So Much Happier Blog
Weaving Progress
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
For most of us, the human experience is complicated; everyone I know has a love/hate relationship with life on this planet, in that we have things that we absolutely love to do, see, and enjoy…but we also have serious issues with some of the mechanics of how things and people here behave. It takes a lot of effort to just go about one’s daily routine and take care of the items necessary to stay alive, and it can be extremely challenging at times (if not all the time) to find the space and energy to work and play the way we’d like to. We’ve all had the experience of having things humming along in some semblance of balance, only to have several difficult things happen at once to break the rhythm and call us into a whole bunch of activity we weren’t expecting and didn’t want. Devices break down. People close to us have urgent needs, disappoint us, or even pass away. World events change the course of our lives in ways that are frustrating at best or catastrophic at worst. It’s a lot to balance, to say the least.
In order to carve out more of what makes all the effort seem worth it to you, there are things you can be doing along the way to make it easier to weather the next bout of challenge. While your attention is being taken up by handling a crisis, the best you’re probably going to be able to do is to practice what you’ve already begun to establish, so these are things to have an eye on when your life is not at its most demanding. They are worth working at as a long game, and let’s face it, if you’re alive, you’re never finished with these. All of the factors that make up your life continually change, and there will always be a new balance to create, but the more skill you can build in each area, the more grace you’ll be able to draw from when you’re called upon to dig deep. Here are the basic areas in which you might choose to focus in order to make progress when you have capacity:
Internal resources. This is the world of factors that are more within your control, and it encompasses the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual:
· The quality of the food you eat, the sleep you allow yourself, the exercise you get regularly
· How well you express and manage your emotions, including through the use of tools such as Tapping/EFT
· How well you manage the thoughts, relationships, and situations that give rise to those emotions
· Your mental habits and discipline, and practices like meditation or journaling in which you grow in your understanding of and ability to manage your mind
· Your general beliefs about yourself and the world
· Your spiritual beliefs and practices
External resources, and your ability to handle interacting with them while maintaining your own equilibrium. These are the factors that are not within your control:
· Basic physics, the intrinsic properties of the world around us
· The beliefs and actions of singular people
· The opportunities available to you at any given time, your positioning in relationship to others and the whole
· World events that are a product of mass movements—these by definition don’t start or end with one person
The areas in which you choose to grow will define your life in many ways. You might choose to focus on an area in which you feel least functional in order to limit the lows you will experience going forward in that area. You also might, as discussed in last week’s blog, focus on putting more energy into an area where you’re already skilled and passionate while finding ways to cooperate with others so that you don’t need to become expert in the areas that are hardest for you. When you read through the bullets above, which areas seem most appropriate for your next round of efforts? If you’ve read this far, you’re most likely someone who likes to keep improving yourself and your life, so giving this some thought will probably open up ideas about progress that would excite you and strengthen your ability to handle future challenge while maintaining better balance and more of a sense of ease.
Particularly if you’re someone who is sensitive to and aware of the people and events around you, I don’t think life as a human ever becomes easy. One of the things that can be counted on is that your life never turns out exactly the way you expected. And yet, this is part of what makes life thrilling—the element of surprise, the constant interweaving of an array of complex factors that promotes endless possibility. That will not change no matter how much we wish it to, so what can you do to appreciate the overall tapestry and the colors you’re weaving into the whole? What can you do to turn up your ability to savor your everyday experience of the process and the beauty it offers?
Leveraging Joy
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
We all have things we’re really great at and enjoy doing. We also have things we hate doing and struggle at—and yet sometimes doing these things is necessary. It certainly makes sense to work at being functional in numerous important areas of your life, such as finance, organization, planning and time management, social skills, negotiation, communication skills, etc., but some things will always be more fun for you than others. I suggest that you’ll likely be able to be far more productive if you can spend more time working on the fun (for you) tasks. You’ll feel more energized, hopeful, and creative in the course of doing that work and afterward. Conversely, when you spend time slogging through the tasks that are particularly difficult and dreary for you, you’ll feel more tired by the effort, more oppressed by the work, and your self-esteem is likely to take a hit.
The Gallup organization has done some fantastic work on this concept; they’ve conducted thousands of interviews with people in corporate jobs asking about what their greatest strengths are in the workplace. They published a series of books about what they learned, including the current research on the amazing leaps in success people are often able to make when they are allowed to focus on their strengths rather than trying to remediate weaknesses. I found their conclusions to be fascinating and quite common sense, actually, but unfortunately most cultures around the world, as well as businesses, function in just the opposite way from the recommended models. Gallup developed their own unique system of classifying the strengths they uncovered in all of these interviews, and if you’d like to take the talent assessment survey they developed and see the items where you rank highly, you can do that here. I found doing so very useful, and discussing the results with my partner most helpful as well—we each learned about the other’s strengths, priorities and viewpoints in surprising ways. Note that because the interviews were done in corporate office settings, there are plenty of strength areas that you won’t find represented here that might have been uncovered in other settings (such as those requiring more physical or creative work) but the ones enumerated here are still applicable to other kinds of work as well.
One of the greatest secrets to productivity, according to this work, lies in getting help on your most dreaded tasks from others with complementary skills while you intentionally focus on what you’re talented at doing. I find this concept to be very freeing: You mean I DON’T have to become an expert on every technological device in my house? (I loathe the endless minutiae of electronic things, but I hit the jackpot in that my partner is totally comfortable at figuring that stuff out. And it never takes him that long to do it, whereas it’s a demoralizing, time-consuming struggle for me. I can do it. I just hate it.)
Ok, time for an exercise. If you’ve never done this before, I suggest spending some time brainstorming about the tasks in life that you most enjoy doing, or at least find easy to accomplish. Are you at ease with people such that it’s easy-breezy for you to meet and talk to new people or make phone calls for various purposes? Are you a whiz with numbers? Maybe you’re great at estimating distances and other tasks that require skill in spatial relations. Are you handy? Unusually strong physically? Are you good at organizing social get-togethers? Do you enjoy writing? Reading? Are you musical? Like doing dishes? Try to think of every little kind of task that you look forward to in some way, even if only a little. It’s a good idea to think back over different times in your life to mine these abilities fully. Keep a list of items that you can keep adding to when you think of them and let it grow over time. This will become useful later.
Then, make a list of the things you don’t like doing. This should be pretty easy, since pain points are hard to miss. Most of us can rattle off our pet peeves at the drop of a hat. On the other hand, there may be some minor things you’ve never thought to add to the list because it seems self-indulgent to think about farming those out. Start allowing yourself to notice any little thing that is a downer in the course of your week. While you may not be able to completely solve all of these, you never know! Might as well make a wish list and see where it takes you.
Next, no matter what you do for a living, spend some time thinking about how you could do more of these tasks you like and cooperate with others to get some of the ones you hate doing done for you in return. This is such a simple thing, and yet most of us were encouraged to be “adult,” self-sufficient, and force ourselves to do everything alone—or sweep under the rug in shame the fact that we can’t or won’t do certain things. Turn out, that’s inefficient and unnecessary, not to mention demoralizing. I guarantee that someone you know would love to trade efforts with you on something you’d be happy to offer, and this is a fast and often free way to boost your satisfaction and results in life. You’ll feel good about helping someone else, and great about being able to skip the tasks you’d prefer never to do again! Humans evolved to live in groups and cooperate. If you’re not leveraging the power of cooperation, you’re leaving a lot of joy and progress languishing on the table.
