Chasing Your Tail?

“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”

— Marilyn vos Savant

Do you ever find yourself asking, “Why does this keep happening to me?”  If so, you’re in good company!  You may have encountered this kind of confusion many times.  We all get stuck sometimes in patterns that aren’t helpful, but also aren’t easy to solve.  You may have no idea what’s going on, or you may know exactly what the problem is and feel powerless to change your outcome.  Assuming that you want to start getting better results when this is your complaint, read on.  We’ll look at how to break out of a persistent pattern and move toward happier developments.

When you feel stuck, you’re probably also feeling frustration, anger, sadness, pessimism or hopelessness.  Since good ideas don’t usually pop up in the midst of strong negative emotions, it’s best to work on changing your emotional state before working on your issue.  You might do this by venting how you feel in any number of ways (writing it all down, talking with a friend who won’t mind hearing your tale of woe, working out to let off steam, etc.), or by just getting your mind off the subject for a while.  If you’re tired, hungry, or thirsty, you may need to address those physical needs too.  At a time when you can feel fresh physically, mentally, and emotionally, you’re more likely to be able to take a good look at what has happened or is happening with curiosity and openness to new insights and ideas.

When you’re ready, here are the steps I recommend for moving yourself forward.

1. Start with your mind, as it helps to figure out what your level of clarity is before troubleshooting.  Think through your pattern and how it tends to show up in your life.  How have the circumstances played out over time?  Have recent experiences been very similar to those further in the past, or are they different lately?  Have you made any progress at all on the issue?  Can you see any way at all in which you may be contributing to the problem?  Treat this like a full-on investigation—feel free to enlist the help of a supportive friend and really get your Sherlock on.  Sometimes telling someone else about all the times something similar has occurred gives you a chance to have your experience validated as unusual, which can help you feel like it’s not just all in your head.  Sometimes it’s just helpful to have someone there to help as you think about your problem, and bring a different perspective to illuminate aspects you might have missed. 

This is a good time to brainstorm, meaning to toss around any wild idea that comes to mind about what’s happening and why, and then try it on to see whether it seems to have any merit.  Trying to exaggerate, get creative, and make things outrageous to the point of silliness (without judging yourself) brings in an element of fun, which helps you to remember this is not the only thing in your life, and it may be possible to change things for the better.

2. Hopefully, you now have some clarity about what you know.  If this is a case where you know exactly what the problem is and have some ideas about how change it, but you feel a lack of confidence or an unwillingness to try your best options, skip to #3.  On the other hand, if you still feel thoroughly confused, it’s now time to find an expert.  You can run an online search for information about your problem and see who has experience with this, and who’s offering information about it.  You can visit a library or bookstore and see what information is available there.  You could find a support group for people with a similar problem, and see if anyone there has valuable insight for you.  You could talk to a coach or psychologist or religious counselor, depending on the nature of your issue, and see whether that helps you to gain clarity about your options.  Once you have a better idea of how others have dealt with your issue, you should have some ideas about possible steps to take.

3. If the thought of taking any of the steps that would be part of your best ideas makes you want to have a meltdown, you need to go back to physical needs (do you need hydration or nutrition, sleep, exercise, stretching, or other attention to your physical body?)  You don’t have to be in perfect condition to move forward, but if any of those physical needs is very loud, you’ll do better to address it first so you’re not distracted.  Once those are taken care of, it’s time to look at your emotional state. 

How you feel is a powerful indicator of other factors that might hold you back if not given some air time.  You can want to make progress all you want with your mind, but if some part of you is afraid to because of previous experiences or outsized worries, you’re going to have a hard time getting anywhere.  We’re so often taught by well-meaning mentors that we must ignore and power through fears and other emotions, but I find that emotions are often there for good reason.  They may hold important information that can help us understand how to proceed in the most efficient way for our unique needs.

This is where the use of EFT can really save the day.  If emotions come up when you consider taking some reasonable step toward a solution, Tapping can help you to get clear on why you feel the way you do; it can then help you to release the fear or other emotion that is keeping you feeling stuck.  I’m not suggesting that this is a one-time endeavor, because change is often difficult, demanding, and scary.  Emotional management is a crucial component in maintaining motivation and effective action at all times.  A persistent fear, for instance, might be difficult or impossible to completely remove from your experience, but having a tool like EFT makes it much easier to keep coming back to a calm, more resourceful state; with it, you can take useful messages from your emotions and settle them with reassurance rather than ignoring or trying to dominate them out of existence.

4. Take action on some of those good ideas you came up with in other steps.  There’s no substitute for experience and the feedback it results in.  Keep reminding yourself that any change requires practice; your new action may not be a comfortable tool to use at will until you’ve experimented with it numerous times.  You will probably make mistakes, or find some of the shortcomings of your new policy, and you will need to start back at #1 with anything that doesn’t work for reasons you can’t quite make out. 

Then, rinse and repeat.  Your life is unique, and solutions that are right for you may not be such that you can copy them directly from others.  It may take a lot of experimentation and refinement to find what works best for you.  That’s normal and ok.  Only you can decide how to best be yourself!  You get to choose how to express who you want to be in every moment, and that’s a privilege.  It’s one of the exciting things about being alive.  The willingness to concentrate on and truly observe your own life and experience makes understanding and innovation possible.  If you want a life that is more to your liking, getting there must involve focus and observation—bringing your desires into being requires that you first notice what is true for you and what you want.  While not everything can be solved with the mind, it is our best tool for beginning the process of appropriate and fulfilling change.  I challenge you to start paying attention to what you’re not enjoying in life, and activate the power of your curiosity.

Silence Is Golden

“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”

— Buddha

Even if you’ve never meditated, you’ve probably heard that one of the benefits of many kinds of meditation practice is supposed to be a quieter mind.  Since most cultures today place great value on the use of the mind, the benefits of a quiet mind can seem mysterious.  Use it or lose it, right?  Aren’t we supposed to be exercising our minds in order to stretch their capacities and keep them nimble?  Well, just as our bodies need both weight-bearing exercise, cardio, stretching, AND rest in order to function at peak capacity, our minds need various kinds of use and rest in order to provide us with the capacities we want from them. 

Modern life is so hectic, demanding, and distracting that we don’t generally get much time for silence and reflection.  This leaves is with a mind that is mostly running at high speed all the time.  With a mind so busily engaged, it’s harder to notice the patterns that are running on autopilot, keeping us stuck in ruts that we never seem to be able to break out of for reasons that elude us.  When we put ourselves into a situation where nothing is required of us, and practice meditation with the aim of quieting the mind, we allow the mind to rest a bit; by the way, this in turn allows the body’s stress response to calm down, which is great for physical health—a bonus side effect!  While it definitely takes practice to make progress in disengaging from normal patterns of thought, so that benefits may not be immediately felt, over time, it’s possible to build familiarity with new mind states.  This familiarity makes it easier to take them with you, or recreate them when you’re experiencing something difficult, so that you can function more smoothly throughout your life.  A hyper mind isn’t necessarily a resourceful mind, just as a chronically tense muscle isn’t always useful—it needs to be able to relax and stretch in order to do everything it’s meant to do. 

When you’re meditating for the ability to quiet the mind, there are numerous benefits that I know I immediately experience, and you may as well, such as:

·      As I head toward greater quiet, my mind will usually chime in a few times to reveal things I need to do or remember, which is legitimately helpful.  I can make note of these and continue the process.  Without giving myself a few minutes of quiet, I would not have remembered these, and opportunities would have been lost.

·      As my mind slows down, I become more aware of my body, and anything about it that I need to address. 

·      I start to notice more about what is really going on with me, how I really feel about things that have been going on recently in my life.  I begin to feel more like myself and less like someone just running around at the behest of every distracting thing I encounter every day.

·      I begin to feel that there’s more time available to me than I would otherwise. 

·      I begin to feel calmer, more at peace, and more powerfully able to define what’s important and where I will choose to put my energy and focus.

·      I feel more in touch with my intuition.

·      My body feels more pleasantly calm and peaceful.

·      I feel like my to do list falls away and I’m able to recognize the goodness of just being alive, which at this point is much more a feeling than a thought.

Once you’ve practiced an expanded state of mental quiet, there are many other meditation techniques to pursue depending on what you want, but being able to create that quiet space is a foundational skill without which only certain kinds of progress can be made.  This state also becomes something you can remind yourself to revert to when you find yourself getting hyper for any reason.  It can immediately help you to regain helpful perspective on the ways in which you may have been contributing to your own stress.  Bringing a greater sense of calm to challenge allows you to stay more creative, less reactive, and more reasonable.  You’re then more likely to be able to solve problems and work well with others, which makes you less likely to spend your time feeling stuck and confused.

In a seemingly unlikely way, spending time creating mental quiet leads to greater focus and energy, which can make it seem like you have more time rather than having lost it in the pursuit.  Even if you don’t think you can spend more than a few minutes practicing, you can still benefit from the attempt to create a few minutes of internal quiet throughout your day here and there.  I highly recommend making this a little game that you play with yourself.  You may have other mental games you already play, like doing crossword puzzles.  This is just another category of game that builds capacity your brain needs to function with excellence.

Girl Power!

“Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.”

— Margaret Fuller

I have a beef with a lot of the language I hear out there in the motivation and personal development arenas. There are many wonderful teachers giving their all and providing excellent information.  However, too often I find the available advice to be heavily skewed toward that which boils down to exhortations to students to man up, stop whining, and just do it, whatever the "it" of the moment may be. 

We all have access to both masculine and feminine energy and wisdom, but because the past two thousand years or so have been a time of dominance of masculine energy, experience, and thinking, most of us alive now have all been taught that action and tangible results are what matter in life. The measure of success during this time has been how much wealth one could amass (whether or not one had any plan for actually utilizing it) and how much power and influence one could gain over others.  Not to say that the desire to gain rewards is bad or that masculine energy is no good!  It can be a very helpful and motivating thing to enjoy achievement, rewards, and the process of earning a place of respect in the world.  Masculine energy, and men, have a unique and important viewpoint to contribute that is 50% of the necessary picture.  But we've been severely out of balance with the feminine energy side of things, which would vote that rewards not be gained at the expense of others' rights, health, and safety; that wealth be used to improve daily life for self and community rather than being endlessly hoarded as a symbol of self-importance; that those who are not the most competitive, aggressive high achievers still have inestimable value that may reveal itself through states of being rather than states of doing.

