Monthly Archives: November 2019

November 26:  Practicing Peace Makes Me Better

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NaBloPoMo 2019

What helps you find peace these days?

With so much tumult in the country/world and Thanksgiving gatherings fast approaching, what will get you through this season and the coming year with minimal suffering and relationships intact?

Lately my inner peace feels tested on multiple fronts.  Anxiety, guilt, fear, regret, and insecurity accelerate their rotations through my limbic brain.  Thankfully, with age, therapy, and loving, compassionate friends, I have let go of self-judgment for experiencing stress and distress.  I don’t resist negative feelings as much as I used to.  I wish I could say this makes them less unpleasant, easier to tolerate.  Sadly, no.  But I am better able to let them pass through me, to ease into peace.

The more I observe, the more I notice that rather than allow and release our emotions, we tend to either deny/repress or fixate on them.  The consequent suffering can be disabling.  I started wondering how peace comes so much more easily to me now than before.  Below is a partial list.  What would you add to it?

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Breathe

Rose may have saved my career.  One day early in practice, running around exasperated and cranky yet again, I returned to my spot at the counter to find “TAKE A DEEP BREATH” posted in large font on the wall in front of me.  It was one of those immediate and profound, perspective-shifting, life-changing moments.  One. Deep. Breath.  Everything goes smoother and happier since that day.  Later I learned about tactical breathing, which trains inner peace both mentally and physically.  I’m not facing mortal combat (primitive stress reflex responses notwithstanding), but it helps me find peace all the same.

Smile (especially when I see my kids)

I was a dormitory resident assistant my senior year in college.  Though it was my job to serve as counselor and guide to college life for my fellow residents, it was a wise freshman who taught me about exercising agency in the face of adversity.  I can still see her joyful, welcoming face and posture, feel her free and loving spirit.  I wish I had gotten to know her better.  She wrote on my message board, “Smile, Cathy, you’ll feel ten times better!”  Of course she was right.  Over the past 25 years I’m proud to say that I’m much better at finding my smile now.  Thank you, sweet girl.

Quote Michael J. Fox

MJ Fox worry

Focus on the Now

My daughter had an anaphylactic reaction while I was at work.  The sitter called and I could hear my preschooler stridoring in the background.  My son called 911 as I raced out of the office to meet them at the emergency department.  I was shaking and could barely see straight—how was I going to drive?  What if she died?  I still had to keep it together for my other kid.  That was a morbid turn, I remember thinking.  How quickly we catastrophize.  Thank God for the mindfulness training I had recently started.  Right now, everybody’s still alive.  Paramedics are on their way.  They already did the EpiPen.  Things are okay right now.  This mantra occurred to me as I pulled out of my parking space.  It carried me through that crisis and has held me up through numerous others since.  Mindfulness works, my friends.

Let Go Outcome

See quote by Michael J. Fox.  No matter how much we plan, what we expect, or how prepared we are, we just don’t know what will happen.  This practice is also an extension of mindfulness.  I can only control my own attitude and action right now.  I can cultivate relationships that influence others, attempt to enroll them in my ideas, and recruit them on my mission.  But I cannot control their reactions, their behavior, or the myriad circumstantial dynamics that facilitate or stymie our activities.  If we work steadily for our highest goals, stay on the path of honesty, integrity, and authenticity, and commit to ethical process, then we can deal with any outcome.

Stop Chasing Confirmation

Early in marriage and parenting, I used to fight.  I would flood my family with more and louder words, convinced I could prove my point and win.  The more I spoke (yelled), the more blank and silent my loved ones became, and the louder and larger I got in their faces, demanding understanding, agreement, acquiescence.  [Please feel free to laugh out loud while cringing here.]  These encounters inevitably ended in frustration for all of us.  Somewhere along the way I noticed people demonstrating the behaviors I demanded, even though they had never agreed to them.  Maybe there’s a better way?  Perhaps if I state my case calmly and lovingly, and let go of the immediate outcome, the doors in their minds might stay more open and I can still get what I want, without all the hurt feelings and wasted energy.  *sigh*

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Four more days, friends.  Almost there!  Thank you for your views, likes, and comments!

November 25:  My Journals Make Me Better

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NaBloPoMo 2019

“You both have multiple journals that are all partially written in?” I asked, feeling vaguely twitchy.

On an online forum where I like to think I’m making new friends, three of us have bonded over our shared love of journals.  I wrote to the group last week, “I may have almost as many blank journals as I have books–the potential in them, the invitation to fill them with experience and life–they just make me so happy.”  The other two musketeers described their journals of various sizes, shapes, and designs, scattered about their homes.  They get written in whenever inspiration strikes.

