So Much Happier Blog
Feeling Out of Phase?
Well friends, here we are solidly into 2020, a new year and a new decade! Whether you were raring to go or felt blindsided by the trappings of wrapping up the old year, time marches on. Like a lot of people, I spent the transition groggy with a nasty cold, and I feel like I’m only now finally starting to wake up again. Maybe you’ve already hit the ground running with exciting new ideas and plans, and if so, well done!
Whatever your experience has been so far, remember that your personal timing doesn’t have to line up with everyone else’s to be valid. Sometimes we all get a little (or a lot) out of step with where the world seems to be headed. You may experience this in small ways, with a sense of being out of synch in your closest relationships or in your local routines. For much of human history, the local was most of what we had to worry about! However, now, with the advent of the Information Age and the 24-hour news cycle that must be filled, no matter how low-quality the programming, we are bombarded with so much more than we can ever participate in, and much of it is fear-mongering. The split focus and temptation toward constant worry that this constantly induces is confusing at best and utterly overwhelming at worst.
And this is not just experienced on a personal level. Our new normal is affecting the genesis and reaction to mass events the world over. This time in history is in many ways chaotic and shot through with layers of rudderless conflict. We’ve hit multiple tipping points that require us to change on a global scale if we want to have a planet to live on at all in another decade or three, and the majority of the world’s leaders seem convinced that childish, self-obsessed stupidity is the way to go.
I actually think a lot of our issues come down to failures in educational systems. That’s not really surprising, since education used to be only for the wealthy, and only quite recently has there been an effort to scale it up to cover everyone in cultures across the world. This effort has revealed a whole new set of challenges that are not easy or quick to solve with our current level of experience regarding the effective transfer of information and skills in group settings. And just recently, the number of readily available distractions has exploded. It used to be that for those with the luxury of free time, one of the exciting things you could do was learn, and expand your horizons in self-motivated ways. Now so much is handed to us, even foisted upon us, that learning is less a joy and more of a constant drudgery as we try to keep up with everything that a cacophony of questionably valuable tastemakers tells us we must.
I don’t mean to sound like a grumpy old person here (“It used to be that everything was just great, blah blah blah”), because there was never a time when everything was perfect on planet Earth! What I’m hearing from so many people right now, though, is that the fight against constant overwhelm is becoming more and more consuming and exhausting. If you feel like you’re bogged down in a cycle of just getting through each day and recovering from it, you’re in good company! Here are some ideas that may help you as you begin to construct your vision of this new year and begin to set it into motion:
Acknowledge that this world is a challenging place in which to live, and don’t be so hard on yourself about it. You have to balance yourself and your needs, the needs of those closest to you, and your relationship with the wider world, all of which are demanding, and these demands are constantly shifting. Give yourself some love and credit for keeping up with all of this. Some people like to make their lives look effortless on social media. Don’t believe that #*%~.
Reaffirm that only you can be the source of the most high-quality information about you. By all means, consider feedback from others as you chart your path, but if their assumptions are wrong, reject them. Only if you retain the right to be the arbiter of your opinions about yourself, and choose to make self-compassion a guiding principle, will you have access to the constant stream of creativity you need in your daily efforts to make your life the best it can be.
Have a written list of your priorities that you refer to daily. Focus is key. You can imagine far more than you can ever accomplish in the flesh! You must prioritize your highest values and connected projects if you ever want to get anywhere. Do you have this? Almost no one does. If you don’t, make a list now in your phone or somewhere else you can easily refer to it. Have you done this yet? Seriously, do it now!
Unless you are a writer or other passionate content producer by choice, focusing on living your life in the real world is far more crucial than narrating your every move in the twittersphere. Yes, stay in touch with important people in your life in the most convenient ways for you. Just don’t confuse running in endless circles online with accomplishing your goals. Simplify and focus.
Carve out the time you need to take care of yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. If you think you’re too busy, start with small steps. If you fall off the wagon, get up and keep trying. You can’t sustain an optimal life if you always put your basic needs last.
Get clear about the ways in which you want to contribute and give, the ways that feel appropriate and exciting for you. If you’re not sure, get out there and practice donating some of your favorite skills. Be careful to corral your giving into this mission statement so that you don’t start behaving as though you owe all things to all people. We all need to exist within a give and take dynamic with the societies we live in, but doing too much will exhaust you and deny the world the best version of what you have to give. Give joyfully, and when you can’t, plot your rest and rejuvenation, and then get back to your chosen areas of giving.
Keep an eye out for ways to make your life fun. If something isn’t fun at all, you’ll tend to quit, because there are limits to human reserves of willpower. Enjoyment keeps us motivated in healthy ways. It also draws us toward activities we’re good at, which helps nurture our effectiveness and deeply feed our life vitality.
It’s fine to be influenced by the timing of the world and the people around you, but remember that those who have invented some of the best solutions in history have been considered eccentric-to-outright-crazy because they were not following the pack. In case you haven’t noticed (you probably have if you’re reading this), the world is desperately in need of creative solutions to a wide variety of problems. Paradoxically, you may be better able to help by refusing to have your timing and your activities dictated by conventional wisdom, immediate imperatives that you’re not the right person for, and public opinion.
Treasure the people you trust. Friends who have your best interests at heart as well as their own, and who have demonstrated the ability to maintain relationships characterized by a balance between giving and receiving, are one of the best things in life. Appreciate these people at every opportunity!
