Arts

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Listen To The Intention In What People Say

Self-Care Tip #107 – Listen to the intention in what other people say.  Be a friend to yourself.

Knowing when to stand up.  To speak out.  There’s so much said about letting things go that when we don’t, we can feel, if not see, the people pinching up inside.  “Uck!”  But that can’t always be good, keeping quiet.

Trying to connect is hard to do in silence.  It’s hard to do in sound too, if it doesn’t penetrate.  Connections are penetrating experiences.  They get inside and hook us.  They touch our simple selves and although foreign, don’t corrupt us.  That is the Love’s job – the cleanness of it.  We are touched but still clean because of Love.  Without it, getting touched can feel contaminating, dirty.

In an earlier blog post, “Criticize if You Love Me,” I spoke about the love it takes to deal with a problem, and not walk away.  The comments made the post bigger and better by highlighting how much courage it takes not only to give criticism, but also to receive it.  And more often, I was told about the pain people received from criticism.

There are 2 parts here.  The “Giver” and the “Taker.”  Giving criticism can be more about the person giving it than anything to do with the person receiving it.  It is in reality often an attempt by Giver to connect.  And when it doesn’t feel that way by Taker, it becomes disconnecting.

 

tele-smart.com

 

2 parts, remember?  Which ever side we are on, we have a choice.  We have a choice to connect.  Knowing something of the intention of Giver to connect must help that choice some, even when it doesn’t feel like what they are saying has anything good in it.

The real part of us is sacred.  Any contact to our simple selves is a privilege.  It is a privilege to both parties – Giver and Taker.  Both parties can be blessed and then in that exchange, Giver becomes Taker.

So think about what you want to say to someone you love and give.  Now, think about what you are hearing.  Take it.  And connect.

Question:  Do you find yourself on one side or another?  How do you connect?  Please tell me your story.

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Saying Something Great

 

apicturefromlifesotherside.blogspot.com

Self-Care Tip #104 – Say something that you wouldn’t, but wanted.  Be a friend to yourself.

 

There are those things out there, a pirates booty of words and phrases, that I love to hear or see written in pixels or ink.  Things like, (from the doodling doodlemum,)

clean breast pads.

(Um.  If you don’t know what that both implies and means, you can’t know why that is perfect script.)

Or from the esteemed Posky’s blog,

Nobody wants to change a diaper because they know very well what is going to be in there waiting for them. I have given this a lot of thought and, if this were my world to make, I would change it up so you wouldn’t always know what you were getting. A lot of the time it would still be poop but, every so often, you’d find little treasures like a gold coin or a note from the baby thanking you. How sweet would it be to find a plastic dinosaur, half a sandwich or an autographed photo of Mark Twain in the diaper instead of just business as usual?

(Snort!  Gasp!  Too funny!)

Or how bout a name like, bendedspoon?  I loved reading that name for the first time.  Who hasn’t felt like something still recognizable but barely.  Something changed but beautiful.  That name is brilliant!  Before I consciously said it, my subconscious was already leaping up for a high-five.

Say things with a little less filter, with a little more trust, with words that say, in some form or other, “Will you be my friend?”

Question:  What are some of your own words that have lighted you up?

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Are You a Victim or What?!

 

 

Number Two of Bella’s List – victim or what!?:

Last night I took my 5 year-old daughter on a sleep-over date at a hotel.  Generous I thought …and boy was it!  To me!!  I couldn’t believe how much fun I had.  I quickly realized why I had done this.

A bit of me still wants to float away on wings of the modern-martyred-Mom, and I can, because it did take a lot of time and money and energy and….  But it’s not too friendly to me.  As attractive as that flight may seem, I’ll lose air at some point and take a big fall.  Ouch.  I might fall on my kid too which is against my intuitive effort here.

Being a victim is attractive at some level, no?  My story is a softer example, but we all have tougher ones.  Like Bella’s when “she spoke of her injury.”  The gravity of her injury was created by her perception of things.  Our perception makes our emotional success.  My story about last night with my daughter sounds pretty because that’s how I perceived it.  However, I have other stories that have negative power over me as Bella’s had on her and as yours have on you.

The key here is that when we take the victim role, we aren’t just telling our story or venting.  We are feeling self-pity. But venting is not necessarily self-victimization.  Venting can be healthy.  Venting can be done without taking a victim air-bus to no-where good.  Venting can be a way of being present in your suffering, of going where the pain is and letting it lose power over you.  Self-pity only gives the suffering more power.

