What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Friday Check-in #31: “mustached checklist” edition
Because it’s Friday AGAIN. And because traditions are important. In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
Right.
So last week I made brave statements about how I wasn’t going to spend my Friday check-in (or chicken, if you prefer) complaining about being in pain.
And I’m quite proud of myself for lasting a whole week, but that’s as far as it goes.
We are going to have to talk about the pain.
The hard
Did I mention the pain!?!
Adjusting to this new and (she types hopefully) temporary handicap…
Yes, I’m trying on hopeful, but I keep getting distracted by how hard it is.
Also, I’m learning just how much I think with my hands.
I’m pretty good at not talking with my hands — as long as I’m not speaking Hebrew.
But talking to a client without taking notes? Even thinking to myself or teasing out an idea… I don’t know how to do it without simultaneously scribbling like mad. My hands want to move and write and create. And they can’t.
Talking posts instead of typing them is a nightmare. It takes twice as long to come up with something half as good.
My writing style is “edit as you go”. Yes, I know that most everyone advises against this, but that’s what works for me. I write fastest, most happily and most in flow when I can play as I go. That’s what’s fun for me. Sculpting and polishing. Leaping and retreating.
I love to write so much. And now I can’t.
I mean, obviously I’m doing it right now. But because I’m speaking it — and because editing as I go is way too complicated for Stu (as I’ve provisionally named my text-to-speech software) — what comes out is something that is never quite the thing I want.
But of course I can’t not write.
Words and ideas flow out of me completely of their own accord and not giving them voice is the most painful thing I can think of. Well, second to the moment right after I take my arms out of the ice bath.
The ice baths.
Did I say massage therapist? Because I meant to say my Dungeon Master.
Every two hours I have to plunge my arms in a bath of ice and Epsom salt.
I’ve nothing else to say about this other than that it’s the bane of my existence and it had better freaking help. Because it hurts. So. Much.
The identity crisis.
Not being able to really work or write or do the things that I normally do during the day is wreaking havoc on my sense of what my work is really about.
I’m sure things will clear up and find their way into right relationship. In the meantime, all this transition and newness is a little too much for me.
Can we move on to the good now? I’m ready for it.
The good
Making a difference.
So Naomi and I did our “let’s not be impressed by the recession” call on Wednesday.
And it was so much fun! You wouldn’t think that talking about something so depressing would be fun at all, but we came up with so many ideas and so much inspiration. And we just had a good time.
We’ve been getting some amazing feedback — pretty much everyone reported burning through pages and pages of notes, and are now taking steps and getting stuff done and feeling good about life in general.
I can’t think of anything better than that.
Cairene MacDonald rocks my world.
I’m taking her class on having a better relationship with time and where it goes. And I also signed up for six coaching sessions.
Wow.
We did the first one this week, and I’m already feeling more positive about the possibility of making useful changes than I’ve ever been before.
She’s so not one of those rah-rah cheerleader coaches. She totally gets how I think, and all of her suggestions and insights are remarkably useful for me.
Also she gave me official permission to not have to make lists and then prioritize the things on them. Ha! I hate prioritizing things and every single book I’ve ever read about time management tells me I have to. Oh my god — awesome.
Ezra still lives here!
Still great. Still fun.
This week we went and invented a new dance form. Had some crazy pun runs with my gentleman friend. And went on a Walking Expotition to North Portland.
Also, he’s earning his keep by making a variety of cheeses, which endears him to us even more. If you can imagine such a thing.
This isn’t really a good thing, but …
Yes, since I am not in the most cheerful of moods and cannot come up with any more good things…
I thought I’d entertain you with some of the more amusing things that Stu (my voice to text software — yes, it’s short for “work, you Stupid piece of crap!”) has come up with this week:
- It’s turned “dignify” into “deify”,
- Bullshit into Bolshevik,
- Massage therapist into mustached checklist,
- Avoidance into “avoid the ends”,
- And hurt and disappointment into “her dentist appointment”.
Oh, and here’s my all-time favorite. Every single time I DM Naomi on Twitter to say, “What do you think?” it somehow becomes “What Steve think?”
I quite enjoy thinking that I’m the sort of person who says “What Steve think?”
And that Naomi is the sort of person who could answer that.
That’s it for me …
And yes yes yes, of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments bit if you feel like it.
Yeah? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious weekend. And a happy week to come.
Success doesn’t mean not having problems. Apparently.