Through my experiences with clients and my own personal work, I have found that the reasons behind the difficulties most people have in creating the success they want generally lie in accumulated pain and in fear, rather than in laziness or weakness.  They don't need to be shamed into action, particularly since shame is a poor motivator—it may spur someone to temporary action, but it's likely to leave him more demoralized than when he started once any challenge appears to block his wave of progress.  We don't need to be whipped into a panicked frenzy about how little time we have to spend on this planet through rallying cries like, "You can sleep when you're dead!"  Instead, we need to learn motivation techniques that are self-perpetuating, those that have a tendency to build momentum over time; such techniques are built around positive feelings like fun, appreciation, and the satisfaction of personal values.  If we try to power our dreams and goals on shame or frenzy, we inevitable burn out, because prolonged exposure to these feelings steals energy rather than creating it.  A few people may continue to pick themselves up and keep going through cycles of ultra-high activity and demoralizing crashes, but for most people, the extreme swings that mark the reality of this paradigm are not helpful or productive.

In pursuing what you truly want, here's what I suggest to help you bring the power of the feminine viewpoint into play:

·      When envisioning a goal, start with the ideal, whether or not it seems attainable. Then, work forward from where you are now and backward from where you want to be to come up with a sequence of steps to get there.  This is essential work, but also, know that the roadmap you're creating is just a draft that you're likely to revise many times unless the goal is very simple.  Avoid becoming rigid about adhering to your plan, and attempt to remain open and curious.  Curiosity is an aspect of feminine energy.

·      Keep in mind that even a master in a given field doesn't know everything, and must constantly adjust plans in order to stay on course as life throws curveballs.  Get used to the idea that flexibility is an absolutely necessary life skill, and challenge yourself to build this capacity little bits at a time.  For example, you might want to rehearse a sequence of supportive thoughts that you can bring to bear when something unexpected happens.  Then, when you’re interrupted or required to reconsider your course, you have that thought string to fall back on to help you remember that this is not a disaster.  Compassion for the self and others is a gift of feminine energy.

·      Make space for your intuition, by which I mean the mysterious gifts of your unconscious mind's workings, your connection with and experiences with others, and your connection with the divine if that's something you believe in.  This is a huge area, but one worth investing in in whatever way you are inspired to do so.  Many of the world's most creative and prolific artists and inventors have powered their plans with ideas that seem to flow to them effortlessly in odd moments.  We can all learn to be more open to such processes.  Intuition is one of the superpowers of the feminine, and we can all learn to make use of it.

·      Make sure you think about how your values underlie the goals you pursue. If your goal is not truly an expression of your highest values, achieving it will be unsatisfying.  Take time to really listen to what’s in your heart about what brings you joy.  Creating harmony with the self, as well as with others, is a feminine-energy strength.

·      As long as you take time to celebrate and feel good about your small victories, making progress can and should be fun.  Most people almost never stop and appreciate what has gone well and the small achievements they’ve made within a larger process.  In failing to do so, they leave a huge source of daily happiness and renewal on the table.  If you’re not having fun, you need to focus more on why you want to achieve your goal, and how great it will feel when you do.  It’s fine to acknowledge that you’re not sure how you’re going to find your way to success, but then it’s time to get off that topic and get back to feeling great about where you’ve decided to go.  This greatly contributes to the creation of positive motivation and energy, and should be part of your daily routine.  Fun and playfulness are some of feminine energy’s greatest strengths.

·      If you feel stuck, it may be because you’re struggling with one of your emotions; try actually allowing yourself to be open to any messages that the emotion has for you.  Even the most unpleasant emotions have wisdom to offer if we’re willing to listen for it.  Talk out or write down what you’re feeling.  You may uncover something that you’ve been afraid to admit, but is your truth at the moment.  If you try to sweep all your emotions under the rug, you’re wasting a lot of energy, because it takes effort to keep them under there.  If you let them come up and examine them, you get that energy back, and you can apply it to whatever you want.  You get even more energy back if you’re willing to actually feel those feelings so they can be released and transformed.  Again, ask for help from a professional if you’re stuck.  Refusing to acknowledge emotions is not a sign of strength, it’s a sign of fear, and if indulged, it will lead to brittleness and eventual meltdowns.  The willingness to confront your personal truths is one of the feminine aspects of courage.

Here are some of the ways in which it's ok to be uncomfortable as you work toward the fruition of your best ideas:

·      Say you find that the next step of your roadmap requires that you learn something that's not fun or natural for you.  Does this mean that you're on the wrong track?  No!  It means that you were not born knowing how to do everything that life requires.  Welcome to life on planet Earth!  It's usually best to get a basic grounding in the skills you need, even if you decide to find or hire help with that skill going forward.  You don't have to master every skill, but you need to know enough to be able to supervise or partner with others effectively.  Learning something brand new is uncomfortable, but this discomfort is just part of the process of growth.  Flexibility is a feminine aspect of power.

·      Working toward a big goal can be frightening.  You may need to grow into a more expanded, more competent person in order to get to it, and you may wonder if you can, or even should, do this.  After all, who will you be then?  What will you have to give up?  Will you like yourself?  Will your loved ones still like you?  How will you cope?  If you're confronting issues of identity, but your goal is something you really want, don't be afraid to get help from a friend, a psychological professional, or a coach in finding a way through your dilemma.  If you don't resolve your conflict, you're likely to encounter resistance from your unconscious mind.  This can take the form of all kinds of obstacles, from illness or injury to confusion and lethargy to fears that stop you in your tracks.  Your subconscious mind is the more feminine-energy part of your mind.  It’s also a much bigger, more influential part of your mind, so you might as well learn to work with it rather than against it.

·      You may worry about how your life will change if you do reach your goal. What if people criticize you?  What if you get a lot of unwanted attention?  Or you might just worry that you won't be able to make it happen at all.  Either way, you need a constructive way to deal with worries and fears.  There may be past experiences and traumas you need to heal.  As usual, I will recommend EFT/Tapping here.  It's a fantastic tool for helping you to calm yourself down and regain perspective so that you can go about your business resourcefully.  When we act in states of fear, we have less brain power at our disposal, less access to our creativity, and often less physical coordination.  When we act from a sense of confidence, we tend to have a much better experience.  It’s worth some effort to change your emotional, mental, and physical state before making decisions or putting plans into action.  Healing is one of feminine energy’s superpowers.

·      You may encounter the negativity and naysaying of others.  While this can be hurtful, no one but you has the right to decide what is appropriate, or possible, for you.  Even if Negative Nellie has your best interests at heart, she is not the boss of you!  Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do something when you feel deep down that it's part of your life's purpose to try.  Find more positive people to support you, and work on your own resistance to negativity.  Rehearse saying something like, "Thank you for caring about me.  I'll think about about what you've said."  Then proceed to make whatever you believe is the best decision for yourself.  People often think they’re protecting us by discouraging us from endeavors that seem dangerous to them, even if their fears are based in their own personal issues that have nothing at all to do with you.  It’s up to you to decide what’s worth your time and effort.  Feminine energy can be stubborn, and this can be a good thing!

·      Making mistakes and failing at attempts feels bad.  It won't generally kill you, though, and through these experiences, we often learn the most valuable lessons about how to get where we want to go in ways that we won't ever forget.  Take the time to review what went wrong, talk it over with someone you respect, and put your new awareness to use going forward.  The more comfortable you become with the idea that you will sometimes fail, the less likely you'll be to freak out and quit—and the more you'll learn over time.  You'll also end up with terrific stories, which will make you a more entertaining human being.  Everyone wins!  Being able to laugh at oneself and the absurdities of life is another aspect of feminine power. 

 I hope you can now see that the more feminine-energy parts of you that may resist forward motion have valuable gifts to offer you if you pay attention, instead of trying to trample them under a stampede of frenzied, oblivious action.  By all means, get inspired by the ideas of making great contributions and reaping spectacular rewards, but please don't allow anyone to convince you that you should ignore 50% of your own available wisdom.  When you’re uncomfortable, allow yourself to pay attention to what’s going on, and write it out or verbalize it so you can decide whether there’s an important message in your resistance.  Even if not, it’s best to find a way to care for the resistant parts of you rather than forcing yourself to soldier on despite your discomfort.  Fear is a part of life, but there are things you can do to dial it down in a loving, compassionate way and get out of the fearful perspective without self-judgment.  Once you do, you’ll be more likely to succeed and more able to enjoy the journey to everything you want.  What’s stopping you from making the progress you want?  Go ahead, write it down and see if there’s a helpful message in there for you!

We're Not Gonna Take It!

“Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.”

— Saadi

This week, I’ll be addressing a subject that is right up there with politics and religious debates in its ability to annoy just about everyone:  The virtues of patience.  Now, before you run screaming and try to pretend you didn’t even read this far, let me assure you that this blog post won’t be about trying to make you feel bad for not having any.  I hope it will give you a few new angles from which to consider the concept of patience.

Let’s start by addressing the opposite, which is, I think, far more familiar to most of us leading a typical modern life.  Things are hectic and we’re trying to balance so many different parts of life and self all the time.  This is demanding and difficult.  Here are some specific thoughts on why we tend to spend so much time in some variation of this state:

·      With the advent of hyper-connectivity, we are constantly aware of hordes of other people anytime we glance at one of the many screens to which we have access.  We can see what millions of other people are thinking, doing, and achieving at the click of just a few buttons.  It can seem like others have a lot more of the good stuff in life than we do, at least if their own narratives are to be believed.  Those who are at all competitive may feel the need to do more in order to keep up at every turn.

·      The world seems a lot more crowded than it used to because of the constant crush of new information.  With all the people out there doing things, it seems less likely that what we have have to contribute will be seen, acknowledged, and valued.  Before the free flow of information was possible, you could be a major contributor in any market by following rules that had been in place for thousands of years in business interactions. Now the rules have changed almost overnight, and continue to evolve at a rapid pace.

·      We need a great deal of flexibility and a willingness to learn constantly in order to succeed now. Until you become comfortable with always being in flux, which may take time to learn, all your discomfort might build up in ways that boil over and stop your momentum until you can regroup.

·      The world population is growing at unprecedented rates. If you're paying attention, you notice that there are new and worrisome problems connected with this change for which we don't currently have solutions. 

·      In many places, there are more people on the roads and riding public transportation than ever before, as well as in lines at supermarkets and other necessary stopping points. It can seem like everything is more difficult and time consuming because of the crowds everywhere you turn.