The great novelist and philosopher, David Foster Wallace, who courageously lived and died with major depressive disorder, encouraged,

To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties.

The willingness to learn or grow is the foot-path away from victim-ville.  Could we even say that being a victim is “arrogant?”  We – Me, my patient Bella, you – have we taken steps to tell our story, to be present, to live with the humility it takes to look at ourselves and not escape/fly-away?

Whatever it is you are going through, it might help to vent it!  Grow and learn and get bigger than that experience.

Self-Care Tip #94 – Get in your own space to choose freedom from self-pity.  Be a friend to Yourself.

Question:  What barriers have you felt to telling your story?  What has made it difficult to be in the space of your own feelings?  Please tell us.

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You’ll Be Less Bored if You Do

 

Rocky Balboa

Image via Wikipedia

 

Self-Care Tip #89 – Practice being real.  Exercise it!  Be a friend to yourself.

Sara Stein MD and author of Obese From the Heart, wrote

There’s nothing romantic or mysterious about advanced age. It’s painful and difficult for everyone, but there are good moments.

I like that.  We could say it about a lot of other things too.  Just today in clinic for starters, Mary said she’s falling asleep during the day, but is doing less self-injury since starting topiramate.  Max has gained about 20 pounds but he is over his Staphylococcus infection and he’s sleep through the night.  Marge is crying because there is no cure for her son’s illness, but he can still be treated medically and protected against further disease progression.

Any time someone asks me how I’m doing, I’m in a paradox.  It’s the drive I struggle with to express emotions purely and completely that can be my own Rocky (Dir: John G.Avildsen, 1977) experience or it can kick me in the back-side.  Doing what Dr. Stein so eloquently did isn’t as easy as it looks.

“Fine,” I say.  “Things are wonderful.  Thanks for asking.”  (Snore.)

Or, (trip,) “I’m tired and parenting is difficult, and as much as I talk about it, I can’t seem to figure out how to take care of myself.  But I’m also really good and haven’t been this happy in a long time.” (Panting holding my sides.)

Being real without boring or tiring yourself out might take some practice.

The “real-thing,” blogger Film Fan wrote

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway, 26th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.  The most famous location in Rocky is probably the stairs he jogs up during the ’Gonna Fly Now’ training montage. The good news is that you can re-enact the scene and jog up and down them, the bad news is that there are 68 steps… That’s quite a few if you’re jogging.

If you ever want to get bored quick, try to be happy.  Try it.  Try to be good.  Try to ignore the monotony.  If you want to be bored, draw your house with a window and a door and a sun shining in the corner.  It’s no good for boredom when you draw in the shadows and colors.  But doing that well might not be natural for everyone.  We might need to get into a training program, like Rocky Balboa before we can be in the presence of the bad and the good of our lives without loosing our breath.

It may take practice to be real, but you will be less bored if you do.

Question:  How do you find being real with the good and bad of your life affects you?  Please tell me your story.

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The Price of Manure

In yesterday’s post I asked “What has happened in the space between you and the ones you love?”  A reader responded,

Think of being loved but not being able to be touched. …Rituals above spontaneity. Of having Lysol applied to everything you touch. Lysol applied to children’s legs and shoes. Not being able to hug your kids after work until after a bath and your inside-clothes on. The tirades. Most things literal and not humorous. Any cabinet or freezer needing to be as stuffed as possible.
As a young person it seemed very personal and hurtful. …All the lost years….  After all those years now on the mend.

It doesn’t matter how old we are, it takes courage to live.  There are many astounding parts of this story, but today I draw attention to “the lost years.”

I don’t know if any of you readers saw the episode last week from the musical comedy, Glee.  It irreverently tossed together a potato salad of high impact emotions.  (Delicious potato salad!)  The best part was as usual the great Jane Lynch.  That woman is brilliant.  She shows us anger, resentment, and personalization through spitting words.  She contrasts this against her thick velvet love for her older disabled sister. Sue Sylvester (Lynch’s on-screen character) has festered the insults she absorbed on her sister’s behalf, ever since she first realized her sister was different.  It was only until her sister, with a still-waters affect told Sue that she didn’t care what others said about her.  Her disabled sister was whole inside.  Sue started to heal too.

Being present with our dark history, can summarily be our gain.  Especially if in the end we found love, became connected with our journey and with others, and forgave.  It becomes rather an education of sorts.

