those questions. I am flying through the air at the moment, and unaware of exactly where the bar I eventually grab onto will lead me. For the first time in my life, I am actually enjoying the unknown. It has resulted in this blog, in a lot of self-reflection and some degree of self-awareness. I feel that in all of this not knowing what my life will be, I have found out a lot about what my life actually is.
Amazing what you can learn from the monkey bars.
More specifically the person whose words she read had made a rather astute correlation between traversing the monkey bars and navigating life in general.
The author revealed that when he was younger, he possessed no natural aptitude for swinging across the monkey bars. A sort of paralyzing fear would grip him, and he would be unable to let go of one bar in order to reach out for the next. As he allowed his fear to overtake him, his body would just hang, and become like dead weight. When he finally mustered up the courage to attempt to grab the next bar, it would prove too difficult as he had lost any momentum he may have had—momentum that would have inevitably made his passage from one bar to the next smoother, more graceful, perhaps even possible.
His overall point was that, during those moments on the monkey bars, he very much feared the time when he would have to let go of one bar and before he had gripped the new bar. He dreaded this transitional period, this unknown, this “space between.”
What an apt comparison for life! For it can be truly frightening when you know the only way to move forward is to release the grip you have on the past, and yet there is no assurance that you will have any more solid grip on the future; if you even make it that far. After all, you may fall or you may tire.
Or, perhaps worst of all, what if you hurl yourself forward with as much gusto as you can manage only to find that the journey you made was ultimately not worth your while after all?
This analogy may seem a bit trite considering the relative safety of this childhood recess-time activity is being juxtaposed with the very real difficulties inherent in navigating life itself. But I like it for its accessibility. And because if you know me at all, you are well aware that I feel about analogies the way I feel about ice cream treats–that is to say, I look for them absolutely everywhere I go and I very nearly love them all.
Incidentally, I always liked the monkey bars. Yet I also remember those moments of panic as I swung my ten-year-old body from bar to bar, only to discover that the next bar—the one I trusted to be as secure and reliable as the last—was unexpectedly loose, especially slippery, or ungraspable in some way.
When you think about it you wonder: how can you be certain that if you take that leap of faith the net will, in fact, appear?
And the truth is, of course, that you can never be certain.
How terrifying.
And how amazing, liberating, and exciting.
As we all know, to make any progress whatsoever—in life or on those monkey bars—you have to let go of the grip you have on your past in order to move into the future. The more resolutely you white-knuckle that which you are leaving behind, and the more time it will take you to move forward, the more momentum you will lose, and the harder the journey will be.
Our society, being very “future-focused,” does not encourage us to embrace the transitional periods, the liminal space between “here” and “there.” We live in a culture that is very much defined by where we have been and where we are going. We are not taught to be present. We are not encouraged to “stay in the question.” Rather, we are trained to have answers, plans, solutions, and destinations.
Ironically, and as the monkey bar story author pointed out, it is only when in the transitional space that you are the most aware, the most present, the most, well, you. It is in those spaces that true creativity thrives and blossoms. It is those spaces that make growth possible.
Personally, I am someone who has always struggled when the next step in my life is not clearly defined and mapped out for me, or by me. Dichotomous as ever, I am also someone who has regularly launched myself into new situations without giving them the appropriate consideration (umm, anyone remember when I enrolled full-time in woodworking school?). Basically, my modus operendai was to either sit around and wait in my comfortable space of the known until I could clearly see the next stair onto which I would carefully step, or else I would hurl myself forward just to feel I was doing something.
If you are reading between the lines, I historically have done about all I could to avoid having to spend any time in that middle, transitional area.
Right now, I feel a lot of my life is up in the air. Among some of the more pressing issues are the questions: Will I ever feel the urge to have children? Will I ever be truly excited and satisfied with my professional pursuits? And, of course, the answers to those questions would be able to add perspective to the larger, looming, question: What do I want my future to look like?
And the truth is that I do not currently have the answers to those questions. I am flying through the air at the moment, and unaware of exactly where the bar I eventually grab onto will lead me. For the first time in my life, I am actually enjoying the unknown. It has resulted in this blog, in a lot of self-reflection and some degree of self-awareness. I feel that in all of this not knowing what my life will be, I have found out a lot about what my life actually is.
Amazing what you can learn from the monkey bars.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Filling Custom Orders in an Off the Rack World
The other day, as I was chatting with two of my girlfriends, they suggested that I post a blog entry about about the job at which we all met one another. Though we all left this company many months ago, it somehow still provides fodder for our regular get togethers. It was a unique experience and one for which I am grateful because I met these great friends, and also because it was quite eye-opening as to the discordance between who people say they are and who they actually are--an interesting and relevant topic in this day and age of internet-fueled relationships.
So what was the job?
Well, by way of beefing up humanitarian efforts on my resume, last year I worked for a dating service. During that time, I inevitably had the opportunity to describe my most recent vocational pursuit to many people at various social gatherings. Unlike when I had held what I perceived to be less charitable jobs (travel agent, technical writer, hospitality manager), I would actually look forward to sharing stories involving my latest venture with friends, family, and virtual strangers.
Erroneously, I assumed that people would believe, as I did at the time, that my position not only made for fun and interesting conversation, but was also an altruistic job where I essentially provided community service for the world at large. Indeed, I felt I was making the world a better place, one lunch date at a time. Admittedly, and on a more superficial level, it was also fun to have a plethora of social fodder at my fingertips. Despite the general reluctance to admit it, people are fascinated by that sort of thing, which is clearly evidenced by the alarming success of such inane programs as The Bachelor and Beauty and the Geek.
My actual job title was, improbably enough, “matchmaker.” I worked for a company where clients pay a rather hefty fee for a yearly membership in which they are promised a specific number of dates. I took the position—in fact I avidly campaigned to secure the job—because I thought it sounded both personally rewarding and selfless. I would be helping people find true love! How much more of a positive and valuable service could I ever offer this world? My naïve, Pollyanna attitude, had me believing that this matchmaking gig was the equivalent of providing ample rations to entire populations of people in starving nations.
Initially, I loved the idea of meeting with people, hearing them describe their ideal partners, and swiping their Visa cards (my boss actually liked that part, but I justified the membership fee by believing that these people took their love lives seriously—and were therefore happy to make such a worthwhile investment).
I delighted in spending time each morning going over profiles with my colleagues and matching people with their potential soul-mates. How incredible that I could play a role in assisting people to find lasting happiness, to personally orchestrate true love matches.
I will pause a moment to give you a chance to once again absorb the depths of my naivety and also, perhaps, to barf at my general sappiness.
In any case, the whole enterprise was a sad disappointment. And I am not saying this to bash this particular dating service—it is actually a very successful organization in many cities, and the concept is certainly viable. The service eschews computers and only operates via telephone and in person.
So I would spend considerable time telling each respective party why Tom or Susan was someone we identified as a great match. They would then meet one another at a restaurant where a reservation had already been made (under first names only), the restaurant would split the check, and if they wanted to see one another again they could exchange information during this date. The clients would call us with post-date feedback so that we could see if we were on the right track.
It all sounded like a well-oiled machine, where the service does all the work and the daters just show up, eat some food, and enjoy the potential romance sitting two feet across the table. Frankly, it all sounded a little too good to be true.
And so it was.
The major loophole with this service, as might be implicit given the nature of the task at hand, is that human chemistry is unpredictable. This is an obvious fact; I realize that if someone could figure out how to accurately and regularly predict how or why certain people would be attracted to certain others then widely popular services such as Match.com, and perhaps Dr. Phil himself, would be rendered obsolete entities.
Another problem was that when people pay for a service they have certain expectations of their return on investment. Unlike buying, for example a toaster, buying a membership to a dating service comes with no guarantee that the model and serial number that best suits your life will be available—or that it will ever be in stock in our particular warehouse. I had clients that were unable to accept that this purchase was one with unpredictable results. While I cared about helping people find potential partners, I often felt discouraged by my clients who were treating the procedure as if they were ordering a sandwich.
For example, a man in his late forties might come in with an exact idea of his “perfect” woman. After chatting with him, my notes indicate that he identifies himself as someone who is professionally successful, loves to travel, is outgoing, enjoys political debates, and feels his children are his number one priority.
After gleaning this personal information, we would move onto his hopes for his potential partner. I would expect (again note my naivety), that such criteria might be approximately as follows: someone who is independent, open-minded, committed to personal and professional growth, has a sense of adventure, and recognizes the importance of family. Or something that might hint that this man was actually conscious when he told me his own priorities and that he was, indeed, looking for a relationship with a compatible woman.
Instead, more often than not, I would hear something like the following: She must be between 22 and 28 years old, between “5’4” and 5’6” feet tall, curvy, yet slender, blond, blue-eyed, and have beautiful feet.” If you are in need of translation, basically the bozo was looking for a young, thin girl with fake boobs whose utter Barbie doll perfection would extend even to her extremities. Note that he said nothing about her actually character, personality, or interests.
Invariably, after such conversations, I would look at the portly nearing middle-aged man sitting across from me and I would be reminded of George Costanza on Seinfeld when he proclaims that he likes a thick head of hair on the women he dates.
George Costanza, as you may remember, was bald.
Now when I considered this list of non-negotiable criteria for a would-be life-partner, here is what I mentally pictured: The same man is standing at a deli counter at a gourmet sandwich shop. He places his order as follows: “I want roast beef on house-made foccacia with extra mayonnaise, cheese, and all the fixings. Do not forget the hot peppers. Leave out the calories and cholesterol. Make it delicious because I am paying for this sandy after all.” Huh. And would you like a side of fat free fries with that fantasy?
Such a “mail order” type client would be just the sort who would call me to complain after every date: “I TOLD you what I wanted and this girl had ugly feet.” Indeed. “Let me see, Sir, why have you not gone out with anyone that exactly matches your criteria? Oh, well, as it turns out we DO have women who fit the description you so carefully mapped out for me. Oddly, the descriptions given to me by THOSE young women were not for a balding rotund man in his late forties.”
Go figure.
And I do not mean to dig at the men only. Women were just as bad. Women would often order up something like this: “Looks are not important to me. But I only date men over six feet tall, absolutely no facial hair, no one balding, no one overweight, no ex-wives—or any serious exes at all. NO BAGGAGE.”
Honestly, who has no baggage? Not this duck, for one.
People are just not realistic.
Moreover, their priorities are quite wonky. The dilemma came up again and again that people felt they were physically “too good” for the people with whom they were being sent out. I understand pride and dignity, but I do not understand why so many people felt they ought to be going out with Brad and Angelina clones. Is it our celebrity culture? Did they live in mirror-less homes? Did they realize that looks are not, in fact, the most important criteria in building a life with someone?
Of course, physical attraction is certainly an integral component to long-lasting love and of course there are certain “types” to whom people are naturally more attracted to than others. Although I must say it makes me deeply suspicious when 45 year-old men insist that they only ever “click” with women 25 or younger.
So job had me wondering just how skewed were the priorities of the population with which I was dealing, and how did this epidemic come about? Was the problem that people did not actually want love, but rather wanted to feel superficially validated by a partner embodying specific physical, paint-by-number, attributes?
Ultimately, I left the company because the whole situation depressed me. I also felt the moral compass of the higher-ups had been seriously tampered with. True, it was also wearing to be constantly yelled at over the phone because people felt rejected and needed to take it out on someone. I could have lived with that though—of course people felt discouraged because finding love is hard. I absolutely empathize with that actuality. The main problem I saw with the situation was that finding a good book is also hard, but most people understand that making selections based solely on the covers will likely lead to disappointment. This analogy somehow did not register.
Here is the golden nugget of the day: people are not comprised of ingredients available at your local deli. You cannot always mix and match to have what you feel is the perfect combination. Or if you can, you might find out that it is not as “perfect” as you imagined. Or you will get bored. Or one day they are out of avocado and you feel disproportionately gypped.
I loved the idea of my job as a matchmaker, and I naively did not expect the position to be so full of complications, backlash, and irrationality. In retrospect, I may have been suffering from the same mismanagement of expectations as my clients were. Who was I to think that I could conjure up love for people when love is such an elusive and unpredictable gift?
I was excited to share my job with others because it made me feel validated to be orchestrating the impossible—perhaps the same way my clients felt they could earn validation through a made-to-order person on their arms. But the job was not the community service position I had imagined it to be, and while we did have a certain amount of success with a small percentage of our members, I found that the vast majority of the people with whom I was dealing were not buying what I was selling, so to speak.
Ultimately, I could not squash the Pollyanna at my core; I could not allow people to objectify others in the name of temporary and unsatisfying happiness. If I learned anything from this venture it is that we are all flawed, we all have baggage, and, most importantly—no matter how wonderful and amazing it may sound—a sandwich with no fat or calories is ultimately a sandwich with no substance.
So what was the job?
Well, by way of beefing up humanitarian efforts on my resume, last year I worked for a dating service. During that time, I inevitably had the opportunity to describe my most recent vocational pursuit to many people at various social gatherings. Unlike when I had held what I perceived to be less charitable jobs (travel agent, technical writer, hospitality manager), I would actually look forward to sharing stories involving my latest venture with friends, family, and virtual strangers.