I was on Twitter the other day and saw a bunch of people repeating something I didn’t remember saying and attributing it to me.
“Success doesn’t mean you don’t have problems. It means you’re strong enough to ask for help.” — me, I guess.
Right. It turned out to have been something I said during a call I with my group leaders from the Kitchen Table program. I definitely said it. What the context was, though… who knows.
So I’m going to elaborate on the concept because it keeps coming up in a variety of forms. Plus I think it’s really important.
Also, people keep asking me what the hell I’m talking about. So I might as well figure that out too. Hahahahaha. How awkward.
Three teachings.
There are three ways I would interpret this concept.
And since I can’t for the life of me remember what my original point was — and because this still true, valid, and useful even though it allows for different interpretations — I’m going to give you all three.
First interpretation: challenge is a constant. But hey, it’ll be okay.
Problems and challenges … things not going the way you wanted them to … it’s just part of business. Part of being alive.
It’s like when my clients say, “I don’t want to have this pattern anymore.”
We can zap patterns all day — or even all year. We can rewrite them, shift them, change them, dissolve them… but you will always have patterns.
Just different ones — ones that work better for you.
Same thing with challenges.
You work through one, you get to work on the next one. If you made it through your last one, you should have picked up some helpful tools for working with the next one.
But those challenges? They’re going to show up.
You’ll get better at facing them. You’ll be less impressed with the fact that they exist. You’ll have more creative ideas for how to interact with them.
But the fact that they exist is not going anywhere.
I know, it’s kind of a pain. But here’s the good news:
Since challenges and problems and Stuff Going Horribly Wrong no longer imply that you are a total failure, you can take the time you were spending dreading them and start getting help working through them.
Since they’re going to be around anyway, you might as well learn as much as you can about maintaining your peace of mind and asking for what you need.
We talk a lot in my Shiva Nata classes about finding the eye of the storm. Coming into that solid spot of calm, even — especially — when there’s chaos all around you.
Success — whatever that means for you — will solve a bunch of your current challenges. And create a bunch of new ones. So you might as well get really good at figuring out what your support systems are.
Instead of thinking that the challenges are the enemy. Which is my favourite thing to do, yes, but not all that helpful.
Second interpretation: vulnerability is power.
It’s useful for your clients and customers to know that you have challenges too.
If you try to convince them that you’re actually perfect, they won’t be able to relate to you. They won’t believe that you get their pain. That they can ever be like you.
When you speak honestly about the challenges that come up in your business and your life — and how you’re interacting with them — you’re demonstrating that it’s possible to learn and grow and change.
We’ve talked about this before. Perfection is not sexy.
Come on. How often do I talk about things that terrify me? Or mistakes I’ve made? Weaknesses. Pain. At least twice a week.
Actually, it’s probably way more than that.
But at least twice a week I tell you about stuff that’s hard for me. You get to watch when I fall down.
And every time I model what it’s like to have problems and challenges, good things happen. And people hire me. Willingness to admit weakness is pretty much the only strength you need.
If you want the people you truly care about helping to believe that it is possible to make the changes that you have made, to learn what you have to teach — you’d better have problems and challenges too.
Because we need to know that you’re a real-live human being. That you know how much it hurts.
Every time I see someone I admire ask for help, I get a little braver. I get a little more daring. And a little more inspired to ask for help when I need it too.
Third interpretation: don’t let anyone put you on a pedestal.
When you’re strong enough to ask for help, it’s easier for your Right People to identify with you. And the more they identify with you, the less likely they are to put you up on a pedestal. Which is a good thing.
For one thing, if you’re not up there, no one can knock you down.
And — even more important — your clients can’t use your “greatness” as an excuse for not trying.
Since you have problems too, they might as well give whatever-it-is a shot.
I know it feels scary to not have that illusion of safety, but that’s exactly what it is. An illusion.
When you surround yourself with the protection of presenting only your professional side to the world, you constantly have to worry about people finding out “what you’re really like”.
Real safety comes from somewhere else.
From asking yourself what you need. From creating structures and boundaries. From letting people know how they can interact with you and what’s not appropriate or acceptable.
From letting them see that your humanity is what makes you and your work appealing and accessible.
Obviously we all worry about that feeling of exposure, being human and everything. But whenever I worry about it, I remind myself that you guys already know what I’m really like.
You already know that I get scared. That I’ve done things I’m not proud of. That I rage around and accidentally break the bed.
Problems? Yeah, I’ve got them. Badge of experience. Badge of humanity.
