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Use What You Know – It Will Help You Know Yourself Better And Be a Guide For Your Future Efforts

The Forbidden Kingdom

Image by Gandalf. via Flickr

Some of the best encouragement I got was from my sister-in-law who writes, CretingBrains.com. She said,

Sana, you know a lot! When you start writing, you’ll see. It will come to you. You won’t believe how much you have to say.

Now when I get stuck, when no words come, I remember this, the panic ebbs away and I start to write.  I increased my listening skills …to myself, to hear myself.  It’s a terrible thing to live, loud background noise, but not learning how to become the main voice  of your own journey.  The knowledge base, emotions, energies and passive efforts although acquainted with each other never merge into rhythm.

Just write what you know.

I learned more to trust myself.  In fact, I became a better physician.

However, before this, I studied. I studied and I studied and got worked really hard, but I got the knowledge base that I have and I gained part of my platform.  I got a lot.

I share my sister’s words with others.

Just write what you know.

I’m not done.  I shudder to think about being done.  It feels like death.   However by writing, it stretches my movements.  It reminds me of those martial arts movies that show all the kicks and jumps and climbing air as if moments could be shaped differently.

That is my experience, but any of us have something worth saying.  We have our suffering at least.  Everyone has some of that.

My six year-old was asking me about writing a blog.  I’m sure she’s tired of watching me at the keys and figures she’ll join me if she can’t get me otherwise.  I asked her what she’d write about and she said,

I have nothing to say Mommy!

Just write what you think, I said.

I have nothing to say!

Just write what you feel, I said.

And then my daughter found her words.

One!  I’m lonely!  Two!  I feel left out!  Three!  I’m sad!  Four!  I’m happy!

She is a fierce creation.  She is, like me, “A big ‘F.”  (F stands for feeler in the language of temperaments.)  At age six, she has much to write about.  I remembered my sisters words,

…you’ll see. It will come to you. You won’t believe how much you have to say.  Just write what you know.

We all have something to say and for many of us, saying it increases our sense of presence with ourselves, our connections with others and inherent to the design of writing freestyle, guides us into the space of what we enjoy.  That space can be evasive and for some of us, it takes practice and increased skill to find it.  But here is an exercise in being friendly with ourselves.  Not many of us would spend this kind of time on things that bore us, things we feel awkward with, things that erode our self-confidence or increase incongruence with our inner-self.  When we write freestyle, we let our genetic self speak.  It can be used as a guide to clarify our talents and interests as per our design.

I hope I never forget how compelling my daughter was with her,

One! I’m lonely!…

That is a lot to say.  There’s a lot there worth hearing as well.

Go toward your interests and you’ll be writing what you know.  If writing isn’t in your design, something else is that will join you up with your personal journey, grow your sense of presence, connect you to others and serve as a guide to clarify your talents per the design you were created to be.  Go toward it.  You won’t believe how much you’ve already stored up.  You are treasure.

Self-Care Tip – Use what you know by using your temperament as your guide. Keep on.

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Presence – What is Turning In You?

How the pages turn slowly in life

Image by Nina Matthews Photography via Flickr

It’s summer break already and that means more Mom-time for the kids,… and a few other things.  But if there’s more Mom-time for the kids, we all know what there is more of for Mom.  These things come together and equal more spending-money-time combined with less work-time.  This can’t be without consequence.

I’m thinking stress, memory-makers, lots of kissing marshmellow-cheeks and tears to show.  Always tears.  The kids cry of course but if I do, its all,

Mom!  Oh NO!  Mom!  Stop crying!  Agh.  I can’t stand it when you do that!

Lots of exclamation points are involved.  I’m thinking this summer will have some of that because some days are stressful and painful.  Others are just too beautiful to leave unstained with tears to sign my name by.  Get ready kids!

Tonight, this is what I have.

I am licking my finger and turning a page.  I feel the book as the page slowly fights the air to pass over.  I haven’t seen the other side yet but the way the page lifts up and toward me, I know that this part is significant in itself.  Lick my finger, press it down and sweep up.  Up and passing over, just.  The page is turning and so are we.

Question:  What is turning in your life?

Self-Care Tip #280 – Pay attention to what is turning in you.

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Positive Emotions and Behaviors are Contagious Too

Chris Sacca, Google special issues

Image by dfarber via Flickr

We are doing a narrative series on understanding where emotions and behaviors come from:

  1. Emotions Are Contagious
  2. Our own Emotional Junk 
  3. Positive Emotions and Behaviors are Contagious Too (today’s post) 

What we’ve covered so far in our series is that we know emotions are contagious and we know that if we take care of our own first, we might not be as “susceptible to contagion” in turn.  Further we were left with the hope that if we do this, we might have the ability to choose to be with people we love even if they don’t do their own self-care and have that connection without personalizing what isn’t about us.  Sigh.  That is nice, isn’t it?