I encourage you to actually do this exercise and actually talk to others about what you discovered. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to start thinking in this way and taking small actions to find solutions, and the potential rewards are endless…especially in this age of technology, where it’s easy to connect with others on a variety of platforms almost no matter what you’re looking for. You may decide that it works best to hire someone to do some of your least favorite tasks, or you might find trade- or gift-oriented solutions. However you choose to proceed, I hope you find that you start to feel a greater sense of energy and space in your life through these small, thoughtful actions.
A Fine Romance
“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”
Love it or hate it, Valentine’s Day is almost here. Historical underpinnings aside, it has evolved into a day when we’re expected to focus on romance, which is a concept with numerous connotations. Some of us enjoy an excuse to get mushy and cuddly with a main squeeze. Others feel pressured by the designation of a day when we’re supposed to show up with expressions of love that another will find to be appropriately showy. And for those who are not, but would like to be, in a relationship with a partner, it can be…well…downright depressing having to watch all of the canoodling couples doing their thing.
Whatever your take on this day has generally been in the past, let’s consider what its essential value is, so that we can salvage the best of it this year. Romance is sometimes ridiculed as a state of fantasy, a desire and an effort to see through hazy rose-colored glasses rather than living in the “real” world and acknowledging what actually is true—or a desire for a relationship that is perfect beyond possibility. Yet, the feminine side of us knows that at its core, romance is about appreciation, and celebration, of what is beautiful and good and whole in another. It is a desire and an intention to see the perfection that is available to us, and to feel joy and even exultation in the process. The ability to do so is actually a tremendous strength. What can get us into trouble is the expectation that someone else will behave in what we consider to be a perfect manner, actualizing our version of the divine for us in every moment. That is folly indeed, as no one can be exactly everything we want and need, no matter how much they aim to please. Also, I’ve never yet heard of a human being who seems to have lived a blameless life, expressing nothing but divine perfection at all times. If not even enlightened masters can pull this off, then your mortal partner, or the target of your affection, certainly can’t!
In romance, then, the ability to see and appreciate the beauty and perfection in another person is really the goal. When you direct this kind of benevolent effort at someone, it can be interesting how s/he will often begin to reciprocate, or at least try to. Your largesse of heart may touch off an enjoyable cycle of appreciation that makes your relationship a lot more fun. On the other hand, if you don’t have a romantic partner, it’s possible to direct this same kind of intent toward other people or things and enjoy a slightly different experience of romance through appreciating them. There can be a kind of romance to tuning into the striking beauty of a sunset, or other feature of the natural environment; there can be a romantic feeling that comes from deeply appreciating art or other brilliant achievements; there can be a level of romance that can result from acknowledging the amazing friends and other blessings that are in your life, no matter what you find it to lack at the moment.
Amidst the bustle that often goes along with Valentine’s Day, see if you can direct your focus to the aspects of someone or something that you can celebrate with joy and deep gratitude. If you are with a partner, this is likely what they most want from you anyway, even when the other trappings of the day are very nice. If you’re not with a partner, you’ll be bringing joy to yourself, and practicing a habit that can become one of the best skills you could ever bring to a relationship when an opportunity arrives. Whatever else you may choose to do tomorrow, look for things to appreciate, and see whether you don’t enjoy the day more than you have in the past. If you are willing to let yourself be surprised and delighted by beauty where you find it, the chances are excellent that you will.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road
“Endure and persist; this pain will turn to good by and by.”
There are many personal qualities that are important contributors to long-term success, but I’ve been writing about some of the most powerful ones over the last few weeks. Along with focus and creativity, persistence is absolutely necessary if you’re to keep yourself moving ever forward in life toward greater mastery of your chosen subject matter. Life has a way of surprising us with all manner of challenges no matter how well we plan. It’s easy to become discouraged by the constant disruptions and the necessary adjustments those challenges call upon us to make. In order to hang in there long enough to get where you want to go, you’ll need to be able to fire up your persistence day in and day out, almost no matter what may be happening around you. Yes, I know, that’s a tall order! I can hear some of you groaning already—this is starting to sound very un-fun.
And yet, what if you could find ways to maintain a calm sense of balance in the midst of chaos? What if you knew how to feed your confidence throughout challenge so that persistence didn’t seem like such a Herculean effort? These are just skills that can be learned, like any other. While some people will be more naturally gifted than others in any area, almost everyone can become at least functional in most skill sets. If you’re someone whose motivation gets knocked off course often, such that you’re often starting and stopping your efforts on things that really matter to you, here are some things to try on the road to becoming unstoppable.
· Remember the importance of focus? You’ll need to apply it to keep reminding yourself that persistence is a skill, not some magical quality that you weren’t born with, so why bother? Some people were taught the skills that feed persistence early, and some need to learn them later, but you have to acknowledge that it’s possible to learn them before you can effectively build them.
· You’ll also need to focus on what’s important to you consistently. Every day. Find ways to do this that appeal to you. It’s good to make this fun, so indulge yourself! If you like, write reminders to yourself on bright sticky notes and scatter them around where you’ll see them throughout the day, or make a recording of yourself repeating your top priorities and play it back in the car, or take a few minutes before you get out of bed and before you go to sleep at night to go over them in your mind and enjoy how they express the truth of you. There can be great joy in just repeating your most important values to yourself often. You might be surprised how enjoyable and inspiring this becomes.
· Practice reviewing your priorities before making decisions throughout your day. When you get into the habit of making sure that what’s most important to you is at least considered in your smallest decisions, you reinforce your ability to strategize with them always in mind. When the larger, more pivotal decisions come up, it will be easier to do the same, and you’ll become brilliant at making decisions that serve your values and goals.
· Keep a journal on decisions you made and how well they support your goals. This is an excellent way to give yourself credit for and celebrate good decisions, as well as notice decisions that you made in a hurry, forgetting to think through what would really be best for you and everyone else before charging ahead. If you don’t take time to frequently review what’s happening in your life, it’s easy to fall back into old patterns and find that you’re getting nowhere. If you keep an eye on things, you have opportunities to do better every day, and you’ll progress much more quickly.
· Sometimes, you will have a bad day. You will need the love and support of at least a few people who you can count on to care about you no matter what. Practice reaching out to them when things aren’t terrible just to talk through a choice or share a win or a concern. This will make it more natural and easy for you to ask for attention when you really need it. Everyone needs support sometimes, and being reminded that someone else cares about you and believes in you helps restore your courage and keep you in the game.
· Manage your mind and your emotions. This cannot be said enough. Your mind will have a tendency to judge you, and others, and spiral into negativity. If you want to build persistence, you must gain the ability to arrest this cycle and bring your mind back to a neutral state at least, and practice more resourceful thinking. You don’t have to pretend that everything is always rosy, but if you’re always indulging in negativity, there’s no way you’re going to reach your goals—and if you did by some stroke of luck, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy them. Your emotions, in the moment at least, proceed from your thinking. There are also probably a bunch stuck in your system from previous events and thinking. For clearing those, the best technique I’ve ever found is EFT/Tapping, and it’s easy and free to do, so if you haven’t taken the time yet, learn the basics and try it! It’s so much easier to make good decisions when you’re not being overwhelmed with outdated mental and emotional habits left over from the past.
· Be stubborn. Every two-year-old knows how to do this like a champ. If you’ve forgotten how, channel your inner two-year-old and stamp your feet and yell, “No! No, no NO! I want _______!” at the top of your lungs every once in a while. Jump up and down for added effect. In addition to being hilarious and getting your blood pumping, this can reconnect you with your most basic desires and your conviction that you deserve to get them. Small children don’t spend time worrying about whether it’s prudent to want a pet unicorn, they just go ahead and want it. When you really connect with your desires, a lot of energy becomes available to you that you can use to take action. Your zest for life resurfaces. You can’t achieve goals if you’re always exhausted and don’t remember what all the effort is for. You have to let yourself want things in order to feel fully alive. Even if they seem impossible, your desires have important messages for you, and help you to keep finding your direction in the face of adversity.
