Monday, February 23, 2015

Remembering

Over the weekend I read an article about chronic pain, a condition which has often held me in its grip for 25 years. I've learned to manage my pain, letting it stop me from almost nothing.  A long-time friend recently expressed astonishment that I'd suffered so much, and he'd never known.  If I let the pain own me, then it would win.  So, I own it.  I've gone for months, perhaps occasionally even a year, during which my simple practices to manage the pain left me almost unconscious of it during the day.

The decision I made to own the pain two and a half decades ago was a good one, it seems.  The article said that recent brain research shows that when pain takes control of us, our brains actually change shape.  Depression often results.  While I've often wondered at it, I don't believe I've ever been "depressed" more than having a down day or two, when I struggled to control the pain when it wrestled vehemently to prevail.

What has always interested me is that even after long periods without the pain, the very slightest aggravation can spin me deeply back into the very worst of it, leaving me to begin once again the slow journey back to relative comfort.  I've often thought that there must be a switch in my brain which takes only a small trigger to flip.  Perhaps this is what the recent brain research suggests. "Don't let it get started," was the message of the article.

Just as I've been pondering this new finding, I've been walking a parallel path of flipped switches, this time as a result of my decision to give up sugar during Lent.   For decades I lived a healthy eating/healthy living regimen.  I liked sweet things, but they didn't control me.  I owned my decisions about what to eat and what to avoid.

I really wish I could see a scan of my brain on sugar.  I suspect that like the brain on pain, my brain changes contorts and takes with it every modicum of self-control. Now a scarce six days after abandoning my sweet treats, my body seems to have remembered how to be healthy.  Like the switch in my brain that flips bringing or alleviating pain, my control over sugar has valiantly returned.

As surely as dancing an athletic Viennese waltz at the pace of a sprinter reminds my body how to work, the absence of sugar has reminded my impulse controls how to be healthy.  When I walked through the door this evening, I was starved.  I'd missed my usual afternoon snack, and I was nearly shaky.  Over the last year or two, I would have headed right for the cupboard for crackers, nuts, or pretzels, accompanied by a glass of red wine, or more recently a whiskey sour.  Just one, but my sugar shot nonetheless.

This evening I made a beeline to the refrigerator for a pear and iced tea.  Later I craved raw nuts.  I wanted to exercise.  I wanted to sit and write, rather than watching another TV show. Giving up the sugar has apparently flipped a switch in my brain: the healthy living switch.

A friend and I share the stage of life when we aren't inclined to go back for more education, but we've both said that, if we had it to do over again, and neuroscience existed then, we would like to study the brain.  I am fascinated by the ability of some relatively insignificant thing to slip a switch and either bring health or pain, even changing the shape of our brains.

I find it equally compelling to reflect on how I have chosen to dominate my pain, but contrarily, I've let my addiction to sugar control me.  Why is it that the moment I have even a single sweet treat that I forget how good healthy habits feel?  I would like to say it is simply a process of remembering what I need to do, and I think I would be right.  However, I don't think it is remembering the way we most often speak of it--the cognitive way.  I am quite certain that this kind of remembering is seated deep in the brain, in a switch which determines who or what runs my life.

There was a line in a movie that I watched over the weekend, spoken by a newly converted vegan, "Nothing tastes as good as this feels."  I want to remember every day for the rest of the year that nothing tastes as good as this feels.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Rebirth

Last Wednesday marked the beginning of Lent--the 40 days prior to Easter--for Christians. Observers give up substances, foods, or activities that separate them from God.  They also spend time in reflection and sacred study.  The idea is to examine our lives--to learn what it means for each of us to be more Godlike, arriving at the holiest of Christian holidays ready to metaphorically start our lives anew.

Sadly, many miss the purpose.  "I'll give up smoking for Lent."

"I didn't know you smoked."

"Oh, I don't, so it will be easy to give up."

Lent isn't supposed to be easy.  It is supposed to be an annual reset, moving us to our higher selves. While Lent is a Christian practice, it is not unique.  Jews mark Passover, which commemorates their escape from bondage in Egypt to return to freedom in God's promised land for them.  Lent mirrors as we escape our bondage to bad habits in order to find our way to God's promise for us.

Although each is unique to its culture, the practice of marking the seasonal spring with observance of human rebirth is millennia old.  Some may say that Lent isn't a lot different than marking the New Year and New Year's Resolutions, but to me it contrasts starkly, not the least of which is that many New Year's Resolutions are forgotten within the day.  In Lent I am pledged to practice for 40 days.

"Practice" is the appropriate word.  "Discipline" might be another, signifying that we are disciples or students.  Lent is also marked by the personal reflection, which for me is a bit like peeling an onion. Each day I, the student, explore a different layer.

For many years, I have given up sugar for Lent.  I am seriously addicted, and nothing distracts me more from my God-self than sugar.  Giving up sugar (and consequently alcohol) is a no-brainer for me.  Each year for a few days, I experience cravings and even shakes as I give up sugar, but by now, five days into Lent, I am feeling the freedom of having it out of my system.