Erroneously, I assumed that people would believe, as I did at the time, that my position not only made for fun and interesting conversation, but was also an altruistic job where I essentially provided community service for the world at large. Indeed, I felt I was making the world a better place, one lunch date at a time. Admittedly, and on a more superficial level, it was also fun to have a plethora of social fodder at my fingertips. Despite the general reluctance to admit it, people are fascinated by that sort of thing, which is clearly evidenced by the alarming success of such inane programs as The Bachelor and Beauty and the Geek.
My actual job title was, improbably enough, “matchmaker.” I worked for a company where clients pay a rather hefty fee for a yearly membership in which they are promised a specific number of dates. I took the position—in fact I avidly campaigned to secure the job—because I thought it sounded both personally rewarding and selfless. I would be helping people find true love! How much more of a positive and valuable service could I ever offer this world? My naïve, Pollyanna attitude, had me believing that this matchmaking gig was the equivalent of providing ample rations to entire populations of people in starving nations.
Initially, I loved the idea of meeting with people, hearing them describe their ideal partners, and swiping their Visa cards (my boss actually liked that part, but I justified the membership fee by believing that these people took their love lives seriously—and were therefore happy to make such a worthwhile investment).
I delighted in spending time each morning going over profiles with my colleagues and matching people with their potential soul-mates. How incredible that I could play a role in assisting people to find lasting happiness, to personally orchestrate true love matches.
I will pause a moment to give you a chance to once again absorb the depths of my naivety and also, perhaps, to barf at my general sappiness.
In any case, the whole enterprise was a sad disappointment. And I am not saying this to bash this particular dating service—it is actually a very successful organization in many cities, and the concept is certainly viable. The service eschews computers and only operates via telephone and in person.
So I would spend considerable time telling each respective party why Tom or Susan was someone we identified as a great match. They would then meet one another at a restaurant where a reservation had already been made (under first names only), the restaurant would split the check, and if they wanted to see one another again they could exchange information during this date. The clients would call us with post-date feedback so that we could see if we were on the right track.
It all sounded like a well-oiled machine, where the service does all the work and the daters just show up, eat some food, and enjoy the potential romance sitting two feet across the table. Frankly, it all sounded a little too good to be true.
And so it was.
The major loophole with this service, as might be implicit given the nature of the task at hand, is that human chemistry is unpredictable. This is an obvious fact; I realize that if someone could figure out how to accurately and regularly predict how or why certain people would be attracted to certain others then widely popular services such as Match.com, and perhaps Dr. Phil himself, would be rendered obsolete entities.
Another problem was that when people pay for a service they have certain expectations of their return on investment. Unlike buying, for example a toaster, buying a membership to a dating service comes with no guarantee that the model and serial number that best suits your life will be available—or that it will ever be in stock in our particular warehouse. I had clients that were unable to accept that this purchase was one with unpredictable results. While I cared about helping people find potential partners, I often felt discouraged by my clients who were treating the procedure as if they were ordering a sandwich.
For example, a man in his late forties might come in with an exact idea of his “perfect” woman. After chatting with him, my notes indicate that he identifies himself as someone who is professionally successful, loves to travel, is outgoing, enjoys political debates, and feels his children are his number one priority.
After gleaning this personal information, we would move onto his hopes for his potential partner. I would expect (again note my naivety), that such criteria might be approximately as follows: someone who is independent, open-minded, committed to personal and professional growth, has a sense of adventure, and recognizes the importance of family. Or something that might hint that this man was actually conscious when he told me his own priorities and that he was, indeed, looking for a relationship with a compatible woman.
Instead, more often than not, I would hear something like the following: She must be between 22 and 28 years old, between “5’4” and 5’6” feet tall, curvy, yet slender, blond, blue-eyed, and have beautiful feet.” If you are in need of translation, basically the bozo was looking for a young, thin girl with fake boobs whose utter Barbie doll perfection would extend even to her extremities. Note that he said nothing about her actually character, personality, or interests.
Invariably, after such conversations, I would look at the portly nearing middle-aged man sitting across from me and I would be reminded of George Costanza on Seinfeld when he proclaims that he likes a thick head of hair on the women he dates.
George Costanza, as you may remember, was bald.
Now when I considered this list of non-negotiable criteria for a would-be life-partner, here is what I mentally pictured: The same man is standing at a deli counter at a gourmet sandwich shop. He places his order as follows: “I want roast beef on house-made foccacia with extra mayonnaise, cheese, and all the fixings. Do not forget the hot peppers. Leave out the calories and cholesterol. Make it delicious because I am paying for this sandy after all.” Huh. And would you like a side of fat free fries with that fantasy?
Such a “mail order” type client would be just the sort who would call me to complain after every date: “I TOLD you what I wanted and this girl had ugly feet.” Indeed. “Let me see, Sir, why have you not gone out with anyone that exactly matches your criteria? Oh, well, as it turns out we DO have women who fit the description you so carefully mapped out for me. Oddly, the descriptions given to me by THOSE young women were not for a balding rotund man in his late forties.”
Go figure.
And I do not mean to dig at the men only. Women were just as bad. Women would often order up something like this: “Looks are not important to me. But I only date men over six feet tall, absolutely no facial hair, no one balding, no one overweight, no ex-wives—or any serious exes at all. NO BAGGAGE.”
Honestly, who has no baggage? Not this duck, for one.
People are just not realistic.
Moreover, their priorities are quite wonky. The dilemma came up again and again that people felt they were physically “too good” for the people with whom they were being sent out. I understand pride and dignity, but I do not understand why so many people felt they ought to be going out with Brad and Angelina clones. Is it our celebrity culture? Did they live in mirror-less homes? Did they realize that looks are not, in fact, the most important criteria in building a life with someone?
Of course, physical attraction is certainly an integral component to long-lasting love and of course there are certain “types” to whom people are naturally more attracted to than others. Although I must say it makes me deeply suspicious when 45 year-old men insist that they only ever “click” with women 25 or younger.
So job had me wondering just how skewed were the priorities of the population with which I was dealing, and how did this epidemic come about? Was the problem that people did not actually want love, but rather wanted to feel superficially validated by a partner embodying specific physical, paint-by-number, attributes?
Ultimately, I left the company because the whole situation depressed me. I also felt the moral compass of the higher-ups had been seriously tampered with. True, it was also wearing to be constantly yelled at over the phone because people felt rejected and needed to take it out on someone. I could have lived with that though—of course people felt discouraged because finding love is hard. I absolutely empathize with that actuality. The main problem I saw with the situation was that finding a good book is also hard, but most people understand that making selections based solely on the covers will likely lead to disappointment. This analogy somehow did not register.
Here is the golden nugget of the day: people are not comprised of ingredients available at your local deli. You cannot always mix and match to have what you feel is the perfect combination. Or if you can, you might find out that it is not as “perfect” as you imagined. Or you will get bored. Or one day they are out of avocado and you feel disproportionately gypped.
I loved the idea of my job as a matchmaker, and I naively did not expect the position to be so full of complications, backlash, and irrationality. In retrospect, I may have been suffering from the same mismanagement of expectations as my clients were. Who was I to think that I could conjure up love for people when love is such an elusive and unpredictable gift?
I was excited to share my job with others because it made me feel validated to be orchestrating the impossible—perhaps the same way my clients felt they could earn validation through a made-to-order person on their arms. But the job was not the community service position I had imagined it to be, and while we did have a certain amount of success with a small percentage of our members, I found that the vast majority of the people with whom I was dealing were not buying what I was selling, so to speak.
Ultimately, I could not squash the Pollyanna at my core; I could not allow people to objectify others in the name of temporary and unsatisfying happiness. If I learned anything from this venture it is that we are all flawed, we all have baggage, and, most importantly—no matter how wonderful and amazing it may sound—a sandwich with no fat or calories is ultimately a sandwich with no substance.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Believe It
You may have noticed that I love to include snippets about my brother in my blog postings. This inclination is due, in part, to the fact that the guy has some crazy stories in his arsenal and we therefore engage in some pretty ridiculous dialogue pertaining to his various shenanigans (observed or lived) on a somewhat regular basis.
In fact, I often think that I could write a book called Conversations with My Brother. And it would be, to use one of his favorite adjectives, unbelievable. I am not exaggerating either. It is truly my sentiment that you would be reading the book, flipping the pages like mad of course as your devoured this sanctimonious piece of literary genius, and would be muttering aloud to yourself: “I just don’t believe this. This is truly unbelievable.”
In fact, people in Robert’s life—myself included, feel that the realm of reality television is doing the world at large a disservice by offering up dum-dum shows featuring insipid Housewives of wherever and various people generally being tactless and tyrannical, when we could be watching Big Rob sail through life. It is like eating bologna sandwiches on Wonder bread everyday only to suddenly be introduced to an Italian sub on ciabatta. I mean you would never go back. Are you with me here? Rob is not the bologna in the analogy if I lost you. Cliff’s notes to follow.
But Robert often says that he is a terrible candidate for a reality television show because no one would believe that his life was real. Although we all know that is hardly a criterion for “reality” television as we know it.
What I really think is that it is the whole shedding of general human decency that feels quite repugnant to him. Actually I sort of know that to be the case.
I say that because, being a sometimes model and actor, a few years back he was solicited to appear on a reality show. On this show, he would have had to actually marry someone and then embody every possible characteristic that her family would find disgraceful. The whole purpose of the show was to appall her entire family, only to reveal after months of psychological torment (“Our baby girl married THAT?”), that the whole marriage was a sham designed to keep all of the evil-minded television viewers at home entertained.
Implicitly, he turned down the audition. If you have to ask why, then please log off now and engage in some rigorous self-examination and/or bring your moral compass in for a complete tune-up.
So the other day, we were talking about a poker game he was invited to join. A truly social creature, my brother just loves striking up conversations with strange people, often in strange venues, often at strange times. The whole thing is strange in my opinion, but you probably got that.
Post-poker game, I received a recap of the evenings events. Rob thought it would just be a group of guys hanging out, playing cards, and maybe having some"brew-pops and mellow eats," as my friend Dave likes to say. I guess it was a bit more wild than that.
In fact, it all sounded sort of like Animal House meets Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, with a little Boogie Nights thrown in. But hey, he lives in L.A. so what could we really expect?
In the poker night scenario, Rob played the role, as my communication classes tell me, of participant-as-observer. It was sort of like a humanities research project, this poker night.
At one point an uninvited woman entered the room, talking loudly and acting quite strangely. She was proclaiming to anyone who would listen that she was not a stripper. I find this an odd thing to need to tell a room full of strangers. So did my brother, and thus she was one stranger with whom he did not feel compelled to chat.
The non-stripper proceeded to lock herself in the only bathroom off the common area where the poker game was taking place. Now I know men and women have different levels of “needing” to have a bathroom available, but I think it is safe to say that a room full of guys drinking beers would likely notice the unavailability of a restroom.
A line forms.
She emerges after about a half hour, and proclaims (big on proclamations, this gal): “The toilet is clogged.”
Ew.
But some brave soul (not Robert) goes into inspect the specifics of her announcement. He comes out and evidently encourages other people to go in and have a gander at the situation.
The guys file in for a viewing, and it turns out that dolly has dumped the contents of a trash can into the toilet. There were various papers coming out, a plastic container, I think Robert mentioned there was a paper towel roll stuffed in there.
The real mystery is where the woman was hiding this alarming amount of debris before she entered the rest facility. But perhaps I will have to accept that as a mystery for which I will never have the answer.
Well, yesterday I was in a public restroom in a medical building. As I often do, I marveled at the sign that instructed all visiting parties not to throw anything in the toilet other than toilet tissue. I mean who would throw anything in a toilet other than toilet tissue?
The exception being dramatic scenes in Lifetime movies where someone ceremoniously dumps handles of cheap vodka and/or bottles of pills into the can. But those are usually in private homes. As a rule, no one actually puts things into toilets other than toilet tissue. Right?
Wrong.
I will tell you who does: poker-game crashing, non-stripping, bathroom hogs. Who knew.
And all of this emerged out of a simple conversation with my brother. You see what I am saying? Unbelievable.
In fact, I often think that I could write a book called Conversations with My Brother. And it would be, to use one of his favorite adjectives, unbelievable. I am not exaggerating either. It is truly my sentiment that you would be reading the book, flipping the pages like mad of course as your devoured this sanctimonious piece of literary genius, and would be muttering aloud to yourself: “I just don’t believe this. This is truly unbelievable.”
In fact, people in Robert’s life—myself included, feel that the realm of reality television is doing the world at large a disservice by offering up dum-dum shows featuring insipid Housewives of wherever and various people generally being tactless and tyrannical, when we could be watching Big Rob sail through life. It is like eating bologna sandwiches on Wonder bread everyday only to suddenly be introduced to an Italian sub on ciabatta. I mean you would never go back. Are you with me here? Rob is not the bologna in the analogy if I lost you. Cliff’s notes to follow.
But Robert often says that he is a terrible candidate for a reality television show because no one would believe that his life was real. Although we all know that is hardly a criterion for “reality” television as we know it.
What I really think is that it is the whole shedding of general human decency that feels quite repugnant to him. Actually I sort of know that to be the case.
