Category Archives: relationship

Be Myself, Change Myself, Be the Change

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Vail, Colorado, 2019

We are who we are from a very early age, maybe even before we are born. AND, we also constantly evolve throughout our lives. 

This is one of my favorite paradoxes.

Image shared on Instagram–one of my favorite quotes

I’m thinking a lot lately about Outer Peace. Our world swirls and bubbles with chaos and toxicity, so many psyches apparently living on the knife edge between tolerance and breakage, between breathing and screaming. How often are we tempted to yell, kick, throw things, or simply stop whatever we’re doing and just cry a while? How do we hold it together and simply function ourselves, much less help anybody else, and/or make any positive difference in the universe?

The longer I live the more I (re)learn that it’s about core values, goals, and trade offs, and not ego. Change is not about fighting. It’s Inner Peace in service of Outer Peace.

“Yesterday I was clever,” I knew better than everybody else. I was smart, and I wanted to show it. I came at rather than coming alongside, made simple and superficial assumptions, jumped to (often wrong) conclusions. This part of the quote expresses the necessary adolescence that we all go through in life–personal, social, and professional–the ‘know it all’ phase that our elders tolerate knowingly because their own elders did the same for them. Impetuous and defiant confidence, disregarding boundaries, testing and finding limits and resonances, if only subconsciously and often painfully. It is the organic growth and pruning of youth to early adulthood. If we’re lucky, we have mentors to guide us, helping us navigate the morass with fewer mental, emotional, and spiritual nicks, bruises, and fractures.

“…so I wanted to change the world.” Because it *should* all be a certain way, the way I think, because I know what’s right. Those who agree with me are my friends; those who don’t are not. I’m oversimplifying. But this is not far from a persistent mindset reality in our social groups well past physiologic adolescence, and not least among those who determine and enforce policy. Change the world how? According to my own world view and life philosophy, however rigid, narrow, and closed. I wonder about the (inverse?) correlation between how tightly we hold onto our rigidities and how far we have traveled, how diverse our experience, how many different cultures and realities we truly understand and empathize with? I submit that if we are honestly paying attention, if we open our eyes, minds, and hearts to the depth and breadth of any given human’s life experience, it instantly puts our all-knowing and arrogant ego in its place, which is at the back of the ‘world change’ bus.

“Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” I am still clever–perhaps ever more so with age. With wisdom, however, I apply my cleverness in a different, more mindful, relationally intelligent way. I realize that power to change is not power over, it is power to. Strong arming (which includes coercing and shaming) rarely creates lasting, meaningful change, at least not without deep human cost. When I look inward first, seeing how I myself relate to and connect with that which I wish to change, therein lies my strength. I approach any problem from an ultimately human and humane perspective, which makes me more credible, more creative, more holistic in my problem solving. This is a big ask, requiring vulnerability and a willingness to step ‘way outside of my comfort zones. How does this give me any kind of peace? Don’t I risk losing myself, my identity entirely, when I make such daring attempts at real inclusiveness?

Who am I, that I can withstand this broadening, this profound stretching of perspective?

I am clear. I am centered. I am grounded, focused, and engaged–in my Why, in my Just Cause, in my commitment to playing the infinite game of human relationship and connection as long as I possibly can. To be me, my Best Self, means constantly evolving through lived experience, while hewing closely to my core values of honesty, integrity, curiosity, humility, generosity, and kindness. My inner peace comes from knowing, at the end of each day, that I did my best to show up this way, even when it was hard. 

It’s hard when I’m attacked, dismissed, or rejected for asking open, honest questions, for challenging social norms and ‘the way we do things,’ for facing and abutting over and over the rigid, the narrow, the closed. It’s hard when I discover my own rigidity, narrowness, and closures–oh man, that is tough to take. And the practices bring me back; they de-escalate, defuse, disarm, and rejuvenate: Breath. Mindfulness. Writing. Talking. Connection.

Inner Peace may not come immediately or even for a while after a disruption. But it does come, and each training episode strengthens my skills. The peace I eventually feel, then, grows and deepens; it integrates synergistically. It cannot help but then exude, at least while it lasts, until the next trial. Intervals between trials lengthen because what disrupted my peace last year rolls off of my consciousness today. Episodes shorten as I am able to breathe and regulate through them more effectively and efficiently. I become elastic, supple–strong and soft. My peace grows, and I grow with it, as does my capacity to share it.

I am me this whole time, learning, practicing, training, ad infinitum. I am me, rooted while growing. I am me, the change I wish to see in the world.

Bit Post: What Is Up With This Road Rage?