When I was struggling with my ambivalence about vocational choices, my dad told me, “Education is never a loss.”  I plunged forward with that as a talisman.  

Education is never a loss.  Even our school of suffering?  Look at it as a currency of sorts.  It’s all perspective.  Even manure helps you know.  We had to pay $100 the other day for a truckload of chicken-poo for our farm trees.

Self Care Tip #73 – Find the value in your suffering.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Do you agree or not?  Please tell me your story.

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Trust The Momentum of Your Own Desires

Writing every day has blessed me.  It has however also taken away.  Aside from the obvious such as time, I’ve missed reading in the evenings.  I used to spend most of my evenings jamming happily through fast page turning books.  I love bound paper.

I’ve always had something of sensory issues.  My girlfriend Marlo Albritton, MS, CCC-SLP always laughs at me in the car – every other moment adjusting the angle of the vent or the pressure or the direction of the air that can never hit my face or the temperature.  In books, it is so many things as well that get me.  The smell and touch of course, the sound of fingers on page, swish there’s a turn, the visual in my hands or when I set it down.  I fidget but any way I turn, the book is my focal point, a lover!  The book keeps pace with me too.  When I wander, it waits patiently, unpressured and available.  When I must rush because I might die if I don’t reach the story’s climax, the book is the perfect buddy swimmer.  Like a good psychotherapist, the book is there for me.  It is a unidirectional relationship.  There aren’t many good unidirectional relationships.

I listen to audio books sometimes.  When I exercise or drive alone, and they are good.  But they are the fast food of the book pantry.  Never as satisfying.  They leave most of my senses quite alone.

I realize it is of course my own fault!  Not the blog or the writing.  I make the choices that keep me from reading.  I’m going to have to figure something out.  I can’t not read!  Remember when I said that time and energy increase when you do what you love?  (See “There is Room In Our Wanting Selves.”)  Well that’s what I’m putting my money on.  I’m going to trust the momentum of my own desires.

I’m off to read.

Self Care Tip #66 – Trust the momentum of your own desires.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Do you have a sense of where your own momentum is taking you?  Please tell me your story.

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Bringing Your Worst or Your Best – Family

When I go to work, I feel my spirit get up off the floor, onto its knees and then it’s feet, and then fly into skies of happiness and inner congruence.  Work is where people are respectful to others.  If not they disappear.  (i.e. They’re fired.)  They do their chores and sometimes even with pleasure.  I am less often reminded of the fine line between success and failure, and I can always find my scissors, tape and stapler.  I’m sitting at home now, letting out a dreamy sigh.  Ah.

Why do we treat strangers so well and our family not so well?  Why do we give our best where our best is valued only as much as the going rate of gold and

silver?

John Tauer, Ph.D. states that coöperation and competition are not an either or.  He tells us from 4 years of research at basketball summer camps that the effects of combining coöperation with competition (intergroup competition) is much more powerful than either one alone.   In other words, individuals competing isn’t as fun or successful as a group of people competing against another group of people (i.e. teams.)  I propose that this might be part of the play in the difference between home and out of home behaviors.

In the home, we tend to see ourselves as individuals maybe even competing against each other.  Out of the home, we ally with others whom we can work with to compete against others.  We bring our best to the playing field perhaps.

In The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, we see a family who is marooned, cooperating as a team against dangerous elements (intergroup competition) to survive.  They have so much fun doing it that when rescue finally comes, nothing could entice them to leave their happy treehouse.

We see other examples of this (intergroup competition) when a family member gets sick and everyone rally’s to fight the disease together.  I wonder how we can do that good stuff without having to wreck a ship or fight cancer.  I’d like to give my best to my husband and kids every day.  The fraternities, the gangs, the undying lure of neighborhood rivalries, reality TV show Survivor – all show us that this intergroup competition is pleasurable and effective.

Question:  Have you experienced this kind of success in your own home?  Please tell me your story.

Self Care Tip #57 – Bring your best to the people you love.  Be a friend to yourself.

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Take What is Yours

It doesn’t have to be that complicated.  “I only go two places.  The tattoo parlor to hang out with my buddies or the beach.”  He says he doesn’t have a cell phone or a computer.  I see him every week with his wife, doing what he can to support her as she teaches a class for my 3-year-old. He smiles and chortles and pokes with satire.  He has shown me his skin art several times and it is easy to see what these represent.  The people he loves and who love him.