I say that because, being a sometimes model and actor, a few years back he was solicited to appear on a reality show. On this show, he would have had to actually marry someone and then embody every possible characteristic that her family would find disgraceful. The whole purpose of the show was to appall her entire family, only to reveal after months of psychological torment (“Our baby girl married THAT?”), that the whole marriage was a sham designed to keep all of the evil-minded television viewers at home entertained.
Implicitly, he turned down the audition. If you have to ask why, then please log off now and engage in some rigorous self-examination and/or bring your moral compass in for a complete tune-up.
So the other day, we were talking about a poker game he was invited to join. A truly social creature, my brother just loves striking up conversations with strange people, often in strange venues, often at strange times. The whole thing is strange in my opinion, but you probably got that.
Post-poker game, I received a recap of the evenings events. Rob thought it would just be a group of guys hanging out, playing cards, and maybe having some"brew-pops and mellow eats," as my friend Dave likes to say. I guess it was a bit more wild than that.
In fact, it all sounded sort of like Animal House meets Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, with a little Boogie Nights thrown in. But hey, he lives in L.A. so what could we really expect?
In the poker night scenario, Rob played the role, as my communication classes tell me, of participant-as-observer. It was sort of like a humanities research project, this poker night.
At one point an uninvited woman entered the room, talking loudly and acting quite strangely. She was proclaiming to anyone who would listen that she was not a stripper. I find this an odd thing to need to tell a room full of strangers. So did my brother, and thus she was one stranger with whom he did not feel compelled to chat.
The non-stripper proceeded to lock herself in the only bathroom off the common area where the poker game was taking place. Now I know men and women have different levels of “needing” to have a bathroom available, but I think it is safe to say that a room full of guys drinking beers would likely notice the unavailability of a restroom.
A line forms.
She emerges after about a half hour, and proclaims (big on proclamations, this gal): “The toilet is clogged.”
Ew.
But some brave soul (not Robert) goes into inspect the specifics of her announcement. He comes out and evidently encourages other people to go in and have a gander at the situation.
The guys file in for a viewing, and it turns out that dolly has dumped the contents of a trash can into the toilet. There were various papers coming out, a plastic container, I think Robert mentioned there was a paper towel roll stuffed in there.
The real mystery is where the woman was hiding this alarming amount of debris before she entered the rest facility. But perhaps I will have to accept that as a mystery for which I will never have the answer.
Well, yesterday I was in a public restroom in a medical building. As I often do, I marveled at the sign that instructed all visiting parties not to throw anything in the toilet other than toilet tissue. I mean who would throw anything in a toilet other than toilet tissue?
The exception being dramatic scenes in Lifetime movies where someone ceremoniously dumps handles of cheap vodka and/or bottles of pills into the can. But those are usually in private homes. As a rule, no one actually puts things into toilets other than toilet tissue. Right?
Wrong.
I will tell you who does: poker-game crashing, non-stripping, bathroom hogs. Who knew.
And all of this emerged out of a simple conversation with my brother. You see what I am saying? Unbelievable.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Is the Grass Greener or Not?
This past Thanksgiving weekend had me thinking quite a bit about the idea of gratitude. I know—my propensity for original thought is astounding.
But in particular, I was considering the idea of being grateful for what I currently have versus the always wanting of more. It seems that so many of us are perpetually pushing ourselves to reach that next level, only to arrive at the desired position or to have acquired the dream object, and find immediately that we are ready for the next rung on the ladder to appear. It seems, therefore, that it is hard for us to be grateful for what we have now, without tying some element of what we want next into the equation.
And is this devotion/obsession with the next best thing a positive motivator or a hindering debilitating factor? Is it an assurance that we will always strive for more and thus be on a constant trajectory of a better version of ourselves, or does it merely mean that no matter how far we go, how much we achieve, we will always feel inadequate as we stare greedily at the next, as yet unachieved, goal?
For the sake of full disclosure, I am definitely someone who is always thinking about the next step, about the future—about the destination as opposed to the journey, if you will. It is a struggle for me to live in the moment, although I am trying very hard to do so—every day.
Of course, like you may be as well, I am very much a product of a society that does not necessarily endorse living in the now, but has conditioned its members to be very “future focused.” As you know, recent buzz words of the past several years have sought to undo some of that mentality and there have been many infiltrations of the more Eastern philosophy of living in the moment. Hence the existence of a yoga studio in innumerable strip malls all over the country.
So, as I pondered this concept of gratitude and how it relates to my (affliction?) of being “future focused,” I was trying to discern what the difference actually was between having a “grass is always greener” attitude, which I feel is detrimental and damaging, and simply having a consistent urge for self-betterment and improvement, which I feel is healthy and necessary to lead a happy life.
Now, having graduated from my undergraduate institution with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, I fancy myself to be quite adept with a little trope called the analogy. In fact, I am able to draw analogies between even the most unrelated of circumstances or situations—thanks in large part to the English departments at Middlesex School and at Colby College.
In consideration of the subtle, yet vast difference between building a broader and better life versus always wanting more, different, and new, I came up with an analogy. Did it initially seem unrelated? Absolutely. Does it somehow work in my oddball mind of drawing correlations between farfetched circumstances? Indeed.
Here you have it: growing up, I was a rather avid gymnast. The flat, water-ski type appendages that are attached to my ankles, in conjunction with my towering-for-a-gymnast height of five-foot six-inches, cut my career unceremoniously short.
Incidentally, my “quitting” coincided with my coach implementing mandatory practices on Friday night. I do not know about you, but in 8th grade, my rather paltry social life consisted of hanging out at the movie theater or the bowl-a-drome with some rather dreamy young gentlemen. These activities dubbed compulsory by myself and my peers, happened to occur on Friday nights. Frankly, I was darned if I was going to put precious time and energy into being a mediocre gymnast when I could be putting far more precious time and energy into having a decidedly mediocre social life.
Priorities, you know.
In any case, during practice in gymnastics, it was almost a certainty that you were trying to learn a new trick/ridiculous body contortion. I now recall these movements with a sense of wonder and confusion. As in: I flipped my body around with ease on a four-inch wide, four-foot high, cloth-covered saw horse? Really?
It seems that a mere week after I perfected a back handspring, my coach was pushing me to learn a back tuck (basic difference is that the former involves springing back onto your hands and then onto your feet, and the latter is just a hurling of your body backwards through the air with no hands touching the ground—I know: wonder and confusion). Personally, I wanted some time to appreciate my new skill, without tumbling (literally) into another realm of the unknown.
Yet the whole point of gymnastics is to learn a skill so that it will immediately act as the foundation for the next skill.
Wow. Is that not the whole point of life?
It is not an abandonment of the skill achieved, for something newer or better, but rather an appreciation of what has just been realized because it is that skill that enables the next one to even be conceivable, let alone achievable.
In case you are missing the point through my convoluted diatribe: it is the idea of building blocks. It is not as though I learned a back handspring and then felt an immediate urge to conquer the butterfly in a swim meet, or to paint a mural on a bus or something. It was the idea that I was working on a steady and consistent trajectory upwards—or forwards if that direction appeals to you more.
By contrast, if I accomplished something only to abandon it in favor of wanting whatever shiny object caught my eye, then I would be guilty of having a grass is always greener complex. And now I see the difference between such detrimental “want it, need it, have to have it” attitude, and the basic evolution of a person to being a better and better version of herself. Or himself, as I suppose it works for you men too.
So as I was thinking about gratitude and Thanksgiving, I was feeling guilty about the fact that I do always want more, I am always excited about the next thing. I was worried that I was not “living in the now” and fully expressing my appreciation for what I have. But now I realize that even having the dreams of the bigger, the better, the next rung on the ladder is exactly that: a trust and appreciation in the foundation I have built up to this point.
It is an amazing thing: perception. Not quite as amazing as the fact that I used to hurl my body through the air with nary a hesitation, but amazing nonetheless.
But in particular, I was considering the idea of being grateful for what I currently have versus the always wanting of more. It seems that so many of us are perpetually pushing ourselves to reach that next level, only to arrive at the desired position or to have acquired the dream object, and find immediately that we are ready for the next rung on the ladder to appear. It seems, therefore, that it is hard for us to be grateful for what we have now, without tying some element of what we want next into the equation.
And is this devotion/obsession with the next best thing a positive motivator or a hindering debilitating factor? Is it an assurance that we will always strive for more and thus be on a constant trajectory of a better version of ourselves, or does it merely mean that no matter how far we go, how much we achieve, we will always feel inadequate as we stare greedily at the next, as yet unachieved, goal?
For the sake of full disclosure, I am definitely someone who is always thinking about the next step, about the future—about the destination as opposed to the journey, if you will. It is a struggle for me to live in the moment, although I am trying very hard to do so—every day.
Of course, like you may be as well, I am very much a product of a society that does not necessarily endorse living in the now, but has conditioned its members to be very “future focused.” As you know, recent buzz words of the past several years have sought to undo some of that mentality and there have been many infiltrations of the more Eastern philosophy of living in the moment. Hence the existence of a yoga studio in innumerable strip malls all over the country.
So, as I pondered this concept of gratitude and how it relates to my (affliction?) of being “future focused,” I was trying to discern what the difference actually was between having a “grass is always greener” attitude, which I feel is detrimental and damaging, and simply having a consistent urge for self-betterment and improvement, which I feel is healthy and necessary to lead a happy life.
Now, having graduated from my undergraduate institution with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, I fancy myself to be quite adept with a little trope called the analogy. In fact, I am able to draw analogies between even the most unrelated of circumstances or situations—thanks in large part to the English departments at Middlesex School and at Colby College.
In consideration of the subtle, yet vast difference between building a broader and better life versus always wanting more, different, and new, I came up with an analogy. Did it initially seem unrelated? Absolutely. Does it somehow work in my oddball mind of drawing correlations between farfetched circumstances? Indeed.
Here you have it: growing up, I was a rather avid gymnast. The flat, water-ski type appendages that are attached to my ankles, in conjunction with my towering-for-a-gymnast height of five-foot six-inches, cut my career unceremoniously short.
Incidentally, my “quitting” coincided with my coach implementing mandatory practices on Friday night. I do not know about you, but in 8th grade, my rather paltry social life consisted of hanging out at the movie theater or the bowl-a-drome with some rather dreamy young gentlemen. These activities dubbed compulsory by myself and my peers, happened to occur on Friday nights. Frankly, I was darned if I was going to put precious time and energy into being a mediocre gymnast when I could be putting far more precious time and energy into having a decidedly mediocre social life.
Priorities, you know.
In any case, during practice in gymnastics, it was almost a certainty that you were trying to learn a new trick/ridiculous body contortion. I now recall these movements with a sense of wonder and confusion. As in: I flipped my body around with ease on a four-inch wide, four-foot high, cloth-covered saw horse? Really?
It seems that a mere week after I perfected a back handspring, my coach was pushing me to learn a back tuck (basic difference is that the former involves springing back onto your hands and then onto your feet, and the latter is just a hurling of your body backwards through the air with no hands touching the ground—I know: wonder and confusion). Personally, I wanted some time to appreciate my new skill, without tumbling (literally) into another realm of the unknown.
Yet the whole point of gymnastics is to learn a skill so that it will immediately act as the foundation for the next skill.
Wow. Is that not the whole point of life?
It is not an abandonment of the skill achieved, for something newer or better, but rather an appreciation of what has just been realized because it is that skill that enables the next one to even be conceivable, let alone achievable.
In case you are missing the point through my convoluted diatribe: it is the idea of building blocks. It is not as though I learned a back handspring and then felt an immediate urge to conquer the butterfly in a swim meet, or to paint a mural on a bus or something. It was the idea that I was working on a steady and consistent trajectory upwards—or forwards if that direction appeals to you more.
By contrast, if I accomplished something only to abandon it in favor of wanting whatever shiny object caught my eye, then I would be guilty of having a grass is always greener complex. And now I see the difference between such detrimental “want it, need it, have to have it” attitude, and the basic evolution of a person to being a better and better version of herself. Or himself, as I suppose it works for you men too.
So as I was thinking about gratitude and Thanksgiving, I was feeling guilty about the fact that I do always want more, I am always excited about the next thing. I was worried that I was not “living in the now” and fully expressing my appreciation for what I have. But now I realize that even having the dreams of the bigger, the better, the next rung on the ladder is exactly that: a trust and appreciation in the foundation I have built up to this point.
It is an amazing thing: perception. Not quite as amazing as the fact that I used to hurl my body through the air with nary a hesitation, but amazing nonetheless.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thanksgiving Thoughts
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
These words, spoken by Plato, just seem especially apt on a holiday such as today. It just rings very true that every single person you come across, no matter how charmed his/her life may superficially appear, is undoubtedly struggling in one way or another. When you frame this notion in this manner, I think it makes it easier to be forgiving of the transgressions of others. We are all doing the best we can.
Although, I realize the focus of a day like today is not on our "problems" but rather on all of our good fortune.
And we all have a lot of good fortune. I know we all have many things to be grateful for--just as surely as I know we all have struggles in our lives.
But this idea of everyone fighting a hard batttle was especially visceral for me yesterday, and inspired me to write this entry.
I work part-time for a consulting firm. Many of our clients are non-profit organizations that are in need of some business guidance, and we often partner with these groups in order to increase their fundraising capacities. Yesterday, I spent most of the morning at the offices of one such client.
