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.
Happy Purim. Also: Cookies.
Yes, it’s Purim.
Unless you’re Stu (my voice to text software), in which case it’s either pour him, query him, Kareem or, weirdly, Putin.
Stu doesn’t speak Hebrew. And we have some commute Haitian (communication) problems aside from that… but I actually like him more than I let on.
Anyway, poor aim! I mean, Purim! Cut it out, Stu. You know I hate to type.
Here’s what you need to know about Purim.
Unless you’re racking your brain trying to remember the plot of “Home for Purim” in For Your Consideration, I’ll just assume you have no idea what I’m talking about and go from there.
Purim is my absolute favorite holiday. Ever.
It involves getting dressed up in costumes, screaming at the top of your lungs and getting drunk. It’s basically Roller Derby, with cookies.
It’s also got some pretty good themes. Identity. Speaking your truth. Salvation. Memory. And I already mentioned the cookies.
Also I was born right after Purim. And if you’re about to point out that my birthday was a couple of days ago and Purim is right now, let me just add that the Hebrew calendar is interesting lunar.
So… since Selma and I are going to be spending the day in costume, screaming and going on cookie delivery runs with my gentleman friend, I thought I would share with you some rambling software-dictated thoughts and my mother’s amazing hamentaschen recipe.
My mother’s hamentaschen: are better than yours.
But of course first I have to share with you Stu’s interpretation of “hamentaschen”.
My favorite so far is “Hmmm passion”, which kind of sums up how I feel about them. I’m also a fan of “how men fashion”, even though it makes no sense. Unless it’s a snippet of Dickens.
And “Hahnemann Cassian”? Sheer genius.
Moving on. I can’t actually eat ham and passion hamentaschen because they have sugar in them and I can’t eat sugar.
But I can lick the spoon of the all-fruit-filling and then dance around the room on a crazy high and collapse on the floor laughing, which is what I did yesterday. Oh, the fun that is my life.
Okay, hamentaschen. It means Haman’s pockets or Haman’s purse in Yiddish. Or if you prefer the Hebrew version? Haman’s ears.
Forget about etymology. My mother’s are the best in the entire world.
I may have alluded yesterday to her weird tendency to jump to bizarre conclusions, but what’s a bizarre conclusion, really, compared to exceptionally good hamentaschen?
If you’re thinking meh, hamentaschen, that’s because you’ve had the fat, doughy, flour-ey kind. This is something different. Entirely different.
So, between me, my mother and Stu, I’m going to make sure you get the recipe.
The whole recipe, complete with parts of our phone conversation when she gave it to me, and with Stu’s charming interlocutions, because it’s that kind of day. Let the hilarity ensue. Also, a bunch of people on Twitter asked me for it.
The recipe.
Getting started.
My mother: You can make them dairy or you can also not make them dairy, if you’re not eating dairy. I can’t keep track of what you’re not eating.
Me: I’ll make them dairy.
My mother: You don’t have to.
Me: I’m going to.
The dough.
You will love this dough! It’s super easy-to-work-with-mooshable cookie dough type dough.
Oooh, and before you even start reading the ingredients, take the butter out of the refrigerator right now. You’ll thank me later.
Here’s what you need:
- 1/2 cup butter = 1 stick (room temperature-ish)
- 1 cup brown sugar (this is my little tweak, I like the consistency better and my gentleman friend likes the taste)
- 1 egg
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tsp baking powder (“Not soda, you’ll ruin it!”)
- 2 Tsp orange juice
- 1 tsp pure vanilla (here we go again) or almond extract
Here’s what you do:
- cream butter with sugar
- add egg and stir
- stir the flour and the baking powder together
- you add half of flour mixture and then all of o.j. and vanilla. And mix well.
- add the remaining flour mixture and you end up with either a roll or a patty.
- divide into two balls of dough and chill several hours or overnight.
My mother: The dough can be refrigerated up to a week.
Me: I’m making them today.
My mother: Up to a week.
Me: Good to know.
The filling
- several handfuls of uncooked dried figs
- a few handfuls of raisins (golden or regular)
- a couple shakes of cinnamon
Cover the fruit with water and bring to boil.
Cook on low heat until all squooshy. It takes a while. Maybe an hour.
Add cinnamon towards the end. Remove. Cool.
Since I usually refrigerate the dough for several hours or overnight, I stick the pot of fruit goo into the refrigerator as well.
My mother: You could also add just one small apple. You can chop it, grind it or grate it.
Me: No, I’m just a mistake with exaggerations. Scratch that. That was Stu. What I meant to say was no, I’m just going to stick with the raisins.
My mother: Just a small one. It adds texture.
Me: Okay.
My mother: I add 2 teaspoons of honey. But you don’t eat honey.
Me: Okay.
My mother: You can add cinnamon and nuts too. Or a teaspoon of lemon juice and a half a cup of chopped nuts. Or use dates. Or prunes. And throw in some walnuts.
Me: Okay.
My mother: Never mind, if you don’t like it, why don’t you just make them with jam?
Me: Not so into the jam.
My mother: Apricot is best for jam.
Me: Okay.
Yes, we have some commute Haitian problems. I know. But she’s lovely and I adore her and she makes some mean hamentaschen.
The actual cookie making part
Here’s what you do:
- Spread waxed paper over the counter and sprinkle some flour around artistically. Take a chunk of dough and roll it out.
- Use a glass to cut perfect circles in the dough. Take a spoonful of the fruit filling and place it in the center of your flat circle.
