Inner180

What am I feeling today? Excitement with fear.
What hurts today? Nothing hurts.  But the little alarm bell of feeling is active inside my trunk, a shaky, vibrating feeling.
What is the painful story I am telling? I have a fantastic opportunity to do something very cool, something I would love to do.  It is something new for me, and I am telling myself that I don’t know how to do it and I won’t do it well.
Is this painful story true? No.
Is my painful story working? No. It limits my ability to enjoy my good fortune.  It limits my faith in myself.  It separates me from my joy.  I am shrinking from my own good fortune and from my abilities.
Can I think of another story that might work better? Yes.  I am completely capable of doing what I have been asked to do.  It is going to be amazing and fun.

This is a crystalline example of Marianne Williamson’s words about our fear of our greatness and strength.  Here are her words “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? . . . . Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. . . . And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

As you journey towards your truth, notice where your discomfort arises around your fear of your light.  Can you let it shine, as children do?

My truth today was confusion, question marks randomly interrupting my concentration.  Here are the facts: my new assistant didn’t show up for work yesterday, didn’t call, didn’t answer her phone.  Today, I called her husband to see if she was okay.  Without explanation, he said, “She is fine. I’ll have her call you.”  She hasn’t.

Here are the questions that pop up and distract me: Did I choose the wrong person?  Did her references lie to me?  Am I a poor judge of character, unable to spot an irresponsible person?  Did she dislike me?  Why didn’t she at least call?  The truth is that these questions cannot be answered.

An interpretation that works better:  I may never know the answers. It’s interesting to see how my questions shift the responsibility for her actions to me, as if it’s my fault.  In this way, she has been my teacher.  Luckily, she only worked for me for a few weeks, so I didn’t spend a lot of time training her.  I will find someone more suitable in some way I can’t see right now. This feels much more clear.  I can let it go now, the same way I let go of thoughts during my daily dose of “nothing.”

After my daily dose of nothing, today’s truth exploration:

1.  What am I feeling?  A little anxiety.

2.  What hurts?  It is a fluttering sensation in my belly.  I crave a snack even though I am not hungry.  I want food to bury this sensation.

3.  What is the painful story I’m telling?  This afternoon is going to be miserable because I have to finalize paperwork for my appointment with the accountant tomorrow morning to finish my 2007 income taxes. I hate doing this.  It’s not fair.  It’s not creative.  I shouldn’t have to do this.

4.  Is this painful story true?  Well.., no, this story is full of dirty pain.

5.  Is this story working?  No.  I feel upset and I want to avoid this afternoon’s task, which is why I missed the April 15 deadline.

6.  Can I think of another story that might work better?  Yes. Actually, my disorganization was much less in 2007 than it has been in the past.  I’m improving.  This year, I hired an assistant instead.  She organized everything.  My involvement has been minimal this year.  I only have about two hours of work to do today. After tomorrow’s appointment, I will be totally finished with this.  I plan to have the assistant organize 2008 now, and keep at it monthly, so next year will be easy.

I see that I’ve had a lot of dirty pain around this.  I did the loving kindness meditation for a few seconds.  My assistant should arrive in a few minutes, and by this time tomorrow, the whole project will be over.

This truth exercise took less than five minutes.  Pretty good.  I’m going to reward myself with some silliness.  Enjoy.

A full week of doing nothing every single day.  I look forward to it now–a respite from a busy life.  Today, after hours of talking and listening, silence was delicious.  I’ve discovered that I like doing nothing best when walking.

Yesterday, I referred to the John Lennon song, “Across the Universe.”  Today, I realized the main line of the song, repeated a dozen times, is this:  “Nothing’s gonna change my world.”

Last night, to leave my thoughts behind, I took a small walk, but not so far that I worried about becoming bear food. Away from the lights of the cabins, I flipped my flashlight off. Overhead, billions of stars peeked through scattered clouds. The only sounds were those of intermittent specks of rain falling on nearby leaves.

Thoughts let go almost effortlessly, perhaps for the first time ever.  As I left to return to our cabin, words from “the most poetic lyric” John Lennon said he ever wrote, popped into my head: “Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup they slither while pass, they slip their way across the universe.”

I also love this line: thoughts “meander like a restless wind inside a letter box.” 

This year, for its fiftieth anniversary,  NASA beamed this song into deep space, towards the star Polaris, 431 light years from earth.  This was the very first time a song has ever been transmitted into deep space.  Was I hearing those words last night from way up there, across the universe?

The internet is everywhere, including the main office at this lovely off the grid hot springs I’m visiting this weekend. Somewhere in the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado, I walked on a mountain trail late last night.  As I practiced letting go of thought, I realized that I was perhaps too far from the small enclave of tents and cabins to be heard if a bear or a mountain lion wanted a midnight snack. Already challenged from the altitude and the steep walk, my heart thundered with colorful visions of my dramatic demise.

I remembered Byron Katie’s words when she talked about being robbed at gunpoint.  Are you going to live your last few moments on earth in fear, or are you going to enjoy them?  Exhilarated, I decided that, since I so rarely have the opportunity to be in such darkness, such quiet, such isolation, that I would not spend this time afraid.  If I am going to be eaten tonight, I’ll enjoy every step until then.