A few caveats:
· Sometimes persistence is not the right tool for the job. If you’re persisting but continually missing the mark, it may be time for a new strategy and some course correction. Mindless persistence can end up looking a lot like reckless stupidity. You want to stay open to learning new things, and benefiting from outside perspectives.
· There will always be moments in any life when it’s time to take a break, either just for vacation, to rest and recharge, or because you’re going through a major transition of some sort—but when you can decide when to take time rather than always struggling to recover enough to get back on the horse, that’s a better place to be.
· Each of us has things we’re just really, really not suited for, in addition to things we’re great at. If you’ve applied yourself enough to gain some ability, but still loathe and get bogged down by a certain activity, it’s wise to partner with someone who is good at it, or find other ways to work around doing it.
· If you’re someone who is motivated by joining with others in some way, then by all means find a buddy who can help you keep at it on a daily basis, or pay a coach to help you stay focused on your goals and the actions you need to take to keep growing. Most people enjoy effort more if they can share accomplishments with others who cheer them on and appreciate their progress. Relationships make life, and our successes, more meaningful and more fun. Look, we brought it back around to fun! And we should. Why be so serious when we can build fun into all of our days with just the intention to do so? Balance means playing as well as we work, because play helps us to relax, de-stress, and regain creativity.
Maintaining persistence is a lifelong pursuit, like maintaining good health. We’re never done. But if you don’t ever get around to investing time and effort into creating basic habits that will keep you going, you can’t expect to live the kind of life you want. Start small if persistence is hard for you, but start! You can do this.
Painting with All Colors
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
Creativity is one of the most powerful qualities one can foster in the effort to build the life of one’s dreams. You’ve probably heard the sentiment that nothing in life ever goes according to plan, and I find that to be true the vast majority of the time. It makes sense that it would be when you think of the sheer variety of experiences that are possible on Earth, and the constant interplay of billions of individuals with a wide variety of backgounds and values. The ability to communicate in real time with nearly every corner of the globe has only sped up the pace of our lives and broadened the complexity of our interactions, concerns, and possibilities. Yet without the creativity to see opportunities in the new and surprising, it’s easy to become quickly overwhelmed. So how do we nurture healthy, resilient creativity that can keep us moving forward toward our goals?
This is a slippery subject, one on which many books have been written, because the answer will need to be highly personal to you. But just for fun, this week I will rashly sally forth and attempt to write some basic guidelines on how to make space for and encourage your creativity. Do keep in mind that, if you want to turn your creativity into the superpower that it can be, you will likely need to try various approaches over time to find what really works for you, refining and updating them to suit what you need at any given moment in your life. Ok, here goes!
· Cultivate a calm, open, curious, and playful state of mind. This is probably the biggest hurdle to opening up your creativity (and it can be quite a tall order if you’ve never exerted yourself in this way). Doing so requires that you gain the ability to calm your thoughts so that there’s room in your headspace for new ideas to arise. You’re probably familiar with the phenomenon of a useful idea popping into your mind while you’re in the shower or doing dishes or yard work; this can happen because you’re somewhat occupied, but have mental space for your mind to roam, and you’re not trying to make anything happen. Practicing a similar state so that you can bring it forward at will gives you far more opportunity for putting your creative talents to use. Meditation is excellent for helping you to practice slowing down your busy mind, and some kind of meditative practice can help you learn to stay out of the way of your creativity. You may need to look into and experiment with several styles until you find one you like, but doing so is incredibly worthwhile for all of the many benefits meditation confers.
· If you want your creativity to come out and play, you’ll need to make time for this to happen in which you don’t feel pressured. You might want to listen to music, or draw, go to a museum, or dance around the living room in order to prime the pump and mark the occasion with your intent. Some people like darkness and silence for thinking creatively. Some like to brainstorm or share a space with others who are also working on creative pursuits. If there’s something specific you’d like to produce, decide what that is and then set aside time to try different approaches and see what inspires and supports your purpose. It may help to think about things you enjoyed doing when you were a child. Even if nothing seems to be working at first, keep setting aside the time and putting yourself in enjoyable, relaxed situations, and eventually you are very likely to get somewhere. Everyone is creative. If you are awake and alive, your creativity is in there, so don’t give up on it.
· In a world in which the ideal is generally for everyone to be driven and achievement minded, it can take courage to insist on making space for creativity, and valuing this process appropriately. If you’re an artist who is driven to create, this may be easier, but if you don’t identify that way, remember that creativity is not just about painting a beautiful work of art, for example. It’s also about flexing the “muscles” necessary to live life artfully in each moment, building skills around coming up with useful solutions to everyday challenges with grace and enjoyment. Knowing that your creativity is going to be responsive when you need it helps to build your confidence, which then makes you more willing to try new things—and we all need to keep doing that in order to avoid becoming stale and old at any age.
· Choose to think of yourself as a creative person. If you have decided that you aren’t for any reason, your mind and experience will tend to uphold your belief. Decide that, even if you haven’t yet exhibited any remarkable creative talent, you still can. Just as you wouldn’t tell a child who has just used a crayon for the first time that they are clearly talent free and should never attempt to draw again, you should give yourself the benefit of the doubt and allow your talents to emerge over time. Just as with brainstorming, practice being non-judgmental about your attempts. Your creativity will emerge when you make it safe to do so. If you’re constantly criticizing yourself, it may stubbornly hide.
· Creativity proceeds from enjoyment. Look for beauty in the world and the people around you. Enjoy the fruits of others’ creative labors, as well as sound, light, color, flavors, and fragrances that surprise and delight you. There is so much wondrous art and natural gorgeousness out there for you to explore. Do you know anyone who hates pretty much everything about life who has created a glorious masterpiece of any sort? I sincerely doubt it. Be on the lookout for beautiful experiences, and you’ll find more to inspire, which will give you more to work with.
· If you have personal issues that get in the way of any of this, ask for help. There are many ways to deal with trauma and fears that might prevent you from allowing your creativity to blossom. The part of you where your creativity resides is a tender, childlike part that needs and deserves to feel safe and valued in order for it to function well. Doing what you need to do to support it can make everything in your life work better.
Time spent on creativity is sometimes seen as an impractical luxury, but I find that expanding access to one’s creativity leads to more opportunities in all areas of life. Even if you take small steps toward opening yours up, I think you’ll find that you enjoy life more and come up with better solutions to anything life throws at you. Even if you have no idea what you might like to produce, adding in even the exploration of good books, movies, visual art, music, or cuisine can enrich your experience of daily life and help energize the creative part of yourself, with excellent long-term effects.
Squirrel!
“The direction of your focus is the direction your life will move. Let yourself move toward what is good, valuable, strong and true.”
In last week’s blog about time management, I mentioned that creating change requires focus, creativity, and persistence. This week I’d like to zero in on focus. The achievement of any long-term goal requires sustained application of focused effort and attention, so let’s consider what this means and how we can bring focus to bear for maximum results.
Focus is:
· Cultivating the ability to apply your consciousness to a goal in the present moment so that you can get high-quality work done
· Tuning out everyday distractions like ambient noise, junk mail, and anything else unimportant that might tempt you to swing your attention away from what is important to you
· Keeping any fears and doubts that crop up along the way in perspective so that they don’t stop you short
· Continually returning to the work that needs to be done in order to keep your project moving
Bringing all of your mental powers to the subject at hand requires that you live in such a way that you’re prepared to do so when it’s time. There’s no way around it—if you want to stay the course over time and reach your biggest goals, you have to take care of yourself, consuming adequate nutrition, getting the amount of sleep that is optimal for you most of the time, and managing your mind and emotions. It takes practice to build your attention span and to keep returning your busy mind to the task in front of you, as well as a strong, calm emotional center. Meditation is, in my experience, one of the best tools for creating these abilities and conditions, and I suggest that you look for a variety that suits you and practice it to help support your ability to focus. If you get into the habit of calming your mind, you supercharge your capacity to expand your attention span and the quality of attention you’re capable of offering to any given task or person.