Yesterday, M in his usual gentle way, reminded us that contagious emotions might be effective for spreading more deliberately and more in the positive nature.

 I am encouraged and hopeful. Being peaceful can be contagious too?

Then today I read a tweet about Chris Sacca’s commencement address.

presence -> sleeping well -> breathing *ahhh* -> embracing my weird self -> presence. Thx again @sacca So good.

Well worth my time!  Sacca spoke about being a friend to yourself!  Can you believe it!?  …Ok.  He didn’t say those words or mention this blog, …or me …but he may as well have!  (Wink.)

If you listen, think and process, please tell.   I would love to hear what you get from his speech.

…Did you catch the bit about start overs?!  You know I love that.

Sometimes however, I am a real bore making this “friend to yourself” thing seem so dull and difficult.  And M and Sacca are right!  Peace and happiness are also contagious and a better effort.  To get that, Sacca tells us to do some specific things.  Did you catch them?

Question:  What did Chris Sacca say that you find useful to friendship with yourself? or others?

Self-Care #269 – Positive emotions and behaviors are also contagious and are a better effort for your friend – You.

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We Are Unique

Waiting room of Nanjing railway station

Image via Wikipedia

We are unique, but it is not our suffering that makes us unique.

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Imagine If You Were Your Own Friend, And Take Your Advice

Postcard - Sexy Woman writing a letter

Image by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #234 – Imagine if you were your own friend, and take your advice.

Joana Johnson, author of CreatingBrains.com, full-time mom of six, part-time University history teacher, student, wife, confidant, friend and sister-in-law… (no she’s not running for president) …Joana asked me today,

Write a letter to someone you love sharing what you want them to do to take better care of themselves.  You don’t have to give it to them or you can.

Now imagine what letter with what self-care requests would someone who loved you write to you?

…You’re right.  I’m going to have to talk her into running for president.

And so, I offer this challenge to you.  I wonder after you.  I am sitting in waiting.  Please tell us this part or more of your story.

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Connection is Part of Self-Care

AMBER Alert highway sign alerting motorists to...

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Self-Care Tip #177 – Discover your connections to others.  Be a friend to yourself.

Every Sabbath in my son’s class, the teacher prays for the offering,

Please help it bless all the little girls and boys all over the world to learn of your great Love.

It hasn’t been until the more recent years that my own prayers have felt invited in by those type of prayers.  Where my thoughts go are to the abused kids and instinctually I count my children’s heads, heard them and cluck.  Walking down Powell Street in San Francisco, my husband kept urgently telling me,

Watch the kids.  Don’t let them out of your sight!  Anyone could grab them!

He had just read Middlesex and felt the threat of child abduction crawling up his skin.  When he gave me these warnings, I heard the words of my son’s teacher again.

Please help….

There is so much yuck, and the yuck is so loud and awful that seeing the help around might be missed.  We are distracted by suffering.  We are distracted for good, bad or somewhere in-between.

Today, Darcy Delaproser introduced me to a couple people she’s advocating for, as seen on YouTube.  Watching these videos, I prayed, “Help.”  I met Darcy, aka @PrincessDelap on @Twitter and am drawn to her tenacity and beliefs.  She is a human and civil rights advocate.

The other day I met Cindy Chaisson, from Custom Canine, who volunteers her time and expertise to train service dogs and use them to find abducted children through the Amber Alert program.

Tonight, I was supposed to get to bed early, but I got swept up in all the research on this topic.  There is too much to lay out and more than I read about in the last couple hours.  There is help.

The connect self-care has with all of this is where we turn our posture to.  Where do we place these victims, their past, their future and the perpetrators?  Our self-care includes contemplating what our connection is to them.  For some of us, obviously, the connection is immediate.  For others, the connection is more distant, in the shape of theory or information: data on the Amber Alert screen.

Freedom to do self-care includes this:  Choosing who we will call our own.  Choosing whom we will spend emotional energy on.  Time.  We are free to connect or disconnect.  In those ties or un-ties, we find the climate of our own self-care.

Please help it bless all the little girls and boys all over the world to learn of your great Love.

Questions:  How are your connections a form of your self-care?  How do you see connections being a part of self-care?  Please tell me your story.

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Waiting For Self-Care to Start

Self-Care Tip #176 – Don’t wait to start caring for your self.  