So what is this mythical thing called patience?  There's a cultural idea many of us have inherited that tells us patience is a virtue of the very good, and very boring.  Patience is not fiery or exciting, and we're often told that people need to be a hot, brightly burning mess in order to get anything great done.  We’re given examples of all the great artists who lived hard and flamed out early.  Well, that might be fine if you knew what you were passionate about early in life and had the means to pursue it; on the other hand, what if you'd like to live past the age of 30 and have the option to continue learning and doing new things as you go?  You’re going to have to last and be able to keep yourself moving.  There will always be ample reasons to be impatient in this fast-paced world, but impatience is not a fun or creative state to be in. Because it destroys our ability to apply ourselves in a focused manner over time, mastering impatience is necessary if we want to achieve anything that requires consistent effort.

I like to think of patience as the ability to wait for glorious results and enjoy the work you need to do all along the way to achieve your goals, avoiding having a meltdown that stops your progress anytime something real or imaginary gets in your way. When I put it this way, it probably sounds pretty reasonable and necessary, right?  I think the idea that being a patient person means being either deeply, impossibly good or passionless really needs to go!

Here are a few ideas for increasing your capacity for patience, broken out into the areas of self that is involved. Since most cultures today emphasize the mind, the mental solutions may seem more familiar, but they all work together and should be considered:

Mental solutions:

·      Read biographies/autobiographies of people you admire. I guarantee that these will not read, "I was born, and then everything I ever wanted happened without my lifting a finger."  Even if the person was born into wealth and privilege, his success was not that simple.  This puts you in the good company of others who have worked for what they wanted.  It also reminds you of the value of a good story, which is what you will create by staying in the game.

·      Contemplate how more people on the planet also means more brain power and creativity available to solve the world’s problems and improve quality of life for everyone.  Would you want to go back to a time in which there was a lot of unoccupied land, but no essential services?  No dentistry?  No emergency medical care?  I wouldn’t.  No, thanks.

·      Remind yourself that reality T.V. tempts us to believe that succeeding overnight with little effort is a viable route to our goals.  In fact, most of those featured in these programs have done plenty of work behind the scenes to get where they are, if only the work of promoting themselves—which still counts as work!  

·      Make an effort to become aware of mental nosedives when you are indulging in them.  You don't have to be in a deep meditative trance to notice your own thinking.  Let's say you just got your 5th book rejection, and you're frustrated.  You might think something like, "This book is going nowhere.  I don't know why I bother.  No one cares about what I have to say.  No one likes me."  We all string together thoughts like this sometimes, but it's probably clear to the observer that a few publishers passing on your project has no correlation to whether or not people like you.  You actually do have power over what to think about yourself and your life, but first you have to practice noticing your mental habits.  Then, you can begin to change them by talking gently to yourself as you would a friend in distress.  In the above example, you could say to yourself, "Wait a minute.  I have plenty of people in my life who like me, and if not, I can make new friends.  I bother because I like writing and know I have something to say."  Time to be your own best friend!  This is another essential life skill that most people never acquire, but being able to give yourself an effective pep talk can be invaluable when you’re working on challenging projects.

Physical solutions:

·      In short, take care of your physical body.  Ignoring these needs makes it a lot harder to be patient.

·      If you're not sleeping enough, you will be irritable and reactive, and you won't be able to think clearly.  There's really no way around it.  Find the number of hours that works best for you by experimenting.

·      You also need high-quality nutrition in order for your body to function well.  Learn about nutrition yourself or get help with a basic plan. 

·      Regular exercise increases your energy, stamina, and strength and helps manage stress.  Find something you like to do to get your body moving.

Emotional solutions: 

·      Anger is the enemy of patience.  Most of us have huge stores of built-up anger caused by a lifetime of incidents, which we've swept under the rug because we've been taught that it's rude and unacceptable to express it.  If you want to build your capacity for patience, you're going to have to deal with your anger.  While there are lots of suggestions you can find for doing this, in my experience, nothing is as effective as EFT/Tapping for processing old emotions without any destructive side effects.  Plus, you can do it yourself anytime, anywhere, for free.

·      Other old emotions and traumas may be partly behind those previously mentioned negative thought spirals.  You may find that processing old disappointments, humiliations, and other discomforts makes it a lot easier to avoid the nosedives over time, because now those memories aren’t dragging you down every time you’re challenged.  Some things you can't just think yourself out of because they’re not purely mental.  That’s why modalities with physical and emotional aspects are so important.

Spiritual solutions (these are best when they respect your beliefs and traditions, so you’ll need to find what works best for you):

·      Ask for help.  You can ask people you know or ask for help from some spiritual force, but the act of being willing to ask and being open to receiving help can be transformative on its own.  Sometimes if you can relax a bit, you can find creative insights coming to you that were not available before.

·      Acknowledge that you don’t know everything about how things you want could come into being.  Everyone has different strengths and talents, and that’s ok.  If we work with ours and let others work with theirs, and trust that it can all work out, life is more enjoyable and holds more opportunity.  Embrace mystery.  Allow blind faith to work in your favor.

·      Spend some time every day thinking about things you’re grateful for.  This is not about denying what may be wrong in your life or trying to discipline yourself about having negative feelings.  It just helps you to remember that those aren’t all your life is about.  It helps you look forward to enjoyment that you already have access to.  Some people like to write these things down.  When you’re in bed going to sleep or just after waking up can be a nice, relaxed time to appreciate what’s good in your life.

Allowing yourself to be more patient doesn’t mean you have to deny that you want things, or that there are things in your life that you don’t like.  It’s healthy to learn to dial down your moments of full-on freaking out so you can smooth out your experience of life, exhaust yourself less with needless lows, and make faster progress toward your goals.  Don’t be afraid to consider ways to bring more of this virtue to life.  If it helps, tell yourself that this means you’re being a rebel in this stressed-out, stretched-thin world.  I dare you to start making serenity trendy!

Walking the High Wire

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

— Albert Einstein

With an estimated 7.4 billion people on the planet in 2016, it can seem as though there can be nothing new under the sun, and yet new discoveries are made every day.  New songs are written, paintings made, books completed, gizmos prototyped, with every passing day.  Humans are a busy lot!  This is possible because genetically, there has never been anyone identical to you in history.  We’re all intrinsically unique, and with so many moving parts, both concrete and intangible—hopes and desires, likes and dislikes, talents and challenges; physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual progress and happenings.  Every day is a kaleidoscope of your interacting elements, which never cease to run through their individual cycles; yet those cycles are all timed differently, and rarely align in the same way because of the complexity of the model.  To a certain extent, in trying to maintain our balance with all of our parts, we’re all trying to slog our way across a high wire bucking in a high wind.

One of the great challenges in life is that, because of our uniqueness, no one can create a formula for living that is perfect for more than one person.  We can share our wins and losses with each other, and we can offer the wisdom we feel we’ve acquired, but sometimes others won’t even be able to hear the messages we’re sending let alone duplicate our successes and failures.  We must all tinker with the models that have been passed down to us if our greatest possible success and happiness is what we’re after.  And there’s a sort of catch-22 at play, in that we have to be in a reasonably balanced state in order to make good decisions for ourselves, but without making “good” decisions that suit our needs, it’s hard to find balance.  We start by making decisions that others have told us are good, but whether they will suit our uniqueness and get us where we want to go is always the question.

When how we operate, or what we want, is sufficiently different from those around us, whether in one way or in many, we may feel particularly bewildered about what to do.  Maintaining some semblance of balance is a lifelong endeavor, and there is no “done,” but it’s even harder when you’re young or when you’re striking out in new directions.  Luckily, in this age of information, we have access to guidance from sources well outside our own communities, and that can be incredibly helpful in broadening our horizons.  You still have to put advice into practice and try it out for yourself, and you need the patience to do this over time, as every day is different.  For instance, sometimes your first attempt at something will be disastrous, but with practice you realize its merit.  I once watched a fellow participant in a meditation class, a first-timer, have a full-on meltdown because she was so frightened by the prospect of confronting her internal world in silence.  As soon as she tried to do it, she panicked and essentially ran screaming from the exercise.  In this case, I don’t know whether she ever tried again, but I do know that many people who initially find meditation to be extremely challenging learn to love some form of it with experimentation and practice.  And when I first tried EFT/Tapping, I was not even sure that I felt anything at all, but after several practice sessions, I became more and more astonished with its efficacy and usefulness.  I just had to put it into practice and experiment with it for myself.

I wish I had all the answers and could make everything easier for everyone, but that’s a tall order!  I’ll just have to offer some ideas here for constructing your own tool kit for navigating your own personal high wire:

·      Start simply.  Address your physical needs first:  Eat the highest-quality food you can get your hands on, including plenty of vegetables and fruits grown with the fewest and least possible pesticides (poison to you and me); avoid refined sugars and other empty calories, in other words those foods lacking in nutrition; aim for 7+ hours of sleep per night, and try adjusting up and down to see what works best for you; get some form of exercise on a regular basis—find a way to move your body and sweat at least a little.  These items form the basis of any life lived in some semblance of balance.  You can’t skip them, nor can anyone who wants to remain alive in a physical body, so when you’re out of sorts, come back to these first, always.

·      Ask yourself what your mental and emotional states are generally like, and spend some time noticing.  Find daily practices that support healthy attitudes and emotional expression.  I’ve written other blogs on these issues that you may want to check out, but in short, meditate, do affirmations about your values and your intentions, talk to supportive friends and family, write in a journal, read books about people who inspire you, use EFT or hypnosis recordings, attend meetings of like-minded others; adding a spiritual component to any of these is even better, whatever your tradition of choice might be. 

·      Take a look at the overall shape of your life.  Are you doing work you like, are you making enough money to meet your needs, are your relationships supportive and satisfying, are there activities you look forward to experiencing when you wake up in the morning?  When you answer no, think about baby steps you could take to move toward situations you’d like better.  If you’re stuck, ask for help or find it in a library or online.  Choose a small step to make and put your plan in motion.  It’s ok if you can’t see the whole path to your destination.  Just do something.  Every time you make an attempt, you learn and grow.

