Connected and Committed

Occupy Yourself

I had the great fortune recently to attend an intimate performance by a baroque ensemble who played music written by English court composers from back in the day. There were two violins, a soloist, and a lute player who offered their sweet sounds to an appreciative audience for an hour while we munched on a very fine lunch in a room lined with windows, wooden floors and comfy chairs.

At the end of the performance, I felt compelled to engage the gentleman lute player in conversation and find out more about his craft.

When I asked, he told me that there are probably 5 other people in the metro area who play the lute, and maybe a few thousand world-wide. He also volunteered that he plays guitar as well but that gigs for the lute pay better.

I was fascinated by these ratios.

And inspired, by yet another example of someone who followed their passion in spite of--I'm guessing--some pressure from various sectors of the peanut gallery in his family and elsewhere about how practical it was going to be to dedicate one's time and energy toward something so obscure, not to mention the how-will-you-ever-support-yourself factor.

Yet here he is, clearly doing so.

You might be spending time with folks during the next few weeks who aren't exactly your strongest champions.

They may not be able to extend their approval of you in ways that feel like approval.

While that might seem like a wonderful thing, even if it were to arrive by some miracle, it's not enough.

We would still be missing our own.

It's the one that counts.

It's the one that matters.

It's the one that makes the difference between you ever EVER being happy, and, well, not.

Happy means living and doing what we are meant to be living and doing.

Until we allow ourselves that freedom, we assume it's because permission hasn't been granted by someone or something outside of us.

And we continue to subject ourselves to relationship deja vu, job deja vu, money deja vu.

Give yourself permission to alter the status quo.

Occupy Yourself.

Coffee Grounds are the Spice of Life

 

 

Coffee grounds are a necessary evil in the production of magnificent java beverages.

Getting the used grounds to an acceptable receptacle can be tricky business, as anyone who has had to clean up after a nasty spill can testify.

But there just isn't any way around having to deal with the sloppy, messy stuff that's left over if you want a cup full of various degrees of caffeinated goodness.

The same holds true in being alive on the planet.

Those relationships and jobs and living situations that we perhaps cringe over and might even prefer never existed?

They are life's coffee grounds.

They served a purpose in helping us to hone in on our preferences in a life partner, an employment situation or a lifestyle that makes us happy.

Very few people emerge as young adults unscathed enough from the "you-should-do-things-this-way" immersion that is childhood to A) know what those preferences are, and B) to actually pursue them without the burden of recrimination from one member of the peanut gallery or another.

So for the rest of us, dating and/or marrying a certain type of person, or studying a certain subject area in college, or buying a certain type of abode is more than likely going to be a practice round of sorts, because we got trained out of listening to the reliable source of wisdom within.

But even if we got all of those things "right" the first time, there are decades to come where our interests will grow and shift and change, so what felt like the right "fit" at 21 will suddenly not satisfy in the least at 45.

That's how life is supposed to be.

We are supposed to grow and shift and change, in spite of what we're taught about the illusion of security and stability and safety.

There are no guarantees, anywhere, except that life will grow and shift and change around us.

How you roll with the results is what matters.

What happens from today forward is where your power is.

So the next time you are tempted to beat yourself up about how that last relationship went down in flames, remind yourself that there was a whole lotta preference mining goin' on there.

Bless those coffee grounds for the information they supplied, add them to the compost heap of experience and be done with them.

And let's see what new delectable possibilities are on the menu now, shall we?

The Miracle in Group Psychology and Other Clever Distractions

You've probably seen a video of a flash mob on Facebook or elsewhere on the Internet, those groups of people who start singing or dancing to a practiced routine out of nowhere, delighting those who just happened to be in that public space to witness the amazinginess for a few moments, and then stop just as abruptly, re-engage their regular persona and carry on about their business.

The effect this phenomenon has on the audience is remarkable, me included, even though I'm watching the after-market version. It's an opportunity to see a miracle on many levels, and it affects me in that way every time. Knowing what Herculean effort it took to organize such an undertaking, getting people to show up for rehearsals and then the percentage of folks who show up on time for the performance itself--that alone makes something like this miraculous.