There are times when we need to meet life with a warrior spirit, and no matter what you’re attempting to do with your life, it seems to me that now, this moment on this planet, is one of those times. I don’t mean that we need to be combative, but rather suffused with a courageous willingness to do what is necessary and appropriate in order to meet the challenges we face, both personal and collective. Find someone from any time in history who inspires you in this direction.
I wish you courage, focus, friendship, ease, and joy as you face whatever may unfold for you in 2020. Be awesome!
Too...Much...Information!
“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.”
One of the most challenging things about being alive at this time in history is the fire hose of information and pure distraction that we’re all drinking from every day. The sheer number of advertisements we’re bombarded with everywhere we look and listen can make it hard to direct our own attention for very long. If you have goals and important projects underway, this can be a problem! Without focused, sustained time spent on your highest priorities, you’re not likely to make much progress. You need energy, willpower, and all of your creative faculties to keep pushing forward, and the endless firehose will erode all three if you’re not careful.
Studies have shown that we have a limited amount of willpower each day. If you’re burning through yours on evaluating everything the world at large wants you to pay attention to each day, you’re leaving less willpower for yourself. This is why having an information policy for yourself is crucial to your long-term success. You do, in fact, have the power to decide and enforce such a policy. You do not have an obligation to spend your time sifting through a bunch of unsolicited muck when what you really need is time for your own plans. You don’t have to be rude to anyone, but you do need to be clear and firm with those who want your time and give you nothing you want in return.
So why don’t you set these boundaries already (assuming you’re not already perfect at this)? Are you afraid people will be mad at you? Afraid you’ll miss out on something important? Always in search of shiny new adventures? Spare a thought for why you are where you are with the flow of information and distraction in your life and see if you can gain some clarity. Once you see what’s going on for you, think about what you can do about it. Here are a few things you may need to do to come into balance with your environment and improve your focus on areas of your choosing:
Practice saying a firm, but polite no. There are few things as empowering as becoming an expert at this! What if you were able to do so with a smile, a light heart, and an expression of gratitude for an opportunity you’re not choosing—and no internal conflict. It is possible. Just practice! And remember that it’s ok to enjoy, even revel in, your power to choose your path in life. This is a privilege, and your building a life you love, focused on things you’re passionate about, will bless many others, not just you. It will also light the way for others to do the same.
Decide when you will check your phone/e-mail, and make sure you allow for enough time in between for you to sink into tasks and actually get things done. Put your phone on silent and out of sight during this time so it’s not a distraction, and minimize your e-mail if you’re on a computer. If you listen to music while you work, find a way to make it ad free.
Schedule the most important work of your day early, whether that’s exercising, meal planning, or a work proposal that needs to represent you at the top of your game. Then, as you use up your willpower, you’ll be doing so where it counts and not on a bunch of random stuff thrown at you by strangers.
Schedule time for browsing through information that’s relevant to your life, or just enjoyable, toward the end of your day, when you’ve accomplished important daily goals. If you need help limiting this time, set an alarm when you start and have a plan for what you’ll do next when the alarm goes off. Automation can really help in the later part of your day when your willpower is in tatters!
Minimize unnecessary decision making by planning meals ahead. See if you can find other decision processes to streamline as well.
If you’re afraid of missing things, see if you can brainstorm a way to share tasks with others. Maybe you can each keep an eye on a separate area and share anything important that arises with the others. Specialization is necessary when it’s impossible for any one person to stay on top of everything alone.
These are just a few ideas. How else might you manage the flow of information in your life and foster your ability and your inclination to focus? This is a lifelong process, so just work to notice where you could make new choices and gain some traction for your priorities. And don’t forget to share anything you come up with in the comments below!
I Can't Even
“You are responsible for the energy that you create for yourself, and you’re responsible for the energy that you bring to others.”
Often, the reasons we don’t make progress toward our biggest goals boil down to overwhelm. When life seems like it’s all just too much, we tend to shut down as soon as we think about taking action. When it seems like there are always way too many things to do in a finite number of hours each day, when change comes at you so fast it’s hard to prioritize strategically, when you’re under stress and chronically exhausted, you’re probably operating in a state of overwhelm. You feel stuck and confused, and optimism is hard to generate. This is not a powerful place from which to get things done.
Having just gone through a period of very low energy (I was scheduled to the max and got sick three times in short succession because I was determined to keep my commitments and rest later) I was reminded that the most basic level of countering overwhelm requires adequate physical energy. I remembered that the definition of energy in my high school biology class was paraphrased as “the ability to do work.” As a human, that ability requires other things too, but the physical energy part can’t be skipped. After my busy period wrapped up, it was a couple of weeks before I really felt alert, awake and alive again. In those weeks, I got tired early in the day, had less available willpower, greater challenges in finding my natural positivity and resourcefulness, and generally felt a total lack of desire to be productive. As soon as I had gotten some high-quality rest and allowed myself to recover, all of that started to improve. Moving my body helped to boost it all too, once I had the energy to do that. But it was so clear to me that without our own vital energy to pour into our projects, our goals are toast.
Nurturing your energy, therefore, should be primary in your quest for the things you want out of life! The pace of change is often far slower than we want it to be, so you probably won’t be able to create anything truly significant in a flame of short-term overwork. You’ll need to maintain a longer, slower burn in most cases. That means you’ll need to attend to these aspects of creating and maintaining adequate energy to do work:
Physical needs. Nutrition is key here. Sure, you can run your body on nothing but doughnuts, but this is going to short you of everything except a sugar high and subsequent crashes, and subsequent long-term breakdown. You need to work on gravitating to adequate amounts of lean proteins for your level of daily activity, plus plenty of veggies and some fruits throughout the day for all the rejuvenating micronutrients they offer. As much as possible of your diet should be certified organic so you’re not taking in unnecessary pesticides, hormones, and other toxins. If the multiplicity of conflicting views on what you should be eating has left you confused, consider consulting a nutritionist who shares your most important values around food. This can yield huge gains for decades to come.