·      Do you feel a sense of purpose in life?  If not, it will be hard to stay engaged in life, let alone feel inspired; look for clues in the things you loved to do as a child, in the achievements you feel best about as you think back over your life, and in the kinds of things that move you deeply in movies and books.  If you suddenly had all the money in the world, and you had a year off to rest and travel and regroup, what do you think you could do all day and not get tired of?  (This can take some serious imagination if you’re someone who has lived with a lot of obligations or who is chronically exhausted, but it can also be a lot of fun, and is worth trying.)  You can start with a very basic idea like wanting to “help people,” “motivate others,” or “clean up messes,” and then think about your favorite skills to use to see what might be up your alley.  If you love to cook, you might find that helping others could combine with that so that you envision starting a catering company that donates a percentage of meals to those in need.  If you feel satisfied by cleaning up messes, and your favorite skills are in information technology, you might be able to work as a consultant to people and companies who need to get organized in the digital space.  This can take effort to think through, but having a purpose that feels important and expressive of who you are is an essential component in maintaining your energy levels and your commitment to persisting in the face of difficulty, which we all face every day!

Creating and maintaining good functional balance is never going to be easy, especially in today’s fast-paced world, but if you yearn for a better life, this is unavoidable work.  If you can become fascinated with the process of learning about what you need and what is key for you, that is the best solution.  If you make some noticeable progress in your overall balance, your success stories will likely drive you as you continue learning and experimenting with new ideas.  No one knows you as well as you know you, so trust your hunches, and try not to freak out if something you try goes badly.  After all, every day is different.  If you try the same thing on a different day, you might find that you get a different result.  Keep reminding yourself that this is work that feeds everything you’re able to do and become, and it’s worth a great deal of effort.  Over time, your ability to maintain balance will build naturally if you keep at it.  Confused?  Go back to basics, and as you do this repeatedly, you’ll build helpful habits that make greater flexibility and creativity possible.  Celebrate your successes, learn from both success and failure, and just keep inching along that wire.

Slings and Arrows

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s normal to experience disappointments in the course of your daily life.  These can stop you short many times each day, if we’re talking about small disappointments such as just missing a green light, finding that your grocery store is out of one of your favorite items, or having a friend cancel an outing you had planned together.  Now, while they might be jarring, most of these don’t make much of an impact on your overall picture—but larger disappointments certainly can.  In fact, they can be the genesis of negative beliefs that don’t serve you at all, and that may run your behavior for decades after they’re created.  An event that may have seemed insignificant to others can start you down a path of fear and limited thinking, whittling the cornucopia of possible choices you have in any given moment down to a handful of uninspiring options.

Let’s look at a few ways in which this can play out: 

·      Most of us have a memory of a parent, even the most excellent one, overreacting to something we did when we were relatively small.  Perhaps we were playing happily and decided to add a work of art to the wall of the family home.  There was a sense of excitement in the idea of making something beautiful (at least to us) and sharing that with a parent.  When it came time for the big reveal, we displayed the opus proudly only to be faced with the fury of someone who now had to find a way to clean it up, and thought we should have known better.  That feels like a slap in the face when our intentions are innocent and happy.  An unfortunate memory like this can impress us in ways that last a lifetime.  We may come away from it with beliefs such as, “I can’t do anything right,” “No one wants what I have to give,” or “My family doesn’t understand or appreciate me.”  And such beliefs can corrode one’s enthusiasm, creativity, and confidence in subconscious ways that are powerful, but can remain mysterious, because you may not even remember the event as you get older.

·      The first few years of school usually hold some difficult social situations.  Kids start relating to each other in more complex ways, and experience the results of others learning through trial and error.  Most of us experience at least a betrayal or two, fights, resentments, and competitions for attention.  While everyone learns, so many disappointments and hurt feelings proceed from these social experiments.  If patterns emerge, we may come away with beliefs like, “No one likes me,” “Everyone is mean and it’s not even worth trying,” or even just “I hate school.”  There’s often little formal instruction at educational institutions on general communication, conflict resolution, negotiation, sharing, and other essential skills, and these beliefs can remain ingrained if we don’t figure out better ways of relating and coping on our own.

·      In high school, most kids experience life with a high degree of angst in the areas of identity, social acceptance, and achievement, whether academic, athletic, or artistic.  Popularity is often the coin of the realm, so everyone jostles for position both through both attempting to prove their own worth and attempting to disprove others’ worth in order to seem more important.  It’s normal for kids to play with dominance tactics, including those designed to provoke or humiliate others.  Less competitive, more naturally cooperative kids can have a hard time dealing with these status games, and end up feeling stung and embittered by confrontations.  Most of us rack up more experiences of betrayal, embarrassment, and disappointment during these years; these memories can remain particularly painful because we’re experiencing many things for the first time.  We may assume that this is how all such situations will go in the future.  We don’t realize that our peers will continue to grow and mature, as well as gain experience, confidence and clarity, and so will we.  A humiliation experienced at this time of heightened hormones and emotions can seem like death and destruction on a scale that adults find hard to understand.  We may begin to believe that, “I’ll never get what I want,” “I’m not attractive,” or something general like “People are horrible.”

·      As we enter adulthood, we understand that we are now more responsible for our own choices.  We start having to sink or swim, making decisions independently about relationships and leisure time, life direction, health, diet and fitness, and financial matters, and bear the consequences.  Mistakes made here can quickly color our faith in our own abilities, since we’re “supposed” to be able to handle ourselves by now, but in reality may still have many gaps in understanding of basic mechanics, and a lack of supportive habits, which must be built over time.  Beliefs like, “I can’t keep up with everything I need to do,” “I’ll never be able to support myself financially,” or “I’ll never be able to get where I want to go in life” may result from early failures.

·      At any time, we can experience life-changing disappointments such as the death of a loved one, the failure of a relationship, or the sudden loss of a job.  Unfortunate beliefs like, “I’ll never recover,” “I’ll never find love again,” or “I’m a loser” may spring into being.

 Did any of those beliefs sound familiar to you?  Disappointments affect all of us, and yet there isn’t much help available for actually processing the often overwhelming emotions and the negative beliefs that result from them in everyday life.  Most people either talk things through with family or friends, or see a psychological professional to gain perspective on the situation, but usually neither of these addresses the trauma we may be holding in the physical body or the emotional patterns that keep us limited.  If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know what I’m going to say here—techniques with a somatic (meaning involving the body) element seem to be the most helpful for supporting rapid change in these areas.  In my world, there’s just nothing like EFT/Tapping for shaking limitations loose and helping us to shift our understanding of past events and their role in shaping who we are.  Using it helps us to gently but effectively let go of the adverse effects of painful events that are now part of the distant past.  Once you have a chance to lighten the emotional load you’ve been carrying from past disappointments, a new world of possibility opens, and that, to me, is one of the most exhilarating  experiences there is.

Interview with The Feng Shui Guy

“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.”

— Brian Tracy

Ariel Joseph Towne, The Feng Shui Guy

Have you ever been curious about Feng Shui?  You're in luck!  I sat down with Ariel Joseph Towne, a.k.a. The Feng Shui Guy, to talk about this ancient art form:  What it is, how he came to know it, and how it can help to create balance in your life.  Our lively conversation ranged over topics such as how he helps people support good sleep, his secrets on fostering synchronicity, the dynamic connection between inner and outer work, and the importance of inner quiet and gratitude.  Be sure to check out his Web site for more information about his books and coaching services. 

Who's Driving This Thing?

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”

— Carl Rogers

I’ve noticed in my work with clients that many people are much harder on themselves than they would be on anyone else, especially people they love and care about.  Something for which one would easily forgive a friend becomes unforgiveable in oneself for reasons that are hard to fathom.  Sometimes the client will even say that it seems irrational for him to feel so guilty about something relatively minor, and yet he does.  What gives?  And why is this such a common experience?

I think the answer is that we have learned this behavior, usually from people who had no idea what was being passed down, in two different ways.  First, the conscious part of the equation:  When we’re children, we hear from all the adults around us, as well as from friends and peers, about what constitutes being a “good” person.  We may have trouble unifying everything we’re told into a cohesive theory about how to behave, but we do know that we’re supposed to try to be “good.”  We doubtless remember times when we were accused of behaving badly and intentionally embarrassed by someone, whether publicly or privately.  We may learn that life tends to go more smoothly when we behave in a pleasing way toward others; we then take on the job of policing our own behavior, taking on the voices of people we respected or feared and obeying them even in their absence.  This is relatively easy to recognize if you think about it—by which I mean that it may take some work to notice when you’re trying to please someone who’s not there, but if you pay attention to how you make decisions, you’ll probably start to see some of these habits before too long. 

And now for the second part that is not conscious.  Figuring out how this piece is affecting you can be quite a bit trickier.  In The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton writes about how recent scientific study has revealed that children under the age of six spend most of their time in different brain wave states than adults.  Until the age of two, children exhibit mostly delta brain waves, which in adults are associated with sleep states, and from ages two to six they spend most of their time in theta brain wave activity, which in adults is associated with the kind of “suggestible, programmable” state that hypnotherapists lead people into in order to help them accomplish change.  In other words, young children are generally not in a fully conscious state that adults would recognize.  They do not have access to conscious decision-making and analytical abilities.   Therefore, whatever a small child hears is downloaded into her subconscious directly.  Did you get that?  Young children have no filter; what they hear is recorded directly into their subconscious minds as truth.  When you were young, you learned a great deal that you are not aware of now, and it’s still affecting you today unless you’ve taken concrete steps to update that information. 

That explains a lot about why it can be so hard to change old habits and beliefs even if we want to.  The reasons why we feel a certain way may well be rooted in events and verbal commands we can’t even remember!  We have years’ worth of programming that we’ve never had the opportunity to examine.  We may remember plenty from childhood, and still be unaware of some pivotal beliefs that were instilled in us very early.  The people who taught them to you have changed or may not be alive anymore, but the messages have not.  Part of your mind is being run by ghosts.

We all know that parenting is a tough, demanding, and often exhausting job.  Parents do what they can to keep us safe and healthy and stay sane at the same time.  One of the methods most use is the application of shame to keep us in line—a sharp tone of voice telling us to stop it and a withering look, questions about what we were thinking when we did something that seemed really dumb or dangerous from an adult perspective, maybe a slap upside the head to let us know just how unacceptable our choice was.  (Some of this is non-verbal, or even learned from things we just overheard rather than experiencing them personally.)  If they can make us feel bad about certain choices, it’s less likely that we’ll make them again.  While this can be effective, its continued use can also leave us with a general feeling of not being good enough/as good as others, or the feeling that we need to talk to ourselves harshly in order to avoid bad decisions and consequences.  Once it’s installed, this habit of self-talk can run for decades or a lifetime without your awareness of what it’s really about, or that there are other alternatives.  The only thing that really makes this second half of the equation different from the first is that it occurs before we can be fully aware of what’s happening, and we may not be able to recall it later.

