Inner180

I’ll never complain about anything again, I swear, after spending last weekend reading Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.  The author, Immaculee Ilibigiza, was just 22 years old when, in 1994, Rwanda suddenly descended into an unspeakably brutal genocide in which machete-wielding Hutus slaughtered nearly a million ethnic Tutsis.

The memoir recounts the brutal murders of Immaculee’s beloved parents and brothers, along with scores of her friends, neighbors and schoolmates.  She escaped her own death only by hiding in silence for three months in a local pastor’s three foot by four foot bathroom with seven other women, only to emerge starving and still in great danger.

This is a deeply moving love story, in which Immaculee transcends her fear and hatred of those who tore her life, her family, and her country apart.  Ultimately, she faces and forgives her family’s killers.  It is a remarkable and inspiring account of unconditional love under the most challenging circumstances imaginable.

And you think you have problems?

That it’s hard to forgive your ex?

That the economy is scary?

That you can’t let go of your dysfunctional childhood?

That life handed you a raw deal?

If you ever have whiney, victim-y thoughts, read this book.  If you hold onto your painful past for any reason, read this book.

You’ll get a new perspective in a flash, I promise.

Last week, the topic of mistakes and failures came up in many client sessions.  It was also a huge topic in several classes I taught.  “I’m afraid I’ll fail,”  “I’m afraid of making a mistake,” and “I can’t let go of my failure or a mistake I made in the past,” were the themes.

This morning a passage in Deepak Chopra’s little book, Creating Affluence, practically jumped off the page at me:  “In reality, there is no such thing as failure. What we call failure is just a mechanism through which we can learn to do things right. . . . This is the principle of feedback.”

There’s nothing really new in the concept that “there is no such thing as failure” or “there are no mistakes,” but I got really excited when I read this.  A huge light flashed on for me:  I have a whole new way to conceptualize setbacks, mistakes, and failures—it’s FEEDBACK.

I’ve spent plenty of time wrestling with being fearful about mistakes, and having utterly no tolerance for my own. When I was beginning my own deep inner work, I remembered that my dear mother (who passed away when I was in my early twenties, so I don’t think she’ll mind my sharing this now) had told me when I was about ten years old that I was “a mistake.”

This was intended to impress upon me the importance, in her view, of not having sex before marriage.  But that’s not what I got from it.  I think that I somehow internalized this message and was extremely intolerant and fearful of making mistakes.  I was dedicated to avoiding mistakes at all costs.

And, even though I’ve made light years of progress in my personal “mistake and failure acceptance,” I’ve never had much of a sense of humor about it until this morning.  It struck me for the first time that I wasn’t a mistake—I was FEEDBACK!

The more I thought about it the funnier it got.  I was notorious as a child for being into everything; incapable of walking, I only ran. Some handful of feedback, eh?  The facts of life being taught to a young, small-town Southern girl, courtesy of a curious toddler who would never be still.  Somehow, being of such great educational value to my mother made the sting of her words completely vanish.

So thanks, Mommy.  Thanks for the lessons we taught each other.  Perhaps our journey together can help someone else.

And now, how about you?

Can you find any more ease, lightness, or humor in your “mistakes” and “failures” if you see them as feedback?

Could you look forward to your new challenges and activities with more excitement, more enthusiasm, if the worst thing that could happen is that you got feedback?

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.

I began my fifteen minutes of Nothing today by walking.  I walked on a wide dirt trail near my house.  I trained my eyes downward, let go of thought, and heard the swish of my jacket sleeves as they rubbed against my sides.  I had never heard this sound before, despite many walks here wearing this same jacket.

I got excited.  “I can write about this swishing sound,”  I thought.  “Cool!  I can write about something so obvious that I never noticed before.   This noise is really loud.  Wow!  With all the thoughts I usually have, I never noticed it.  I can’t believe I never heard it before.  Hey! The swishing sound has a rhythm.  It’s not even.  One side of me swings differently than the other.  How could that happen?  Maybe my body is twisted.  Maybe I should try to walk straighter.”

I realized that I was thinking.  “Cheating!” came the next thought, “you’re thinking.”  Then, “telling yourself that you are cheating is not exactly compassionate.  Just let go of the thought.  Write about it later.”

And this is how it went on day one of my Joy Diet.  Thinking, then realizing I was thinking, sometimes  judging, then letting it all go.  Over and over.