Exercise. Your body wants and needs to move for optimal energy, balance, sleep, moods, and overall health. You don’t need to overdo it to see and feel results. Find something you don’t mind doing, even if you don’t love it—just do something.
Sleep. If you’re not getting enough, you’re trying to pursue excellence while mentally and physically impaired, and you’re leaving huge areas of your own capacity out of reach. Do what you can to set aside more time for sleep and solve problems you have with it. There may be periods of your life when you won’t get much sleep (such as the first year of a new child’s life), in which case you’ll need to minimize other goals to some extent if you want the process toward them to be something other than a disheartening struggle.
Emotional needs. It’s pretty hard to find the energy to knuckle down and get to work if you’re immobilized by fear, anxiety, grief, or other emotions. These are not just distractions, they’re sources of important information that can actually help you find a deeper sense of purpose and maintain a strong sense of self and what’s right for you. Tapping to the rescue! Of course there are other options that can be of help, but I’ve never found anything more efficient than EFT to help move, illuminate, and clear emotions.
Mental needs. The mind functions best in balance with all of your other parts, so bonus—your work in the other areas helps here too. We’re also learning that meditation helps the brain to function better. Being able to calm your mind gives it space to function without the unnecessary din of wild, reactive thinking. If sitting still and trying to get quiet internally feels too challenging, you can start with moving meditations like walking and repeating a rhythmic mantra, or spending some time every day consciously listening to and enjoying some soothing music. Tapping can help calm your thoughts too, and I consider it to be another type of moving meditation. Just sayin’.
Spiritual/Values-Based Needs. Humans are naturally social animals with a desire to participate in efforts larger than themselves. If you are not finding a way to do this in some way that feels appropriate and inspiring to you, then you’re disconnected from one of the greatest motivational engines you could ever harness. This doesn’t have to show up in a standard-looking religious or spiritual manner for you, but it does need to express what you consider to be your highest values, the best of who you are and want to be. As with exercise, baby steps are fine, just start something and see where the inspiration takes you.
Look, I know this is a lot to balance, and that’s why life is such a challenge. It’s ok to admit that! Working toward and constantly correcting this balance for yourself is a lifelong process of learning, and not something you ever achieve and put behind you. If you want to sustain the energy you’ll need to accomplish your goals, though, it’s the stuff of your daily assignment. Go forth and be energetic!
Shifting Sands
“Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that.”
Last week, we looked at the importance of setting boundaries in order to support your long-term functionality and excellence. This week, we’ll delve into the “how” of knowing that your boundaries need attention and making new choices. Since we are living in a world of limitations in bodies with specific needs, there will always be limits on how much activity we can sustain. Just to make things confusing, though, we’re all different. The range of talents and physical capacities that exist across the members of the human race is wide. What works for others won’t necessarily work for you, and vice versa. Attaining mastery at anything takes trial and error and a whole lot of practice. Only through testing your limits can you really know whether a condition is truly a limitation or merely a plateau. Boundaries, then, are often temporary in their usefulness, with a need to be periodically reevaluated if they are to serve their purposes and not become limitations of their own.
As mentioned last week, one of your best indicators of a need for a boundary is the constant feedback of your emotions. If you listen to what they’re telling you in real time, you’ll save yourself an enormous amount of angst and inefficiency by gaining clarity and being able to act on it; if you ignore them, the pain inherent in your situation is likely to become louder and louder until you are unable to ignore the message. By then, things may have gotten much worse than they ever needed to be. Situations may have fallen apart. Your health may have suffered, because stress is physically bad for us. You will have experienced, to at least some extent, the opposite of inspiration—disappointment, loss, and frustration. So much of this is avoidable if you just take a few minutes out of your day to notice and admit what’s going on with your emotions and why.
Ignoring what’s true for you may be more comfortable in the short term, but the longer you ignore the truth, even if it seems you can’t change it, the more of a powder keg your repressed emotions become. This is why, when someone is new to Tapping, I often recommend that they use the very simple “tap and rant” technique, in which you pretend you’re talking to a best friend who will support and commiserate with you about all your frustrations while maintaining her/his sense of humor. You just vent, mentioning every little thing that’s bothering you while Tapping. Not only is this fun because we usually try to hold all this in, and it feels a little outrageous and rebellious to let it out, but it relieves pressure physically by calming your body as well. Once you’ve spent some time on this, you’re usually more clear on what your most important, timely issues are. Now you can give those the attention they need with greater focus.
When you’ve achieved this clarity, you can more easily recognize situations that are untenable and need your creativity. In what way would you like those to change? How can you communicate your desires clearly to others so that they understand your preferences and requests? What will you do if change is not forthcoming, and how will you communicate your contingency plan along with your request? All of this can be very scary depending on what you stand to lose if others choose not to cooperate with you on a solution. Luckily, Tapping is also great for releasing fear and finding your courage! Fear is a constricting, immobilizing force. If it’s stopping you from doing what is best for you and others, you’ll need to relax its grip so you can move. By Tapping while expressing the emotional and physical sensations of fear, we teach the body that it’s ok to feel fear and still relax and function. Life you n today’s world is complicated, whereas many of our body’s systems evolved extreme reactions to protect us from physical harm in times of emergency. Tapping helps us to bridge the gap between the ancient protections and the push-and-pull needs of modern life.