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In response to Friend’s post describing a driver’s prolonged tyranical rant at him after honking at her for cutting him off at an intersection, marveling at the disproportionality and vehemence of it, incredulous at its intensity and utterly violent resonance:

“It’s been getting worse for years now, and escalating exponentially in the past year, in my observation. It’s the toxic milieu of the world, I’m afraid. Everybody is on their last nerve and lashing out impulsively whenever and wherever it has the least/fewest perceived consequences—at strangers. 😞 So the best thing each/all of us can do is self-regulate—meet aggression with peace and kindness, defuse rather than escalate. Easier said than done. Sometimes we will inevitably be the aggressor; in those situations we can hope that our target can respond with equanimity rather than hostility. This is how things will get better. One de-escalated encounter at a time.” 🙏🏼🫤❤️‍🩹

Immensity: A Practice in Self-Awareness

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What are your body signs of stress?

Mine was neck pain for the longest time. I could usually relieve it with a brief massage until starting a very stressful job, where I quickly developed daily pain, stinging and tight. Then nothing helped, neither massage nor ibuprofen, only vacation, for 5 years until I left. During pandemic lockdown, low back pain emerged as a new physical manifestation of mental stress. 

For the past month I have had varying degrees of lumbar pain, but it did not occur to me that it was stress related. I must be doing my dead lifts wrong, I thought. I must need to stretch. But nothing seemed to help after a while, and it got worse after Thanksgiving. That weekend, I found out in no uncertain terms how I had hurt someone very close to me. I always had an inkling, but the full impact of my actions became clear in one starkly honest conversation. In the emotional overwhelm, I could only process a little at a time, mentally (hence the I Wish I Was Better For You post–I was actually thinking of a different relationship, but the idea for that post brought up multiple relational regrets all at once). The rest landed squarely and heavily on my back. It was sore during the days, and woke me up from sleep at night with severe pain and stiffness. I was not limited during my Ethos workouts, though–in fact, I felt better during exercise. After a relatively easy session last Sunday morning, I sat the rest of the day writing, and that night felt like I was both 100 years old and got hit by a truck. It was slowly dawning on me, the origin of my physical pain: The full depth and persistence of my relational fuck-ups was unfolding into conscious awareness, and it was painful, quite literally. Looking back, I was also much more tearful than usual in the past month–like leaks of extreme emotion springing forth, portending.

As is often the case, conscious awareness brought alleviation of pain. No NSAIDs, no physical therapy, no yoga, just an emerging understanding and acceptance. And insights: I realized this week that when I get sad, I get sedentary. I lean heavily toward stillness, with a strong urge to write for release, instead of moving, which is how I relieve anxiety and anger. This past month my workouts diminshed and verbal output escalated significantly. Writing helped untangle and clarify thoughts (I knew I was projecting self-loathing, I just didn’t know why), but I think the lack of movment may have perpetuated repression of feelings, thus diverting them into spiraling physical pain. Now I know, Opposite Action helps: Under stress, doing the opposite of my wallowing tendency can keep me healthy. Hopefully the next time I experience profound sadness (or guilt, or shame), I will resist the pull of the comforting though potentially counterproductive chairs and instead get on the elliptical.

My friends also helped this week. When I told them my sorrowful discovery, they held space for it so lovingly, so patiently. No platitudes, no false positivity–only empathy, validation, and compassion. They shared their own hardships, and I helped them hold it, too. How lucky am I, to know these wonderful people, to have them in my corner? The mutual uplift is absolutely synergistic and exponential, as is my gratitude.

I wrote about forgiveness last month, and how withholding it harms the (un)forgiver. Today I understand acutely how it also hurts and plagues the unforgiven. My loved one forgives me, thank God; I think I can forgive myself more easily now that I know that. We shall see.

“Big feelings” don’t just happen to kids. We grown-ups experience big, hard, complicated emotions as much as anyone. ”So much, so much,” as my friend’s daughter used to lament. ’Immense,’ as it occurred to me this week. Elation, gratitude, grief, guilt, regret, joy, humility, connection–it can all really be so much–sometimes too much for a mind to hold. So it puts it in the body for a while.

After several days of chasing–analyzing, journaling, thought experimenting, self-flagellating–I finally ran out of evaluative fuel and just let the feelings be. Rather than mixing, kneading, stretching, and folding, impatiently trying to shape the nebulous into a smooth ball of cognitive comprehension, I put it to sit and ferment a while. It didn’t take long for a form to rise, to show me what it was made of. I see now what’s been happening. Hopefully I can take the learning and apply it next time. [HA! Who knew a post on dark emotions could include a fun sourdough analogy?]

My back feels fine today, better than it has in weeks. Fascinating.

Onward.