Another fabulous quality of the experience is the response of the crowd in attendance. Once it's clear what's going on and the audience can relax without worrying that something weird is starting to happen, everyone within hearing distance streams into the usually standing-room only viewing area, electronic recording conveyances of all manner begin to roll, and female elders and small children join in as best they can.

People stop whatever they were doing and focus elsewhere.

As long as the well-chosen music plays, whatever background noise was playing in our awareness--the thing that's been on our mind today, a relationship that's not going so well, the problem that we keep chewing on and can't seem to let go of--is suddenly dropped and completely forgotten.

It might even take a minute or two to recall what the heck it was we were doing and where we were going as we process what just happened back there.

This power of distraction that provides shifts in our moods and our perceptions is exactly what I teach my clients to harness and then brainstorm ways to infuse into their day-to-day lives.

Identifying the things, people and circumstances that delight, inspire and recharge us--I call them joy pullers--and then choosing to focus on them in the moments we are caught up in what exasperates, confuses and depletes us, is nothing less than the key to freedom.

Plain and simple.

And we don't have to wait for a seemingly random performance-art event to benefit from the relief we are looking for.

It just takes some practice looking over "there" for a moment longer than we have been looking over "here" for the snowball effect to start.

Here's a down-and-dirty exercise to try:

1. Quick--think of a memory, or a present-tense person, place or thing that makes you smile just thinking about it/them.

2. Pay attention to which of the senses your "joy puller" appeals to.

3. Now think of four others that fill out the rest of the senses, so each of the five most commonly referred to are covered.

Could be a song from high school, a delectable aroma from your grandmother's kitchen, etc., etc.--it doesn't matter what they are, as long as they are not borrowed inspiration, and they easily transport you from blah to bliss.

4. Write them down in an email and send them to yourself--right now.

When you stumble upon it later, you will get to experience the same delight and wonder that those flashmob audiences get to, only your hit of happiness doesn't have to end like theirs does.

You get to determine how often and when to connect with something that makes you feel alive.

And it probably should be happening more often that it does, correct?

We are really good at arranging for our kids or our significant others to be delighted on a regular basis, but not so much for ourselves.

And we wonder why we feel taken advantage of, crabby, bored, or generally disinterested; we've stopped investing in who we are.

Log in to your joy puller account and make a deposit.

Get busy becoming the person the perfect partner would want to hang around with, so they can find you.

And they will.

7 Milestones to the Connected and Committed Relationship

One of the most annoying things about relationships that mystified me for years was the deja vu effect: the phenomenon of the same kind of potential partner showing up, bringing very little variation on the theme of emotional unavailability to the table.

There were slight improvements from one to the next, but not to the point where I experienced connected and committed, what I was shooting for, what I knew was possible.

Until I got connected with and committed to myself.

There were seven milestones along the way to my understanding of what that meant, seven key realizations that I eventually came to through hard work, intention, and a need to know that just would not let me be.

Each of those "Ah-ha!" moments are available to anyone who is ready for them.

I offer them to you here in the hopes of adding one to your collection when the opportunity shows up today.

Which it will.

Those opportunities are endless.

Whether we choose to view them as such is another story, which is a great segue into Number One:

#1 - Keep looking for the intellectual framework that explains how the universe works to your satisfaction. This could be a religious or spiritual practice, or a body of work by an certain author, or a combination of a few different ideas. Whatever those pieces of wisdom are, you'll know them when you bump into them because of how the teachings resonate with you, how they fill in the gaps where other frameworks were lacking, and especially in how they make you feel on a daily basis. Having an answer to the "why" and "how" of our existence makes the "how" and the "why" of relationship yin and yang easier to find. My own personal cosmology is eclectic and diverse, collected over the years into a pantheon that stands the test of time and the, "Well, what about this?" test. If you don't currently have such a framework, keep looking--it's out there, waiting for you to claim it.

#2 - The wherewithal to outmaneuver the onslaught of the Inner Critic, that inaccurate, unforgiving and relentless belittler. Without #1 above in place, our Inner Critics have free reign with no place for a toe-hold of interruption to build upon and eventually outwit this wily character. Most of us have undergone decades of programming from our families, religious dogmas, school authorities and the culture at large, not to mention the messages we see on the covers of women's magazines in the check-out line. With #1 in place, we have the chance to dismantle the negative self-talk tapes that play in our heads and keep us stuck in beliefs and behaviors that don't serve us and keep dishing up Mr./Ms. Wrong.