This particular organization is a homeless shelter and soup kitchen. I had never been there before. My time yesterday was spent in the sequestered quarters of the administration offices working with a few of the team members and my boss.
Just before noon, I announced my departure; I had to get to the grocery store to pick up our turkey and a few other last minute food items for our Thanksgiving dinner.
I exited the back of the building to find myself amidst hordes of homeless people who were lining up for lunch at the soup kitchen door.
Do you have moments in your life when you just feel like a complete and utter ignoramus?
This was one such moment for me.
I was hurrying away from a homeless shelter, where people were anxiously awaiting what might be their one hot meal of the day, to pick up a turkey that was far larger than the needs of my family, in order to cook a grandiose and elaborate meal. I had been so excited about the holiday, and yet I wondered suddenly at my frivolity, ignorance, and hypocrisy.
As I walked towards my car I felt guilty, I felt a little fearful, and I felt very confused.
I felt guilty because I lead a comfortable and privileged life, by most accounts. I have never had to wonder where I might be sleeping at night or how I will pay for lunch. But I am also just a human being, just like these homeless people, and yet my struggles seem far less drastic or sad somehow. Why is that?
My brother might say it is because we are all handed specific hardships in our life because they are the ones we did not master in our last life. I like this concept because it neatly ties up the issue, but I am not sure I buy it. And, in any case, such a notion did little to assuage my feelings of guilt.
I felt fearful because I was clearly not one of them. I walked to my own car, dressed in my work clothes of skirt and heels, a diamond glistening on both hands, and immediately thought that they might want something from me. I feared, as a woman and as an outsider, that these poor hungry people might want to harm me for having what they do not have. All that being said, perhaps it is obvious that this fear was also tied up with guilt.
Finally, I felt confused because I still wanted to go pick up my turkey. And I did. Was that wrong? Would a better person have taken the money used for the turkey and the other groceries and donated it to the shelter, and then made do with what was at home for the Thanksgiving dinner? Would a better person not have carried on with her day as normal, after being faced with poverty?
Of course this confusion was tied up in both guilt and fear. The guilt as in: "How could I walk away and not DO something?" and the fear that perhaps I am really not that good, or evolved, of a person after all.
So as these feelings tumbled around in my head, I looked up and smiled at a few people in the line. I said hello and was greeted in return with vacant stares, subtle nods, and several kind smiles. When I was getting into my car, I made eye contact with one final homeless man. He looked at me, obviously knowing that I had emerged from the building that was about to serve him lunch, and he spoke to me.
He smiled broadly and said "thank you."
He had no idea what I may or may not have done in that building. And as it turns out, my role was hardly one that impacted his lunch yesterday, but hopefully will impact the longevity and viability of the shelter in the future.
But that is not really the point.
The point is that this man is clearly one who is fighting a hard battle, to go back to Plato's words. He is doing so in a more obvious way than most of us--I think it is safe to say that many people reading this blog do not face the sames kinds of hardships that this man faces. Yet he looked at me with kindness and seemed genuinely happy to be able to express his gratitude.
So today, on this day designated to give thanks, I cannot help but feel grateful for my encounter with this homeless man. He was not judging my position or resenting my rushing off just as lunch hour was getting going. Instead, he wanted to say thank you because he knew that whatever happens in that building has helped his life: I came out of the building and therefore I deserved a thank you.
The logic is simple, and yet I so often become tied up in specifics.
Now did I deserve a thank you? Arguable. But I took it.
I took it because I think he needed to say it. And in my haze of feeling guilty, fearful, and confused, I needed, more than anything at that moment, to hear it.
However "small" my problems may be, I think that man saw me yesterday and recognized my hard battle in that moment and I am beyond grateful that a homeless man demonstrated to me the power of giving thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving!
These words, spoken by Plato, just seem especially apt on a holiday such as today. It just rings very true that every single person you come across, no matter how charmed his/her life may superficially appear, is undoubtedly struggling in one way or another. When you frame this notion in this manner, I think it makes it easier to be forgiving of the transgressions of others. We are all doing the best we can.
Although, I realize the focus of a day like today is not on our "problems" but rather on all of our good fortune.
And we all have a lot of good fortune. I know we all have many things to be grateful for--just as surely as I know we all have struggles in our lives.
But this idea of everyone fighting a hard batttle was especially visceral for me yesterday, and inspired me to write this entry.
I work part-time for a consulting firm. Many of our clients are non-profit organizations that are in need of some business guidance, and we often partner with these groups in order to increase their fundraising capacities. Yesterday, I spent most of the morning at the offices of one such client.
This particular organization is a homeless shelter and soup kitchen. I had never been there before. My time yesterday was spent in the sequestered quarters of the administration offices working with a few of the team members and my boss.
Just before noon, I announced my departure; I had to get to the grocery store to pick up our turkey and a few other last minute food items for our Thanksgiving dinner.
I exited the back of the building to find myself amidst hordes of homeless people who were lining up for lunch at the soup kitchen door.
Do you have moments in your life when you just feel like a complete and utter ignoramus?
This was one such moment for me.
I was hurrying away from a homeless shelter, where people were anxiously awaiting what might be their one hot meal of the day, to pick up a turkey that was far larger than the needs of my family, in order to cook a grandiose and elaborate meal. I had been so excited about the holiday, and yet I wondered suddenly at my frivolity, ignorance, and hypocrisy.
As I walked towards my car I felt guilty, I felt a little fearful, and I felt very confused.
I felt guilty because I lead a comfortable and privileged life, by most accounts. I have never had to wonder where I might be sleeping at night or how I will pay for lunch. But I am also just a human being, just like these homeless people, and yet my struggles seem far less drastic or sad somehow. Why is that?
My brother might say it is because we are all handed specific hardships in our life because they are the ones we did not master in our last life. I like this concept because it neatly ties up the issue, but I am not sure I buy it. And, in any case, such a notion did little to assuage my feelings of guilt.
I felt fearful because I was clearly not one of them. I walked to my own car, dressed in my work clothes of skirt and heels, a diamond glistening on both hands, and immediately thought that they might want something from me. I feared, as a woman and as an outsider, that these poor hungry people might want to harm me for having what they do not have. All that being said, perhaps it is obvious that this fear was also tied up with guilt.
Finally, I felt confused because I still wanted to go pick up my turkey. And I did. Was that wrong? Would a better person have taken the money used for the turkey and the other groceries and donated it to the shelter, and then made do with what was at home for the Thanksgiving dinner? Would a better person not have carried on with her day as normal, after being faced with poverty?
Of course this confusion was tied up in both guilt and fear. The guilt as in: "How could I walk away and not DO something?" and the fear that perhaps I am really not that good, or evolved, of a person after all.
So as these feelings tumbled around in my head, I looked up and smiled at a few people in the line. I said hello and was greeted in return with vacant stares, subtle nods, and several kind smiles. When I was getting into my car, I made eye contact with one final homeless man. He looked at me, obviously knowing that I had emerged from the building that was about to serve him lunch, and he spoke to me.
He smiled broadly and said "thank you."
He had no idea what I may or may not have done in that building. And as it turns out, my role was hardly one that impacted his lunch yesterday, but hopefully will impact the longevity and viability of the shelter in the future.
But that is not really the point.
The point is that this man is clearly one who is fighting a hard battle, to go back to Plato's words. He is doing so in a more obvious way than most of us--I think it is safe to say that many people reading this blog do not face the sames kinds of hardships that this man faces. Yet he looked at me with kindness and seemed genuinely happy to be able to express his gratitude.
So today, on this day designated to give thanks, I cannot help but feel grateful for my encounter with this homeless man. He was not judging my position or resenting my rushing off just as lunch hour was getting going. Instead, he wanted to say thank you because he knew that whatever happens in that building has helped his life: I came out of the building and therefore I deserved a thank you.
The logic is simple, and yet I so often become tied up in specifics.
Now did I deserve a thank you? Arguable. But I took it.
I took it because I think he needed to say it. And in my haze of feeling guilty, fearful, and confused, I needed, more than anything at that moment, to hear it.
However "small" my problems may be, I think that man saw me yesterday and recognized my hard battle in that moment and I am beyond grateful that a homeless man demonstrated to me the power of giving thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Values--What a Juicy Topic!
I talk a lot about my desire to let go of my judging of others, and of my unhappiness when I feel others are judging me. The former seems to be a particular challenge because it has become a habit and (let’s face it), a bit of a hobby as well. The latter is more complicated because it has to do both with my own fear of letting people down, and also with the giving up of the idea that I have any control over how others perceive me.
What has just come to light for me is that at the root of these judgment issues is the question of values.
This realization came about during a wonderfully insightful conversation I had yesterday with my friend Kristine. Kristine, by the way, is an amazing life and professional coach (www.kismet-consulting.com), and she is consistently brilliant in her understanding of human relationships and interpersonal dynamics. I was telling her about some of the fears I have with regards to judgment—my own and those of others. It was she who framed my mental predicament with the word that rang so true: values.
By way of background, it is difficult for many people (and women in particular I think), to let go of the idea that it is our responsibility to make other people happy. Just in case you are taking notes, jot this one down: it is not your responsibility to make anyone happy, except for yourself.
That sounds selfish, but it is actually the opposite. It is tremendously selfless because if you can make yourself happy, you will inevitably be exuding and imparting happiness to those around you.
Think about it: you know how some people can just walk into a room and the whole energy in the room feels lighter, fresher, happier somehow. This happens, as I understand it, because these are people who have no need to take from the energy of others. They are whole, complete, and filled, and this state of being likely came about because they understand the importance of making themselves happy.
This is an incredible phenomenon to me. If you take care to make yourself happy, you will find you are not looking for others to fill the voids of your life. When you are drawn to another person it is in the vein of “You complement me, and I complement you.” Rather than, “I need this from you or I need that from you.” When we have holes in our life, we inevitably suck energy from others in order to fill those holes. If you understood the idea of how a person can make the energy feel lighter, then you also understand, probably all too well, its opposite.
So make yourself happy. There is your golden nugget for the day.
Of course, like so many things: easier said than done.
However, working to achieve your own happiness is also a far easier approach, and one with a much greater return on investment, than the current tactic so many people seem to employ. You know, the one where we try to make everyone else happy at all and any cost to our own selves. This approach sounds selfless and heroic. But it is really just like chasing your tail: unproductive and tiresome.
If you want to, come over to my house sometime and watch my dog, Bruce, chase his tail. He does it with some regularity, and he has never caught it. It is even a pretty long tail, all things considered. I am sure you can read between the lines.
And one final thought on this happiness situation before we get into the meat and potatoes of values. If someone else is looking for you to make them happy, then here is what you do: run. Seriously. You will never live up to what they want and the void they seek to fill will remain vast and unfathomable. We can fill our own voids, but we will never come close to filling those of others. You can add to or complement another. You cannot be their raison d’etre.
Unless this other creature is a dog, but that is an entirely different dynamic to be explored in an entirely different blog entry.
So now we tie this all back to values. A big struggle I have is when I tell people in my life that I am happy for them, that I am proud of them, and/or that I think what they are doing with their life is wonderful.
I often say these things to people in my life because I can be rather cheesy (my brother did not get all those genes in the family) and because I often feel them. The many ways people choose to spend their time and realize their dreams is exciting and interesting to me.
The snafu comes in when they then ask me why I am not doing the same thing, or when it is I will be jumping on board with their program.
Now there is a difference between being excited and happy for someone else’s life and in wanting that life for yourself. It is hard, at times, for people to understand that someone can be utterly approving of their decisions and goals, and yet feel to implement those same goals in their own life would be wrong, and perhaps disastrous.
As human beings we care a lot about external validation. To have someone say, “I think your choices are amazing, I am so happy for you to be doing X.” And then to say, “Me too, I am so happy. When will you be doing X?”
And then, if you are me having one of these conversations, there is an awkward silence. Silence is followed by a red-faced, mumbling, bumbling: “Well it is not the right thing for me.”
Everyone involved in the conversation suddenly has their shackles up, so to speak. On one hand the person handing out the support suddenly feels guilty, hypocritical, and is perhaps sweating profusely due to the awkwardness of it all. The person receiving the encouraging commentary wonders how much said might have been disingenuous, and has mentally demoted the conversation partner to their "D" list.
But if I choose not to follow that path that is working so well for you, it does not mean that I disapprove of your way. It does not mean that when I say I am happy for you and inspired by you, that I am not being truthful. It just means that another way is a better way for me.
It just means we differ on what we value.
I forget sometimes, that other people may not have the same values as me. I am eager to approve of other’s paths and to have them approve of mine, but I am not immune from thoughts like: “This is best for me, therefore this is best for everyone in my life.”
This reminds me of when I adopted my first dog. I would rhapsodize about how wonderful and fullfilling it was to have a dog, and was a bit perplexed when every person with whom I communicated did not run to the local shelter. It did not mean their support and enthusiasm (and patience for that matter--I would really go on and on) was insincere. It just meant that adopting a dog was not for them at that moment. Or maybe ever.
And the truth is that what I value are the “right” things to value, because they are what will make me happy. What others value are the “right” things for them because they are what will make them happy. I have to remember that my idea of happiness looks quite different from other’s ideas of happiness—even people with whom I identify greatly.