Today the waterfall technique soothed me.  My thoughts about my son’s traffic ticket are challenging my peace.  I walked today, using the waterfall,  and the rhythm of my steps reminded me of how, as a teenager, I loved to use my sewing machine.  Something about the soft, rhythmical clacking was soothing in those tumultuous times.

I am off for a last minute weekend with a friend, at a rustic hot springs deep in the Colorado Mountains.  I have no idea if the internet exists there.  I will post if I can, otherwise, you’ll get three posts on Monday.

My thoughts were easily released today with the ticker tape, and I wasn’t as absorbed in creative naming.  Afterward, I turned on my electronic appointment calendar and discovered that I had accidentally wiped out all of my future appointments while trying to back it up last night.

My stomach began to burn.  At some point I emailed my clients, asking for help.  My teaching schedule and my airline ticket could be retrieved from saved emails.  Everything else must not be too important.

The crisis was over, but my stomach still ached. I observed myself looking for someone else to blame. (The tech support people at the Apple Store?)  Then, I remembered the guiding principle of my childhood: “I cannot make a mistake.”  Still around.

It took about 30 minutes today to recover. I was able to observe myself in the process of thinking of who I could blame.  About six months ago, I was mostly unconscious of this process within me.  Here’s how it went last spring:

When a colleague asked a question about something I’d done on a group coaching call,  it felt like criticism.  The question, or at least what I made of it in my mind, pushed a big, hot button in me.  I paced in little circles, muttering “I can’t believe her nerve.”

I couldn’t forget about it.  Psychologists call this attentional hijacking, and my attention for anything else was nowhere to be found.

Donning my imaginary power suit and stilettos, I called forth my inner trial lawyer.  I gathered supporting evidence, consulted potential allies, and crafted my arguments. In the process, my judgments about my colleague got very creative, for example: “I bet she was intentionally trying to make me look bad.”

At some point, I came to my senses enough to call a coaching buddy for a session. I began to understand that my old childhood belief, “I cannot ever make a mistake,” was alive and well. I began to breathe more easily, and my attention returned.

And guess what?  No less than an hour after the storm was over, someone else questioned something I said.  I’d love to report that this time, I saw through myself.  Nope, out came the power suit and stilettos.  It felt just as overwhelming as the first round had.  I defended myself with a swift montage of thoughts: “She didn’t understand.  She wasn’t listening,  She set me up for that.”

I called my coaching buddy again.  I wrote in my journal.  Soon, my internal gyroscope righted me, and my attention came back.

And guess what?  The next day, I posted a short note on a coaching forum. I thought it was particularly insightful and eagerly awaited the opinions of the other coaches.  The first comment that was posted noted that I used a comma where I should have used a semi-colon, and quoted the rule of semi-colon usage for my convenience.

And guess what?  Yep.  Again, I rushed to my defense, and compiled a short, funny, but firm response, explaining that as  journalism major, and a former lawyer who made a living for years through writing, ha ha, I certainly knew the rules of semi-colon usage, and ….

It clobbered me over the head, and I began laughing and crying at once. Old images swirled up–missing a question on a second-grade reading test, forgetting to return a library book, being scolded for talking in class. My childhood strategy–performance beyond criticism, straight A’s in every aspect of life–was looking pretty silly.  My biggest, most heartless critic was an eight-year-old-me.  I saw how messily human I am, and how that’s both hilarious and profound.

So maybe next time, I’ll smile wisely.  If not, if I reach for my legal pad and stilettos, compiling my defense of blame and evasion, and the process can unfold again.  Again and again until I get it.

Yesterday, I chose The Ticker Tape method of Doing Nothing.  As my thoughts arose I visualized them moving across a mental screen, and named them.

Since they were tame, I nick-named them instead of naming the emotion.  I had the I’m-hungry thought, some to-do-tomorrow thoughts, the I-want-chocolate-instead-of-dinner thought, the whoops-I’m-in-someone-else’s-business thought, and the whoops-I’m-thinking-again-thought.

Then, I had the my-son-didn’t-call-me-like-he-was-supposed-to-so-I-could-fax-him-the-information-to-pay-his-traffic-ticket-and-I-forgot-about-it-until-now thought.  I laughed as I named it the I-forgot-to-worry-about-this-until-now thought.  And was hilarious to realize how worrying is so optional.

By bestowing each thought cluster with a name, I easily wiggled free from them, especially from the one about my son not calling, which had the potential to get me going.  But by naming it, it floated by, just another thought in a marching thought parade.

When my 15 minutes of doing nothing was up, I chose not to react to my son’s inaction. His ticket.  His business. The best way to handle it, of course.

The name-that-thought process was fun, like a game.  As I said in class, creativity is one of my signature strengths on the Values in Action Inventory, and here I had an opportunity to be creative, right in the middle of doing nothing.  How cool is that!

So what do you think?  Is it okay to be creative and have fun as we are on our way?