I’ll get to it when things slow down for me.

I can’t handle one more stress on top of the kids and all the people who take, take, take.

Don’t take this away!  It’s my only vice!

I don’t have time because I’m working so much.

There are so many good reasons to wait for self-care.  I don’t belittle them.  I do them too.  There’s a reason we here at FriendtoYourself.com call self-care the hardest work.  It is not for anyone who isn’t willing to go through the fire of putting themselves first.

“The fire,” you say?  Yes.  Fred taught me that.  He was down twenty pounds, working out almost every day with aerobic and anaerobic exercises, putting his ear-plugs in when sounds escalated his nerves, more motivated, interested and active.  Fred was growing again.  He said that it had been years since he’d done any of these things for himself and couldn’t believe what the world looked like when he felt so good.

Fred was sad though.  Not depressed.  No, he hadn’t been depressed for at least a year on his medication and even less so since he was taking care of himself physically.  But sad.  His wife wasn’t interested in his changes, she was disconnected emotionally, and more so every day it seemed to him as he began to change physically, emotionally and behaviorally.  His friends were growing distant.  He wasn’t interested in office politics either.  It was a simultaneous coming together of life in himself and a falling away of the life connection in his “previous life,” as he called it.  Surprisingly, the people he loved the most weren’t so happy for him.  Weren’t supportive of him.  He was sad for that.  There are never gains without losses.

This is not to forget the new relationships he was growing.  There was new life all around him and he still maintained hope for the connections he had before.  But those people who he had called his own for years were the ones who gave him all the reasons to wait for self-care.  He was way past waiting.  He was already on the other side enjoying the sun.

Question:  What have you overcome to get at your own self-care?  Is there anything your are still waiting to do?  Please tell me your story.

*Art work (assumed) courtesy of carldagostino.wordpress.com.

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Remember Love to Feel Bigger Than Your Self

A Mothers Love. The Hand of a Child.

Image by Steve Rhode via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #175 – Remember Love.

Yesterday was my son’s birthday and today we partied over him.

How old are you?

He looks at his fingers and sees how many come up before he answers,

Four.  I’m four!

Right now, he feels really big.  He blows his lid if anyone says otherwise.  And because he’s never been above the bottom twentieth percentile on the growth curve, and because he’s four years old and the youngest of three, and because he’s so small, when he says, “I’m big!” looking serious over, yet under you with his bottle cap eyes, it’s really hard to keep straight.  But more often I do …until he loudly says,

I love you the whole day, Mommy!  The whole day!  You are my friend!

Then it’s over for me.  I can’t stay off of him.  He’s just too beautiful.  His open forwardness humbles me and I remember that it’s Love that makes us great.  It’s Love that brings us to our knees.  It’s Love, more than this stack of years, inches and knowledge that makes my son bigger than me when I forget Love.  He doesn’t.  He’s just too small to.  Four years of Love is big.

Questions:  What has helped you remember Love lately?  What has made you feel bigger than your own self?  Please tell me your story.

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When You Can’t Control This, Emote Empathically

Self-Care Tip #172 – When you can’t control this, emote empathically.  Be a friend to yourself.

A couple of days ago I wrote about being transparent with ourselves and others when we are not in control of things.  (Say, “I Can’t Control This” When You Can’t.)

This road sign image is in the public domain a...

Image via Wikipedia

It got mixed responses but all worth thinking about.

Jennifer responded on Facebook,

The 3 C’s help me all the time; I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, I can’t change and or cure it!

Isn’t that wonderful?!

  1. Cause
  2. Control
  3. Change

And it’s helpful to remember that claiming these 3C’s still may not remove us from the stressor.  We are however more present with ourselves and others despite the stressor.

Another reader BeeBlu’s, brought up that famous “fine line,”

I agree that it’s healthy to have this attitude to certain things in our lives, but as you say, it is also no excuse for bad behaviour and letting emotions go into free fall at the expense of others. I think there is a very fine line between the two. bb

…And her signature, “bb,” – awesome.

A line that is thin implies insecurity, danger and something precarious that may end up all wrong.  I wonder about that line.

On one side we have the 3 C’s:  cause, control, change.  On the other side of the line we have responsibility for the boundaries of others.  I wonder if there really is a dividing line after all or if it is just bad lighting.  If there wasn’t, there would be no need to thicken the line, to defend, or to pick sides.

Emotional health makes shadowy lines disappear.  It takes someone who has emotional health to be able to say their 3 C’s and still consider the internal and external milieu of others.  It takes someone who has done their self-care and put money in the bank; someone who has reserve built up that spills over into empathy.  We can’t emote empathically so well when we aren’t emotionally healthy.  The less of that, the more real the line becomes.  The less of that, the more precarious we are.

