Practice Being Uncomfortable…

Failure is demotivating. It's frustrating. I do not always respond well when I perceive I have failed. I think this is a fairly predictable response to discomfort, but guess what? I'm learning that being uncomfortable is a precious gift on the path to growth.

Pete and I enjoy our empty nester early morning routine, which includes solving a puzzle or two before we rush off to a day filled with adulting. One of the puzzles I prefer, Kakuro, is a great crossword like puzzle without words. You have to align numbers 1 through 9 in such a way as to come up with the designated total count both vertically and horizontally. Sometimes it is really hard and I get frustrated trying to solve it. The secret is to just keep working the puzzle. Plug away, fill in what you can. Start with the easy ones - a two square line that equals 16 HAS to be 9 and 7, and if you put those two options down on paper, you might discover that there is only one square the 9 or 7 will fit with the corresponding vertical or horizontal line that has its own unique options and restrictions.

Here's the point: even when unmotivated, uninspired, freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional - keep moving. Not in a habitual, robotic, reactionary way - but from a place of humility, curiosity, and surrender. Maybe today I will not solve the problem set in front of me but I might get better skills for my effort. I may learn new tricks that will help me with tomorrow's puzzle.

If we feel like we have to be motivated to make progress, we are wrong. If we think we have to succeed, we are wrong. If we think we need to have warm fuzzy feelings about our adulting, we are wrong. Here's what's right: keep moving and as we move, try to pay attention to aligning ourselves with our core values.

I align myself with my core values when I follow my teacher's instructions for piano fingering practice. My values include the belief that I am a student of life and lessons learned in one arena inevitably translate into other dimensions of life. I value expertise and I appreciate when I have access to it. I believe that there is value in doing things that feel unnatural at first, because it is a sign that I am awake, alert and not asleep in a habitual, unconscious patterned way of thinking, feeling and behaving with certainty.

What do you need to practice today that will be uncomfortable?

Thinking and Rethinking

An easy way to care less and focus more on the issues that really matter in our life is to start assuming we are wrong. I am deadly serious about this. We are wrong most of the time. Our beliefs are often misguided or distorted. Our conclusions are usually more hypothesis than fact. We are wrong most of the time.

It is an awesome spiritual practice to ask yourself, "What if I'm wrong?" Remember, our brain does NOT like to contemplate being wrong. This form of inquiry requires it to fire up extra cylinders and kick itself into a higher gear. No self-respecting brain wants to do that! Our initial response will most likely be something along the lines of, "I couldn't possibly be wrong about this!" Again, just to be clear, yes. Yes. We could be wrong.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Aristotle

We will need to challenge our mind - a powerful force that is well suited for denying anything that is inconvenient and will cause more work. When we ask this question, we may discover that indeed, we were right! That's great, but it will in no way grow or develop us. It will always be in the midst of discovering something wrong that we will get smarter, wiser and...better at playing the piano if we will humble ourselves and consider a different perspective.

What are you so sure about that you might need to rethink?

Virtue Sets the Coordinates

I am not going to try to find the perfect scripture for what I am about to say because I believe it would require cutting and pasting the entire bible. So allow me to summarize. You carry within you the capacity for virtuosity. Now, I know, this word is rarely used to describe a person but hang with me. Technically, this word means "great skill in music oranother artistic pursuit" (Oxford Languages).

And that is exactly what I intend to convey about you and all humans. When we bear the image of God, it is not a replica, it's a tiny piece. You are not THE God or even A God, but you bear his image by holding within your spirit a virtue that is attributable to God. You arrived with it and I assume we take it back with us when we return to our heavenly home.

This virtue is what needs to be mirrored to us and rarely is. This virtue, once identified, sets the coordinates for the rest of our work as long as we live. This virtue, when combined with the virtues carried in the bodies of all the other humans on earth will change the world.

It will be virtue that will bring heaven to earth.

And we will have to release our habitual ways of being in the world to allow it to rise up and take hold of your choices.

If you do not know what your virtue is, do not give up the hunt. For you life will not longer be about what you lack, get wrong, or have been hurt by. Your life will be one big adventure of ridding yourself of any of the ties that bind you to your small way of seeing yourself, your false beliefs and limited thoughts, your mis-guided albeit sincere emotions and your unproductive way of doing things.

Keep looking. You are in there. You are worth the fight.

Still Growing

I want to warn you about new problems. Most people will prefer that you keep your old ones because they are predictable for them, and they never have to re-evaluate their assumptions about you. This is unpleasant for the brain who craves consistency over wisdom, habit over discernment.

My beloved tennis playing husband has a whole new set of problems now that I can place my serve and my cross-court backhand is smoking. He has a new set of angles to consider because I am getting to the corners and running into the net like I mean business. I still miss a fair number of these shots, but I am making him think and his brain HATES that.

But here is what we both love. We love that we know that we may be old but we are still growing. THAT is very sexy. Go be your sexy self today!

Change something!

Stuck on the Details…

I have this friend who is having trouble in her marriage. She has decided that her problem is so unique, so special, that no one can help her navigate it and find a path through it to a new and better problem.

Maybe she is right; I am very curious about this approach to life and I wonder if she is onto something I cannot see. I am also curious and wonder what would happen if she broadened her identity a bit. What if, instead of seeing all the exceptions to life that define her - what would happen if she chose to think about her situation more simply?

What if, for example, she chose to think of herself as a wife and mother? What would her core values be? What kind of wife would she want to be? How would she show up in the relationship? How would she want to show up as a mother? What values does she want to stand by and express?

I observe this so often in myself and others - we get very caught up in the details of our story. And it truly is OUR story, the one we tell ourselves and stand by with the loyalty of a brain that has limitations and prefers habitual patterns rather than insights and transformation. We get stuck on the minutia of the story, rather than focusing on our responsibility and the values we care about and how we want to take responsibility for living them in our present day life.

If she, and I, and you, could think like this more often we might be not only more curious, but more eager to ask for outside voices to challenge our brain's stubborn resistance to humility. We might ask for support. We might listen to learn rather than react to opinions that vary from our own certainty. We might end up with better, more interesting problems.