In order to resist the senseless pull of distractions, you need to devote time to reminding yourself of what you’re working so hard for. You need to imagine vividly and savor the sweet rewards of achieving your goal before you do so, constantly remembering the compelling reasons why it’s worth the effort so you can stay inspired. And you need to attend to uncomfortable emotions that arise and make it difficult for you to stay on task. Tapping/EFT is a fantastic help in this, as it can make it much quicker and easier to process and release emotional buildup, and clarify any actions you authentically want to take from a calm, balanced place so you don’t make mistakes by acting impulsively.
It’s a great idea to make sure that your workspace is clean, uncluttered, and comfortable enough for you to spend time there. If you can make it attractive and fun to be in, even better. Making sure you can play music you like, look at artwork you love, and have supplies at hand that are colorful and appealing can all be important. This is worth your thought and effort, because everything you can do to make your work enjoyable helps to keep you engaged—if you like your environment, it will be easier to be productive.
Time management is also important to protecting your ability to focus, as if you’re always hurrying and overwhelmed, you’ll find it hard to be fully present where you are and get your best work done. It’s important to find time for everything that’s a priority in your life even if it means slowing the pace of your progress toward your goals. If time management is hard for you, go back and read last week’s blog again for ideas about how to regain some control over your schedule. There are some basic skills we all need to work on that make working effectively with time possible, but it’s not something we tend to get a lot of formal support for. It’s also very unglamorous to do the work to build these skills, so it may not seem like an attractive way to spend our time. Even so, these skills make so much more possible that it makes sense to do it anyway.
If you’ve done your best with all of these points and you’re still struggling, it might be a good time to consider whether you could use some help. Maybe you just need some support from a friend or through coaching, or maybe you’re dealing with a specific issue like a learning disability (there are lots of great resources and techniques for coping with these now) or ADD/ADHD. Before I knew adults with ADD who could explain it to me, I can safely say that I was not aware of just how different someone else’s inner world could be from mine, despite having had a variety of experiences as well as a history of relating to eclectic friends. There are chemical conditions like this one, depression, and others that can make everyday tasks a struggle beyond what most people encounter. If you suspect that you may be in this boat, get some more information and find a professional to help guide you as you explore your personal experience and your options. Any unnecessary struggle is a waste of your time and vital energy, plus it’s just super frustrating and demoralizing. There is help available if you just reach out for it.
Next week we’ll explore the importance of developing persistence, which also strongly supports focus. In the meantime, I hope this gives you a few things to think about as you look for ways to optimize your happiness and productivity.
Tempus Fugit
“Lost time is never found again.”
We’re two weeks into 2017, and right about now it starts to become difficult for many people to see how they’ll keep up new habits inspired by the turning of the new year. Some people never got around to taking action this time around at all. Others may be feeling the difficulties of making change and the sacrifices it often requires. Often times we decide to make time for these endeavors, only to find that life has a persistent way of “happening” during those very free times we expected to utilize. Our rhythm may get interrupted, our commitment may start to waver, and those shining visions we had of the future may seem to recede farther into the distance with every step so that they seem like they were only ever a fantasy. Then, the negative thoughts come out to play, suggesting that we’ll never get anywhere, and who are we to have thought we could in the first place?
If some version of this is happening to you, congratulations—you’re human! Really making change happen is difficult, messy, and often time consuming well beyond our expectations and hopes. The world around us feeds us stories of “overnight” successes without acknowledging that most of these successful people actually put in a great deal of effort of some kind before they ever achieved any accolades or grand opportunities. Learning and growing in meaningful ways, building new skills and habits, requires long-term application of focus, creativity, and persistence. All of these take practice to wield consistently, but one of the biggest challenges you will face in the modern world is the scarcity of available time; not that this has been absent at any time in history, because time is one the one commodity that it’s tough to make more of, but the pace of life now is arguably more hectic than in times past. We live longer, but we also work more hours, and for more years, than ever before, while the notion of success has continually expanded to cover more ground.
Time management is therefore a key skill, and unfortunately one that we are not formally taught during our formative years in most schools. It’s something we’re usually left to figure out for ourselves—or not. Unless you’re naturally talented in this area, you may find that you never have a clear sense of how much you can realistically accomplish on any given day, nor how best to organize your tasks to get where you’d like to go. You may find that you always seem to be running, but without actually getting anywhere. If you never take the time to step back and think through new strategies suited for your unique needs, you may find yourself living in frustration, self-recrimination, and despair that things can ever be better. It’s easy to decide that everyone else knows things we don’t, or was born with skills we lack, but the truth is that most people have to work to gain these skills. Below are some suggestions for increasing your time management competence. This is one of the leverage points that almost any satisfying life must incorporate in order to run smoothly. Doing this work may not seem fun, but so much more becomes possible when your time management skills improve that it’s well worth putting effort here consistently until you’re more proficient.
· If you’re someone who tends to lose track of time, and find that something you thought would take an hour often ends up taking you three, you may need to consciously become more of a clock watcher for a while, or maybe always. As you work on a task, try keeping a clock in view and check it often. Make it a game to try and guess how much time has passed since the last time you looked. Keep this casual and light. If you play this game consistently, you may find that you become more attuned to the passage of time.
· You can also try setting alarms for certain periods of time so that you have warnings when you’re a quarter of the way into the amount of time you’ve allotted to a task, then halfway, then three quarters, so that you can continually measure where you are. The point is not to stress yourself out with hard interruptions, but to have a chance to speed up, slow down, or make new decisions about how to work.
· For example, if you’re halfway through the time you have, and nowhere near completing your task, you may need to stop, admit that your goal was unrealistic at this time, and either accept a lesser goal for the day or allot more time to continue your efforts.
· Note that people tend to be more naturally productive at different times of day. If you know that you’re a morning person, plan your most difficult tasks to be done first thing. If you tend to come alive in the evening, plan your productive time to take place then. Start to take note of when your high-energy times of day seem to be. There may be times when you need to work outside of these, but acknowledge that you will be less efficient in that case.
· After you become more adept at knowing how much time it takes for you to complete certain kinds of tasks at various times of day, you can begin to do a better job of planning your life. (The previous steps are necessary before this becomes plausible.) When you can plan realistically, you can steer your life with greater effectiveness and satisfaction.
· Once you are in a position to plan well, it’s time to start thinking about how to consolidate your movements so that you waste less time and effort. What would you like to get done today and how much time will each task take? Is there a way that you could accomplish two or more at once, or nearly so, by doing them in tandem? Is there a way that you can walk across the room only once, doing something on the way and something on the way back, rather than making a separate trip for each task? Planning can make a huge difference in how much time you seem to have and what you can accomplish. Again, challenge yourself to be creative about this, but treat it like a game. If you make it fun, your creativity is more likely to come to your aid with less effort and more consistency.
· Always plan a little “uh-oh” time into a task for things that will come up and surprise you—at least an added 10% of the time you were already planning. For example, if you’re doing errands, you may at some point be slowed down by road construction. If you build in a buffer, normal curveballs like this won’t frustrate you out nearly as much, and you’ll be much more likely to stay on track with your overall schedule.