Gaining emotional health may take medication, exercise, sunlight, granola, grandma’s kisses and all sorts of things.  Each of us has to figure it out for our own selves and just do it.

Questions:  What do you think about this business of shadows, lines, and living cautiously?  When you have been healthiest, how have you been able to embrace both the 3 C’s and emote empathically at the same time?  Please tell me your story.

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Receive When a Gift is Offered

Ms. Stephanie Cocks

Image by -kÇ- via Flickr

Self-Care Tip#149 – Receive when a gift is offered.  Be a friend to yourself.

I am totally charmed.  Sitting in the coffee-shop, and this lovely man came up and handed me his James Patterson book.  “I’m going to throw it away and thought you might like to read it.  I’m done and it was great.”  Judge and Jury looks suspenseful and I’m too fragile I think for it, but I took it anyway.  I was more charmed by the intent and character of the giver.

I try to tell my daughter about this.  When someone offers you a gift, just accept it.  It’s not so hard.  Say thank you and in doing so, give them the gift of giving and receive the gift of receiving.  It’s powerful for both parties.  The ability to receive isn’t always natural.  It’s something I’ve tried to understand my whole life.

Well, I didn’t catch the name of the book-man but we chatted despite lacking that social etiquette.  He saw my blog-site on my open computer screen and discovered my background in mental health.

“I have problems,” he said.  “Really I do.”  Maybe he was used to people not believing him and added that to add emphasis.  “I have anxiety.”  “Oh.”  I said.  “That’s torture.”  “It is!” book-man said.  “We don’t choose our emotions!  I used to think we did, but we really don’t!”  I heard it from the source.  Speak it book-man!  We don’t always choose our emotions.

We didn’t talk long.  He walked off before I could offer too much.  Maybe it was the anxiety that called him away.  I felt sad and happy.  Sad, because his suffering connected with me.  Happy, because of all the people in here, he and I connected.

Connecting with people any time any where is a small bit of the supernatural.  It’s not something that we can distil, put in a tube or slide under a microscope.  It’s not something that obeys even the excellent paradigm of temperaments.  It comes both expectedly and unexpectedly.  It comes deliberately through labor and through chance.  An airborne-something from the spirit world.  This is not to say that the natural isn’t also family, the dear child of the supernatural.  It’s just that there is a unique charm in the unknowing.

And so the book-man and the unknown connection stays with me even now after he is gone.  His anxiety, his reaching out, his generosity, the Me drawn into his space and he into mine.  I am receiving and he gave.

Thank you Great Supernatural and Natural God for this.

Question:  When do you connect despite the anxiety of being in the position of receiving?  Please tell me your story.

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Connecting to Others is a Condition of Freedom Rather Than Loss of It.

Sitting on this land, fenced and gated I felt small.  It was different from my home.  Here I lost my connection to beyond the fence.  The string that attached me wasn’t long enough.  At my home, without thinking about it, I thought my self was bigger.  Small yet as large as the large connection I had to all the life that stretched out.  I hadn’t been in that place for a long time.

In the distance I saw the strange mountains, snow-covered, scoops of freedom and thought, “I must get there before I disappear.”

That’s what internet, (blogging, Facebook, Twitter) has done for me.  Taken me there.  No fences, no neighborhoods or zoning.  Suddenly my home became the great outdoors again and although I became smaller in it’s largeness, I became bigger by connection.  I had died a little in my isolation.  Designed in temperament and by human nature to get my energy from connections, I was weakening and alone.

I did not know.  I did now know a name for my condition.  I did not know the nature of my weakness.  I did not know what would happen when I took it down.  And I was afraid.

Tomorrow I’ll talk a little more about what conditions us to disconnect.  But for today I only share the openness around me with you.  It surprised me and wasn’t my conscious goal originally when I set out writing FriendtoYourself.  But as all true gifts come, It came to me from Love, not bought by labor or coin.

My land has changed.

Self-Care Tip #142 – Use the internet as a way to connect with others to be a friend to yourself.

Question:  What have been the connecting forces in your life?  Please tell me your story!

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The Biopsychosocial-How-to Be a Friend to Yourself

Marine of the United States Marine Corps runs ...

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There is interplay between biological, psychological, and social issues that make us who we are.  You can work as a team not only  with your family, physicians, therapists, and whomever else is involved in your team approach to getting friendly with yourself – but you can also team up with yourself so to speak.