I have to remember that it is not for me to judge how another lives and it is not up to me to control how, if, when, where, or why others perceive or judge me. All I can do is try to make myself happy and thus positively impact those in my life.
A way for me to do so is to remember this idea of values. When I feel that oh-so-familiar urge to judge, or when I feel disgruntled at what I take to be the face of judgment on another, I can try to remind myself that no one is right or wrong, we just have different values.
What has just come to light for me is that at the root of these judgment issues is the question of values.
This realization came about during a wonderfully insightful conversation I had yesterday with my friend Kristine. Kristine, by the way, is an amazing life and professional coach (www.kismet-consulting.com), and she is consistently brilliant in her understanding of human relationships and interpersonal dynamics. I was telling her about some of the fears I have with regards to judgment—my own and those of others. It was she who framed my mental predicament with the word that rang so true: values.
By way of background, it is difficult for many people (and women in particular I think), to let go of the idea that it is our responsibility to make other people happy. Just in case you are taking notes, jot this one down: it is not your responsibility to make anyone happy, except for yourself.
That sounds selfish, but it is actually the opposite. It is tremendously selfless because if you can make yourself happy, you will inevitably be exuding and imparting happiness to those around you.
Think about it: you know how some people can just walk into a room and the whole energy in the room feels lighter, fresher, happier somehow. This happens, as I understand it, because these are people who have no need to take from the energy of others. They are whole, complete, and filled, and this state of being likely came about because they understand the importance of making themselves happy.
This is an incredible phenomenon to me. If you take care to make yourself happy, you will find you are not looking for others to fill the voids of your life. When you are drawn to another person it is in the vein of “You complement me, and I complement you.” Rather than, “I need this from you or I need that from you.” When we have holes in our life, we inevitably suck energy from others in order to fill those holes. If you understood the idea of how a person can make the energy feel lighter, then you also understand, probably all too well, its opposite.
So make yourself happy. There is your golden nugget for the day.
Of course, like so many things: easier said than done.
However, working to achieve your own happiness is also a far easier approach, and one with a much greater return on investment, than the current tactic so many people seem to employ. You know, the one where we try to make everyone else happy at all and any cost to our own selves. This approach sounds selfless and heroic. But it is really just like chasing your tail: unproductive and tiresome.
If you want to, come over to my house sometime and watch my dog, Bruce, chase his tail. He does it with some regularity, and he has never caught it. It is even a pretty long tail, all things considered. I am sure you can read between the lines.
And one final thought on this happiness situation before we get into the meat and potatoes of values. If someone else is looking for you to make them happy, then here is what you do: run. Seriously. You will never live up to what they want and the void they seek to fill will remain vast and unfathomable. We can fill our own voids, but we will never come close to filling those of others. You can add to or complement another. You cannot be their raison d’etre.
Unless this other creature is a dog, but that is an entirely different dynamic to be explored in an entirely different blog entry.
So now we tie this all back to values. A big struggle I have is when I tell people in my life that I am happy for them, that I am proud of them, and/or that I think what they are doing with their life is wonderful.
I often say these things to people in my life because I can be rather cheesy (my brother did not get all those genes in the family) and because I often feel them. The many ways people choose to spend their time and realize their dreams is exciting and interesting to me.
The snafu comes in when they then ask me why I am not doing the same thing, or when it is I will be jumping on board with their program.
Now there is a difference between being excited and happy for someone else’s life and in wanting that life for yourself. It is hard, at times, for people to understand that someone can be utterly approving of their decisions and goals, and yet feel to implement those same goals in their own life would be wrong, and perhaps disastrous.
As human beings we care a lot about external validation. To have someone say, “I think your choices are amazing, I am so happy for you to be doing X.” And then to say, “Me too, I am so happy. When will you be doing X?”
And then, if you are me having one of these conversations, there is an awkward silence. Silence is followed by a red-faced, mumbling, bumbling: “Well it is not the right thing for me.”
Everyone involved in the conversation suddenly has their shackles up, so to speak. On one hand the person handing out the support suddenly feels guilty, hypocritical, and is perhaps sweating profusely due to the awkwardness of it all. The person receiving the encouraging commentary wonders how much said might have been disingenuous, and has mentally demoted the conversation partner to their "D" list.
But if I choose not to follow that path that is working so well for you, it does not mean that I disapprove of your way. It does not mean that when I say I am happy for you and inspired by you, that I am not being truthful. It just means that another way is a better way for me.
It just means we differ on what we value.
I forget sometimes, that other people may not have the same values as me. I am eager to approve of other’s paths and to have them approve of mine, but I am not immune from thoughts like: “This is best for me, therefore this is best for everyone in my life.”
This reminds me of when I adopted my first dog. I would rhapsodize about how wonderful and fullfilling it was to have a dog, and was a bit perplexed when every person with whom I communicated did not run to the local shelter. It did not mean their support and enthusiasm (and patience for that matter--I would really go on and on) was insincere. It just meant that adopting a dog was not for them at that moment. Or maybe ever.
And the truth is that what I value are the “right” things to value, because they are what will make me happy. What others value are the “right” things for them because they are what will make them happy. I have to remember that my idea of happiness looks quite different from other’s ideas of happiness—even people with whom I identify greatly.
I have to remember that it is not for me to judge how another lives and it is not up to me to control how, if, when, where, or why others perceive or judge me. All I can do is try to make myself happy and thus positively impact those in my life.
A way for me to do so is to remember this idea of values. When I feel that oh-so-familiar urge to judge, or when I feel disgruntled at what I take to be the face of judgment on another, I can try to remind myself that no one is right or wrong, we just have different values.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Moochachkas
I am often disdained and yet not entirely surprised to find out about the endless manners in which people out there are being misled. Hoodwinked, if you will. Personally, I do not strive to enter into any kind of relationship with anyone whosoever where they would ever have reason to feel I had mislead them or misrepresented myself.
Now, I am not disillusioned. I know I am far from perfect. But I will not swindle you. Glad-handling and schmoozing are aspects of life I can easily do without. I feel demeaned and resentful when others try to pull such maneuvers out of their greasy little top-hats.
And, as someone who works quite hard at being authentic and speaking my truth--and in encouraging others to do the same--I find I am becoming sort of allergic to hypocrisy.
All that considered, it is now perhaps needless to say that there are times when the world in general just sort of bums me out.
One example: I just took a teleclass entitled “Simple Steps to Monetize your Blog.” The name of the class led me to believe that what would be entailed would be simple and would pertain to my blog. Such an assumption sounds very reasonable, even in retrospect when things that often seemed initially reasonable, no longer do.
Well, the class did not live up to its, rather straightforward, name. Instead, the advice was convoluted and multi-layered and pertained primarily to websites as opposed to blogs. If/when I am asked for feedback, I might suggest re-naming the class. In keeping with the straightforward sounding title, my suggestion is: “Complicated Ways to Clutter your Website with Advertisements for Junk that No One Actually Needs.”
I felt icky being a part of a conversation about web-advertising. At least, I dislike when I am visiting a place—be it a store, a magazine article, or a website--and find out that at least 50% of why I have been lured there is for my potential as a cash cow. It bugs me.
Sort of like when I read a magazine, say on “Healthy Living” or some other similar topic and they tout all this seemingly viable advice and information in congruence with their central theme, only to also have six pages of advertisements about “DietFuel” or some other heart-attack inducing, unhealthy drug du jour that I can purchase for a low monthly installment. Is it just me, or is the hypocrisy blatant?
I do not like having my intelligence questioned.
It is not even like a special sale where the customer is respectfully targeted because he or she is actually in need/want of the product being peddled. Ideally, I like to believe there is potential for a long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationship, a la the barter system. A good sales relationship, to me, involves a friendship where holiday cards are exchanged. What I really disdain is the current sales model of: “You got $4.60? Great. Let me charge your debit and push you on your way. Thanks for the buck, customer 4011.”
I mean how would you feel, as my devoted reader, when I espouse to be someone who cares about personal fulfillment, finding your best self, wading through the nonsense, etc., and then I throw advertisements at you for how you can order prescription pharmaceutical products or, maybe worse--a Snuggie?
If I like my readers (and I do, by the very nature of you reading what I write), then why would I direct you to junk? Why would I debase myself, and undermine my own credibility--not to mention cloud up the aesthetic appeal of my blog page--with flashing advertisements worthy of the Atlantic City strip?
Frankly, the teleclass, and all this venting it inspired, gave me a headache. I like to blog, in fact it seems pretty neat-o to me that I can write whatever I want on this free virtual journal that “belongs” to me, and then share it with any Tom, Dick, or Harry. The fact that I can just suggest to people to read my blog as opposed to, say, actually having to explain myself in a tete a tete (how 1990) seems like a fairly good return on investment. I do not need to advocate men’s hair growth products as well as a way of making a quick buck or two.
However, living in the world of: “If a little is good, then more must be better" (please go to any movie theater and inquire about a small popcorn for proof of this assertion), it seems that we are always wondering how we can cash in on any and every move we make. In speaking to people about my blog, people often have all kinds of ideas for how I can make money. It is like “Well, hey, you are entertaining people for free. You might as well charge them for it.”
Although that makes me wonder, should I start invoicing my friends after they come over for a drink or dinner?
But I have to say, it felt a bit appealing to explore the idea that I could be receiving checks in the mail for just writing what I was going to write anyway. And that is why I took the class. Yes, I too succumbed to the modern thinking, and I am ashamed.
Hence the headache, I think.
Here is what I would like: I would like people to read my blog because it makes them think. Because it gives them mental fodder and keeps them curious and interested. I would then like a publisher and/or agent to read my blog, and say, “This girl can write. This girl is sort of a mess, yet I find her musings to be compelling and a bit insightful too. I would like to publish her book.” Publisher could then offer me some moochachkas (money) to publish my book.
And then, my friends, my devoted readers, if you want to buy my book you can do so through the appropriate vendor and/or at the appropriate venue. No hoodwinking, no flashing billboards. You will merely be buying what you set out to buy at the place where you set out to buy it, and I will be making money in an ethical and straightforward manner. Voila! Everyone wins.
Until then, you can read my blog for free, with no pressure to buy controversial non-FDC tested drugs…or worse—a Snuggie.
Now, I am not disillusioned. I know I am far from perfect. But I will not swindle you. Glad-handling and schmoozing are aspects of life I can easily do without. I feel demeaned and resentful when others try to pull such maneuvers out of their greasy little top-hats.
And, as someone who works quite hard at being authentic and speaking my truth--and in encouraging others to do the same--I find I am becoming sort of allergic to hypocrisy.
All that considered, it is now perhaps needless to say that there are times when the world in general just sort of bums me out.
One example: I just took a teleclass entitled “Simple Steps to Monetize your Blog.” The name of the class led me to believe that what would be entailed would be simple and would pertain to my blog. Such an assumption sounds very reasonable, even in retrospect when things that often seemed initially reasonable, no longer do.
Well, the class did not live up to its, rather straightforward, name. Instead, the advice was convoluted and multi-layered and pertained primarily to websites as opposed to blogs. If/when I am asked for feedback, I might suggest re-naming the class. In keeping with the straightforward sounding title, my suggestion is: “Complicated Ways to Clutter your Website with Advertisements for Junk that No One Actually Needs.”
I felt icky being a part of a conversation about web-advertising. At least, I dislike when I am visiting a place—be it a store, a magazine article, or a website--and find out that at least 50% of why I have been lured there is for my potential as a cash cow. It bugs me.
Sort of like when I read a magazine, say on “Healthy Living” or some other similar topic and they tout all this seemingly viable advice and information in congruence with their central theme, only to also have six pages of advertisements about “DietFuel” or some other heart-attack inducing, unhealthy drug du jour that I can purchase for a low monthly installment. Is it just me, or is the hypocrisy blatant?
I do not like having my intelligence questioned.
It is not even like a special sale where the customer is respectfully targeted because he or she is actually in need/want of the product being peddled. Ideally, I like to believe there is potential for a long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationship, a la the barter system. A good sales relationship, to me, involves a friendship where holiday cards are exchanged. What I really disdain is the current sales model of: “You got $4.60? Great. Let me charge your debit and push you on your way. Thanks for the buck, customer 4011.”
I mean how would you feel, as my devoted reader, when I espouse to be someone who cares about personal fulfillment, finding your best self, wading through the nonsense, etc., and then I throw advertisements at you for how you can order prescription pharmaceutical products or, maybe worse--a Snuggie?
If I like my readers (and I do, by the very nature of you reading what I write), then why would I direct you to junk? Why would I debase myself, and undermine my own credibility--not to mention cloud up the aesthetic appeal of my blog page--with flashing advertisements worthy of the Atlantic City strip?
Frankly, the teleclass, and all this venting it inspired, gave me a headache. I like to blog, in fact it seems pretty neat-o to me that I can write whatever I want on this free virtual journal that “belongs” to me, and then share it with any Tom, Dick, or Harry. The fact that I can just suggest to people to read my blog as opposed to, say, actually having to explain myself in a tete a tete (how 1990) seems like a fairly good return on investment. I do not need to advocate men’s hair growth products as well as a way of making a quick buck or two.