· When you decide to make an important change to your life, you must talk seriously with those close to you about it. Communicate what you’re doing and why, and ask for their support. Be clear that the time you set aside for this new effort is essential to your making the change happen. If they respect and support your goal, there will be times when you might have faltered, but their support can help you use your time and keep up the effort necessary to keep growing.
· In turn, respect the time that others need in order to pursue their important goals. Support your loved ones in carving out and protecting that time.
· Occasionally emergencies happen. When they do, take care of them, and then get back to your important goals. Moving forward toward our dreams and goals is part of what makes us feel that we’re truly alive, so don’t allow surprises to permanently knock you off course.
· If all of this is particularly hard for you, consider hiring a teacher or coach to help you increase your skills.
You deserve to be living the kind of life that can be yours through efficient planning and time management. Resist hasty conclusions that you’re not capable of having what you want, and notice the ways in which you just need to build your skills in order to waste less time and effort. In later blogs, we’ll look at other ways to keep moving forward, but don’t ignore these fundamental skills.
Method or Madness
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
It’s that time of year when people’s fancy turns to self-improvement. Everyone’s doing it! We’ve indulged, we’ve rested, and enthusiasm for a fresh start is rising! There’s nothing at all wrong with this—in fact it can make life fun to take part in seasonal and societal shifts as they happen—and joining with others can help to reinforce your own commitment to positive change. If you want to jump on this bandwagon, here are just a few thoughts to help you add checks and balances to your process (not just for politics, people!) so that your decisions really suit your needs and purposes:
· It seems that, in January, physical fitness goals dominate the day. While improving your physical health and fitness is always a worthy goal, and one that supports pretty much everything else you probably want to do and experience, adding an aggressive exercise regimen is not the best place to start for everyone. You may be tempted to think that you have to go whole hog or nothing, but this kind of thinking gets a lot of people injured before the month is out. That will throw a monkey wrench into your momentum for sure. Try to keep any schemes for physical exercise moderate for your current level of fitness so that you’re not adding unsustainable stress to your body, and so that you don’t get stopped short before you can begin to solidify healthy new habits. This is one of those areas in which you will never be finished. There’s no such thing as “done.“ So don’t freak out and overdo, but do plan activities that will qualify as your next phase of achievement.
· For that matter, try to keep any resolution for change to a moderate scheme. We’re often taught that in order to get anything worthwhile done, we need to decide what to accomplish and how, and then thoroughly ignore thoughts, feelings, and life circumstances that might make adhering to the plan difficult. This is the best thinking of two thousand years of male-energy-dominant thinking, and while it has its merits, it also exposes us to unnecessary likelihoods of stress, burnout, unhappiness that results from an unbalanced approach to life, and shame if we fail in a pursuit that was woefully unrealistic to begin with. I’m not saying that no one should take on big goals, but we need to make sure we’re thinking about fitting new items into the context of a whole life with multiple demands. We need to think about building in flexibility, and appropriate moments for reconsideration when circumstances change, so that we can stay in the game for the long haul as life throws distractions our way.
· Just because someone you know or read about is taking on something that sounds interesting or inspiring, that doesn’t mean you need to take on the same. Focus. Really think about what you feel called to learn and grow into this year. There is such a thing as right timing. Events and repetitive pain points in your life may be pointing to certain areas in which it would really behoove you to acquire new skills. Spend a few minutes noting whether there has been a recurring situation in your life lately that you could handle better if you just noticed and addressed your part in it. This might be a more appropriate focus for your energies than climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, or what have you.
· No one is in a better position than you to decide what’s the right next step for your goals and your life. Of course, it can be helpful to talk through decisions like this with someone supportive, but make sure you don’t turn to someone who has strong agendas of their own for you who might limit your sense of possibility. It’s fine to give important people in your life input on the choice and timing of your projects, but it helps to start with your own opinions about what would be ideal for you before beginning any negotiations of this kind. A great deal of your own power flows from following your heart about who you want to be and what you want to strive for in this life. Don’t abdicate your opportunity to get clear on your own desires and intuition about you.
I hope this helps you to make good decisions for the year ahead. Whatever you do or don’t decide to pursue in 2017, I wish you a happy, healthy year filled with blessings and challenges worthy of you.
Just This
“ In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.”
Many cultures have historically celebrated, in some way, the winter solstice, which marks the return of the light—in other words, the lengthening of days after the longest night of the year. The darkest time is now past, and we are once again looking forward to longer, warmer days and the fruition of seeds that are only being dreamed now, until they can be planted in the spring. And yet, there’s not much to do now. It’s still dark and cold, and we feel like hibernating, especially if the fall season was busy and social.
Now may be a good time to remember that sometimes the best thing to do is nothing at all. It’s appropriate sometimes to relax and enjoy the comforts of home, family, and the appreciation of what the passing year’s harvest has brought. In today’s harried world, it’s easy to think that taking downtime is lazy or selfish, but what if this is an important time to bond with those who are closest in your life so that in busier times, you’ll have great memories and the confidence that these people are on your side? Playing games, telling stories around a fire, and catching up on rest are traditional things to do at this time of year, and they help us build resilience for later.
There’s one more week of holiday social activity before us, and then with the passing of the old year and the advent of the new, we all begin to break off again to envision and work toward our own ideas. The new year brings with it a sense of possibility and fresh starts, and many people experience a resurgence of motivation and zestfulness about what is possible. Don’t miss this final week of celebratory enjoyment! It’s important for maintaining your morale to take breaks from your normal stressors and appreciate natural rhythms and the good people around you.
New ideas, projects, and stimulation will be along soon enough. This week, have fun, sleep deeply, appreciate the love you have now and have experienced throughout your life, and acknowledge yourself for all the good work you’ve done this year. There will always be more to do and experience, but let your actions flow from joy and enthusiasm in right timing. Right now, and always, without doing anything, you are enough.
That's Nice, Dear
“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
Two weeks ago, I blogged about creating a balance in life between giving and receiving; we looked at how to be an insightful giver, and also a gracious receiver. This week, I want to address one of the things that can go wrong with this balance. What can be done when something less concrete that we very much want to give, such as a personal talent or message, is not well received? This becomes a core issue for many people, and one that often causes a great deal of pain, because it gets to the heart of the ways in which we define and value ourselves.
The roots of this problem are usually planted in childhood, but they can be attached to any time period in which we chose to give something personal and precious to us only to have it rejected or minimized by someone else—or many others. One of the difficulties of being alive is that we are born as beginners at everything. Anytime we try something new, we risk failure and humiliation to some extent. If you’re alive for more than a few years, chances are you’re going to have an experience in which you do something you think is beautiful, only to have someone stomp all over your enthusiasm and let you know just how mediocre your effort seems in their eyes. The difficulty really sets in when that person is someone whose good opinion is deeply important to you, or when what you’re giving seems like a fundamental part of yourself, and no one seems to get it.
It’s natural for human beings to want to give of the best of ourselves and to be acknowledged and appreciated for that. Some of the tensions that tend to come up around the holidays have to do with not being seen and acknowledged by family and friends the way we want to be, the way we feel we deserve to be for what is best in us. So here are a few things to try if you find yourself in this position:
· Remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder—beauty that is very plainly visible to you may be invisible to someone else because everyone’s worldview is colored by natural tendencies, upbringing, and experience. It’s extra-hard to remember this when what you want those close to you to see is you, but try to acknowledge that other sane opinions than yours are possible, and have compassion for their selective blindness if you can. No doubt someone has tried, at some point, to convince you of the great value of something that you just don’t care for. As my family used to say, this is why they make chocolate and vanilla. Not everyone has to like everything. Work to accept that, sometimes, important people in your life will not fully understand everything that’s important to you.