Some of this may not seem very empowering.  After all, what can we do about things we don’t even remember in the first place?  In fact, there are ways to clean up even the mysterious things that may be holding you back.  Making positive change happen in your life often requires the use of tools that can open a dialogue between your conscious and your unconscious mind.  My favorite of these is EFT/Tapping because it’s highly effective, and it’s a self-help tool that almost anyone can learn and use safely.  Once you’ve spent some time getting the hang of it, it’s astonishing what you can learn about yourself and what might be keeping you stuck in a particular area of your life.  It takes practice to become confident in this dialogue, but it’s well worth the effort if you’re someone who would like to feel better physically, emotionally, or spiritually, or to work toward more positive mental habits.  Despite what we may have been taught, it is possible to learn to treat yourself more kindly, and think and problem-solve more constructively.  Quieting habitual negativity can free up a lot of energy for better physical health and greater creativity.  And now that you know more about how children function, you might want to spend some time thinking about how you talk to the little ones in your life.  What you say to them will shape their habits more directly than you might think.  Choose your messages carefully to support their long-term health and happiness just as you learn to be more careful with how you speak to yourself.  

Red-Letter Days

“The way to stay inspired and motivated is by doing what you like, doing what you love.”

— Raphael Saadiq

Sometimes, you just have a naturally amazing day.  You wake up feeling rested and enthusiastic, the skies are sunny and blue, you make all the green lights without driving like a maniac, people return your smiles, and you have time to get everything done.  Everything seems to hum along easily.  It’s so lovely when this happens.  But for all the days when it doesn’t, how to stay sane?  In a crowded world, we cross paths with so many others, all on their own private missions, all the time.  Sometimes there are crashes, whether physical or philosophical.  We have to deal with numerous institutions, from governments to schools to businesses, that bring order to our world, but which we didn’t create and may not agree with.  There are important people whose happiness we’re trying to contribute to every day.  And there are just so many distractions competing for our attention!

I’ve come to think of the happy phenomenon described above as the result of the alignment of numerous factors, some of which are hard or impossible to predict.  While you can’t force this experience of ease into being, there are certainly things you can do to make this experience more common.  If you’re serious about creating more instances of it, here are some areas to check in on:

·      With what foods and liquids are you fueling your body?  If your nutrition is not good, and if you’re not properly hydrated, you will start to crumble, both physically and mentally.  You can’t be productive if you’re crashing throughout the day because your body is missing essential elements that it needs to function.  You need high-quality protein, healthy fats, and lots of fruits and vegetables.  You also need more water than you think you do.

·      How much sleep are you getting, and is it deep and restful?  So many important things are meant to happen when you sleep.  If you’re consistently getting less than seven hours per night of high-quality sleep, you’re running on empty.  You will have a much harder time with mental focus, and you’re far more likely to be emotionally volatile; your body will feel less coordinated and heavier.  Some people need more than seven hours, so if you feel the need to sleep late on days off, try bumping up your sleep time routinely and see how many hours it takes per night before you stop needing that “catch up” time.  In addition to sleep, we also need some rest time when we’re not running, doing, or worrying.  Hobbies and creative pursuits, reading, time with friends, and other fun, relaxing activities can fall into this category.  If you don’t allow yourself any of this kind of time, you’ll have a hard time enjoying your life at all.

·      How much exercise are you getting?  Moving your physical body both strengthens your fitness and creates happiness chemicals known as endorphins (which can enhance mood for many people just as well as the most powerful pharmaceuticals tailored for this purpose).  Exercise has so many benefits for your body and your outlook that it must be considered an essential element in your daily routine.  Be smart and check with your medical professional before you make any substantial changes in your health regimen, but do find an activity you can do and work it into your life.  Not immediately, but with continued application, you will create more energy than you use this way.

·      What gives your life meaning and purpose?  Are there things that get you out of bed in the morning because you genuinely want to do them on a deep level?  These can be anything really as long as you feel like you’ve chosen to give them an important place in your life and they’re important to you—learning to play an instrument whose sound you’ve always loved, caring for an aging relative, writing a book, climbing a mountain, solving a problem in your community—just something that fires you up when you think about it or makes you feel satisfied when you do it.  If you don’t have anything like this drawing you forward, you’re leaving a major source of energy and joy on the table.

·      What really inspires you?  A particular style of music or a particular composer or recording artist?  Movies with heroic themes, well-written novels, beautifully performed theatre, Olympic or other professional sports, the beauty of the natural world, your pet, etc.?  When you figure out answers to this, do your best to bring these things into your experience on a regular basis.  These things will also create more energy and enthusiasm for you.

·      What just annoys the heck out of you?  And how can you minimize the impact of these things on your life?  Maybe you need to be careful not to spend too much time around the more negative people you know.  Maybe you need to wear earplugs when you have to be somewhere really loud.  Maybe you can brainstorm about how to spend less time commuting.  You get my drift.  Sometimes small adjustments can yield a lot of relief.

·      What are you doing as a calming daily practice for your mind, emotions and spirit?  If you want to have more days when you sail through life with joy and ease, you can’t skip this one, even though it can be hard to carve out the time for it.  Find one thing or several things that can occupy this function for you, and prioritize doing one of them every day.  Write in a journal, meditate, pray, use EFT/Tapping, spend a few minutes every day thinking about what you’re grateful for, walk mindfully, breathe deeply, or do something else that is calming, relaxing, and that helps you to feel centered and reassured.  When you’re attending to your own needs, it’s far easier to be generous and understanding with others.

If some of these suggestions seem annoyingly familiar, as though they’ve come directly from the desk of Captain Obvious, that is most likely because these are some of the most important things we can do as humans to increase the likelihood that we will function well and happily as we go about the business of being alive, and they don’t change over time.  When you’re handling these basics, you’re helping yourself to have a far better daily experience, and you’re also far more able to contribute positively to the world around you.  It’s a life’s work to become a pro at balancing all this, but you’re probably already good at some of them.  Pick one where you know you could do better and start trying new things, and then rinse and repeat!

Say What You Need to Say

“Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful.”

— Charles Bradlaugh

We’ve now examined each of Maslowe’s fundamental needs.  Did you think we were done with him?  Not so fast!  In A Theory of Human Motivation, the paper in which he originally introduced his understanding of the basic needs in 1943, he mentions some related concepts that I’d like to tour in the next few blogs.  One of these is the existence of preconditions for the continued satisfaction of those needs.  He states that if certain cognitive functions are threatened, we are wired to react.  That’s because, on some level, we understand that our survival is supported by our cognitive functions, that these must remain intact in order for us to protect ourselves.  If we’re denied the ability to freely use those functions, we feel as though our very lives are in danger.  Logically, this will cause us to be drawn back down into the realm of safety needs—which are some of the more dire needs, and less fun and rewarding to spend our time on than some of the “higher” needs.  These preconditions (he mentions “freedom to speak, freedom to do as one wishes so long as no harm is done to others, freedom to express one’s self, freedom to investigate and seek for information, freedom to defend ones’ self, justice, fairness, honesty, and orderliness in the group”), as you will see, are both in the realm of the cognitive and fostered at a societal level.  If they are not present, it will be a lot harder for us to live a satisfying life that includes progress toward the things we really want.

The first of the preconditions that he mentions is the freedom to speak, so we’ll start there.  In “free” countries, there is recognition that allowing individuals to speak openly within society is important for the proper functioning of that society; the importance of free and independent news outlets is also acknowledged.  In the United States, for instance, freedom of speech is named as a fundamental right of all citizens in the nation’s Constitution.  While no one will enjoy hearing the opinions of all the voices that will be raised in such a culture, and conflicts and disagreements will result, the exchange of ideas makes more possible for all.  It’s much easier for anyone to find other like-minded citizens, and to band together with others to explore specific viewpoints, experiments, and experiences, which is often what the pursuit of happiness is all about.  It’s also far easier to stay abreast of what’s happening in the culture and the surrounding world; this supports better decision making across the board, from deciding where to live and work based on our preferences, to how to plan for our family’s safety and development, to figuring out what to do for fun.

Consider what we know of cultures that do not encourage or allow free speech.  They are generally restrictive cultures in which a few make all the important decisions about what will be possible for the many.  Often there are dire consequences to speaking out on any subject that is taboo.  Selling out others who do wish to speak openly to authorities is often encouraged, which creates an environment of general fear and distrust.  Yuck!  In this scenario, the safest thing is to metaphorically and physically batten down the hatches, interact with only a very few people you feel you know and trust, and stay as invisible as possible in order to preserve the freedoms that remain.  Uprisings and coups are inevitable in environments like this in the long run, because the human spirit rebels against such smothering influences.

News organizations, those that publish facts about the happenings of the world and local concerns in any location in real time, assist us in quickly becoming aware of any threat to the preconditions we need in place in order to tend to our basic needs.  When you live outside of a small tribe or close enough to others to interact, this becomes important.  No individual can keep track of everything that happens around him unless his world is very small.  When we can benefit from the efforts of people who work full time on understanding and sharing information about the world, we ourselves can spend less time on this and more on our own interests and personal needs.  That’s helpful in fueling personal progress.  Of course, we have to keep in mind that any writer or organization may have an agenda beyond sharing facts, so it’s best to educate and use our critical thinking skills.  Completely outsourcing our thinking to others has also proven historically to be a bad idea!

On the other hand, there are some obvious annoyances that come with the territory in today’s free countries, such as:

• With the advent of the Internet, the world has rapidly become much smaller in that we have access to a mind-boggling amount of information and shared experience at the touch of a button.  It’s interesting and hard to ignore, and may distract us from clarity about and from spending time on the things we truly want.
• A significant portion of the available content is created by people who are not particularly good at or mindful about what they do.  They are merely excited about doing it, and often desperate for attention.  This tends to mean a lot of fun for the creator, but an amplification of worldwide cacophony for everyone else.
• It can be hard to sort in information relevant to one’s life and sort out everything less relevant in an efficient way.  Most of us end up feeling like our time and focus are being eroded at every turn.

