Go Enjoy Your Day!

I have about run out of material, for now, regarding all the gifts my breakdown has given me. But I do want to take a minute to return to the scene of the crime: my loss of joy. Joy is not the same as happiness. Today, I am unhappy that a grant proposal we turned in was not accepted. But I am still joyful.

Joy is a reflection of clarity about our purpose. Happiness usually involves getting our way. Joy is not an inside job. It comes from our shared experiences with others. Joy is the emotion that is best friends with the thought that we are "enough."

Our joy matters. Some days you are the one who reminds others; other days they remind you.

We do not have a moral obligation to give every drop of our humanity to support others ESPECIALLY people who treat us as if they are entitled to receive more from us than they would ever give in return.

Go enjoy your day!!

Making Room…

When we are under too much stress, our body is not built for self-reflection. It has four things on its mind: fight, flee, freeze or fawn. But the body does know how to not only survive but thrive. It's been taking in data for our lifetime and it remembers everything and knows us well. When I devoted myself to my practices at a ninja level in order to avoid a hospitalization, my body had the time to speak to me and I was desperate enough to listen. It told me the truth.

During the pandemic all I could do was think about how I could do more, better, to make up for all that we could not accomplish and provide in lockdown. We found new ways to meet relentless needs. We took advantage of pockets of time and took workshops and classes to strengthen our serve potential. We had to figure out technology. We had to decide how to manage risks while meeting needs. What I did not do was take the time to ask any questions; I just redoubled my efforts. My little engine kept saying, "Try harder." And I did!

But a wonderful thing happened while getting my hair cut. I heard someone call me lazy. It was a breakthrough. Because I had support, I was able to finally say the truth to myself, "That is not true." I am many things, lazy is not one of them. This caused a cascading effect of self-realization. I thought to myself, "If that is not true, what else is not true that I am believing?"

The experience has been amazing. The truth is, I am actually strong. I am courageous. I am a human who can give and receive. I do not have to be perfect, fulfill other people's expectations, or make anyone happy.

So yes, I have quit. I have given up on being pleasing or inspiring or effecting change in a world that desperately needs it. This has left plenty of room for new ways of thinking, feeling, and doing that I do hope will be helpful, but mainly, I know I will enjoy my life and love what I do.

Finding YOUR Joy!

Without doing my therapy via a blog post, which is really boring and not helpful, let me say this: I found a hard thing to do that fit with what I was learning about myself in therapy. Here's the thing: I needed to find my joy. MY joy. I enrolled in a program that required me to spend money on myself, attend workshops and retreats and write papers and engage with strangers to work toward a goal. It benefited no one but me. It required others to "give" me support while I was "being" a person in search of her joy.

Today, as I write this, I have recently completed my program. In a few minutes, I will push a button (or whatever it requires) and my new website will be launched that will allow me to pursue my same passion in a new and different way. I am pretty darn joyful.

I had many second-thoughts and frustrations along the way. This work required me to dig deep and shift from "human giver" to "human being."

I have accidentally stumbled into the benefits and joys that only came when I was willing to admit that many of my old ways of thinking, doing and feeling were not working for me anymore. Once upon a time, I believe they helped me survive. But I wanted to move beyond that. I want to be a person who thrives.

What's not working for you? What failure do you need to acknowledge?

Re-Train Your Brain!

I have a friend who is not as old as I am but old enough to make up her own mind about everything. She can drink or not, smoke or not, work or not, marry or stay single, be sexually active or celibate. These are her choices. But she struggles to make choices because every time she makes a decision her mother gives her grief. Nothing she does is quite right. She's either selfish or not taking good care of herself. She is either too frugal or a spendthrift. The feedback, contrary and inconsistent, would be funny if my friend did not care so much about her mother's approval.

My friend has a boundary problem. I'm thinking about buying her a hoola hoop and suggesting she learn how to wear it as a shield against her mother's intrusion. It's easy to poke at the mom and blame her for my friend's distress, but that violates my core value of taking responsibility for every single part of life.

My friend shares this value but she is struggling to practice it. So is it a value for her? Yes, I believe it is and I have seen her over the years develop good skills with others. But her mom might just be her final test in taking responsibility for her life. All of it. Including learning to reject, let go of, activity resist HER REACTION to her mother's words.

Yes, that's it I think. She cannot control her mother but she can learn how to practice new ways of responding. Her brain, lazy as all brains can be, prefers that my friend respond with despair just like she always did when faced with so much negativity as a child. She will have to try all sorts of new tricks of the trade to re-train her brain to stop caring so darn much about her mother's opinions.

This is hard work. It will be learned clumsily over time, so long as she practices. She's practicing and I'm excited to hear, over time, how it works for her. This I know - if she figures this out, she will be able to be more loving to herself and maybe even her mom. That's a big win from my perspective.

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.