Living the life you really want requires that you be in touch with what’s true for you. If you make important decisions about your life without doing some work to clarify what you want and need and how the choices in front of you can serve these, you will always feel like you’re wandering around lost because there’s no YOU there informing and guiding the way. If you leave yourself out, you leave discretion over things that materially affect you to others, or to chance. Taking the reins consciously can be demanding, but that’s why daily work on clarity and emotional management is so important. Doing it can keep you calm and on the path when you might otherwise run screaming from confusion and overwhelm, perpetuating a cycle of mindless drama that saps your power. Just like exercising the body, doing this work is not optional if you want to operate at peak capacity. What will you do this week to increase your sense of calm and clarity?
Crash Landing!
Well, that’s not what I thought would happen…
Sometimes we overestimate what we can pack into a day, a week, a month, or even the hour or two we have free in between other commitments. This is entirely normal, and sometimes it’s just due to unexpected issues arising in the midst of something routine that you thought would be smooth sailing. But what if this is the norm, how you’re living your life habitually? If you constantly overschedule yourself, there will be a lot of misery subtly built into your routines. You’ll feel like you’re always running on empty. You’ll tend to be irritable, grumpy, and resentful of requests, even from people you love. You’ll have to push yourself to do everything rather than powering your actions on enjoyable anticipation. And the truth is, this just isn’t necessary.
If you’re in this position, there can be a few things going on, and a few solutions that can quickly help:
You were taught that you should always be striving, and it’s lazy, or bad, or even dangerous to take time for relaxation when there are things still on the to-do list. This one can be the hardest to grapple with, because what we learn when we’re small can seem so true that we don’t even notice that there might be other options—the beliefs we were fed before our conscious mind really developed can be invisible, and therefore hard to change without help. In this case, you’ll need to either find yourself some assistance, or commit to setting an intention to find the beliefs that are running your behavior, and spend some time noticing what you’re thinking when you’re most stressed. These beliefs are invisible only until we concentrate on finding them. Once you turn a spotlight on your mental processes, it doesn’t usually take more than a few days to get an idea of why you’re acting the way you are. Once you have seen the inner workings, you can do the good work necessary for changing your problematic beliefs. Tapping is an amazing tool for this!
Somewhere along the line, you got used to trying to meet everyone’s expectations without remembering that you always have a vote. This one can also be fairly tricky to deal with too, because if the pattern is very old, as in, you learned in childhood that you should be seen and not heard or some other negating message, you’ll have to do some work on understanding where this comes from and changing your beliefs about what you deserve and what is possible. This takes some doing, but it’s so worth it!
Your stress levels have gotten out of hand, and you feel like you have to run to keep up with a fast-paced life over which you feel you have no control. This is extremely common in today’s world. There is so much to balance, and expectations of what we should be able to do (based on what other “non-us” people are doing) bombard us from all sides. Since you are a unique person with unique abilities and desires, much of this really makes no sense at all, but we take it on anyway. In this case, you need to give yourself permission to make your own decisions about what makes your life good; you then need to make a plan for how to rebalance based on this and carve out time to counteract any tendency you have to just churn and burn through every day without making conscious choices about what’s actually happening in the here and now—is it serving you and what you really want?
You’re a driven, goal-oriented, or very competitive person who genuinely loves getting things done, and ticking things off your list is part of what makes life fun. If this is you, you’re lucky to have consistent access to motivation, but it’s easy to burn yourself out to the point that this becomes essentially an addiction. You must take regular compensatory measures to counteract the effects of so much hard work. If it helps, you can add sleep, leisure activities, lazy family time, and alone time to your to-do list so you can acknowledge that recharging is still “doing” something very important. Notice what works here, what renews your sense of excitement at getting back to your tasks, and make sure that those are a consistent part of your schedule.
Life is complicated, and it’s often impossible to predict just how your days will go. We all get tired, overwhelmed, and disheartened sometimes, but if you start keeping an eye on why you’re doing what you’re doing and how consistently you’re at your best, you can begin to do a better job of recovering from overwhelm and predicting ways to create a better balance. Challenging yourself is often a good, inspiring thing. Consistently running yourself on unrealistic expectations, on the other hand, just produces disappointment, shame, and frustration. None of these will help you; motivating yourself with healthy vitality, balance, and inspiration will fuel your life beyond what you might believe to be possible.
Getting Off That Crazy Wheel
“Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.”
Most people I encounter these days feel as if they're always trying to do too much, that the world moves too fast, that they're always on the edge of falling behind and going under. We're a chronically overwhelmed culture. Now, get ready for a radical statement—part of the reason for this is that we ARE trying to do too much! When the sum total of everything you could be doing in any given moment is infinite, as it is in this age of "convenience," including 24/7 access to nearly all information ever collected, we suddenly need amazing focus and time management skills. And guess what? No one ever formally taught us any of these unless we grew up in a monastery, or with a parent with insanely effective natural organizational skills, in which case maybe we were lucky enough to have had mentors in these areas. Of course that's an exaggeration; you may have learned some excellent tidbits along these lines from any number of sources throughout your life, but it's a rare person who has been able to cobble together an effective set of strategies from these random references. The rest of us have to deal with the outrageous fortune that dumped an endless glut of opportunity in our laps, but with no way to turn off the fire hose when it all gets to be too much.