And yet most free citizens prefer these annoyances to the alternative.  It’s hard to go backward once you’ve had a taste of some basic freedoms, like that of free speech, and the free flow of information.  That is, unless you find it overwhelming.  Some do, and may long for simplicity.  That can be created through various approaches, such as moving to a remote area, narrowing one’s field of movement or social interaction, or even narrowing one’s mindset to include only a few restrictive ideas or beliefs.  The first two are examples of actions that can empower you as you find a balance with the modern world, though of course your balance may need to change over time.  This last choice may help some to feel more calm and confident, but sadly, it often encourages its proponents to advocate for the similar restriction of others around them as well.  Insisting that you have all the answers that anyone else should ever need is the height of hubris is this world of variety.  Over and over, history has taught us that adherence to this viewpoint, and the attempt to force it on others, never goes well.  Humans have a natural desire to learn, and ponder, and create that will not allow endless restriction.

The preconditions for satisfying our basic needs need not be perfect in order for us to thrive.  The world’s most successful free countries acknowledge that some limits to free speech may be helpful; for example, there are generally laws against disclosure of state secrets designed to protect the security of citizens (whether or not those laws are sometimes abused, governments are responsible for attempting to keep their people safe from invasion and other harm).  There are often laws against the manufacture and publishing of untrue information that may cause harm to individuals or groups, as obviously these behaviors can cause a lot of havoc and loss.  While some individuals will find these limits upsetting, part of maturity is realizing that no culture or its set of rules is ever perfect.  It’s all in flux all the time as we learn and grow as a race, and that’s also part of what makes life exciting.  We get to participate in that constant change and progress.  What’s important as far as speech is not complete lack of limitation, but that we are allowed to speak and write as we choose as long as we are not maliciously or falsely attacking others.

If you live in a place where this is a protected right, congratulations!  One of the preconditions for the pursuit of what you need and want out of life is firmly in place.  This allows you to formulate and share a message with others that you feel is important.  Self-expression (what you do with your freedom of speech) will be the subject of next week’s blog.  In the meantime, try to take a moment or two to appreciate the freedom of speech that you currently have access to, and think about how you interact with it.  Is the balance you’re striking within it satisfying to you?  If not, why not?  What can you do to move toward a more constructive balance for your personality and your goals?

I Gotta Be Me!

“Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be.”

— Abraham Maslowe

We’ve now reached the final need in Abraham Maslowe’s hierarchy:  Self-actualization, and this is where things really get fun.  When all one’s other needs are met well enough, he observed, only then is one freed to take on “the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”  This isn’t about merely remaining functional and motivated to get up in the morning.  This is about living out your own passionate quest for being the very best possible version of yourself.  He acknowledges that there are some rare individuals who have such a need for achievement in this area that they can and will ignore many of the other basic needs in order to focus on it (think of the artist who will live in squalor because all she or he cares about is creating), but these people are very much in the minority.  In fact, it’s far more common for people to feel sufficiently beaten down and exhausted by the constant effort it takes to maintain a stable daily routine that they never really make it to the finish line of the hierarchy—which is probably why the whole structure is so often represented by a pyramid in which the self-actualization sector is the relatively small area at the top.  If you’re someone who cares about happiness and the art of creating more of it, then spending more time in this sector is your ultimate goal; you’ll need to think about setting up your life to support you in continually refocusing on getting back into this zone.

Maslowe was also clear about the idea that the pursuits to which each person will be drawn when they’re spending time in this sector will be unique.  Only he or she knows where the desire for self-actualization must lead.  I’m reminded of how my mother always said that when you have more than one child, you see that they just come out different, right from the start!  Everyone I know who has raised children has experienced phases of their development when they just get a wild idea and lobby hard for it, whether it’s eating nothing but grilled cheese for weeks at a time, or an insistence that they wear layers and layers of clothing rather than just one outfit at a time, because that’s just how they want to roll.  One could argue that this is early evidence of the self-actualization drive.  People like teachers who spend time around lots of children often remark on how they don’t have to try to be unique.  They just are.  And yet, many of us feel, later in life, that we have nothing unique to offer.  We feel deflated, dispassionate, bored, or uninspired.  Sometimes this happens because we’ve suffered disappointments and don’t know how to deal with them constructively.  But often, it happens because others’ opinions and attempts at control have drowned out the inner adventurer.  We learned to tone it down because it wasn’t going over well.  Partly, this stems from parenting conventions that we’re only slowly learning to move beyond that involve a focus on maintaining authority at all costs lest we lose control of the little beasts altogether.  However, it also stems, I think, from the tendency of parents of young children to be sleep deprived, overwhelmed, and to find it easier to try to shut down a child’s annoyingly endless energy and creativity in favor of a little peace and quiet in many single moments throughout the child’s early life.  This is not necessarily bad, as long as that energy and creativity are encouraged at other times.  After all, we all need to be taught basic manners in order to get along well in society with others, and learning that our rampant self-expression can be trying to others is valuable feedback.  But if a child is not encouraged toward her own uniqueness enough, she will learn to bury it.  If that happens, the way toward happiness must involve excavating and bringing it back.

It’s also true that others can feel threatened by the extent of our differentness.  They may feel unable to cope with the challenge to their own thinking and habits; they may have trouble seeing the beauty in something they’ve never before valued; they may genuinely worry that we will not be treated well in the world because of our unique characteristics; they may worry that they will not be treated well because of their association with us; they may even be jealous of our creativity or sense of self.  For whatever reason, there will always be those who will try to train us out of our uniqueness, which is an essential component of our brilliance.

Even if we’ve been encouraged toward self-expression while in school, many of us find that the transition to life as an adult is a shock to the system.  Often we’re terribly unprepared for the rigors of earning an income, setting up a life that works, and generally fending for ourselves.  In many cultures, there are no longer meaningful rites of passage to help us make the transition.  A sense of true community and mutual support can be hard to come by in this age of individualization.  No matter how brilliant we have the capacity to be, at this point we learn, often in very unpleasant ways, that there are some things we’re entirely clueless about.  There are things we didn’t even realize our family or community members were handling for us.  Life is harder and more painful than we expected, at least in some ways, and this can seriously erode our confidence.  If we don’t quickly find ways to adapt effectively, we can easily fall back into the realm of the lower basic needs and get stuck there.

If this has happened to you (and if it has, you’ll know it by the dissatisfaction you feel with your life and your conviction that there’s never time to just do what you want), here are some suggestions:

·      If you don’t know anything that really gets you feeling excited to be alive, think back to your childhood and remember things you loved to do when you were small.  Let’s say you could happily make mud pies outside for hours.  What was it that you enjoyed about this?  Was it being out in the sunshine?  Was it the texture of the dirt in your hands and working on the recipe?  Was it having time to yourself to think?  There are clues in these memories, so take the time to revisit them.  Don’t worry about what anyone else thought about what you were doing.  Just remember the bliss and what made that time fun.

·      When you start to have a better idea of the things you enjoyed in a pure, self-expressive way, think about how you could recreate some of that joy in your life now.  What can you do, even if only every once in a while, that helps you to bring that enjoyment back?  Maybe it’s just something simple, like being more aware of the textures of the objects you come into contact with daily.  You don’t have to reorder your entire schedule in order to start moving in the right direction.

·      Once you have some ideas of a few things you’d love to have back in your life, you will likely feel some excitement about your ideas.  Do not, however, expect others in your life to buy in whole hog and want to do all of those things alongside you.  Some may, but some won’t.  That’s fine!  Go find others who love those things as well and join up with them if your activities are better enjoyed in a group.  You may need to ask for support in making the time available to take action on some of your ideas.  You can volunteer to help others in your life to do something similar if they'll help you.  Everyone in your life deserves to follow his/her own unique passions.  Your loved ones will be far happier if you allow and encourage them to do that.  

·      Look for friends who support your expression of your inner adventurer, whether they’re personally interested in the same things or not.  Some people will appreciate hearing your stories because they get to sample things they don’t really want to do by living vicariously.  Learn to support others in this way as well.

Some schools of thought teach that in order to experience bliss, we should let go of all attachment to earthly pleasures and to outcomes, and give no time to desires for anything but spiritual focus.  There are many fine books and other works that espouse this view, and if you look into it, you’ll see that this path encourages a specific kind of brilliance.  While I’m interested in all kinds of adventures and I love to read about what others find meaningful, I’ve never wanted to live a solitary life on a mountaintop.  I want to live a meaningful life in the midst of all the craziness of daily life around others, and to see where my innermost desires will lead; I think our most deeply held desires can be key to living out lives that elevate those around us and the wider world in which we move and breathe.  Personally, I want to experience that world and experiment with it.  And it could be said that those who turn their focus habitually inward are also following a kind of desire of their own.  After all, who could keep that up if it didn’t somehow excite them?

It need not be selfish to be who you are, to focus on becoming more and more of yourself.  Maslowe defined this as a basic and natural human need.  I’m guessing that if you’re reading this, you haven’t chosen a life of solitary meditation on a mountaintop either.  I recommend spending some time in thinking about how you can follow your inner adventurer and still participate generously in the lives of others. This is your mission, if you choose to accept it.  Where will your adventure lead, and what will you choose to express and give?

R-e-s-p-e-c-t

“It’s easy to not feel misplaced if this tidal wave of appreciation is coming your way.”

— Christoph Waltz

Last week we looked at the importance of gaining significant skills in some area of your choice as a way to bolster self-worth.  The second part of Maslowe’s posited esteem needs is, in his own words, “the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance, or appreciation.”  He found that, even if we feel great about our accomplishments, abilities, and our value from within, it’s important that the reactions of others align with our assessment.  If they don’t, if we haven’t clearly earned the respect and commendation of others for having produced something valuable, we will likely feel unsatisfied until the respect of others does show up. 

Humans exist within an evolutionary dynamic in which we tend to be always reaching for new ideas, better solutions, and more progress—not just biologically, but with our hearts, minds, and spirits as well.   This all makes sense, as thriving in a constantly changing world like ours requires the ability to adapt just as constantly.  We wouldn’t have survived for long as a species without this drive to adapt and grow.  Since we’re social beings, it also makes sense that to be considered valuable within a group, it helps for an individual to be good at contributing to the progress of the group, rather than just his own.  In the harsh climates of centuries past, it was extremely difficult to survive alone; if one was not important to a societal group, one’s very survival could be on the line.  Perhaps the reason we long for the adulation of others for our contributions is that, without it, we still feel vulnerable and afraid of being banished as the weakest link.  In the modern world, even though most of don’t live in tribal cultures anymore, it can still be horrifying to contemplate being deemed unimportant or unworthy by family, colleagues, friends or other communities. 

