Category Archives: personal growth

The Fabulous Fizzle of a NaMo

Posted on by
10

November Gratitude Shorts, Days 25-30

Hello Friends, I have missed you!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

I find it funny that I stopped posting on Gratitude the day before Thanksgiving—how ironic!  Believe me, it was not from lack of thankfulness or desire.  I had to make some decisions about how to spend my time and energy this past week, and I chose to forgo posting each day.  It doesn’t feel too bad—I did make it 24 days, after all!  It helps that I set out on this NaBloPoMo challenge with high hopes and low expectations.  Looking back, some of the posts this month make me pretty proud; others I’m happy to forget.  As Ben Zander would say, “How fascinating!”

I felt validated this weekend by Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook post on quitting versus surrendering.   Quitting, she writes, is when you just plain give up.  Surrender, on the other hand, happens when you come to the end of your power.  I kept up my daily posts, for the most part, and it cost me time and energy, both finite resources.  Over the month, I finally had to admit that I was overextended.  I started to worry about neglecting my family—that was a sign.  This holiday weekend was a great chance for us to spend all kinds of quality time together, and I think I made the right choices.  Yes, I committed to post daily gratitude.  It didn’t work out.  Meh.

What were the underlying goals and drivers of this challenge?  It was an exercise to practice intentional gratitude, and articulate it.  It was a chance to confront my perfectionist tendencies, the ones that keep me from trying new things because I fear doing them, well, imperfectly.  I now have a clearer view of my abilities, limitations, and priorities.  I came to the end of my power for posting in this format and frequency, and realized that it’s more than I thought I had in me, yay!  I did not quit my posts.  I surrendered to the realities of life and learned important lessons about myself.  Gilbert writes, “There is always grace in surrender. There is always truth in surrender. There is always a great deal of human dignity in surrender.”  I agree.

On this final day of November, as we move well into the holiday season, I feel truly grateful for so many things.  Our holiday weekend was both relaxing and productive.  We slept in, saw family, ate too much, and purged our closets.  We spent time together all four of us, and the hubs and I managed to get in a date night, too—thank you, sister-in-law, for babysitting!  I wanted to write about all of it, but sometimes you just have to live in it first.

With all the hostility exploding around the world, some of it in my own backyard, I am reminded that every day is a gift.  Each day that does not visit tragedy on my front door is a day to be truly appreciated.  And while I cannot myself affect positive change on a global scale, I can do my part in each of my human interactions.  When someone cuts me off in traffic or behaves rudely at the store, I can choose to tell a story of compassion and patience, rather than personal affront.  The outcome of all this gratitude should be better behavior on my part—more love and light directed outward, indiscriminately, driven by an internal flame, fueled by the realization that I have everything I need and more.  My NaMo may have fizzled this last week, but it was an awesome fizzle indeed, and I am proud to own it.

 

Facebook Fast, or Coming Home

Posted on by
5

November Gratitude Shorts, Day 21 (Late entry)

Thank you, friend Donna.

We had one of our usual soul-feeding brunch meetings on Friday.  I expressed excitement, intensity, diversion, passion, apprehension, exhilaration for all kinds of things, and also concern that in all my ambition to achieve my professional vision, I would neglect my family.  We talked through all the connections between my activities, my values, and the world at large.   You helped me explore my inner world, slow down and examine the concerns that I might otherwise gloss over.  I described my urge to be home, pay attention to the kids, be present.

Conservatively, I probably spend 3+ hours on Facebook, email, or WordPress per day. You suggested I do a social media cleanse–what was it, a week?  A month?  Whoa nelly, let’s not get carried away!  But it caught my attention. I’ve been struggling for a while with FOMO, as David Brooks calls it, or Fear of Missing Out. I scroll through my Facebook feed for articles. I check my WordPress stats to see how many views and visitors, comparing one day to the next. It all diverts my attention from the family, when I’m with them. I’ve tried to implement limits, like no Facebook after 9pm. That lasted maybe a week. It’s become a habit, a compulsion—walk by the phone, pick it up, check this, then that. A multi-day cleanse seemed a bit drastic. But maybe a fast? Just try, we said. No pressure. See if I can go 24 hours without checking Facebook, Twitter, or WordPress, and look at email minimally. We agreed I would try Saturday—today is as good a time as any.

It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I feel liberated and reassured. Turns out I can live without Facebook for a day, and I don’t dissolve into cold sweats and tremors. I meant to post my November Gratitude Shorts on time, but I let up on myself for those, too. I knew I’d get them done. It’s not the end of the world if my daily posts are a little delayed.

I spent time with the family. We watched a movie together, decorated the Christmas tree, and had some good friends over for a potsticker party. I didn’t miss out on anything, and all is well. I still may not be ready for a week-long cleanse, but I can definitely make fasting a regular practice. As I continue to pursue my professional mission(s), I can use social media as a source of ideas and information, and I can also put it down and engage in person with those around me.

Thank you, friend Donna, for the invitation.

 

Superhero Exploration!

Posted on by
8

November Gratitude Shorts, Day 20 (Late entry)

Man of Steel, Ironman, Thor, Avengers, Captain America, Mission Impossible, Jason Bourne, Hallelujah!

In the last several years my preferred movie genre has shifted from romantic comedies to superhero action flicks. I’m not exactly sure why, though I suspect it has something to do with letting go childish wishes of happily ever after and embracing a more, shall we say, assertive form of entertainment.

The story follows a similar arc, regardless of the movie. We meet the heroes, then follow along as some colossal menace emerges that only they can fight.  In at least one scene they narrowly avert some mortal threat at the last millisecond.  No matter how desperate and hopeless the situation, no matter how fast my heart races and I tremble and fret, in the end the heroes win and all is saved…until next time—tune in next summer!

I learned recently about three types of stress:

  1. Threat stress: This is what we generally mean when we say ‘stress.’ It’s the fight, flight, or freeze response, when we sense a threat to survival, or we appraise that we lack the resources to cope with our circumstances. It’s mediated by cortisol.
  2. Challenge stress: We face a challenge that we feel at least somewhat qualified to tackle but it will be hard, test our limits. If we’re lucky, it’s something we care deeply about and we rise to the occasion—I’m thinking this could lead to a state of flow. This stress results in increases in DHEA and testosterone.
  3. Tend and befriend stress: This is empathy. We see a friend in need and we respond with compassion and love. We feel connected through their struggle. Oxytocin rises here. [Addendum, 04/26/16: This is an incorrect interpretation of the tend and befriend response.  Read my updated understanding here.]

This is intriguing to me, and I will study more about this construct in the very near future. I have experienced a fair amount of the latter two recently, and I’m positively exhausted.  So here is what I have learned: Not all stress is bad.  But even good stress costs energy, and we need to recover from it.

So maybe this is why superhero action films appeal to me? The heroes experience a call to adventure.  They, and we, wonder if they are up to the challenge.  They are tested, sometimes to their very limits.  In the end they prevail.  Maybe watching these movies vicariously feeds my challenge stress hunger, helps me believe that I, too, can rise to the occasion of my challenges in life?  None of the heroes do it alone, they all have at least one loyal partner who believes in them and their cause—the partners tend and befriend them—they have connection.  We all need help to get where we need to go.  The true superheroes know this well.