· If you’re not getting the appreciation you think you deserve for what you have to give, ask yourself if what you’re giving is really as great as you think it is. Be willing to get some friendly feedback from people you trust and who do appreciate you generally, or from an expert adviser whose opinion you respect. They may be able to point out ways in which your honing a skill or two would help others to appreciate your offerings. You can choose see targeting what you have to give to an obstinate person as a challenge that might help you, and learn from the experience. The feedback you get also might confirm that what you’re giving is pretty wonderful already, and it’s just not that obstinate person’s cup of tea. If so, go back to the first point above.
· For the sake of your fulfillment and self-respect, go find some other people who think what you have to give is amazing. There are clubs and organizations for practically everything under the sun. If you put in some work, I can virtually guarantee that you will find some fellow humans who will be delighted with what you have to offer. Get your appreciation from people who truly want to give it, and release those who don’t from attempts at manipulation. Everyone will be happier. I’m not saying it’s easy to stop wanting acknowledgement from people close to you, but the happier you are about yourself, the less you’ll need it—and paradoxically, the more likely they are to come around at some point in the future as you gain confidence and the appreciation of others.
Giving of who you are and what is best about you is an important part of a balanced, happy life. If you’re not feeling that enough other people know, truly see, and acknowledge the goodness you have to give, then this is a worthy area for effort and growth. You have unique qualities that will add to the life experiences of others in positive ways. You’re in the best position to know what those are based on your talents and passions. Don’t give up. Keep learning and be willing to make new connections, and you’ll eventually make progress in finding the appreciation you deserve.
Year in Review
“Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth.”
Despite the fact that this month is a whirlwind for many people, most of us are still managing to find odd moments to judge ourselves against the hopes and goals we had for ourselves in 2016. We may feel good about our achievements, but we’re also quite likely to be dealing with disappointment about where we may have missed out on things we wanted very much. No matter how good life is, some part of us is aware of the ways in which things could be better, and it prowls the corners of the mind resenting this gap and grumbling about the injustice of it.
Perhaps now is a good time to actually tune into that voice and see what it has to say. Periodically assessing where you are is an important part of continually moving forward, and the voice of discontent can be valuable. Taking a few quiet moments to write down how 2016 went for you personally can help orient you as you naturally begin to think about the approach of 2017. Much of this past year, you were likely doing the best you could. If you weren’t, the constructive thing is not to berate yourself, but to gain understanding about why. Ask yourself: Where do you feel you got stuck this year? What are you disappointed and frustrated about that maybe you’ve been avoiding admitting? Stuffing down these feelings won’t help you resolve anything emotionally, and it also won’t support your learning and growth going forward. What would you do over if you could and why? How would you like to be able to handle a situation like this in the future if it comes up again? And what skills will you need to work on in order to become the kind of person who can easily handle it that way?
Doing this before you get drawn into the annual storm of New Year’s resolutions peer pressure will reveal the desires that are most important to you. If you must resolve to change something, let it be supportive of your movement toward the goals that are authentic to you. If you are having trouble figuring out why something is so hard for you, it might be time to call in an expert or a trusted friend for a perspective check. You might need to get a little creative about working with your subconscious to clear out problems that have been dogging you (Tapping, NLP, and hypnosis are great ways to address this kind of issue, and there are plenty of others.) Even though recurring patterns can be extremely galling, know that you can make progress on these if you are willing to keep working on them and trying things until you find something that works for you. Everyone gets exhausted sometimes. When you do, it’s ok to step back, renew yourself, and then get back to it.
So, give yourself a break already. Nothing in life ever goes exactly according to plan. That’s the nature of the human experience. Enjoy any holidays you celebrate this month with zest, and celebrate what went right for you this year with every fiber of your being. In fact, that would be a helpful resolution for 2017—I will celebrate everything that goes right! I will acknowledge something that brought me joy at the end of every day, and celebrate the happiness of others as well! If you acknowledge where you are discontent, and then keeping moving back toward focus on what’s working, it will be easier to keep yourself feeling happy and enthusiastic throughout the new year. If you can do that, all your hopes and dreams become more possible.
It's a...Bunny Suit?
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
For the next few weeks, I plan to keep my posts on the shorter side because I know that most people who read my blog are probably very busy this month! This week, I’ll just write a few words about the dynamics of giving and receiving, since gifts are on many people’s minds at the moment.
Giving and receiving graciously are skills, arts, even, that have been prized in diverse cultures throughout history. The most respected people in any culture have tended to be those able to strike a good balance between the two. Giving in effective ways necessitates being in a position to give. This requires a person to care for herself enough to have more than is necessary, whether the giving involves material goods or just time, love, and energy. It also requires having the willingness to give, which is built on emotional, mental, and spiritual management of the self. If you are fearful for your own survival, whether or not those fears are founded, you will be unwilling to give; this may be an emotional problem. Failure to manage your fears has immobilized you. If you believe that others are selfish takers who will never give back to you, you may worry that giving anything will establish a pattern that will suck you dry; this can be a spiritual/philosophical issue. If you are not willing to look for the commonalities that bind us, and the good in human nature, you will never trust others, and will not be able to create deep connections in which you can give and receive in satisfying ways. If you are constantly keeping score of who has given what, this may be a mental/ego problem. If you think that giving must always be equal based on your own personal values, which are invisible to others unless you share them, then it’s easy to work yourself into a frenzy of resentment when people close to you are just doing the best they can with the information they have.
The ability and willingness to give is a deeply ingrained cultural imperative. On some level we know that someone who doesn’t give to others is dangerous; during the eons in which almost everyone lived in small tribes or villages, every person had to pull his weight in order for the group to have the best chances of survival in a hostile environment. If you were able but not willing to give, you might have been ostracized for your selfishness, which would have made it extremely difficult for you to remain alive at all. While modern life may not operate the same way, your life will still be more difficult if you don’t find a way to be seen as an equal member of any group to which you want to belong. If you cannot give in a balanced way, you yourself may become known as a mooch! This might not threaten your survival, but it surely will threaten the health of your relationships.
The willingness to receive is also of great importance to the health of your personal relationships. Receiving what others are trying to give to you from a good-hearted place shows them that you accept and appreciate them and their efforts. If you can’t, people will come to see you as snobby or downright cruel. We’ve all received gifts that don’t excite us, but without the ability to affirm the effort and care that went in the arrangement of the gift, you will alienate others by rudely dashing their hopes of pleasing you. The trick is to put aside expectations and to attempt to see what is offered to you as an expression of love, or the desire to be loved. The person giving deserves to be treated with respect and to receive your thanks, if only for the thought! We’ve all been given a gift at some point that seems ugly or even downright insulting, but the giver may have genuinely thought it was a good one! You may also have found that lapses in your own graciousness don’t look or feel good in the rear view mirror—I know I have, and I’ve wished I could take those moments back. You’re allowed to hint to those who don’t understand what you like, and become practiced in the art of re-gifting anything you don’t love to someone else or to charity, but keeping your reactions in check when receiving is an important life skill that is worth working on no matter what the skill of the givers in your sphere. Your graciousness will, over time, earn the respect of others and make you more comfortable in all situations.