Since feeling chronically overwhelmed and ineffective doesn't feel like living a fulfilling life, we must find ways to do better. If you want to take back your life, it's time to get friendly with the concept of focus. There are two aspects I want to mention here: Inward focus and outward focus. The inward version is the one we practice in meditation when we observe our breathe or keep returning to a mantra—it's the ability to place our mind's awareness on, and continually bring it back to, a subject or a feeling of our choosing. Building this internal skill allows us to hone our capacity to spend time living in the calmest, best parts of ourselves, and therefore to have access to an ability to make the best possible choices, with the greatest possible sense of peace, in each moment. This is called sanity! Getting better at holding onto yours grants you a kind of personal power that's hard to describe, but imagine how great it would be to be able to choose your internal state more often than you react, automatically and without choice, to whatever assails you from your mental and emotional worlds.
The outward aspect of focus is the ability to deflect, in real time, distractions that bombard us from the outside world. Being able to do this efficiently all day long takes clarity (about your values and your purpose), intent, and relentless determination. While willpower is involved, a lot less of it is required when you've taken the time to write down your goals and priorities, and you remind yourself of them often so that in a moment of stress you can remember WHY a choice is right or wrong for you. Being clear about why you're choosing what you're choosing serves to inspire and galvanize you when you start to get confused. However, this constant decision making can still be exhausting when you have to do it all day! It's important to simplify where you can and find times each week when you can be restfully free of constant sifting and value judgments. This ability may also be hard to imagine, but I bet you've come across someone who seems able to stay functional even in the face of a whole lot of chaos, showing you that it is possible. If you have, think of that person as a model in this regard.
We also need those pesky time management skills mentioned above if we're going to succeed in getting things done when we choose to. These may include accurately estimating how long tasks will take, scheduling your time but not overscheduling yourself to the point where you burn out, transitioning between tasks in ways that assist you in refocusing, balancing your physical needs throughout the day so you don't crash, planning anew when things change so you can stay productive, managing your emotions when things aren't going your way, and others. Some of these you might already be good at, and some less so. When you think through the kinds of things that tend to stop you when you're working toward something you want, you'll probably be able to come up with your most likely challenges. Like all acquired skills, these take time to build, and you are a complex and ever-changing thing, so this work is never done. Choose just one or two of your personal challenges and start practicing improving your skills around them.
As you work, be patient with yourself. It's always annoying to feel like a beginner at something, but as I remind myself often, we've all been through the learning process many times. What feels painful and unlikely inevitably turns into something you can easily do on autopilot with practice. Over time, our capacities increase, and we can achieve heights that seemed vertigo inducing from former vantage points.
Whatever skills you think need your attention, there are probably lots of emotions, as well as habitual thoughts and negative self-talk, that come into play when they are challenged. This is where Tapping is absolutely brilliant in helping you to move through what's holding you back and come out the other side relieved—and often with new and revolutionary insights about why this thing has been hard for you and how that can change for you now. Humans are hard-wired to resist too much novelty because we have come to associate it with danger. You will always be working against the tendency toward caution because self-preservation is one of our most powerful drives. Dealing with the resistance that comes up when you attempt to make a change is a constant, never-ending process, so you might as well master techniques that can help you to do this quickly and with a sense of enjoyment and adventure. When you become comfortable with releasing unnecessary fear and immobility, the feeling of empowerment that results is amazing. I and my clients find this to be one of the best things about EFT/Tapping. Knowing that you can reduce your fear, overwhelm, and feelings of being stuck whenever you need to is truly something to be grateful for.
If you continue to work on your skills and your emotional management, you will eventually make progress. It may not be as rapid as you want, and it make take trials, errors, and seeming failures, but really, what's your alternative? We are evolutionary beings. We like to grow and test boundaries, even when doing so is scary. And human progress relies on our following this impulse. Failing to focus means that you will spend all your energy on recovery, and ultimately, that's not a lot of fun. This week, think about the ways in which you can work inward and outward focus, as well as better time management strategies, to create more available energy to feed into your goals and passions.
Clear the Decks!
“In the scope of a happy life, a messy desk or an overstuffed coat closet is a trivial thing, yet I find—and I hear from other people that they agree—that getting rid of clutter gives a disproportionate boost to happiness.”
Everyone who wants to learn how to maintain a high level of effectiveness in life must master the basics of organization. If you're not good at this and dread tackling the task of improving these skills, I hear you! It doesn't sound like fun to admit you're kind of a disaster in some ways, and to design systems you'll need to sink constant effort into if you want benefits. The first step in determining whether to focus on this is to admit and accept where you are versus where you'd like to be; if you're totally content with your level of success, well, more power to you! That's fantastic. For the rest of us, the question is, "Are there ways in which I could make more progress if I cleared the decks?" If your answer is yes, and you want progress, you have your answer.
Imagine for a moment that you had a clean, clutter-free environment in which to do your thing. What if you knew that you were all caught up with communication and any tasks that you owe to others? That would be a great feeling, right? I'm betting you'd feel more free to work on the next steps toward your goals, and a greater sense of enthusiasm. That would serve you well, particularly if you were able to maintain this consistently. So why don't you do what it takes to get here...? I have a few guesses:
- Overwhelm. You are literally trying to do too much, and you can't do any of it as effectively as you might if you learned to be more realistic with your time. See this article on time management. Challenge: Staying true to your most important values and getting comfortable with saying no to what is not yours to do. This might sound easy. It's usually not!