So when I need it, I ask for help. Sometimes from you. Sometimes I hire people. Sometimes I ask myself for resources of strength that I haven’t been able to access before.
But I ask.
Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m talking about.
Apparently though, it doesn’t really matter. Especially since I’m having so much fun explicating my own accidental words of wisdom!
Either way, I think that “success” — as completely terrifying as that prospect can be — doesn’t need to be this distant, end-of-the-line goal. It’s just something we practice in little bits and pieces. We model the way we would like to be, while acknowledging that “hey, this is where we are”. Even when sometimes it kind of sucks.
We practice interacting with ourselves with as much compassion as we can stand… and when we’re not there yet, oh well.
Another challenge.
Because success doesn’t mean you don’t have any problems any more. It just means you’re strong enough to ask for help.
I read it on Twitter so it must be true. 🙂
Avoidance! Oh, and getting out of it.
“Why haven’t I been doing more?”
So I was reading this blog post by Emma called Havi, hope, and an unexpected hero.
Yes, I will read your blog post if it has my name in the title but it has to be really, really fascinating (yes, even beyond that) for me to mention it here. 🙂
And it totally was. It’s brilliant and you should read it, and I had an especially thought-provoking experience from the conversation that emerged from the initial comments.
Emma writes beautifully about the patterns of struggle, pain and resistance that so often accompany — or even define — our relationship with the creative process.
And then there was a sweet comment from Diana Maus that kind of summed it all up for me.
She asked a powerful question — and I realized instantly how almost all the people I know have been dancing around this question. For a long time. Maybe forever.
The answer to this question is at the very core of the thing I’ve spent the past few years trying to teach.
“And if this is really everything to me, then why the hell haven’t I been doing more?”
Oh, sweetie. Oh, my love.
I’m about to say something very important that might, at first reading, come across as simplistic or just confusing. I’m not trying to go all Zen koan on you or anything, I promise.
It’s just that the answer to the question is right there in the question.
There is a perfectly good reason to avoid the thing that means everything to you — whether it is your art, your writing, your secret mission, your own heart, or whatever.
In fact, avoidance of the thing which has meaning and power for you is the most understandable and normal thing I can think of.
Here is this thing — ohmygod the thing! — that has incalculable symbolic weight for you.
You’re avoiding the thing that’s holding all your dreams? Good grief! Of course you are! That symbolic weight? It’s that much potential for hurt and disappointment.
If you weren’t avoiding it on some level, I’d be worried about you. If you could do the thing easily and painlessly, without having to spend years and years working on your stuff to get there… I’d probably assume that it didn’t mean everything to you.
It’s not this: “Even though I thought this meant everything to me, I’m still avoiding it so clearly I don’t really care about it.”
It’s this: “Wow, this means everything to me… so of course I’m avoiding it.”
Where things get complicated and tangled.
Where it hurts.
Where it gets tangled up is exactly here. The stuck happens inside of the resistance that you place around the question.
Instead of recognizing your pain, you start to question yourself and your commitment.
Instead of treating your avoidance as a natural sign that this thing is so powerful and so important for you that of course you’re going to run away from it, you give this avoidance the power of truth.
You start to think that if you cared about your dream you’d invest in it, when the truth is that when we really care about our dreams we run away from them in panic and terror.
Until we recognize just how legitimate our fear really is.
Because avoidance is fear’s favorite thing to wear.
Back to talking about fear again.
We want so badly for our fear to become unnecessary and irrelevant. We want it gone — to retire, or at least to take an extended vacation.
And maybe one day it will be gone for good. But the only way to get fear to agree to give you some breathing room is to acknowledge its legitimacy and its purpose.
To say to yourself:
“Of course I’m afraid. It makes sense that I’m afraid. This fear is a temporary part of where I’m at right now. And even though I’d really like to not need to have it around anymore, this is where I am right now.
I am allowed to have this fear.
This is me noticing how much space my fear takes up. This is me reminding myself that my fear is only one part of who I am. It is not all of me. It is of me, but it is not me.”
Because so much space opens up right after you’ve softened the resistance and the fighting with yourself.
Every time I interrogate myself (“Why am I so tired? Why can’t I write this blog post? How come I don’t feel like doing yoga?”), my reaction is resistance.
Every time I notice what I’m feeling and give myself permission to feel it (“Wow, I guess I need some rest. I’m allowed not to always be in the zone”), I feel safe. Safe and comforted.