So what does balanced giving and receiving look like? A gift can be anything that shows you thought of and about the needs and desires of another person. It can be remembering what they enjoy, attempting to offer comfort when it’s clearly needed, or connecting them with something that furthers a goal they’ve expressed. Being someone who takes others into account and tries to make their lives better is part of being a respected giver. Also, your ability to share what you have in material ways is part of the picture in that others do notice what you have versus what you give, and what that says about how you value them. Of course it’s also important not to over-give, because when you do, you’ll begin to resent others. That’s no good for anyone, and only you can be the barometer of your own capacities. Giving can be a wonderfully rewarding part of life. It should feel good. If it doesn’t, it may be because you’re feeling manipulated or not valuing yourself enough to keep your giving in balance. Balanced receiving means not always being the one giving more. Some people define themselves by their ability to give. That’s not healthy either, and denying others the ability to give to you will genuinely disappoint the good-hearted people in your life. Try to appreciate the circle of giving and receiving in your life as a whole. If it feels out of balance, you can work on that, but know that the receiving aspect may not always be satisfied by those you would like to provide it. You don’t get to decree what people give. That choice is up to them. But you do deserve to get what you need and desire from your relationships, so if you’re not getting it, you can work on making some new friends.
Are you someone who receives graciously? Do you give thoughtful gifts based on what the person you’re giving to actually wants and needs? What have you’re your favorite gifts to receive and why? Things to think about as you navigate this holiday season.
Festivity and Fatigue
“I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.”
Now that the Thanksgiving holiday has passed, I’m sure you’ve noticed a ramp-up of epic proportions in the advertising messages coming at you from all directions. A month of wild merchandizing is upon us! For those of us who celebrate religious holidays in the next month or so, some of these may have their utility as we look for a few nice gift ideas; for others, this will be just so much annoying noise and chatter. Even if you are planning on shopping, the sheer volume of the onslaught, both figuratively and literally, is likely beyond what you would prefer. Time to take some compensatory measures!
According to traditional cultures around the world, we in the Northern Hemisphere are entering the season of darkness. This is a time to dream, rest and renew, and envision next year’s harvest in silence before the light returns—and with it, another cycle of increased activity. Our ancestors slept and rested more at this time of year, and our bodies still remember this rhythm despite the dawning of electric light, and now, the reality of constant connectivity. It’s normal to want to slow down now to conserve energy, eat heavier foods to survive the colder months, and in the language of Traditional Chinese Medicine, build yin; yin is the weight and substance that grounds active energy and keeps us from burning out. It’s the physical and energetic reserves we build up over time so that periods of higher activity don’t drain us to the bone. Yet in modern life, taking this time is often seen as silly, unnecessary, or self-indulgent. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The modern-day mindset teaches us that everything can be solved with the mind, and yet, in my experience, that just isn’t the case. For example, sometimes body issues need to be addressed at the level of the body. No amount of thinking about exercising can produce all of the results of actually exercising. Physiological changes can happen in meditative states, but these are states that bring the mind, body, and spirit into closer cooperation. The mind alone, spinning in isolation, does not create the same traction.
If you are feeling the call to find more quiet, more rest, more time alone, or deeper sleep, know that this is not a failing. It doesn’t make you weak or lazy. It makes you someone who is able to mark the changing of the seasons and experience the gifts inherent in each. Holiday time can be a happy celebration of this darker, slower time of year if we can allow ourselves to be more fully present with our friends and family when we come together. We can choose more relaxing shared activities instead of overscheduling ourselves into oblivion. We can take this time to focus more on the satisfying fullness of time spent on simple things like the preparation and enjoyment of good, healthy meals shared with pleasant company. If we do this consciously, we can enter a new year with a growing sense of enthusiasm for what the new cycle of endeavor will bring, rather than an ever-increasing sense of fatigue and overwhelm.
In the next month, as the advertising blitz reaches its blaring heights, remember that you don’t owe your attention to anything you do not value. Everyone may want your attention right now, but when motives are impersonal and selfish, or irrelevant to you, you need not give it. You can decide what your priorities are, and then focus on those despite the cacophony of distractions. That’s how you end up living your own life rather than being pulled to pieces by competing forces.
Here are a few recommendations for staying on track:
· Actually write out your intentions for the coming weeks. What on your to do list is an expression of something that’s truly important to you? Who do you want to be every day as you go about your life?
· Read these when you get up in the morning and before bed to help you stay focused. Think about any ways in which you could do better tomorrow. Only you get to add something to these lists, and only when the timing is right
· Be selective and practice saying no to activities and events that you know would overschedule you. Actively protect your breathing room. This also sets a good example for everyone around you, showing them that no one dies if you don’t attend absolutely every possible seasonal event, as we all need to create the balance that is healthy for us
· Remember that resting, recharging, and playing are things you have “accomplished,” elements of living that are necessary and good for us. Give yourself credit for including these and bucking the tides of manic activity that can spiral well-intentioned people into exhaustion and irritability
· Keep redirecting your attention to the enjoyment of the moment, the operative word being joy. Find the joy you can give and experience even when times are hectic by connecting authentically with fellow human beings, even in small, passing moments. These connections are often what we most crave, and what make us feel most fulfilled in retrospect
Keep breathing. Keep refocusing on what’s really important to you and who you want to be. You are the captain of your ship, so go ahead and steer it. Don’t waste the opportunities today offers to be who you choose to be.
I wish you joy and fulfillment in the coming weeks no matter what you may or may not celebrate, and no matter where your adventures may take you. I hope you create happy memories and progress toward your intentions no matter how busy your season. Rest, celebrate, give, and have fun!
Go Ahead, Indulge
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”
Where I live, this is a week dominated by a holiday with gratitude at its core. It has been declared a time in which we should slow down and focus on what is good. That mostly takes the form of gathering with friends and family and preparing an elaborate (hopefully delicious) meal. This makes sense; some of the most basic and important things humans can celebrate are love and good food available in plenty. However, mixing the challenges of huge numbers of people all moving around at once, gatherings of hungry people who may not always get along, and the cooking of many dishes, with tricky timing issues all to be ready all at the same moment, can make for some pretty tense times! It may not be easy to navigate such treacherous waters with grace. How to keep your cool when you’re in the crossfire of such dynamics? Here are a few things that I think might be helpful to keep in mind in order to get the most out of this Thanksgiving holiday. If you don’t celebrate it where you are, you can still probably relate to the challenges and potential of such gatherings.
Let’s start with this: So much of what we experience is the result of what we choose to focus on. It’s a lot harder to choose your focus when you’re already annoyed and in a reactive place, so start thinking now about the underlying purpose of the holiday. If you can direct your awareness to the things in your life that really are good right now, and choose to really indulge, go all out, in appreciating them, you can get a running start into the spirit of the day. When you have that momentum going, you may find that it’s easier to stay focused on what’s going right rather than getting hot under the collar as soon as your most predictable relative starts up their most trying behaviors right on cue.
You get to decide which things in your life are worthy of gratitude. No one else has the right to make these decisions for you. When people you don’t see often declare their overly frank opinions about your life in front of others, that can seem like an assault on your value as a human being. It can also bring up subjects you’d rather not talk about in front of an entire roomful of eager beavers whose opinions you weren’t seeking. If you have reminded yourself in advance which things in your life you genuinely feel good about, you can carry those good feelings with you to buoy any disappointment you feel at being asked about areas you’re not so excited about. You also know some subjects you can steer conversation toward that will help you feel more comfortable. These subjects may also help others to feel that you are doing well, and they don’t need to worry about you. When relatives seem to be giving you grief about how you live your life, sometimes it’s because they legitimately care about you and just aren’t doing a good job of expressing that in a way that seems supportive. On the other hand, the really may be trying to put you down in order to make themselves feel superior, or in order to try to guilt you into something or other. In that case, you are still in control of what you choose to think about yourself and your value. It’s good to open to constructive criticism, but criticism that comes from anything but a loving and positive place can be safely thrown out. You can always ask someone you respect and admire for her opinion later if you feel confused about someone’s message and motives. But be determined to hold onto your gratitude, and it will be easier to remain grounded in your sense of self, complete with your remembrance of all the sources of joy in your life.