- As mentioned, putting kick-a$$ organizational systems in place that you will adhere to over the long term sounds like a drag. Challenge: Make it more palatable by enlisting the help of a friend who loves to organize, or hire a professional to help you get set up with what you need. Remind yourself that life requires maintenance of numerous kinds, and this is one of them. Do you need to eat every day? Pretty much. Do you need to exercise regularly to stay healthy? Yup. Do you need to clear the decks continually as clutter piles up? Yes. Yes you do.
- You're avoiding something that's buried in those disorganized piles, or harsh judgments you might make about yourself along the way if you confronted them—or you're avoiding having the time and space to work on what you really want because of fears connected with your concepts of success and failure. Challenge: Allow yourself to see what your resistance is really about. Then be willing to do the work it will take to reduce it and increase your enthusiasm for the tasks ahead.
Does creating space for your own successful functioning take effort? Why yes! But if you want to spend your time on what you choose and create results, you need this effort. You want this effort, because you want these results! You can work on this a little at a time. In fact, if you want to go the distance, you'll need to get into the habit of small, but constant, daily efforts. It may seem unsustainable at first to add yet another task to your list, but over time, this is a habit that will create more energy than it burns. As with anything, you gain confidence and efficiency through practice and small victories. When you get good at this, and you're not getting tripped up by so much visual noise and other distractions, you'll be free to build momentum that will be hard to stop—and that's when life gets exciting!
Jumping Off the Hamster Wheel
“To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.”
If you've been reading my blogs for a while, you know that I'm all about helping you find ways to dial down stress. This week, we'll look at the importance of making choices that are right for you despite the lure of endless possibilities. Living in a world with 24/7 access to electric lights and incessant information means that we know there's always something we could be doing. That can be overwhelming, and some people feel this as a constant. Combine that feeling with the Puritanical ideals of our country's European settlers, which became a part of the fabric of our collective philosophy, and you have a culture-wide tendency to believe that if we can be doing something, then we must. Anything else makes us lazy, selfish, and useless. This is a recipe for anxiety; it will erode your happiness and physical health more insidiously than almost anything else you can experience. No one wants that, but how do you halt this cycle when so many options and imperatives are always staring you in the face?
First, let me acknowledge that this is difficult. Options, information, and entertainment are fun to play with, and therefore hard to put down at the best of times. Also, if you believe that opportunity is obligation, then your self-image will suffer when you take time away from attending to the constant requests of people and advertisers that will assail you throughout your waking hours, never mind the things you'd like to be doing to address your own priorities. Then there are any frantic mental habits you inherited from family and others before you were old enough to notice. This constant stimulation gets your mind into the habit of racing, and then it takes serious effort to retrain it to allow some empty space and relaxation to permeate.
When there's an abundance of anything, whether information or food or opportunity, maintaining health and balance requires that we learn to set boundaries. We need some hard stops that will carve out appropriate time for sleep, exercise, healthy eating, and leisure. Those can be planned and tinkered with until they seem optimal in the grand scheme of your life, your needs and your desires. The trickier boundaries to set and police are those that will keep you functioning well when unexpected circumstances arise. These you need to brainstorm on the fly. Learning to do this well is a constantly evolving effort, since we change throughout life, and in small ways each day. It's more art than science, and only you can really know how well it's working for you at any given time. If you're constantly exhausted, resentful, or frustrated, it's not! So where does one start when it's clear that better boundaries are necessary?
There's a concept in Qi Gong, a Chinese healing art, that one should never do anything to more than 70 percent of one's capacity. Reserving 30 percent at all times means that there's leftover energy at the end of the day. You're not collapsing into sleep desperate for regeneration without which you cannot function; instead, you just need small adjustments to keep you in balance, and your sleep can regenerate you more deeply on all levels as well as build yin—energy reserves and power. Then, when you go through any periods of high activity, you can get through them in better shape. You'll have to rebuild your yin later to replace the overage you've used, but you are not a mess if you have to overextend yourself somewhat. If you encounter a health challenge when you're in the habit of reserving your 30 percent, you'll be able to bounce back from it more easily, and that's obviously very important to your quality of life.
Some other keys for learning to set appropriate boundaries:
- Write out and read daily two lists: Your goals and your highest values. Both help you to work out your long-term plans, and to make those on-the-fly decisions about when to say yes and when to pass. These decisions are subjective. If you don't have a strong commitment to your plans and values, you'll flounder more than is necessary when faced with a choice.
- Remember that no one can do everything that sounds interesting in any given lifetime. Focus on doing the things that seem most right for your interests and abilities (while remaining creative about workarounds and breakthroughs where you identify limits). Revel in how these things are yours, and make you unique and wonderful!
- Just because someone wants something from you doesn't mean you need to say yes to the request. If you're afraid of what will happen if you say no, you may need to work on your communication skills, your list of priorities, or your self-esteem. This last one is a long-term project in most cases, but every day is a good day to start. In order to set appropriate boundaries, you have to see your own life as valuable, just as much as everyone else's. If you're not sure what to do here, get help from a book, class, or specialist.
- Start to watch for beliefs that keep you stuck and challenge them. This takes some doing, but once you decide to notice your thoughts, you'll begin to become aware of them--whenever you feel frustrated or irritable, that's a great time to ask yourself what you were just thinking. Very often those thoughts will comprise some destructive beliefs that are sabotaging you. The stories we tell ourselves, when they're fatalistic (suggesting we are powerless to change our conditions) or negative in ways that trigger and prolong old, outdated patterns, have a huge effect on what's possible for us. Once you know your patterns, you can work on untying those old knots and freeing up powerful stores of energy for whatever you choose. I'll write more about what to do to change old beliefs in the future (and you can bet it will include using some EFT!) but the first step is noticing what's happening and being aware of what you'd like to change.