Invariably, I remember what it’s like to not be fighting with myself.
And then it all gets easier.
Well, one of two things happen.
Sometimes what happens is that all the answers start showing up. All of a sudden I know why I’m tired. I remember the thing, whatever it is, that’s been tugging at my subconscious and fogging up my writing process.
Perspective. Reassurance. And then it gets easier to — as my friend Michael says — “catch the next wave”.
I get back into flow.
Other times what happens is that I no longer care — but in a good way. I still don’t know why I’m tired or why I can’t write, but those questions no longer seem to be that relevant, or to bear the same accusatory weight.
It’s just where I am and it doesn’t mean that I’ve lost my way or anything horrendous like that. So I cheer up.
I step out of the blame-guilt-loathing cycle. I remember that only something as significant and important to me as my work could bring up so much stuckified gunk.
Which at least makes me laugh ruefully. Hey, it’s better than banging my head on the wall.
It’s the question that’s half of the problem.
Every time I wonder why things aren’t the way I want them to be, it creates friction.
And every time I recognize that it’s legitimate for me to feel whatever it is I’m feeling about the way things happened to be, I get room to breathe.
So the big thing I’ve been working on is moving from the crappy questions (“Why like this?!?!)* to the useful questions.
* Direct translation from Hebrew, if that sentence made no sense to you!
Some of the “useful questions” that I’ve been working with:
- What if I’m allowed to be scared of the things that are meaningful and important to me?
- What if there’s an easier way of doing things?
- What do I need?
- What will help me feel safe and supported?
That’s where I’m at right now.
I won’t say that it’s easy or anything. But it beats the hell out of drawing the conclusion that stuckification and avoidance mean that my dreams aren’t important to me.
Because they are. They must be. Because they still scare me.
p.s. Speaking of stucknesses and working through them, Naomi and I are teaching our absolute best tricks for Not Being Impressed by the recession — tomorrow. You should at least get the recording if you can.
The hole in the system
One of the things we talk about an awful lot in my At The Kitchen Table With Havi & Selma course is systems.
Systems in business. Or in life in general.
And the more I teach about them, the more I realize how very problematic some of mine are.
Which is fine, mostly. I mean, one of the things I’m trying to convey when I talk about systems is that hey, the fact that they are always changing is actually a good thing.
Change — within limits — is something you want to have in your systems. It means you’re growing.
Plus, you know, life is flow… and all that stuff.
Okay, so things change. But ow!
It seems to me as though most challenges that tend to come up in these situations have two sources.
Maybe the system is flawed. There’s a spot where things get stuck, jammed, or fall through and get lost. Or a great system is already in place, but we’re just not using it. Which is the flaw.
Either way, there’s a hole in the system.
Concrete examples, anyone?
Three situations where systems fall down (and then get up again).
Scenario 1: the baby-bathwater thing.
A bunch of the people I work with are copywriters, designers, or coaches. They know about the importance of things like having a client-intake process.
Not to mention contracts, procedures, and stuff like that.
One of my students recently took on a rush job as a favor to a friend. She didn’t really want the job, but — for a variety of reasons — she felt pressure to take it.
Things went weird. There was some serious miscommunication. And in the end, she was unhappy and the client was unhappy and it was generally miserable. Yuck.
So we started brainstorming things she might do in the future to avoid repeating the situation. We were trying to come up with solutions both “in the hard” (the concrete steps) and “in the soft” (mental and emotional shifts).
And here’s what was interesting.
All the ideas we came up with “in the hard”? She was already doing these things, every single one.
She already had a really clear client contract that she was happy with. She already had a system for determining whether or not a potential client was one of her Right People.
Both of these things got lost in the shuffle though as soon as the “Ack! Emergency rush job!” button was pushed. Which is completely understandable — but also really uncomfortable for everyone involved.
A good system. With a hole.
Scenario 2: the misguided assumption thing.
So of course, because it’s apparently not enough for me to learn from my clients’ lessons, I just went through a similar thing myself.
I used to have a really complex system for new clients. This included — among other things — a signed agreement in which we committed to how we were going to communicate with each other. Like, clearly. And kindly.
You know what I didn’t appreciate at the time? How it totally set the tone that working with me is different. That we are doing work together that’s so important and life-altering that it deserves the full attention of our hearts.
One of the things we committed to was this:
“I understand that in the course of working together and working on my patterns, this may tap some deep emotional places in me. If I am ever feeling angry or otherwise upset with you, I agree to tell you as soon as possible.