However, living in the world of: “If a little is good, then more must be better" (please go to any movie theater and inquire about a small popcorn for proof of this assertion), it seems that we are always wondering how we can cash in on any and every move we make. In speaking to people about my blog, people often have all kinds of ideas for how I can make money. It is like “Well, hey, you are entertaining people for free. You might as well charge them for it.”
Although that makes me wonder, should I start invoicing my friends after they come over for a drink or dinner?
But I have to say, it felt a bit appealing to explore the idea that I could be receiving checks in the mail for just writing what I was going to write anyway. And that is why I took the class. Yes, I too succumbed to the modern thinking, and I am ashamed.
Hence the headache, I think.
Here is what I would like: I would like people to read my blog because it makes them think. Because it gives them mental fodder and keeps them curious and interested. I would then like a publisher and/or agent to read my blog, and say, “This girl can write. This girl is sort of a mess, yet I find her musings to be compelling and a bit insightful too. I would like to publish her book.” Publisher could then offer me some moochachkas (money) to publish my book.
And then, my friends, my devoted readers, if you want to buy my book you can do so through the appropriate vendor and/or at the appropriate venue. No hoodwinking, no flashing billboards. You will merely be buying what you set out to buy at the place where you set out to buy it, and I will be making money in an ethical and straightforward manner. Voila! Everyone wins.
Until then, you can read my blog for free, with no pressure to buy controversial non-FDC tested drugs…or worse—a Snuggie.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Calling My Own Bluff
I do not suffer fools.
This personal propensity was revealed to me several years ago when a boss of mine informed me that the reason she liked my management style was because I did not suffer fools.
Even then, before I actually knew what it meant to suffer a fool, I was innately and staunchly adhering to this social positioning. In fact, when I first heard the expression from my boss, I found it so appealing that I made a mental commitment to find out what it meant and, as luck would have it, my own personal philosophy did seem in accordance with the statement.
I am aware, by the way, that by admitting that I believe myself to be someone who has the right to decide who is a fool and who is not, I have unveiled myself as a fool of the most grandiose proportions.
In any case, I have two dogs: Freya and Bruce. When we adopted Freya, about six years ago, two elements of her character quickly became clear: number one, she was more human than dog, and number two, she possessed a similar stance as my own with regards to fools. Proof of her inclination lay in the fact that it was immediately apparent that she detested teenagers. Show me the teenager who is not a fool and I will admit that I have been proven wrong. I know teenagers, I was a teenager, and trust me, they are all idiots.
And I am speaking from a place of compassion—you have to go through a phase of utter insecurity and foolishness if you are ever going to be a person of substance. Really, I commend their struggle.
Freya, however, as a canine, tends to live in the moment. She doubtfully considers the future of these rambunctious folks and merely focuses on the present. From the start, she seemed to be able to sniff out instability and unpredictability and to disdain it. As such, she has always avoided teenagers like the plague.
Freya is, incidentally, both an intellectual and a behavioral snob. I hope you can fully appreciate how rare these qualities are amongst the exotic mixed breeds of the canine world, otherwise known as “mutts”. She does not pick up refuse from the street, she abhors raucous behavior, she will not cavort with strangers (dogs or human), she has never plunged headlong into any body of water, she crosses her paws daintily when seated, and she enjoys jazz music and classic films.
Her strangest quality, as far as I can discern, is that she is a dog and not, in fact, a debutante from the 1950’s.
I take great pride in Freya’s undog-like behavior. She is calm, classy, graceful, thoughtful, and funny. In case you are failing to read between the lines, I have ascribed to Freya all of the qualities I strive to embody. It is a lot to live up to.
So enamored have my husband and I been with Freya, that last year we felt inspired to adopt a second dog. Enter Bruce.
Bruce is incredibly handsome. He is fifteen pounds of terrier mix with short rust colored coat, floppy ears, big brown eyes and a white stripe down his forehead that my husband is convinced makes him faster. We brought him home from the shelter and, much to our delight he was house-trained, cuddly, and willing and able to sleep (remarkably soundly) for 12 hours every night.
Bruce also entered our house with some other little “quirks." For one thing, he would incessantly chew on furniture. Here I want to make it known that the bitter apple spray, by which my mother swears (Paco evidently hates it) was no deterrent--even though it smells like rubbing alcohol. I am inclined, therefore, to add “alcoholic” to Bruce's list of qualities. Additionally, he barked maniacally for approximately six hours of the day, and generally demonstrated paranoid and schizophrenic behavior.
For example, on walks, he would become highly suspicious about random bushes or piles of leaves. He would lurch around these vicinities, seemingly sure that something or someone was about to pop out and pounce on him. He would then go inexplicably plunging into the exact bush about which he demonstrated such fear.
To some dogs he would have no reaction, to others it seemed he wanted to dismember them in sight. The strangest thing would be when we would see the same dog and he would have polar opposite reactions based on...well, based on what, I cannot say.
It bears noting that generally, upon seeing other dogs, he would run wildly at them, only to stop six inches in front of them and bark incessantly. An odd aspect to this “greeting” ritual (in addition to the oddness of the ritual on the whole) is that he seemed to want friends. That is, his tail would wag all the while he barked at an alarmingly high decibel. He would then cry when the other dogs ran away from him (often after having become so scared and/or alarmed that they peed on the spot).
Bruce manages to become unfathomably dirty in very short periods of time, and he will plunge into any and every body of water he comes across—regardless of factors such as temperature or general safety. Of the many, many items he unscrupulously picks up from the streets on our walks, among his favorite delicacies are dead toads and horse manure.
He throws himself with vigor at Freya at what (I would imagine) she perceives to be inconvenient and/or inappropriate times, and he shreds toys, shoes, and furniture with no apparent rhyme or reason. Somehow, all of this is tolerable. However, what I find most troubling is that he seems to love, of all God-forsaken things, teenagers.
I suppose I should not be altogether shocked by that realization. After all, when Bruce first came home with us he basically embodied a teenage boy in dog form; he was generally house-trained, seemed to be experimenting with alcohol, had social skills which outwardly indicated to the world that he wanted everyone to leave him alone, yet he also seemed to yearn for a sense of inclusion, and, finally, the whole “acting before thinking” phenomenon.
So you can imagine my chagrin. The girl who does not suffer fools has brought the canine equivalent of the human epitome of a fool voluntarily into her house. Was I self destructive? Or just, as I mentioned earlier, showing my true colors as the greatest fool of all time? Karma is, after all, a real stinker.
I know that I will never be able to specifically verbalize what made us decide to bring Bruce home, which is a question my husband voiced aloud for several months after we adopted him. Much like when we adopted Freya, some intangible force compelled us to select that particular dog at that particular moment in time despite a number of logical reasons which might have spoken against such a decision.
And when we adopted Freya, our life was truly in need of stabilization. A calm, contained energy was just what our home needed to balance itself as we navigated the waters from being an engaged couple to being married, as we moved homes four times, as we made several job changes, and endured many family “situations.” We needed a Freya, a dog that was, and is, calm in the storm. We relied on her constant support, unwavering gentleness, and companionship.
I, especially, needed Freya as she was the physical embodiment of the person I wanted to be: more grounded, more decisive, more graceful—content with who she was and what place she held in the world. Freya was truly an invaluable constant as we navigated through the waters of chaos to find our own rhythm and peace in this world.
Bruce, in stark contrast to Freya, is chaos embodied. Having some perspective now, I see that our decision to adopt him was indicative of our own need to shake things up in our life. My husband and I are at a stage where we both feel ready for new adventures; we want to grow as individuals and as a couple. Due to time, maturity, and a whole host of other factors, the qualities and components of an ideal life have changed for us, and I believe that we subconsciously craved a physical manifestation of our internal evolutions.
We both, as type-A’s who have been long devoted to routines and have lived carefully within the boundaries of our own making, recently realized that we wanted to stretch beyond our comfort zones and to try to incorporate a little more spontaneity…a little more, well living, into our life. We needed a Bruce as proof that we can plunge into unpredictable waters, get dirty, make awkward social decisions and still, at the end of the day, sleep like a baby.
Freya continues to be calm, graceful, and discerning. And Bruce is spunky, gregarious, and fearless. What I once feared to be his membership to the class of creatures I so disdained—the fool—has actually emerged as a genuine joie de vivre.
Now, as Freya sits by the door, paws gracefully crossed and head resting atop them in her ever dignified napping pose, and Bruce, in contrast, is splayed out in all his messy glory on the bed he spent the better part of the morning chewing up, I am reminded that life is about balance.
My dogs teach me every day in ways both subtle and obvious, on scales both large and small. I have found that what I intrinsically know to be true at any given period in my life is often manifested physically through my relationship with my dogs. Somehow my dogs are the link enabling what my subconscious believes to become a conscious reality.
Freya has helped me build a foundation of peace and inner calm, and Bruce is teaching me that life’s boundaries are far more flexible than I once perceived them to be. As I consider the magnitude of influence of my dogs on my life, and the ever expanding sense of gratitude I feel towards them, I am reminded that I once thought people who spoke of dogs as “teachers” or “friends” were unequivocally crazy.
And with that admission, I pose the inevitable question: who is the fool now?
This personal propensity was revealed to me several years ago when a boss of mine informed me that the reason she liked my management style was because I did not suffer fools.
Even then, before I actually knew what it meant to suffer a fool, I was innately and staunchly adhering to this social positioning. In fact, when I first heard the expression from my boss, I found it so appealing that I made a mental commitment to find out what it meant and, as luck would have it, my own personal philosophy did seem in accordance with the statement.
I am aware, by the way, that by admitting that I believe myself to be someone who has the right to decide who is a fool and who is not, I have unveiled myself as a fool of the most grandiose proportions.
In any case, I have two dogs: Freya and Bruce. When we adopted Freya, about six years ago, two elements of her character quickly became clear: number one, she was more human than dog, and number two, she possessed a similar stance as my own with regards to fools. Proof of her inclination lay in the fact that it was immediately apparent that she detested teenagers. Show me the teenager who is not a fool and I will admit that I have been proven wrong. I know teenagers, I was a teenager, and trust me, they are all idiots.
And I am speaking from a place of compassion—you have to go through a phase of utter insecurity and foolishness if you are ever going to be a person of substance. Really, I commend their struggle.
Freya, however, as a canine, tends to live in the moment. She doubtfully considers the future of these rambunctious folks and merely focuses on the present. From the start, she seemed to be able to sniff out instability and unpredictability and to disdain it. As such, she has always avoided teenagers like the plague.
Freya is, incidentally, both an intellectual and a behavioral snob. I hope you can fully appreciate how rare these qualities are amongst the exotic mixed breeds of the canine world, otherwise known as “mutts”. She does not pick up refuse from the street, she abhors raucous behavior, she will not cavort with strangers (dogs or human), she has never plunged headlong into any body of water, she crosses her paws daintily when seated, and she enjoys jazz music and classic films.
Her strangest quality, as far as I can discern, is that she is a dog and not, in fact, a debutante from the 1950’s.
I take great pride in Freya’s undog-like behavior. She is calm, classy, graceful, thoughtful, and funny. In case you are failing to read between the lines, I have ascribed to Freya all of the qualities I strive to embody. It is a lot to live up to.
So enamored have my husband and I been with Freya, that last year we felt inspired to adopt a second dog. Enter Bruce.
Bruce is incredibly handsome. He is fifteen pounds of terrier mix with short rust colored coat, floppy ears, big brown eyes and a white stripe down his forehead that my husband is convinced makes him faster. We brought him home from the shelter and, much to our delight he was house-trained, cuddly, and willing and able to sleep (remarkably soundly) for 12 hours every night.
Bruce also entered our house with some other little “quirks." For one thing, he would incessantly chew on furniture. Here I want to make it known that the bitter apple spray, by which my mother swears (Paco evidently hates it) was no deterrent--even though it smells like rubbing alcohol. I am inclined, therefore, to add “alcoholic” to Bruce's list of qualities. Additionally, he barked maniacally for approximately six hours of the day, and generally demonstrated paranoid and schizophrenic behavior.
For example, on walks, he would become highly suspicious about random bushes or piles of leaves. He would lurch around these vicinities, seemingly sure that something or someone was about to pop out and pounce on him. He would then go inexplicably plunging into the exact bush about which he demonstrated such fear.
To some dogs he would have no reaction, to others it seemed he wanted to dismember them in sight. The strangest thing would be when we would see the same dog and he would have polar opposite reactions based on...well, based on what, I cannot say.
It bears noting that generally, upon seeing other dogs, he would run wildly at them, only to stop six inches in front of them and bark incessantly. An odd aspect to this “greeting” ritual (in addition to the oddness of the ritual on the whole) is that he seemed to want friends. That is, his tail would wag all the while he barked at an alarmingly high decibel. He would then cry when the other dogs ran away from him (often after having become so scared and/or alarmed that they peed on the spot).
Bruce manages to become unfathomably dirty in very short periods of time, and he will plunge into any and every body of water he comes across—regardless of factors such as temperature or general safety. Of the many, many items he unscrupulously picks up from the streets on our walks, among his favorite delicacies are dead toads and horse manure.
He throws himself with vigor at Freya at what (I would imagine) she perceives to be inconvenient and/or inappropriate times, and he shreds toys, shoes, and furniture with no apparent rhyme or reason. Somehow, all of this is tolerable. However, what I find most troubling is that he seems to love, of all God-forsaken things, teenagers.