#3 - Embracing the lowly baby step.  There are no overnight successes. Ever. What John Q. Public usually sees is the accumulation of millions of baby steps toward a goal that eventually got to critical mass and then paid off. Our human tendency to want change to happen quickly and with no "mistakes" just isn't possible. Nor would we want it to be. The slow, steady acquisition of a new skill makes it more likely to stick and become part of the landscape.

#4 - Resistance Toys. This is my term for any and all visible reminders that we purposefully place in our visual field to assist us in remembering what we decided we were going to do differently, and why. It's one thing to read a relationship or personal growth book and find a perspective that strikes you as helpful; it's quite another to implement the shift in thinking required to get that perspective to stick. Resistance Toys accomplish this task with humor, creativity and the clarity gleaned from the combined strategies of #1, 2 and 3 above. My first effective Resistance Toy was a Post-It note that said, "It's not true," to remind me that my self-talk tapes weren't based in reality, and what I'd rather be thinking instead.

#5 - Uncomfortable is the new comfortable. Any shifts in your personal growth will be accompanied by feeling uncomfortable, since it requires us to try on new behaviors that feel so different than what we are used to. It's easy to quit when this discomfort comes up, but if you are able to champion this notion in your head, you'll look forward to it. It means that you are making progress. Your ego will try to convince you that all hell is breaking loose and you must stop this new thing, NOW! Having strategy #4 in place helps immensely at this crucial juncture.

#6 - Bargaining with yourself is no bargain. Ignoring red flags, pretending that things will get better when we know they won't--this is the practice of bargaining with ourselves about what is acceptable in how we teach others to treat us, what we will settle for, what we think we are worth. Females especially are socialized to make things OK even when they're not, and we can get ourselves into some pretty dangerous circumstances because we are desensitized to that danger. There are baby steps of awareness along the path to knowing what your boundaries are and holding them in the face of being tempted not to. Lather, rinse and repeat with milestones #1-5.

#7 - Joy pullers, or your purpose on the planet. Our bodies and our psyches are not built to carry negativity. The natural consequences of carrying around this negativity--illness and despair--are not why we are here. Allowing ourselves to do and be the things that make our hearts sing, is. And until said allowing happens, in the form of not letting what others think about us dictate how we react, we are held captive in a prison of our own making. Sure, the adults around us were responsible for putting those seedling ideas in our heads when we were small, but we're grown-ups now. We can rewrite the script any time we choose to wake up on the other side of that prison door. Surrounding ourselves with and participating in the things that make us happy--that pull joy through us--only augment, amplify and solidify your efforts with #1-6.

Think any of these steps are impossible, only happen to other people, I've-tried-but-just-don't-work-for-me?

Think again.

I am a thought chaperone.

I can help you with that.

I died this week

I died this week.

Well, part of me did.

And because part of me died to my old self, part of my new self had room to show up and get acquainted.

That new self is the one we put into existence by sending out requests to the universe for something different than what has our attention at the moment.

Lots of attention.

Negative attention.

The kind that we are trained to think will somehow result in a solution, but never does.

We vividly imagine the horrific more than we do the pleasant.

We ardently focus on what we don't want simply from decades of habit.

We sincerely believe in our limitations.

And we enthusiastically argue for them any chance we get.

Until we don't.

I started out this week arguing (half-heartedly--I already knew the jig was up) for mine.

And it felt like crap.

And hanging on to the limitations I was arguing for felt like crap.

I was stuck in the "Uncomfortable is the new comfortable" stage of enlightenment.

The one where a new level of understanding is about to slide into place.

And we go kicking and screaming every step of the way (or not).

Fear, doubt, anxiety--all of them bubbled to the surface.

And then yowzah showed up.

What was on the other side of all that angst was amazingness.

Of course.

I knew that, on some level.

But it had been awhile since I'd dived that deep into completely new, core-bound territory.

I had to drop stories about myself I'd been telling for decades.

Damn it!

But now, I have this entirely new playground available to me.

New ideas, new people, new circumstances, new fun.

I highly recommend taking the plunge.

If you need help, let me know.