I commit to having an open, honest conversation so we can clear it up in a healthy, compassionate, non-blaming way and both come out of this experience with a little more clarity and on good terms with each other.
Cheesy? Maybe. But whatever, people know I’m a big tree hugger before they hire me.
Anyway, I recently stopped working with clients on a long-term basis (a temporary experiment) and started doing only single sessions. It seemed kind of over-the-top to bring up this whole complicated preparation ritual for just one meeting.
If it was someone I didn’t know at all, then yeah. Out came the whole agreement. But if it was someone I knew and trusted …. I’d skip it.
This worked well enough until I worked with a client who — as it turned out — had a deep and serious pattern of misreading information, jumping to conclusions, feeling wounded, stewing quietly and then lashing out.
Without the structure and support of our commitment to communication — without that positive frame — an unhappy situation was the inevitable result.
Hole in the system. My system My responsibility.
*sigh*
Scenario 3: the “not allowing for stuff going wrong” thing.
I posted yesterday about my nine years without sugar or caffeine.
One of the things that’s easiest to forget when you make that kind of big, crazy lifestyle change is how you need to be prepared (or at least know what your options are) for situations that are outside of your control.
For example, eating out? Completely problematic.
If you’re going to be on an airplane, at a baseball game, or going to someone’s house for Thanksgiving, you’re going to be hungry. And there’s probably going to be nothing you can eat.
Not having a plan for situations like this… hole in the system.
I’ve also discovered that no matter how clear I am about what I’m not able to eat, there will always be some people who don’t believe me.
Even after I’ve done the whole “Seriously, no sugar also means no honey, no agave, no sweeteners… right, also no brown sugar… uh-huh” routine, some people are still convinced that you won’t be able to taste “just a little” sugar.
It’s not about the taste. When your body hasn’t had to process sugar for close to a decade, it can’t handle those little experiments.
So I have a system. I’m vocal about explaining what happens when I get sugared. We eat mostly at home. I pack things to take on a plane. And we avoid Thanksgiving like the plague.
But the problem is never the system. The problem is the situations that the system doesn’t cover… or the times when the system gets kicked to the curb because I feel awkward or uncomfortable about it.
So occasionally I get zapped.
I end up high as a kite. Talking a mile a minute, rapping my fist on the table, laughing hysterically, bursting into tears and having terrifying heart palpitations. The high is too high, and the low that follows is agonizing and lasts way too long.
Hole in the system.
Here’s the point.
Over and over again I find that — almost always — we already know what we need. We know what’s missing.
We’re just not doing it.
Sometimes we even know what we’re not doing and when we’re not doing it.
It keeps coming back to this:
I know that I need the systems in my business and in the rest of my life to be flexible enough that they can absorb change as it happens.
And at the same time, I need the different elements within each system to be sturdy and firm enough to hold and support me.
I need to take the time to remember what has worked for me in the past and what hasn’t. To take a close look at where the holes are and what they need from me.
To experiment. To be hopeful. Even when a system has dramatically failed to do the thing I wanted it to do, to remember what it’s like to be curious and playful instead of resigned and beaten down.
To trust myself and my instincts a little more. To trust the systems that are already in place enough to use them — not just when I feel the need for them, but as a habit.
I’m trying to think of my systems as the good guys. Because I’m pretty sure they’re there to help me and support me. We’re not exactly friends yet, but I like to think that we’re getting there.
The first five years are the hardest!
So it’s been exactly nine years since — on one especially excruciating afternoon — I quit sugar and caffeine. Or maybe it was a morning.
I’m having trouble remembering the details, but it was definitely February.
Actually, I do have this one very specific memory, but … there’s something really important I have to say before I tell you about that.
The thing I have to tell you.
I don’t often mention the no-sugar thing. Or the no-caffeine thing. Because it’s been my experience that — when it comes up — people tend to think that I’m secretly implying that they should do it too.
So let me state as clearly as I can:
The choices I make in my life are only about my life. You can totally drink coffee and eat cookies all day and I will love you just the same.
Seriously. I could not care less.
Whatever guilt or “shoulds” come up for you, they’re not coming from me. I’m sorry if talking about stuff that goes on in my life makes you feel uncomfortable about stuff going on in yours. That is never my intention.
People vary. What might be poisonous to me could be completely harmless — or even beneficial — for you.
I am not interested in being an evangelist. “You” just the way you are right now? Fine by me. I promise.
Okay, let’s get back to the story.