Even if we’re not as afraid as all that, it can also be frustrating to have given our all to something only to find that others don’t value it as we do, or as we thought they would.  Such miscalculations may tempt us to doubt the very abilities and results that we were proud of, and to doubt our worth.  I’m sure you’ve been through something like this, and it does not feel good!  Being out of synch with others can make you feel alone even if you're not.  It’s hard to hold onto your sense of self-worth if you continually receive the message from others that your contributions are not valued, and you're profoundly different from others. 

On the other hand, the perks of adulation, of succeeding in earning the respect of others and enjoying a good reputation, have always been worth having.  In the distant past, if you had the best reputation for valuable skills and abilities, you might have become a tribal leader with access to all the best resources.  You might have lived in the best location, had your choice of a mate, and had a disproportionate say in the decisions affecting the group.  Today, it’s not so different.  You might achieve your share of all of the above (house, spouse, platform from which to influence others), plus a lot more autonomy in directing your future separate from any group.  The prevalent cultures today favoring individualism, the universal nature of money in today’s world, and the relative ease of travel mean more personal freedom for those who now succeed in gaining respect and reputation.  You might even earn some degree of fame (the extreme version of recognition), which can open even more doors for you.  These are the very things for which people have vied across centuries.  Wars are still waged for these things by those who see no way to gain them except through force.  We humans cannot seem to help wanting the privileges that come with the respect of others across time and cultures.

In fact, in a study done by the Harvard Business Review and Tony Schwartz that surveyed nearly 20,000 people, referenced here, workers who responded that they were treated with respect by higher-ups “reported 56% better health and well-being” than those who didn’t!  So not only do we crave the respect of others, but when we don’t think we’re getting it, our very health is likely to suffer, in many cases significantly.  Plenty of other research corroborates this story.  If that’s not an argument for thinking deeply about how you can earn a more satisfactory level of appreciation from others, I don’t know what is—going without it is bad for you!

How, then, can we address a perceived lack of respect and appreciation from others?  Some ideas:

• While it’s a lot of fun to spend our time doing and creating things we enjoy ourselves, if you want appreciation from others, you’ll need to think about how your contributions benefit or please others.  Be willing to try on the way others think, even if it’s foreign to you.  You might find that doing so is a lot more fun than missing out on some of the perks discussed above.
• Once you’ve thought that through, you’ll need to work on adapting in order to provide experiences or results that others will respect and enjoy.  I am not saying that in working in this area you need to leave behind the pursuits that please you, not at all, but you may need to be receptive to the idea of branching out.
• If those from whom you most want respect are significantly different from you in values and preferences, there may come a time when you need to admit to yourself that what it would take to earn respect from them is unacceptable to you.  While this kind of impasse can be quite disappointing, there is also power in accepting that you need to find your respect and appreciation elsewhere, and let go of any fruitless power struggles; those can waste a lot of your energy, and people only really change of their own accord.  If you’re trying to make them change, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
• From a perspective shared by most of the world’s major religions, compassion for others expressed by helping someone in need for no personal gain at all is its own reward.  Yet, because this is a widely held perspective, and because receiving appropriate help and love from someone who expects no return often feels good to the receiver, this too can lead to the respect of others and a favorable reputation.  This is a different route toward these than mastery of a particular skill set.  If you lack confidence in your own ability to shine in other ways, or you are someone who is more inspired by the idea of gaining respect for having and sharing personal qualities such as kindness and generosity, then you can bolster this area of your life by focusing on giving more while still maintaining your own health and balance.

Earning the respect of others is a collaborative process.  It requires listening and responding to feedback.  You have to be willing to find ways to surprise, delight, and benefit others, and to enjoy the process of co-creation.  The good news is that in many ways we are hard-wired to cooperate for mutual benefit, and when we do receive the approbation of others, it tends to be a pretty darned enjoyable experience.  It won’t do to ignore your own opinion of yourself; that must be maintained through meaningful accomplishments and the expression of personal qualities that you yourself can decide are valuable.  But the innate desire we have to be considered worthy by others is important to our happiness and health.  If this area of your life feels a bit empty, you may make big gains in your overall satisfaction by spending some time in consideration of how to improve it followed by some tailored action.  I wish you great success in your efforts to value yourself and to be appreciated for your work and your fine qualities. 

The Upward Path

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”

— Michelangelo

Among the needs that humans have in the esteem category is the need to feel our own capacity, in other words our ability to handle life as its events wash over us.  We all long to feel that we are enough.  In fact, in my work with clients, I often find that most of us have a deep-seated horror of not being enough that keeps us in a lack mentality, which in turn continually stimulates the body’s stress response.  Numerous factors can feed this vicious cycle, including the amped-up messages we receive daily in many modern cultures that no one is ever enough, that we must all be striving to be the best at all things all the time—which of course is a losing battle, because no one person ever could be.  In the end, no one else can decide for you that you are enough.  You must simply decide yourself that you are.  Maslowe identified several ways in which we seek satisfaction in the process of making this decision, some of which we’ve already covered, some of which we address this week, and some of which we’ll look at next week.  Since the highest rung on the ladder of capacity that can be achieved through learning and practice is generally known as mastery, that is where we will set our sights today.  This is within the reach of most of us, and a worthy goal to strive for.

One can be a master of information, or of practice, or of both.  Someone can have expert-level understanding of a subject matter area, yet be unable to produce results in that area.  That person is still a master of intellectual knowledge, and that can be incredibly useful if applied in some way or passed on to others who can apply it.  Someone else can be a master of doing something with a high degree of excellence, but be unable to explain it, and lack the benefits that come with studying widely on the subject.  He may have focused on results only, and sought only the coaching and information that was absolutely necessary to keep moving forward.  This too can be extremely useful, as this kind of mastery leaves a trail that others can analyze and duplicate, and again pass on to others.  The master who is most revered, though, is often the one who both understands a subject deeply and can demonstrate that knowledge through action and the creation of exceptional outcomes.  This person is often widely influential.  She is likely to receive feedback from others to that effect, which helps her to feel significant—but that’s next week’s topic!  I’m getting ahead of myself.

Thoreau famously claimed, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” and I think most of us know all too well what he was getting at.  Many people fail to find ways to live with purpose, verve, and the feelings of self-esteem we’re addressing here.  So if we all desire feelings of competence, and building mastery in any area is helpful in producing those feelings, why don’t more of us commit to striving for mastery?  Well, how about:  Life is not easy, first of all.  Second, if we are not stubbornly purposeful about setting a course and continually working to stay on it, it’s so darned easy to be distracted by what others want for us, by the demands of others, by pain, by pleasure, by loud noises, and heck, by shiny objects!  You name it, we’re curious about it.  And that’s fine.  That’s all part of life.  But if we don’t allow ourselves to apply our innate abilities to the pursuit of mastery, we miss out on one of the grander adventures it’s possible to have on this planet.

The process of blossoming into mastery is one filled with drama.  I remember years ago hearing Marianne Williamson make the distinction between the “cheap drama” that prevails when you’re living a petty, childish, self-absorbed life, and the worthy drama that remains part of your experience when you’ve grown into a more authentic, mature person.  (I’m paraphrasing from memory here, so apologies to Ms. Williamson if something is lost in my translation.)  I loved this concept, and I think this applies to growing into mastery as well.  Truly mastering nearly anything requires treading a long road that includes difficulty and constant effort and change.  It includes learning from others who are available to you, even when you know they’re not the best teachers or you don’t love their personalities.  It also includes the necessity of eventually throwing off the strictures of what has been done before, just as a teenager must assert personal independence through acts of rebellion (on whatever scale) in order to become an adult.  There will be times when you have support and help, and others when you don’t; portions of the road will inevitably be lonely and dark.  At times your prospects will seem hopeless as you hit barriers that seem final.  You will lose things along the way, which is part of the price of the journey.  You will gain many others, including successes and personal strengths that can’t be taken from you.  The empowerment that results from reaching the mountaintop at the end of the road is one of life’s peak experiences (another concept originated by Maslowe, by the way—what a guy).  If you ask anyone who you consider to be a master of a subject or a skill set, I think you’ll find that his or her story of the path that lead to mastery was full of ups and downs, and expressed the truly meaningful drama inherent in striving for excellence through exhilarating highs and frightening lows.

While some of this may sound pretty good, the hard parts are no joke.  Most of us are never taught the skills that make up the strength known as discipline.  Most of us are petrified of discomfort, for instance, and are never given strategies for dealing with it in a healthy manner so that we can keep moving toward our mountaintop.  Most of us lack basic knowledge about maintaining the health and balance of the body, mind, emotions and spirit.  Many of us were never shown the basics of organization, which is necessary for keeping everything together through a long and taxing effort.  Many of us were not instructed in the development of focus and techniques on restoring it when it has evaporated.  You can expect more on these topics in blogs up ahead.  But those who are keenly aware that they are missing essential pieces in these areas will lack the confidence to take on a process that can be as grueling as the effort toward mastery.

For those who do venture out onto the path, and who persevere through all the strangeness they encounter, life becomes far fuller and richer.  Whatever they are able to achieve is far more than they had before, and more than those who never try will ever have.  Now, I believe all human life has value, and that we need not be on a path toward mastery in order to be worthy.  We still have the power to decide for ourselves that we are worthy for any reason or no reason at all, and in fact I recommend it!  Doing so tends to immediately make life feel better, and that tends to enliven our energy and creativity, which in my world is pretty much always a good thing.  But if we are able, why not try to wring the most juice out of life that we can?  Feeling that we are competent, that we have done good things, and that we can do more is a major component of building self-esteem.  Why not reach for something grand and see how far we can climb?

It’s worthy of mention that yet higher than mastery is the realm of genius, but that is reached only when mastery is combined with natural talent to yield the astonishing feats of someone at the pinnacle of his or her area of endeavor.  Therefore, as you consider what to master, I highly recommend choosing something that ignites your curiosity with the flame of passion.  When you love a subject, learning is a joy, even a happy compulsion.  It will be a lot easier to keep going if you always have that flame keeping you lit from within.  It will also attract others with its brilliance and power, which can open up opportunities as you reach milestones and require new resources.  Now, off you go!  If you’re not yet on the path to mastery, dig deep for ideas about where you can place your target.  The pace and the goal are entirely up to you, and your business only.  What mountain do you want to scale?  What's a tiny step you can take to begin?

*I was influenced in this post by some of the resources listed here, including a great book called Mastery.