If conversation lags, or if Negative Nell just won’t stop with the horror stories, feel free to ask him about what he’s most grateful for, and then do your best to join him in appreciating and celebrating those things. This can bring out some surprising and sometimes touching stories about the past that you didn’t know about your family members. I find that hearing the stories of the best things that have happened to people I know, as well as how they avoided disasters or managed them to the best of their abilities, is fascinating. It helps me to understand them better, and also to feel the ways in which I am part of something bigger than myself, because I have shared life with them.
Make an effort to meet others with a predisposition to find something to appreciate about them, even if it’s small and simple. For example, maybe they’re wearing a nice color, or clearly made a significant effort to make a tasty dish to contribute to the day. Often people go through life feeling that they’re not appreciated, and when you acknowledgment them in some way, they brighten. Most people also enjoy talking about themselves, so a compliment may lead to a pleasant conversation, or at least a tolerable conversation, even with someone with whom you don’t seem to have a lot in common. Letting someone elaborate on something that makes them feel good about themselves can get things spinning in the right direction so that everyone can have a good time.
When all else fails, cling to others with a sense of humor (as long as they’re not excessively mean spirited). In life and in family dynamics, some things are absurd. Sometimes you are. It helps to laugh at yourself and at the absurd moments you encounter. Having a buddy with whom at least you can laugh, even if a gathering is uncomfortable, can be a relief and help you to keep everything in perspective, not to mention to remember it more fondly when all is said and done.
Sometimes it’s also appropriate to cry. The most intense experiences often occur around or in connection with family members, so give yourself a break when everything seems difficult. This intensity is part of life. Around those closest to you, you also tend to learn the most, specifically because of the element of challenge—the ways in which you have to expand your viewpoint to comprehend someone else’s, or the ways in which you become more compassionate to others with certain problems because you grew to understand how those problems come into being.
A heart filled with gratitude is one that has more to give: More compassion, more understanding, more appreciation of others. If you take responsibility for maintaining your gratitude in the most positive manner that you can muster, it becomes easier over time to both enjoy what you can in any situation and to stay true to your values even in the face of conflicting viewpoints. While I’m not suggesting that remaining stubbornly inflexible no matter what should be the goal, I do think that you have a unique viewpoint and life to live that no one else can replicate. The only thing you can ultimately control is yourself: Your thinking, your focus, your behavior. It’s your job to be you. Resolve to do it well, and to make use of the best tools and ideas available to you. The world needs the best you have to offer, this week and every week.
When You Feel Like You're Just Done
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.”
Further to my blog from last week, this week I’d like to discuss out how the aftermath of disappointment can bear strong resemblance to grief. The need to grieve when we lose a loved one may seem self-evident; the idea that losing out on something we’ve hoped and worked for may send us into similar emotional territory may seem like an indulgent overstatement. Yet, depending on the intensity of our desire and the perceived scarcity of what was lost, the similarities can be striking.
Let’s think for a moment about how the five stages of grief, as conceived by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in On Death and Dying, apply in the case of disappointment. I’m sure you’ve been through an event that you can think back on to remember how you may have gone through these stages even if it was a relatively quick process, in the case of something less intense. (Of course, not everyone does go through all five stages in a noticeably, and they can occur in a non-linear or simultaneous way sometimes, but each of the experiences probably seems at least somewhat familiar to you.)
· Denial: In this stage, we may say things like, “How is this possible? How did that even happen?” We feel shocked, confused, disoriented, and unable to wrap our minds around an event. We may downright refuse to believe that the apparent result is true because we desperately want it not to be. We may be overwhelmed by the enormity of the change we will experience if the result is indeed true. If we don’t move beyond this, we are doomed to remain out of step with the reality that others perceive, and that can create a wide range of problems in daily living and relating to others.
· Anger: An activating emotion, anger tends to make us want to do something, anything, to feel less hurt, even if our chosen action isn’t rational or helpful. We want to lash out, blame others, blame ourselves, and rant about the injustice of it all. We want to feel that we have the power to steer our own lives when we feel out of control, so we look for something to dominate. If we don’t find a way to move through this, we become one of those perpetually grumpy people who no one really wants to be around. We may also seem arrogant in our apparent belief that bad things should never happen to us. Others, sure, but not us.
· Bargaining: We look for someone who seems like they might have power to help and beg them to do something, since our own attempts at control through anger weren’t effective, or we assumed they wouldn’t be. This is another attempt at regaining a sense of power over our life circumstances; that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it can mean a lot of energy expended in trying desperately to avoid dealing with our very natural feelings of sadness and loss. If we don’t move out the other side of this pattern, we become chronically tense because of a vigilant need to ignore how we really feel, and we represent to ourselves that we can’t handle our own lives and emotions. We don’t have to do everything alone, and with appropriate help, most people are capable of regaining balance, even if the idea of trying seems scary.
· Depression: Here we come face to face with the reality of our loss and the new normal that now presents itself. Our grief, sadness, and hurt become more fully apparent. It’s hard to imagine being happy again, or experiencing better results in the future, because we feel downcast and all out of faith. We may become afraid of experiencing other losses because it’s so hard to process this one, and/or we have leftover emotions from past experiences that we’ve never processed, and it all groups together and seems to overpower us. The negative stories we habitually tell ourselves about our patterns and potential may keep us spiraling downward even if, at moments, we’d really like to feel better. If we don’t resolve this state of affairs, we stay listless and unable to experience joy, and that’s obviously not a great way to live.
· Acceptance: At some point, it may become easier to acknowledge the new normal and feel resigned to it. Even better, it’s possible to come to a new understanding of the richness inherent in the upsetting experience we’ve had, or at least put it into a healthy perspective that allows us to return to a satisfying life. It takes work to find the strength, resolve, and creativity to make sense of loss, since it can so often seem senseless—I don’t think many people go around claiming that being human is easy! Without the application of earnest effort, though, it becomes all too easy to become embittered, in which case you’re a consistent downer to yourself and those you interact with. It’s generally a lot more satisfying to feel like you’re contributing to positive outcomes for yourself and others, so it’s important to keep reminding yourself that you can choose to do that even though life is messy and often difficult.
In case you haven’t read any of my previous blogs, at no point do I mean to say that emotions are to be ignored, “powered through,” or denigrated. Emotions are absolutely an important part of a healthy relationship with oneself as a functioning person. They give us immediate and compelling feedback about what’s out of alignment in our lives, as well as what’s wonderful and right. Moving through emotion means, at least to me, admitting the emotions, finding a way to express them that won’t trample on the rights of others (without acting on them, in other words, at least not at first), and then being willing to allow them to transform so that the energy wrapped up in them can be released back to you. While this can all happen in numerous ways, including less conscious ones, the most satisfying way I know to do this is with EFT/Tapping. Its use can be deeply comforting, and provides a framework for clearing out emotional detritus that is not serving you. You don’t lose the memories and the experience you gained when you let the emotions release and transform, but you do gain a wonderful sense of freedom that I, and my clients, find to be a tremendous relief.
When you find yourself experiencing disappointment, remember that it’s a normal part of being human to go through this sometimes. Life can be pretty chaotic, and we definitely don’t always get what we hope for. That doesn’t have to make life futile or uninteresting if you have ways to express how you feel in a healthy manner and are willing to learn tools for creating balance after loss. There’s no standard timeline for finding equilibrium, so try to be patient with yourself; sometimes you’ll have to go back over the same territory numerous times. That’s ok too. Extending care to yourself until you’re able to feel more normal again is worth it, because anything else will erode your quality of life as you fight against yourself. Hang in there, kid. Give yourself some time and space, ask for help if you need it, and remember that your enthusiasm has eventually returned after other difficulties and losses. The human spirit is a resilient thing.