Think:

1.  Biology

Anything going on materially with my physical body?

Medical illnesses, temperament, sleep issues, diet, exercise, air, rash….

2.  Psychological

i.e., thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

Things like lack of self-control, coping skills, catastrophizing, and negative thinking.

3.  Social

Such as socioeconomic status, culture, poverty, technology, and religion can influence health.

Think God, friends, marriage, parenting, work, unemployment….

We can do this not only with others who are here to help us, but also in our own thoughts.  We can start seeing ourselves as more than one part or another.  Separate and disconnected.  This might take some practice or it might be natural for you.  Just start wherever you are and run this through yourself.  When you’re stressed, break it down.  Take it apart to bring it back together.

Read more about this at “Forget About Divisions In Knowledge.”

Question:  How do you see the connections within yourself?  How has this played into your healing processes?  Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip #125 – See yourself as parts that make up your whole.  Be a friend to yourself.

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Don’t Forget Your Friends Chose You Too

 

 

Ok folks.  Not much time to write tonight.  My girly girlfriend is moving out-of-state and we’re off soon on something of a Ta-Ta! date.  Why in the world do I feel rejected?!  If I were French I might think it was the language of the heart.  But I’m not French so I can’t say what they’d say.

Friendship requires ongoing navigation through life.  You can’t ever just sit back and expect safe waters.  The close pals go far away and although they’ll always be friends, here we find ourselves, beached and sifting sand.  Finding gold is thought to be infrequent I think when sifting sand.

Today my daughter told me her classmate’s father lost his job.  Big ouch.  She told me, “Mommy, I wish money covered the streets everywhere so no one would ever not have enough.”  She hasn’t entirely learned what gives value to the dollar.  Friendship is like that.  Valuable and uncommon.

My friend told me once that I chose her and she chose me.  It’s awesome to be chosen!

So I’m off to rub my coins together and be with my friend.  She is a treasure.

Self-Care Tip #90 – Don’t forget that your friends chose you too.  Be a friend to yourself.

Questions:  Have you noticed that you’ve been chosen too?  Please tell me your story.

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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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Caught in Your Net – Thanks

Connecting more with friends since I started blogging. People I went to school with are knitted together electronically.  The world is smaller than ever.

In school, a people whom we drifted in and out of intimacy with, as kids will do, surrounded us.  Regardless of intimacy, they were generally there the next day and the next day. Familiar faces, personalities, specific laughs, and voices you could pick out in any crowd.  I’m pretty sure with many of them, I still could.

After many years without them there to see me fall off my chair, set a ball, share books, compare bra sizes, whisper, giggle – did I not miss them?  But I did.  Now however, through this technology-net, impossibly dispersed groups of people show their faces on my computer screen daily.  And regardless of degrees of intimacy, they are witnesses again when I fall down and when I stand.  I feel more alive!  Even seeing an angle of someone’s jaw line can take me back to a lawn and a tree and a bench we used to share between classes.  In almost real-time, I am laughing at their jokes, fame and foibles.  Crying with them when they lose.

Certain things are even better than they were when we were in school.  We don’t have as much time for closeting behaviors, hurts, shame.  It leaves more room for the real self to occupy.  Read more about this in the post “Sunshine.”

So to all you old (and new ;)) friends who have given me this privilege, thank you for catching me in your “net.”  Life with you is better.

Self Care Tip #58 – Connect with others to feel more alive.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question: What has helped you feel more connected?  Please tell me your story.

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Connect

A salty beach day with lots of kids, today leaves me in the wake of those connections. As we get older it is harder to connect. No more long school days where 90% of the day is spent on the why and how of who. No more band trips sitting in the bus for hours, walking Fisherman’s Warf with the same friends of many other scenarios. River trips with scanty supervision are conducive to creating bonds of friendship that might never be found again, in part because of opportunity. In part because of well, many other possible reasons. I’m sure you have some too.

Connections are healthy. We live longer and get sick less often when we are connected to others. And if you are someone who gets their energy from being alone or someone who gets energy from being with people, this still includes you. It’s a universal concept. My husband who is hardwired to love his alone time, spends hours connecting with his world through Twitter. Watching him swell with energy and joy through his connections has brought something healthy to our home as well.

Whatever our barriers are as we age to connecting, it is worth our while to press past those. Conversely, to try every day to open ourselves as well to the efforts pressing in is in our best interest. Maybe understanding something about those barriers in your life will give you the key to removing them. However you can do it, it’s worth it to you. Being friendly with yourself includes finding someone(s) to connect with.

Self Care Tip #9 – Connect. Be a friend to yourself.