That idea made me a little uncomfortable—that thoughts and ideas might be strewn about in different books, lying randomly around a home, disconnected, alone!  Hence the question above that I keyboard-blurted tonight.  I thought at first, “I can’t do that.”  Then I realized, I do do that—I have at least 4 journals going at the same time.  But I do organize them (not that my friends don’t—I have asked them to clarify).  I have a personal one, where I keep all original content. This one has at least three different designs of washi tape tabs, for blog ideas, presentation ideas, and other recurrent themes.  One is for work–a record of meetings, tasks, initiatives and their progress.  In a third I take notes at conferences or other formal learning.  Yet another holds insights from coaching calls and exercises from LOH.  I carry at least two, sometimes all, of them around with me every day. It’s common for me to have at least two out and be writing in both of them at the same time–taking notes from a meeting or presentation in one, then writing reflections, insights, and revelations in the other.  I often flip them over and write from the back covers, to keep lists and other short, serial records.  I attach email printouts and sticky notes, and when I reread I highlight and write in the margins.  These are well-used and well-loved books.

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In 2010 I went to a Mindfulness in Medical Education retreat.  I was physically ill that week with a respiratory virus.  But I had been mentally and emotionally unwell for months, turbulent and restless inside.  All I could do was ruminate, turning thoughts, conversations, and memories over, raking the same terrain, uncovering nothing new, no insights to show for all that psychic energy spent.  On the first night of the retreat we were given some quiet time and a pad of paper.  I filled my mug with hot tea, climbed into the bay window, and started writing.  For a month I had had inexplicable and persistent cubital tunnel syndrome—inflammation of the ulnar nerve at my right elbow that caused such sensitivity and pain in my forearm that I could hardly stand wearing long sleeves.  That night I unloaded the whole of my pent up frustrations onto that legal pad, many pages worth—a total brain dump.  I always journaled growing up, and somehow it had been years since I had last penned for myself.  I had forgotten how cathartic, how therapeutic, it was.  The next morning my arm felt normal.  I have kept a journal ever since, and that pain has never recurred.

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Another friend mentioned recently that he may leave his house without his wallet or his keys, but he never steps out the door without his journal.  I can totally relate!  Now I suspect there are more of us than I thought.  It’s the most satisfying feeling to have a reliable, accessible repository to record insights, ideas, and discernments, whenever they occur.  When I cannot do this—usually when I’m driving—it’s like having to pee until I can get out the journal at the next stoplight (or pull over).  It occurs to me occasionally to stop accumulating blank journals.  I’ve already set a moratorium on buying yoga pants and washi tape (for now).  But if a blank journal calls to me, I will buy it.  It’s good for my soul.

November 24:  Alone Time Makes Me Better

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NaBloPoMo 2019

How many hours do you get to yourself at a time?  I mean not just in the shower or commuting, or to work out. I mean how much time do you get to really, only take care of yourself?  When there are no kids to pick up or drop off, no meals to plan or prepare, no immediate work deadlines, no call, no commitments?

I had 36 hours this weekend—there are about 25 minutes left.

I realized at the end of Wednesday that my irritation at fellow drivers was probably a projection of anxiety and agitation about my kids being away this weekend, each to a different place, a first experience for both of them and me.  Anxiety often manifests as anger and irritability for me.  I called forth many of my cognitive behavioral and mind body practices to manage the fear and worry, so that I could actually enjoy this amazing alone time—the first such stretch since the elder kid’s birth.

And holy cow, I’ gotta do this more often.

I will spare you the list of restorative activities!  But suffice it to say that I managed to balance sleep, music, food, productivity, creativity, solitude, and connection.  It really was a perfect rhythm.  Deep breath.  And now I’m ready for the family’s return and re-entry into life as usual, a little more relaxed and peaceful.

This year has been intense, fast-paced, and dense with learning, both personal and professional.  I think we all appreciate the idea of alone time, and we understand its importance intellectually.  But like so many things, to actually experience it first hand, for real, is completely different and profound.  I finished listening to Range this morning.  In it David Epstein describes how teams do best when members have a balance between solitary and interactive, collaborative work, as opposed to all one or the other.  Coaches know that training for any skill, be it athletic, musical, or otherwise, requires alternation between periods of sustained, focused practice and rest, time away.  New neural pathways require downtime to fully integrate.  This weekend, I was able to synthesize ideas from Epstein’s book on diversity of experience, and assimilate them with what I’m reading in Ozan’s book, Think Like a Rocket Scientist, on combinatory play.  In the quiet of an empty house, freed from rushing off to the next activity, insights arose more freely, and I connected dots to previous experiences and learning much more easily.  Today I started The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek.  More transformative ideas (simple and profound) to start incorporating into my world view and leadership practice, and to write about later—Yahoo!

I wondered if I’d be lonely this weekend… Nope, not at all.  This time alone was exactly what I needed.  Loving thanks to the family for gifting it to me.