You will be most successful, and most able to help others, when you know how to live in balance. It's no good to anyone if you're chronically exhausted or overwhelmed and cranky. When you prioritize your own health, you are a living example of principles that can help everyone around you. No one else can do this for you, because no one else has first-hand knowledge of what you need. A willingness to set appropriate boundaries is an essential step in fostering your balance, happiness, and ability to be the best of yourself every day.
Never Enough Time!
“Time abides long enough for those who make use of it.”
Since I know I’m not the only one who often feels that there just aren’t enough hours in the day, I thought I’d write this week about how to cope with that feeling of “never enough time.” Because we live in a fast-paced and complex world, I don’t think this issue is going anywhere anytime soon, so we might as well find ways to cope with the constant pull toward busy-ness and the limitations of our daily 24 hours. For much of human history, things were different; before the advent of electric lights, the period of daylight marked the limits of productive time, but now that we can work around the clock, finding balance in our use of time has taken on a whole new dimension of complexity.
I’ve heard it said that the only truly limited resource is time; yet our experience of time can be so different from moment to moment—even our relationship to something so inevitable is not an intractable, hopeless case in which nothing can improve. Here are some ideas for adding more space into your dance partnership with time.
· Tap! Using EFT really is the most effective way I know to introduce more of a sense of calm about what is on your plate. If you’re someone who tends to live on the edge of overwhelm a lot, you might need to make a regular practice of this for a while to really see the results you want. Use it throughout the day whenever tension starts to rise, and eventually you’ll find that your responses to life events and task lists will be less intense. You’ll build an ability to stay out of crisis mode when the situation doesn’t warrant it. Our perception is shaped by our emotions, thoughts, and beliefs; when you can sustain more positive internal states, everything can feel less dire and positive change can seem much more possible.
· Breathe. Remembering to breathe deeply as often as you can, really expanding the belly as you do so, is a quick way to calm your body and mind and refresh every cell with more oxygen than you’d otherwise be getting. If you’re not breathing well, you’re not going to have nearly as much energy as you could with just a little extra effort in this area. It’s fast! It’s free! There’s no downside.
· Know that living with a certain tension in your relationship with time is a normal part of living the human experience. Everyone who has ever lived has had to contend with this. Much remains mysterious as far as why sometimes a vacation day can seem long and lazy, or sometimes it can seem to fly by in two blinks of an eye when you’re doing essentially all the same things. Some days you accomplish far more than you thought you would. Other days, it’s a struggle to do anything at all. All of this is normal, so don’t beat yourself up about it.
· But also know that as with any area of life, with attention and experimentation, you can find ways of handling it that will be more helpful for your unique personality and needs. You can also learn a great deal from others by reading, listening to podcasts, taking workshops, etc. You might want to go reread my previous blog on time management here for some immediate ideas on that subject. As you become comfortable with some best practices for organizing and focusing your efforts, you will find that getting more done for yourself is a less mysterious process. It might take some doing, but you’ll be able to set yourself up to really leverage the time you have when you need to. Still, accept that you’ll experience an ebb and flow in your experience of time, allow yourself to reschedule when you need to, and just keep moving.
· Learn how to say no if you’re bad at it. There is only a certain amount that you will be able to accomplish in a day, and if you’re never leaving enough time to take care of your own needs and goals, you will always feel frustrated to some extent. Saying no is a skill like any other, and it can be learned and mastered. It may not only require making a new decision and practicing, though. Often the reason we say yes to more than is healthy or realistic is that we’ve been taught, through direct teaching or through experience, that this is what it takes to be a good person, to get love, and to be safe. Again, EFT can be incredibly helpful in making change more comfortable by helping you to more easily transform and let go of fears that are keeping you stuck in place.
· Build some time into your schedule for physical activity. Yes, this requires an investment of time, but eventually it will create more energy, enthusiasm, and well-being than it uses up. Similarly, you need nutritious food, clean water, and a reasonable amount of sleep each night to function effectively. If you’re not getting these basics, you’re always going to feel like you’re behind the ball.
· Ask for help when you need it. You may not always get exactly what you wanted, but if you don’t ask, you’re definitely going to be stuck doing much of your task list on your own. If you don’t have anyone to ask for help in your immediate vicinity, there are lots of people you can connect with online who might be willing to barter services if you can’t pay for help.
· Learn to cultivate gratitude for what’s going well in your life. Spending more time appreciating the good has a calming influence. This can help you to be less frantic about making progress, and thus more discerning about what’s really necessary or important for you to do. Maybe there are a bunch of things on your mental to-do list that you could get rid of completely, or put off because they’re not essential at the moment. Panic ensues from an inability to prioritize, and then it perpetuates a vicious cycle, because when you’re panicked, you can’t think clearly. Keep breathing and coming back to appreciation for what’s good already.
· Make sure you’re reminding yourself somehow about your goals every day. That also will help you to stay on track and resist the temptation to scatter your attention on things that don’t advance what’s most important to you.
· Celebrate what you have accomplished. It’s helpful to write down positive actions you took every day before bed, as that helps you to give yourself proper credit for all the good work you did. It’s also fun to look back at this later and see what you’ve been able to achieve, and this is a great way to build your confidence in your own abilities. Even if it’s only one thing per day, you’ll see that you’re making progress little by little, and everything counts—did you manage to make better food choices? Did you handle a recurring situation better than you have in the past? Did you realize something new that will help you in the future? Celebrate it all.