I suppose I should not be altogether shocked by that realization. After all, when Bruce first came home with us he basically embodied a teenage boy in dog form; he was generally house-trained, seemed to be experimenting with alcohol, had social skills which outwardly indicated to the world that he wanted everyone to leave him alone, yet he also seemed to yearn for a sense of inclusion, and, finally, the whole “acting before thinking” phenomenon.
So you can imagine my chagrin. The girl who does not suffer fools has brought the canine equivalent of the human epitome of a fool voluntarily into her house. Was I self destructive? Or just, as I mentioned earlier, showing my true colors as the greatest fool of all time? Karma is, after all, a real stinker.
I know that I will never be able to specifically verbalize what made us decide to bring Bruce home, which is a question my husband voiced aloud for several months after we adopted him. Much like when we adopted Freya, some intangible force compelled us to select that particular dog at that particular moment in time despite a number of logical reasons which might have spoken against such a decision.
And when we adopted Freya, our life was truly in need of stabilization. A calm, contained energy was just what our home needed to balance itself as we navigated the waters from being an engaged couple to being married, as we moved homes four times, as we made several job changes, and endured many family “situations.” We needed a Freya, a dog that was, and is, calm in the storm. We relied on her constant support, unwavering gentleness, and companionship.
I, especially, needed Freya as she was the physical embodiment of the person I wanted to be: more grounded, more decisive, more graceful—content with who she was and what place she held in the world. Freya was truly an invaluable constant as we navigated through the waters of chaos to find our own rhythm and peace in this world.
Bruce, in stark contrast to Freya, is chaos embodied. Having some perspective now, I see that our decision to adopt him was indicative of our own need to shake things up in our life. My husband and I are at a stage where we both feel ready for new adventures; we want to grow as individuals and as a couple. Due to time, maturity, and a whole host of other factors, the qualities and components of an ideal life have changed for us, and I believe that we subconsciously craved a physical manifestation of our internal evolutions.
We both, as type-A’s who have been long devoted to routines and have lived carefully within the boundaries of our own making, recently realized that we wanted to stretch beyond our comfort zones and to try to incorporate a little more spontaneity…a little more, well living, into our life. We needed a Bruce as proof that we can plunge into unpredictable waters, get dirty, make awkward social decisions and still, at the end of the day, sleep like a baby.
Freya continues to be calm, graceful, and discerning. And Bruce is spunky, gregarious, and fearless. What I once feared to be his membership to the class of creatures I so disdained—the fool—has actually emerged as a genuine joie de vivre.
Now, as Freya sits by the door, paws gracefully crossed and head resting atop them in her ever dignified napping pose, and Bruce, in contrast, is splayed out in all his messy glory on the bed he spent the better part of the morning chewing up, I am reminded that life is about balance.
My dogs teach me every day in ways both subtle and obvious, on scales both large and small. I have found that what I intrinsically know to be true at any given period in my life is often manifested physically through my relationship with my dogs. Somehow my dogs are the link enabling what my subconscious believes to become a conscious reality.
Freya has helped me build a foundation of peace and inner calm, and Bruce is teaching me that life’s boundaries are far more flexible than I once perceived them to be. As I consider the magnitude of influence of my dogs on my life, and the ever expanding sense of gratitude I feel towards them, I am reminded that I once thought people who spoke of dogs as “teachers” or “friends” were unequivocally crazy.
And with that admission, I pose the inevitable question: who is the fool now?
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
"Inventing" Psychology
When I write, I have a tendency towards the verbose and the dramatic. When I speak, I have a tendency towards simplicity and repetition. My conversational style, taken out of context, would indicate that I appear to be perpetually speaking to a group of eight year olds.
The root of this unique (strange?) interpersonal style is twofold: one, I think I fear being misunderstood. This reason is, of course, my own issue, as I have no control over how other people will interpret what I say—no matter how slow or how many times I might say it. Two, I am a verbal processer. Even when my subconscious mind has learned and decided on something, it is only fully comprehended by my conscious mind through this process of repetition and simple articulation.
Unfortunately, neither reason for my behavior makes my conversational companions any better off.
For example, the other day, my husband and I were having a conversation about my most recent blog entry. He had not yet read the posting, and was patiently listening to me blather on about the concept of people being attached to their story and what not.
When I was done repeating the same idea in about five different manners—each appropriate for an audience of third graders--he started to say something, hesitated, and then sort of laughed. Forever curious about the reactions my musings elicit, I pressed him to tell me what was on his mind.
He looked at me with a rather wry expression, seemed to consider whether or not he actually wanted to divulge his thoughts, and finally began: “This is going to come across as a sort of wise-ass comment, but…”
Me, eager as ever: “Yes? Tell me!”
Him: “It is just that…Well, do you really think you are the first person to come up with this stuff? It is all sort of obvious. It is common sense.”
My husband, I feel compelled to share, is exceptionally generous and effusive in his praise for my writing. He is also extremely good at calling me out on my nonsense. We spent the next few days making fun of all the psychological analysis/diagnosis I “invent” on a daily basis.
I admit that I am a sometimes ridiculous person, and I forget how ridiculous I can be until someone else calls me on it. This point actually relates to my overall point here, so bear with me.
I would like to clarify what I thought was obvious and what is, based on my husband’s reaction, maybe not coming across through my writing: I do not presume to be re-inventing the wheel or to imply that what I impart through this blog are life-altering lightning bolts of ideas that have struck me, and me alone. Frankly, I am often not even giving these age-old topics a particularly new or original spin.
My intent is to inspire critical thought, conversation, and self-examination. The sort of which I try to engage in with myself. The sort that makes me take a second look at myself and at what I have been doing--and maybe stops me in my tracks for a minute.
Auto-pilot is a proclivity and I think it is a shame. At least, I want to shake myself out of operating in that mode, and I hope my musings inspire you to do the same. In order for that to happen, I do not think new ideas or foreign concepts are the place to start. I want to go back to what we all inherently know on some base level and then we inevitably forget here and there because something--life?--gets in the way.
When we function on auto-pilot, we are not being our true self. We are being a less vibrant, less evolved, less interesting version of the person we are. I seek to pull myself away from that tendency because I think doing so makes me more interesting and interested. Same goes for you.
But the truth is that it can be difficult to change our own habits, shake up our own routines, and rearrange our own perceptions of life and the way things “should” or “ought” to be. (Bad words, but you know that already).
My main point today is that there is so much that is so obvious when it comes to analyzing others. It is so easy to detect how other people are missing the mark, messing up their lives, etc. Discussing all of these issues abstractly often imparts a sort of “Yeah, well, duh!” reaction.
And yet, when I examine my life, I find I fall prey to all these obvious errors of judgment, and a whole host of mistaken self-analysis, with shocking frequency. It is hard to look at your life with an objective lens, and even harder to critically examine how or why you might be engaging in the very acts that seem so obvious, and so obviously detrimental, when you see them occurring in the lives of others.
I am assuming that I am not the only one who does so. At least, I am surprised by how often I can say: “What an imbecile!” when it comes to watching someone else bang their head into a wall with alarming repetition, only to turn the microscopic lens on myself and think: “What? Me, too!?”
But when I think about myself and my ability to opine on people letting go of their stories, etc., I know that the truth of the matter is this: easier said than done.
Personally, a big part of my story if that I care about external validation. I care about “doing the right thing.” I want people to like me, I want people to be impressed by me, and I want to make all the “right” decisions to make all of that happen.
Cognitively I know that to truly be happy and successful there is one person and one person only whose good graces I need to earn: my own. So, ironically, I talk a big game about the importance of being true to yourself. I will readily and convincingly tell you how the only person whose stamp of approval on your life that will matter is your own.
I will then turn around and be the first to cry (hysterically and disproportionately) over a minor criticism from a professor, boss, or client.
Basically, you could watch me for a week, and, in addition to being bored out of your mind (I am not ALL that interesting), conclude that I am guilty of falling into the very traps against which I warn others. I would imagine that you could, maybe easily, “diagnose” me as being idiotic, ignorant, and oblivious.
That scares me a bit. Although now think: could I do the same if I observed you for that amount of time?
We are all works in progress and change is not something that happens overnight. If you have been running on that same wheel for years, telling the same stories, or sleep-walking through your days then this is not a meant to make you feel badly; this is merely a suggestion to turn the lens on yourself. I will certainly do the same.
The root of this unique (strange?) interpersonal style is twofold: one, I think I fear being misunderstood. This reason is, of course, my own issue, as I have no control over how other people will interpret what I say—no matter how slow or how many times I might say it. Two, I am a verbal processer. Even when my subconscious mind has learned and decided on something, it is only fully comprehended by my conscious mind through this process of repetition and simple articulation.
Unfortunately, neither reason for my behavior makes my conversational companions any better off.
For example, the other day, my husband and I were having a conversation about my most recent blog entry. He had not yet read the posting, and was patiently listening to me blather on about the concept of people being attached to their story and what not.
When I was done repeating the same idea in about five different manners—each appropriate for an audience of third graders--he started to say something, hesitated, and then sort of laughed. Forever curious about the reactions my musings elicit, I pressed him to tell me what was on his mind.
He looked at me with a rather wry expression, seemed to consider whether or not he actually wanted to divulge his thoughts, and finally began: “This is going to come across as a sort of wise-ass comment, but…”
Me, eager as ever: “Yes? Tell me!”
Him: “It is just that…Well, do you really think you are the first person to come up with this stuff? It is all sort of obvious. It is common sense.”
My husband, I feel compelled to share, is exceptionally generous and effusive in his praise for my writing. He is also extremely good at calling me out on my nonsense. We spent the next few days making fun of all the psychological analysis/diagnosis I “invent” on a daily basis.
I admit that I am a sometimes ridiculous person, and I forget how ridiculous I can be until someone else calls me on it. This point actually relates to my overall point here, so bear with me.
I would like to clarify what I thought was obvious and what is, based on my husband’s reaction, maybe not coming across through my writing: I do not presume to be re-inventing the wheel or to imply that what I impart through this blog are life-altering lightning bolts of ideas that have struck me, and me alone. Frankly, I am often not even giving these age-old topics a particularly new or original spin.
My intent is to inspire critical thought, conversation, and self-examination. The sort of which I try to engage in with myself. The sort that makes me take a second look at myself and at what I have been doing--and maybe stops me in my tracks for a minute.
Auto-pilot is a proclivity and I think it is a shame. At least, I want to shake myself out of operating in that mode, and I hope my musings inspire you to do the same. In order for that to happen, I do not think new ideas or foreign concepts are the place to start. I want to go back to what we all inherently know on some base level and then we inevitably forget here and there because something--life?--gets in the way.
When we function on auto-pilot, we are not being our true self. We are being a less vibrant, less evolved, less interesting version of the person we are. I seek to pull myself away from that tendency because I think doing so makes me more interesting and interested. Same goes for you.
But the truth is that it can be difficult to change our own habits, shake up our own routines, and rearrange our own perceptions of life and the way things “should” or “ought” to be. (Bad words, but you know that already).
My main point today is that there is so much that is so obvious when it comes to analyzing others. It is so easy to detect how other people are missing the mark, messing up their lives, etc. Discussing all of these issues abstractly often imparts a sort of “Yeah, well, duh!” reaction.
And yet, when I examine my life, I find I fall prey to all these obvious errors of judgment, and a whole host of mistaken self-analysis, with shocking frequency. It is hard to look at your life with an objective lens, and even harder to critically examine how or why you might be engaging in the very acts that seem so obvious, and so obviously detrimental, when you see them occurring in the lives of others.
I am assuming that I am not the only one who does so. At least, I am surprised by how often I can say: “What an imbecile!” when it comes to watching someone else bang their head into a wall with alarming repetition, only to turn the microscopic lens on myself and think: “What? Me, too!?”
But when I think about myself and my ability to opine on people letting go of their stories, etc., I know that the truth of the matter is this: easier said than done.
Personally, a big part of my story if that I care about external validation. I care about “doing the right thing.” I want people to like me, I want people to be impressed by me, and I want to make all the “right” decisions to make all of that happen.
Cognitively I know that to truly be happy and successful there is one person and one person only whose good graces I need to earn: my own. So, ironically, I talk a big game about the importance of being true to yourself. I will readily and convincingly tell you how the only person whose stamp of approval on your life that will matter is your own.
I will then turn around and be the first to cry (hysterically and disproportionately) over a minor criticism from a professor, boss, or client.
Basically, you could watch me for a week, and, in addition to being bored out of your mind (I am not ALL that interesting), conclude that I am guilty of falling into the very traps against which I warn others. I would imagine that you could, maybe easily, “diagnose” me as being idiotic, ignorant, and oblivious.
That scares me a bit. Although now think: could I do the same if I observed you for that amount of time?
We are all works in progress and change is not something that happens overnight. If you have been running on that same wheel for years, telling the same stories, or sleep-walking through your days then this is not a meant to make you feel badly; this is merely a suggestion to turn the lens on yourself. I will certainly do the same.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Creating Your Own Reality
Perhaps you have heard, as I have, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Contemplating such an explanation immediately conjures up a vision of that oft referenced hamster running on a wheel. The little rodent literally runs in circles as he just keeps going and going and is, ironically, never getting anywhere.