Ever a New Summit

“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Another among the esteem needs that Maslowe wrote about is a sense of achievement.  This is an important factor in our conviction of self-worth, both because human beings are built with a natural drive toward creativity they long to satisfy, and because most cultures revere those who have achieved unique and groundbreaking results.  It’s worth periodically looking at how you’re feeling about what you’ve achieved in the course of your life so that you can address your innate desire for a sense of achievement; doing this helps to show the way toward keeping your self-esteem at healthy levels.

So what is achievement?  Dictionary.com defines it as, “Something accomplished, especially by superior ability, special effort, great courage, etc.; a great or heroic deed.”  So this is no walk in the park—it needs to be an accomplishment that required unusual innate qualities, or strife, or both.  And who decides what it should be and when the criteria for accomplishment have been met?  In the context of a discussion about self-esteem, only you decide what an achievement is and when you’ve attained it.  Others will have opinions about what you’ve done, and that will most likely impact your self-assessment to some degree, which we’ll discuss in later blogs in this category.  But no one can ultimately decide for you when to be satisfied with your own performance.  That is your responsibility, and the process of deciding shapes both your life and your opinion of yourself.  This is where clearly defined goals can be useful.  If you have taken some time to think through what you want to the best of your current abilities, it’s far easier to direct yourself along the path to the finish, and to be certain about when you’ve arrived.  If you haven’t clarified your goals, you are far more likely to encounter confusion about where to go, what to do, and when you’ve accomplished something about which you can feel satisfied.

Here are a few other factors that will impact how you feel about your accomplishments:

·      Was the goal something you really wanted to pursue?

Most likely you’ve had the experience of having put considerable time and effort behind something that didn’t bring you the satisfaction you originally expected when you finally achieved it.  This can happen for numerous reasons, such as:

o   It was never really expressive of you.  Someone else wanted this for you, and you went along, either to make them happy, or because you thought it was a good idea, but you never noticed that your own passion was never truly engaged.

o   Somewhere along the way it would have been appropriate to adjust the goal, but you refused to do so for whatever reason.  People do and must grow and change.  It’s normal to realize once you’re in the middle of an effort that your expectations or process need to adjust in order to keep pace with what’s true for you.  A goal is meant to draw you forward, not lock you rigidly in place.

o   Your goal was not worthy of all the time and effort you poured into it.  If you spent years on a complicated revenge scheme, you might eventually achieve it.  However, if you felt satisfaction at the result, there would also be shame mixed in; you would know that your achievement spoke of your own unresolved pain and pettiness.  If you had, instead, taken steps to express your pain, forgive over time, and protect others from injustice, you would likely have felt satisfaction that was clean and clear of internal conflict.

·      Was the process enjoyable?

o   If the process of getting to your goal was not enjoyable, you may have forgotten to build fun into your process.  Sometimes we think that only through suffering can we create results that are glorious.  While it’s true that the application of discipline required to achieve things that fit the dictionary definition of achievement will probably result in some discomfort, it’s also important to be able to enjoy your life during the times that you’re waiting for the gratification at the end of your road.  All of it is your life, not just the occasional end point of an extended effort.

o   If you hated every minute of working toward the goal, once you achieve it you are most likely exhausted, depleted, and in the habit of being in a bad mood.  You may also have convinced yourself that this is the only way anyone gets anything done, and that life is grim and difficult (if you didn’t already believe these things before).

o   Was someone else trying to control you throughout the process?  If so, you’ll end up with a strong flavor of resentment about the whole experience, even if you like the end result.

·      Does your goal result in a satisfactory change in your life?

o   If you thought that your achievement would result in a harvest that didn’t appear, you’re likely to feel frustrated even if you feel great about what you did.  Sometimes we follow in others’ footsteps and expect to have the same experiences, which doesn’t always happen.  Sometimes we pin our fantasies to our goals, such as fame and unreasonable fortune, and are surprised when the fantasy elements aren’t a part of the achievement.

o  If your goal did result in the expected harvest, it’s still possible that you didn’t end up feeling the way you thought you would about it.  We have a tendency to expect external achievements alone to change how we feel about life and about ourselves, but this discounts the inner game that we must also play in order to feel good about life.  As the saying goes, “Wherever you go, there you are.”  You can’t outrun your own negative emotional and thought patterns.  No achievement will absolve you of the need to do the inner work that is uniquely yours. 

No matter how satisfied you are with an achievement, you will find that, as soon as it’s yours, you want something else!  This is a normal part of life as a human being.  We are creative, evolution-oriented beings who crave experience.  This is why it’s best to avoid seeing any goal as the solution to all things in your life and focus on more on a sense of enjoyment of the process—otherwise you’re missing out on the vast collection of moments that make up the majority of your existence.  People who look back at their lives in old age often regret that they were not more engaged in all the small and less significant moments of life, and that they did not take every opportunity to be present to the love and enjoyment that was available in every one of them.  It’s all important.  But if you feel unhappy about what you’ve achieved in life when you take all of it into consideration, I hope you’ll take the time to consider deeply what it is that you most want, and begin to chart a course toward it.  Working toward goals that feel great and significant is a basic human desire; if you want to live a life that feels whole, you must not neglect this.  And try to do it with zest for maximum enjoyment! 

Mr./Ms. Independence

“Independence is happiness.”

— Susan B. Anthony

Following Maslowe’s breadcrumbs, we’ve now arrived at the area of needs related to esteem.  Now that we’ve taken care of basic physiological needs, safety, and love and belongingness needs, he postulates that we will become interested in seeing our sense of self-worth reflected back to us from the world around us.  One of the achievements we long to feel that we’ve earned is independence, which allows us to know our own strength and our ability to stand alone.   While few of us prefer to feel that we must remain alone, being confident that we can handle what comes up in life is an important part of feeling like a competent, whole adult.  If it seems that we must always be relying on the support of others to make our lives run, the human spirit within has a tendency to resent the lack of freedom—even if it is we ourselves who refuse to do what is necessary to move toward independence.

When we have done the work to feel self-reliant, the confidence that results can form the basis of endless avenues of growth.  Being reasonably sure that we can produce results that consistently avoid complete disaster, we become willing to take some risks, learn by doing, take on adventures that challenge our limits.  People who have fulfilling lives have usually acclimated themselves to stretching beyond their comfort zones to some extent in following their desires and goals; this helps to keep life interesting by refreshing our perspective and encouraging creativity.  Desire and creativity are natural hallmarks of humanity.  If harnessed toward worthy goals, they are the most potent fuels we have behind our journey toward self-actualization, the highest level in Maslowe’s concept of personal evolution.

If we lack the confidence in our own competence and ability to rely on ourselves, we will find it very difficult to get anything done.  Nothing kills enthusiasm like the conviction that our efforts are doomed before we’ve even started!  The enjoyable journey toward something we’d really love to create becomes incredibly arduous, if not impossible, if we think it’s impossible to arrive.  If procrastination is something you struggle with, you’ve likely skipped some steps in the process of building your sense of independence.  If you take a look at what’s missing, you may find that filling in the gaps is just a matter of giving yourself a break from blame and worst-case scenarios, realizing that you just need some practice, and devising a simple plan to get it.  If your confidence in yourself is very low, you may need to start very small and work up incrementally, which is fine.  Whatever works to move you forward is worth doing; since it’s natural for us to have desires and use our creativity, feeling stuck in a rut is never going to be enjoyable.

The growth of independence is a natural part of human development, and most of us do gain some before adulthood.  Children who are loved, supported, and encouraged by their parents to challenge themselves appropriately throughout childhood will naturally build confidence in their abilities.  However, there are some obvious things that can go wrong, for instance:  If a parent is overprotective, the child may not be allowed to be challenged enough; if too dominant, the child may not be allowed the space to develop her own judgment and opinions; if not loving and supportive enough, the child may never feel safe enough to accept a challenge and try it on, as the idea of failure can seem disastrous if you don’t have anywhere to land; if too demanding, the child may feel that they have far too much to do already without adding elective risk in pursuit of a personal goal.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you may need to imagine a parent for yourself that you didn’t have.  What would the most skilled, loving parent advise you to do in order to build your own skills and confidence?  When you look back, what do you wish your parents had done (and not done) in helping you to gain independence?  Most of us can come up with some answers here without too much difficulty.  Chances are, you’ve thought many times in your life when considering your family, “Why couldn’t they have just…”  Once you have some ideas, you can use that imaginary parent as inspiration, brainstorm yourself about what you think would help you, or ask a friend you trust to help you come up with a few small steps you could take to get used to taking manageable risks toward something you want.

If you had the overprotective variety of parent, you may need to just practice taking risks at all, of any kind, like asking a stranger for the time, or taking a slightly different route to a familiar destination.  If you had the dominant parent, you might want to start writing in a journal about what you think, and what went well each day, as well as what didn’t and what you might do better next time so that you can develop your own voice.  If your parent wasn’t loving and supportive enough, then you need to build the habit of being more loving and supportive of yourself, and gather kind and caring people around you so that you can feel that it’s safe to fail here and there, and ok to take time to recover when necessary.  If you had a demanding parent, you may need to practice scaling back on busy-ness in order to create space to try some new things, and find ways to combat your judgmental inner voice.

You may also need to find a coach or a cheerleader who will take an interest in your process and share the journey the way the best possible parent for you would have done.  It’s also a great idea to get advice from an expert in your area of interest, whether in person or in book or recorded format.  This can help shorten your learning curve, which can make this process seem more likely to end in success, and thus, more fun.  As you gain experience and understanding, you can become more bold.  Keep in mind that most of us grow more quickly and easily by leveraging positive reinforcement—some kind of healthy reward for small victories, whether it’s a bubble bath or a celebratory dinner with those you love.  It also helps to share our ups and downs with others in some way.  And for many, thinking about ways in which this learning process might help others in the future can make the process more fulfilling.

No matter what childhood you had, chances are you emerged from it feeling like you missed something or other that everyone else seems to have mastered.  We often tell ourselves that we’re hopeless, even broken, because of these missing pieces.  This is clearly not an approach likely to lead to growth and happiness.  If you can isolate an area or two in which your natural development may have been arrested, even small movements forward in those areas can yield significant returns in confidence, because these movements remind us that reaching a distant goal may be possible after all.  We need to know that change and growth is possible to feel like we’re really alive.  Do yourself the honor of spending just a little time on considering what you need in order to feel more confident and independent, and I think you’ll find that your horizons broaden such that life’s prospect is suddenly much more appealing.