- Use your thumb and forefinger to roll up the edges on three sides. Then pinch the corners together and you have a little triangle.
- Butter a baking sheet and load it up with hamentaschen. They’ll spread a little but not too much.
- Bake at 350 until they’re delicately brown at corners and undersides. Somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes.
My mother: You forgot to say that they can also be frozen in layers in an aluminum pie tin.
Me: Are you kidding? These are the best cookies in the entire world. They’re not going to stick around. We’ll deliver some in mishloach manot to Mark and Dana and Shannon. And then Ez and my gentlemen friend will take care of the rest. I bet they’re all gone by tomorrow.
My mother: Don’t forget to put waxed paper between the layers when you pack them.
Me: Okay.
I actually have more to tell you about celebrating Purim — like the crazy, hippie synagogue we ended up at where they actually had a song called “I love my big Jew frog”. I so wish that I had just made that up. Or that Stu had made that up.
Alas, no. But that will have to wait until Friday.
Happy Purim, in the meantime. Or Putin. Eat a cookie for me or something.
Vanilla.
Stu (you know, my voice to text software) is driving me up the wall so this post may end up with no punctuation. I’m just saying.
And since I can’t write, and since not being able to write is messing with my head in the biggest way, I’m going to tell you a little story and maybe it will have a point and maybe it won’t.
The preface that is not a preface
Actually, I’m feeling the need to preface this story with a bunch of disclaimers and hedging and what Stu would call “Bolsheviks”.*
But I’m not going to. Even though that’s kind of driving me crazy too.
*“Bolsheviks” = “bullshit”. Stu is obsessed with Commies. Also he hates foreigners. Which is total Bolsheviks. Damn you, Stu. You know what I mean.
The beginning of a story
So I’m probably fifteen or sixteen. It’s winter. It’s early in the morning.
I’m bundled up in my gigantic winter coat with its enormous pockets and I’m rummaging in a kitchen cupboard to grab a granola bar or something right before I run out the door.
And if there was any thought at all in my mind it was probably something like “oh crap, I’m going to miss the bus.”
Then a day or two later I stick my hand in my pocket and discover a bottle of vanilla. Like, vanilla extract that you would use in baking something. Cookies. I don’t know.
It was the world’s biggest mystery. I came up with about a thousand theories, each equally ridiculous, before it dawned on me that I’d probably knocked it into my pocket with my elbow or something while poking about in the Cabinet.
Don’t capitalize Cabinet, Stu. This isn’t a damn political treatise.
The middle of the story.
I thought it was pretty hilarious that I ended up with a bottle of vanilla in my coat pocket, so instead of just putting it away, I shared the story with my mother. Having forgotten momentarily that you absolutely never know how she’s going to react to basically anything.
She was not amused. In fact, she accused me of having stolen the vanilla for the purposes of getting drunk on the alcohol content or the fumes or something. And of lying about it.
Since a) that would’ve been crazy, b) it never would’ve occurred to me and c) if I’d wanted to get drunk (which I didn’t, ever) I could have raided their huge, untouched “liquor cabinet”*, I didn’t know what to say and just kind of gaped at her.
*By liquor cabinet I mean random bottles gathering dust after being given to my teetotaling parents as unappreciated gifts, and no, I never did that. I may have been young and stupid, but that wasn’t my particular flavor of young and stupid.
The conclusion of the story.
You want a conclusion? I’ll give you a conclusion.
Actually, I don’t have a conclusion. But speaking of conclusions…
Jumping to them, man. It’ll get you every time.
I could give you an absurdly high number of examples of ways we screw up stuff in our relationships, in our business, or in our interactions with ourselves. But how about just one to start with?
Someone recently left my Kitchen Table program because she felt like she didn’t fit in with all the “nice people” there. She thought she wasn’t nice enough.
If she’d told me that before she left, I could have introduced her to some of the meanest, bitchiest, funniest people I know — people who also happen to be members of the Table.
Conclusions.
They’re right there to be jumped to.
The important part.
It’s practically a universal spiritual truth that we know nothing about nothing.
I mean, so many traditions talk about these moments.
The ones where you realize with terrifying clarity that everything you once knew to be true is …. well, you’re not sure, but it’s definitely not than the way you thought it was.
You realize that wisdom is what happens when you acknowledge a lack of knowledge. Like Socrates, you catch a glimpse of just how much you don’t know. And how what you do know is in flux. Because things take many forms.
“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”
Socrates knew about assumptions. And questioning them. And how much they suck. That one’s not a direct quote.
Point is, the things we know feel so true and steady and certain at times. When actually many stories can exist simultaneously, yet all be equally false. Or true.
And there is a certain degree of stability in this too.
Things that are hard.
Oh, lots of things.
It’s hard to stop and ask “What did I just observe? How do I feel about what I think just happened? Could I be wrong?”
It’s hard to distinguish between WEAR and TEAR. You remember, right?
WEAR = What Everyone Agrees is Reality
TEAR = The Ego’s Arbitrary Reality
But enough about reality and the different shapes it can take.
Even without knowing what is real and what is not, even without knowing enough to know that not knowing is its own form of truth… it’s the assumptions that get us all tangled up.
If I could give only one piece of advice to someone feeling stuckified (whatever particular shape your own situation takes) it would be this:
Delay assessment.
Get a second opinion. And then a third one. You know, poke at your assumptions and conclusions and see if they jump. Or if it was just you.
It’s the hardest practice I know of. The one I like the least. But what the hell. Maybe that’s not true either. Poke.
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.