Or to use an analogy involving my old friend/nemesis the bird: this definition of crazy makes me think of a winged creature flying into a window repeatedly--stupidly failing to remember with each attempt that there is a larger, if transparent, obstacle fully blocking the way. Adding injury to insult here is the fact that the bird is likely becoming increasingly physically compromised as he repeats the same action time and time again.
The imagery, despite being a bit sad, is also sort of funny. It is funny because it seems so asinine. As in: “Who would do that?” For an animal such repetitive, fruitless, and even injurious, behavior seems forgivable in a way. As in: “The poor little guy just does not know any better.”
With a human we are less forgiving however. It becomes more like: “Well, you DESERVE to be branded crazy if you are dumb enough to repeat the same action over and over again and not realize that all it is doing for you is making you tired and frustrated--and maybe even slightly concussed.”
All that being said, I bet you perform a variety of this wheel running, tail chasing, window banging in your own life.
I sure do.
If you do not, then I bow to you; you are now my hero and my inspiration. Please send me your address so that I can write you fan mail.
Although, even if you do not, you are actually not entirely off the hook. At the very least you are almost certainly being affected by someone in your life that is doing just that very window banging action over and over. You likely want to just throw them in a cold shower, shake them a bit, or just yell: “Wake up, will you?” at the top of your lungs into their face.
No? That’s just me then.
Despite the temptation, however, I would actually never handle the situation in any of the aforementioned manners. Not only would it be rude, and I tend to care quite a bit about proper decorum, but also because it would be ineffective.
At least, throttling someone and screaming in their grill would likely stun them into silence, acquiescence, and/or submission, but it would not actually solve the problem. Once they have regained their senses and perhaps attempted to sue you, what will probably happen is that you will have provided a very convenient scapegoat. They will misinterpret your frustrations with them as being a product, not of any problem on their part, but rather of your own issues. Voila. You are now the one with the problem.
They will then promptly pick up again where they left off—harvey wall-banging and all that.
The crucial point here is that no one is going to jump off that hamster wheel, or stop ramming into that window, unless he or she realizes that perpetuating a cycle is fruitless, frustrating, and/or harmful. And this is a very hard thing to do. To look at your life with an objective lens is tremendously difficult. To actually see and recognize your patterns is even more complicated.
At least, I have a heck of a time with it.
Patterns are not always as neat and obvious as those on a paisley tie. They are often much more multi-layered and deceptive.
But at the base of the pattern of your situation is the story. Your story. That story you have been telling—and are still telling—to yourself and to others about who you are and what defines your life.
It is the story of the reality you have created for yourself.
You have likely become incredibly attached to this story—whether it is a good story or a bad story. You likely are not even aware of how attached you are because the story is not a separate entity, it is you. As much as your breath is you, really.
So here is the main point of what I am saying: you create your own reality.
A point of reference comes to mind: Dermot Mulroney told Debra Messing in the sort of funny and sort of creepy movie, The Wedding Date, that “every woman has the exact love life she wants.”
Well I believe that, although there are a lot of people looking to throw tomatoes at me right now. But I do believe it. If you want love to be disappointing and fruitless, it will be. If want drama, you get drama, people.
But what I really want to drive home is that you have the exact life you want as well. I know this to be true, because you are creating it yourself.
And you might say, “But I want to be successful and happy and I have not created that for myself so you are wrong, you dumb blogger.”
But then consider: Are you often consumed by all the ways you are not successful? Do you constantly think about aspects of your life that are not going well? Are you someone who tells tales of woe and pessimism? You may not even realize that in wanting to be happy or successful you are just running on the wheel. To create happiness and success you have to feel happiness and success. You have to exude it. You have to, for lack of a better term, “fake it ‘til you make it.”
Because I can tell you that those angels out there are not just whispering, they are also soaking it in. If we say we want to be successful and then we focus on or spend time thinking about all the ways we are not, well then, boom, wish granted. You will remain the person wanting to be successful. You will not be the person who is successful. And that will be your story. Your story will be: “I am someone always seeking and wanting success and happiness.”
And all of this is, of course, based on however you define success. Because as you might remember from a previous post, “success” is a largely subjective concept. Read my old post on success ("Loving Your Problems...") to catch up if you like.
I am sure that even if you are darn near perfect, you have that one friend whose story is that he/she always has a dramatic love life, the one whose story is that he/she always has trouble with a sibling, the one whose story is that she is constantly at odds with her weight, the one whose story is that his/her coworkers are terrible. And so on...
And then they come to you, time after time, to report that the new relationship, the one that started out so new and different, is just as wrought with drama as the last. They tell you that the brother/sister is still being a pain in their arse, that the weight came off and then came back, that the co-workers at yet another new job are still a bunch of meanies.
And of course what they report is the case because these people have become the story they tell. They will perpetuate their story because underlying it all is the question: who are they if they are not the one with the dramatic love life, the one with the weight struggle, the one with the –you fill in the blank here?
We become so intrinsically attached to these stories that we forget who we are without them. As a result, we are constantly repeating the same frustrating patterns.
And we do not recognize that because each cycle comes in a new package, wrapped in different paper if you will.
Take me for example. I am constantly trying to figure out my calling, my passion in terms of a career. I have defined my life by wanting to uncover this perfect career the way one might uncover a crock pot. And each and every new vocation I take on, ends in much the same way. The jobs have all been (vastly) different, the bosses have been across the map, but the result is almost always the same. I run on the hamster wheel without ever thinking maybe I need to hop off and run elsewhere.
Like around a park for example. That might offer some lovely fresh perspective.
So now, I invite you to take some time and think about your story, or stories.
Imagine how powerful it could be if you could flip your story around to be positive. If your new story is that you are the person with the exact life you want because it is the reality you have created for yourself. You can do that.
Really.
Oh and by the way, I hope you know I am not saying you are running on the wheel to nowhere or slamming your head into glass windows on purpose.
My wise and wonderful friend Kristyn has taught me that the truth is that we are all doing the best we can with what we have got. And breaking cycles might take some time because you always have the temptation to go back to what you know.
If what you know is a dramatic love life, or low self esteem, or weight issues, then yes, you will likely run back to that ratty old security blanket of a story whenever the going gets tough.
But you can create a new reality. Just know that it takes a conscious decision, some rigorous self examination, and the willingness to let the old story go. And it might be scary to let it go. Even if it is a bad and self-destructive story, it is yours and you have built a life around it. Who are you without it?
Well, I do not know, but I am excited to meet you. Now let’s jump off that hamster wheel, run around the park, and start writing a new story.
Contemplating such an explanation immediately conjures up a vision of that oft referenced hamster running on a wheel. The little rodent literally runs in circles as he just keeps going and going and is, ironically, never getting anywhere.
Or to use an analogy involving my old friend/nemesis the bird: this definition of crazy makes me think of a winged creature flying into a window repeatedly--stupidly failing to remember with each attempt that there is a larger, if transparent, obstacle fully blocking the way. Adding injury to insult here is the fact that the bird is likely becoming increasingly physically compromised as he repeats the same action time and time again.
The imagery, despite being a bit sad, is also sort of funny. It is funny because it seems so asinine. As in: “Who would do that?” For an animal such repetitive, fruitless, and even injurious, behavior seems forgivable in a way. As in: “The poor little guy just does not know any better.”
With a human we are less forgiving however. It becomes more like: “Well, you DESERVE to be branded crazy if you are dumb enough to repeat the same action over and over again and not realize that all it is doing for you is making you tired and frustrated--and maybe even slightly concussed.”
All that being said, I bet you perform a variety of this wheel running, tail chasing, window banging in your own life.
I sure do.
If you do not, then I bow to you; you are now my hero and my inspiration. Please send me your address so that I can write you fan mail.
Although, even if you do not, you are actually not entirely off the hook. At the very least you are almost certainly being affected by someone in your life that is doing just that very window banging action over and over. You likely want to just throw them in a cold shower, shake them a bit, or just yell: “Wake up, will you?” at the top of your lungs into their face.
No? That’s just me then.
Despite the temptation, however, I would actually never handle the situation in any of the aforementioned manners. Not only would it be rude, and I tend to care quite a bit about proper decorum, but also because it would be ineffective.
At least, throttling someone and screaming in their grill would likely stun them into silence, acquiescence, and/or submission, but it would not actually solve the problem. Once they have regained their senses and perhaps attempted to sue you, what will probably happen is that you will have provided a very convenient scapegoat. They will misinterpret your frustrations with them as being a product, not of any problem on their part, but rather of your own issues. Voila. You are now the one with the problem.
They will then promptly pick up again where they left off—harvey wall-banging and all that.
The crucial point here is that no one is going to jump off that hamster wheel, or stop ramming into that window, unless he or she realizes that perpetuating a cycle is fruitless, frustrating, and/or harmful. And this is a very hard thing to do. To look at your life with an objective lens is tremendously difficult. To actually see and recognize your patterns is even more complicated.
At least, I have a heck of a time with it.
Patterns are not always as neat and obvious as those on a paisley tie. They are often much more multi-layered and deceptive.
But at the base of the pattern of your situation is the story. Your story. That story you have been telling—and are still telling—to yourself and to others about who you are and what defines your life.
It is the story of the reality you have created for yourself.
You have likely become incredibly attached to this story—whether it is a good story or a bad story. You likely are not even aware of how attached you are because the story is not a separate entity, it is you. As much as your breath is you, really.
So here is the main point of what I am saying: you create your own reality.
A point of reference comes to mind: Dermot Mulroney told Debra Messing in the sort of funny and sort of creepy movie, The Wedding Date, that “every woman has the exact love life she wants.”
Well I believe that, although there are a lot of people looking to throw tomatoes at me right now. But I do believe it. If you want love to be disappointing and fruitless, it will be. If want drama, you get drama, people.
But what I really want to drive home is that you have the exact life you want as well. I know this to be true, because you are creating it yourself.
And you might say, “But I want to be successful and happy and I have not created that for myself so you are wrong, you dumb blogger.”
But then consider: Are you often consumed by all the ways you are not successful? Do you constantly think about aspects of your life that are not going well? Are you someone who tells tales of woe and pessimism? You may not even realize that in wanting to be happy or successful you are just running on the wheel. To create happiness and success you have to feel happiness and success. You have to exude it. You have to, for lack of a better term, “fake it ‘til you make it.”
Because I can tell you that those angels out there are not just whispering, they are also soaking it in. If we say we want to be successful and then we focus on or spend time thinking about all the ways we are not, well then, boom, wish granted. You will remain the person wanting to be successful. You will not be the person who is successful. And that will be your story. Your story will be: “I am someone always seeking and wanting success and happiness.”
And all of this is, of course, based on however you define success. Because as you might remember from a previous post, “success” is a largely subjective concept. Read my old post on success ("Loving Your Problems...") to catch up if you like.
I am sure that even if you are darn near perfect, you have that one friend whose story is that he/she always has a dramatic love life, the one whose story is that he/she always has trouble with a sibling, the one whose story is that she is constantly at odds with her weight, the one whose story is that his/her coworkers are terrible. And so on...
And then they come to you, time after time, to report that the new relationship, the one that started out so new and different, is just as wrought with drama as the last. They tell you that the brother/sister is still being a pain in their arse, that the weight came off and then came back, that the co-workers at yet another new job are still a bunch of meanies.
And of course what they report is the case because these people have become the story they tell. They will perpetuate their story because underlying it all is the question: who are they if they are not the one with the dramatic love life, the one with the weight struggle, the one with the –you fill in the blank here?
We become so intrinsically attached to these stories that we forget who we are without them. As a result, we are constantly repeating the same frustrating patterns.
And we do not recognize that because each cycle comes in a new package, wrapped in different paper if you will.
Take me for example. I am constantly trying to figure out my calling, my passion in terms of a career. I have defined my life by wanting to uncover this perfect career the way one might uncover a crock pot. And each and every new vocation I take on, ends in much the same way. The jobs have all been (vastly) different, the bosses have been across the map, but the result is almost always the same. I run on the hamster wheel without ever thinking maybe I need to hop off and run elsewhere.
Like around a park for example. That might offer some lovely fresh perspective.
So now, I invite you to take some time and think about your story, or stories.
Imagine how powerful it could be if you could flip your story around to be positive. If your new story is that you are the person with the exact life you want because it is the reality you have created for yourself. You can do that.
Really.
Oh and by the way, I hope you know I am not saying you are running on the wheel to nowhere or slamming your head into glass windows on purpose.
My wise and wonderful friend Kristyn has taught me that the truth is that we are all doing the best we can with what we have got. And breaking cycles might take some time because you always have the temptation to go back to what you know.
If what you know is a dramatic love life, or low self esteem, or weight issues, then yes, you will likely run back to that ratty old security blanket of a story whenever the going gets tough.
But you can create a new reality. Just know that it takes a conscious decision, some rigorous self examination, and the willingness to let the old story go. And it might be scary to let it go. Even if it is a bad and self-destructive story, it is yours and you have built a life around it. Who are you without it?
Well, I do not know, but I am excited to meet you. Now let’s jump off that hamster wheel, run around the park, and start writing a new story.
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