I hope these ideas help you to find more peace in your relationship to time. This is a huge subject, and one in which we continue to learn and grow for a lifetime, so we’re just focusing on some basics here. Time will always be, in important ways, a limiting factor, but it is possible to grow in your contentment with natural rhythms; you can learn to enjoy getting done what you can and then reverting to rest and renewal before doing it all again.
The Parade Approaches
“I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up—they have no holidays.”
It’s November 1st, and we might as well acknowledge that the holiday season is upon us, love it or hate it! Many of the world’s most prominent religions celebrate important holidays in the course of the next two months, and while this means something different to each of us, there are commonalities. We’re likely to be busier than usual with social engagements. We may travel to be with loved ones at the most traffic-jammed times. We may be planning to host festivities, and be preparing for both fun and lots of unusual tasks and people underfoot. We may be feeling trepidation about spending time with people who we don’t really enjoy. Dreading seeing (or being!) that crazy uncle, or difficult memories from prior years. Most families, and groups of friends, experience plenty of love and fun, and also inevitable complexity. It’s a mixed bag of joy and obligation. Strap in. It’s on!
If you love it, you still need to remind yourself to take time to breathe, rest, and rejuvenate periodically throughout the coming weeks. As the calendar year draws to a close, it’s a natural time to start reflecting on what happened this year and start envisioning what we might like to work toward and experience in the new year. Don’t miss this moment, this opportunity. If there’s no contemplation at this time, you’re more likely to ring in the new year with a scattered, frantic, overstressed desire to turn back to and turn up the volume on your routine and your own personal priorities, and this can escalate into poorly chosen New Year’s resolutions; if we try to legislate ourselves into unrealistic changes, we end up disappointed and demoralized. I think it’s a much better policy to make resolutions throughout the year as needed—when we’re in a calm, centered state and we can choose sustainable plans that support our deepest desires and purpose. But if you must jump on the resolution bandwagon in January, you’ll do a much better job of it if you allowed yourself some room to breathe and reflect in November and December.
In order to really be present and drink in the enjoyment of the moments with loved ones that we’ll be given, that same allowance of breath and self-care is important. If you’re going like a speeding Mack truck for months at a time, running on too little sleep and no personal downtime, you’re more likely to resent what you give to others, and more likely to be a little irritable all throughout. If you’re not getting in a few workouts per week of whatever variety works for you, you won’t feel vital and healthy as you pile on the extra busy-ness. Instead, you’ll end up feeling slower, heavier, and you’ll likely have a harder time managing stress. If you’re not planning healthy meals among the indulgences, you’ll become nutritionally depleted to some extent, which will impact your stamina for the worse. If you’re giving no thought to your internal world, you’re likely to let your own needs go for too long before you tune in and rebalance, and it’s when we’re out of balance that we’re more vulnerable to getting hit with colds or the flu. You can’t party if you’re coughing and sneezing up a storm! To keep yourself in the game, start thinking now about how you can reserve at least some time every week for catching up on your own rest and other physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs.
If you tend not to enjoy this time of year, now’s the time to give some thought to why that is. Make sure you’re clear about the factors in play and see if you can proactively address at least some of them in a new way.
· If you tend to overschedule yourself, block out time every week that’s for your relaxation and catching up on things so you don’t have to feel so overwhelmed, and don’t compromise it!
· Build in time doing, watching, or listening to things that make you laugh. This helps in regaining perspective, plus it’s really good for you!
· If you like to give gifts but tend to procrastinate and make yourself miserable, put time on your calendar starting now so you can spread this out over time and enjoy it more.
· If there’s someone you dread seeing, enlist the help of someone else who knows how you feel, and brainstorm about how you might improve the encounter. Ask for help from someone who might be willing to run interference, for instance. Read up on ways to communicate more effectively. Don’t just tell yourself that nothing can be done! You might find ways to make everyone more comfortable so that more good times can be had by all.
· If you tend to feel down at this time of year because of unhappy memories, or the anniversary of a sad event, plan ways to honor how you feel, and again, get help if you need it. There are lots of people who have this kind of experience at this time of year; those people can understand much of what you’re going through. You don’t have to go it alone, and that’s not a healthy thing to try to do. Seek the help of a professional or find a support group or a friend who can listen when you need some caring attention.
· EFT/Tapping can be a great help in getting your true feelings up and out in a productive way, and in restoring your calm as challenges come up. If you haven’t taken the time to learn the basics, now is a great time to do it! Don’t wait until you desperately need it to get comfortable with this simple yet very powerful tool.
Perhaps you’ve noticed I’m suggesting that you work to become conscious of where the pitfalls are, and map a route around or over them rather than just allowing them to take over again this season, whatever they may be for you. Sometimes it takes time to improve your experience, but if you just keep inching forward, it can be done.
There are wonderful opportunities for enjoyment and fulfillment during this season. Take some time before things kick into high gear to look around and remember what tends to go wrong and plan for the things you’d like to go right. Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan, but why not give yourself an advantage and see what happens? Time with family and friends is precious, and it deserves the same kind of care and attention we would give to any important goal or endeavor. When you turn your conscious attention on something and pursue it with clear intent, chances are you will improve it. I’ll be cheering you on! I wish you happiness in all your holiday festivities and solemnities, and I hope that the remainder of 2016 is filled with blessings for you and those you love.