In the film written and directed by Derrick Borte, “The Joneses,” we watch a pseudo-family move into a gorgeous home with intent to market their wares to the unsuspecting towns-folk.  As they are instruments in sales, they become infected with purchasing-power-fever.  As their own fantasies grow of being the perfect family unit, so does the definition of what it takes to be one.  Being happy individually as well as relationally equals easy access to riches and easy life.  The glitch is that they are not a family nor does the new this or that belong to any of them.  Like making a deal with Ursula the purple octopus-witch, they are ensnared.  It becomes a hard choice to regain the rights to their lives.  In the end, they barely escape with the understanding of what they can really claim as their own – love.

The other day when our dog was dyeing, at bedtime I was able to debrief with our daughter about her feelings.  “I know you love me Mommy but it felt like you loved Maggie more than me.  Even though I knew you loved me more, I didn’t feel it Mommy.”  For someone who can barely see around her Ego, that’s pretty amazing!  From her beautiful child-self, she told us that love is there even when we don’t feel it.

My husband was telling me his “Good News,” quite different from  rights of passage like a fraternity.  It is that God is already right here with each of us and unrelated to our performance.  We all have Love, regardless of lost opportunities, low-character, higher learning, or technology.

It’s not that complicated.

Self Care Tip #51 –  Take what is yours.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Agree or disagree?  What do you think?  Please tell me your story.

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Be Aware

Cover of "The Psychology of Gratitude (Se...

Cover via Amazon

We’re sitting at the piano practicing.  She is smart, reading for a year already, beautiful in a way that scares me at times, has advantages that surround her just because.  She isn’t thinking of these things though.  She thinks about the things she is not.  She says, “I can’t do that.  I don’t know how.”  She is not thankful just now about her opportunities.

I wondered, as I was sitting at the piano, if success and gratitude are collaborators.

Gratitude should not be conceived just in terms of a particular relationship. Gratitude is a philosophical emotion. It is, in a phrase, seeing the bigger picture.  …And so viewed, being grateful for one’s whole life is not a “grateful to whom?” question so much as it is a matter of being aware of one’s whole life, being reflective in a way that most of us are not, most of the time.

-Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, The Psychology of Gratitude

Seems like a little much to expect out of a 5 year-old?  Maybe, maybe not.  But it definitely is if her parent isn’t practicing awareness, reflection, gratitude.

We will have more success in our life’s ambitions if we practice gratitude.  This much I will do and maybe, my little girl will learn to see herself differently too.

Self Care Tip #30 – Be aware.  Be a friend to yourself.

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Journey

“Mumford, The screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan, describes Henry Follet, a man who is living in his fantasies.  The superior problem isn’t that he’s living in his fantasies however.  It is that he has never been a character in them.  They only included other people.  At some point he gets more connected to his own journey, which is when he started appearing in his fantasies.  Or one could say his fantasies became his reality.

Connecting to our journey is multidirectional.  It includes the folding and opening of time.  Someone asked me why I started this blog.  I told him one of the reasons is that so much of what made me who I am was shelved when I went to medical school and then had children.  Time is folding for me when I write now, connecting me here to where this writing-self was last seen then.

When avoiding crucial work, it is as if a broken person’s bits of self are walking their different directions.  There is a divorce and the kids….  What does the father do?  Five years later he is still trying to get the courage to ask them to love him again.  Relapsing negative relationships, and she found herself again with someone abusive.  Overweight, and still buying and bringing binge-foods home.

As Will Rogers said,

When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

Lately I’ve enjoyed my journey more since I stopped breaking traffic laws.  Exhale.  Now I can relax when I’m driving and think, pray, listen to podcasts, be with myself.

Immaterial things like our hopes can both connect us and disconnect us.  When a thought like, “I wish I did…” comes, when employment is more a job than an interest, when anger flares often – look at times like this as opportunities to find your path.  I found that this yearning in me was really a portal for my fantasies to come through and join me.

Self Care Tip #29 – Take your opportunity.  Be a friend to yourself.

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Forward Move

When the waiter came out and took my order, I asked to have ½ of it boxed before he brought me the food. It was the first time for me.

Make a forward decision. Forward means something like a glass of water. It is good for us. It is simple. It is not too hard to figure out. It is what comes to our mind when we accept what we cannot change.

Accepting what we cannot change is a way of coming back together when life breaks our heart. Getting into flow is a multi directional movement. To make a forward decision means that the then and now of our lives are in the same room.

I chose not to have the whole meal at once and for me that was forward.

Self Care Tip #24 – Make a forward decision. Be a friend to yourself.