If you don’t count the week or so I spent curled up in a fetal position, begging for someone — anyone! — to bring me just one piece of chocolate … the first real memory I have of Life Without Sugar is this one:
The end of February. Which I remember because it was my husband’s birthday. It was sunny and beautiful. Tel Aviv. Late afternoon.
We walked past a little Italian café, and my husband bought a cup of gelato — one scoop of chocolate-something and one of pistachio-something. Or maybe it was mint-something. Anyway — it was green.
And when he offered me a taste and the answer wasn’t yes, he looked at me, incredulous.
“You’re really going through with this.”
And I realized for the first time that — yeah, I was.
And then it was a month.
I never intended to stick with it for longer than a month. And the truth is, I didn’t even expect it to make it a month.
I couldn’t even imagine it. Thirty days was pretty much the outside boundary of impossible.
But once I’d gone through that first awful part and come out on the other side … well, things were different. For one thing, I was picking up clues about the nature of my addiction and its power over me.
You seriously don’t realize that there is sugar in just about everything until you try to quit. Then every single thing you crave becomes a clue.
You wake up in the middle of the night, dying for a bowl of corn flakes or a spoonful of spaghetti sauce. A can of corn, a handful of crackers — if you’ve got to have it, expect to find out that it’s loaded with factory-installed sugar.
I’d indulge the latest craving for a couple of days and then eliminate that one as well. It was hard. I didn’t have then the techniques that I have now.
Or the patience.
But I was noticing the sensations that accompany change. And it was fascinating. Painful, yes. And fascinating.
The noticing.
It took a week or so for the fog to clear. But when it did a few things happened.
I would open my eyes in the morning and be absolutely wide awake. Things made sense. The space around me was clearer. The sensations of morning, crisper.
And then there was this energy. The desire to take long walks in the morning, to work and think and create all day, followed by a natural desire to fall exhausted into bed at night.
The holes in my life that I had been filling with sugar and caffeine — they weren’t gone. Other things came in to feed the old patterns instead. I didn’t have the tools to understand that yet.
But I was awake. I was free, or at least felt more free than I had ever been before. And I was noticing so many things about how I interacted with myself. Most of these depressed the hell out of me, but the noticing felt really powerful and true.
What I know now.
When my clients and I work on habits now, we focus on getting to the root of these patterns, to the thing behind the thing. I didn’t know about that yet, so I didn’t have ways to pacify the hurt, to interact with the shame, to meet my pain with comfort and compassion.
If I were going to do this quitting thing again, things would be different. Obviously.
I’d get help. Hypnotherapy. EFT or TAT. Acupuncture. Emergency Calming Techniques.
And then I’d figure out what needs were hiding out inside the pattern I wanted to shift. Needs for sweetness in my life. And comfort. And ritual. And reassurance. And pleasure.
And instead of falling into the old pattern of resenting myself for needing those things, I’d look for other ways to give them attention. And affection.
But I’m not …. I don’t know, tortured by regret or anything like that. The way it happened is the way it happened.
And what I wish someone had told me.
That one month would turn into nine years and it wouldn’t be such a big deal.
That rewriting this habit the wrong way would teach me so much about all sorts of possible right ways.
That — despite my expectation that my whole life without sugar and caffeine would be sluggish, painful and tasteless — I’m actually energized. And my perception of taste has changed so dramatically that now everything is sweet.
A slice of tomato. A handful of raisins. Hazelnuts. Instead of having to look for the thing that will give me sweetness, that sweetness is everywhere. My whole system has re-calibrated itself.
Crazy.
Why I’m telling you all this.
Most of the people I know spend way too much time — completely understandably, of course — feeling guilty about the changes they haven’t made yet.
And about everything that’s getting in the way.
And all I want is to hug them and say that there’s nothing wrong with taking time — even a long, long, very long time — to process all the stuff that needs to be processed to make that change.
The most important thing you can do is to catch yourself doing the guilt thing — and then reminding your guilt that it’s not helping you.
Change through “I think I like you and I want us to feel better” is so much healthier than change through “you’d better get your act together, you lazy, incompetent etc.”
Less depressing, too. And considerably more sustainable.
Honestly? I’d rather see people working on their relationship with their “shoulds” than to see them forcing themselves to make uncomfortable changes because of the old “you need power and discipline, loser” mantra.
Because self-mastery can bite me.
Working on your stuff with patience? And kindness? How completely revolutionary.
I’ll drink to that. 🙂