A couple days ago I actually began to crave exercise instead, and yesterday I ventured out in the cold and snow for a long walk.  I loved it.  My body loved it more.  This morning I walked again, although I did so indoors to avoid the treacherous sleet-encrusted sidewalks of Washington. After a lunch that reflected my healthier eating habits, I actually sat and read.   Then I wanted to meditate, which brought me to writing today.  As if each good habit naturally led to consciousness of yet another and another.

My meditation did more than return me to my computer to write.  I found myself questioning what I spend time on and the level of stress I experience from trying to keep so many balls in the air.  I actually laughed when I thought of forgetting to bring an activity sheet to a presentation I gave on Thursday.  Although I expect I will be harshly judged for this oversight, it wasn't the end of the world, and we were able to complete the activity in another way.  By contrast, letting exercise drop off my schedule for much of the week has had significant long- and short-term consequences.

I'd like to think that I will arrive at Easter pledged to really have learned and practiced my more conscious way of living so that I really will have a rebirth.  History indicates that will not be the case. I've actually continued without sugar until my birthday in May one year and all the way until Christmas another, but there is always a piece of chocolate tantalizing me.

But, what if this year, I actually did allow myself to live my truth?  Would staying off of sugar be like the domino that didn't fall and knock the others down? Would I keep exercising and meditating? Would I write this blog more regularly again? Would I be more like God envisions my potential?

That truly would be the potential of rebirth.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Looks good, feels bad

I continue to slowly work on my New Year's commitment to clear the reading stack from my bed stand before new books.  I have had some success.  I decided that I had no interest in reading a book that my boss had loaned me two or three years ago, but have felt duty bound to read it.  I gave it back on Thursday.  I have finished Richard Rohr's Falling Upward, the second half from which I found quick insights.  (1/30/15) And, I am feeling some urgency to dispose of others since I have two new books that I am eager to start.

I've read another 40 pages in Creative Confidence, Tom and David Kelley's book on unleashing our creativity.  Not unlike Falling Upward, I had gotten stuck on Creative Confidence just before I got to the spiritual meat.  The early part of their book had looked at a design process they teach at the d.school at Stanford and use with corporate clients.  Not long after I picked it up to resume reading, I found myself  in a chapter, entitled "Seek--from Duty to Passion," and not far into that chapter is a section head "The 'Looks Good, Feels Bad' Trap."

Quickly, "Looks Good, Feels Bad" had my full attention.  They talk about having a "safe and prestigious job that makes your parents smile, impresses classmates...or sounds good at a cocktail party...."  That is the "looks good" part.  The "feels bad" part comes when, no matter how impressive the job looks, the person in it just doesn't feel the job is a "fit."  The thing is that we often slide into such a job without consciously visiting how it feels to us once we are in it. 

The Kelleys quote Robert Sternberg, "People get so bogged down in the everyday trivial details of our lives that they sometimes forget that they don't have to be trapped." 

I watched a movie over the weekend in which a man was fired from his job on Wall Street, and after much consternation, he came to understand that he has been much happier living in a small town than he ever was on Wall Street. 

I recalled a number of the extremely successful executives whom I had coached who found themselves trapped in jobs they didn't enjoy simply because they'd become too successful to walk away.  Some entrepreneurs had a great idea, and then they found themselves running a company, which was something they'd never wanted to do. 

One extraordinary heart surgeon that I coached had never even wanted to even be a doctor, but it was "the family business."  He followed in the steps of his grandfather, father, and older brothers because being doctors is what men in his family did.

Some were trapped by the cost of a lifestyle that they'd somehow slipped into--much more than they ever wanted, but now they felt obligated to their families to keep them in the style to which they'd become accustomed.  Many times the family would have preferred to have them at home more than working to pay for the lifestyle.

Doing what Rohr would call "second half of life work," I have pondered the "looks good, feels bad" trap in which I find myself.  Is it any different to be in a looks-good, feels-bad job out of financial necessity than to be trapped there by success?  Until I honestly grapple with my shadow, that would be an easy go-to position, but I can't find any credulity in it for me when I am being honest with myself. Being in a Looks-good, feels-bad job is a trap regardless of where on the economic spectrum the job incumbent finds him- or herself. And, a trap is a trap.  We can't seem to find our way to freedom. 

One of the instructors in the leadership program for which I've been coaching recently told a personal story last week that reminded me of the old "Um Weg" experiments.  "Um Weg" is German for "one way."  There have been many "Um Weg" experiments with a range of species from earthworms to house cats to human beings.  In all of them, when we feel trapped, we can't see an obvious and easy way out of our circumstance, but instead repeatedly throw ourselves at the same solution over and again, even though it never works. 

As Sternberg said, "People get so bogged down in the everyday trivial details of our lives that they sometimes forget that they don't have to be trapped." 

I still have 70 pages to read in Creative Confidence, and I look forward to learning if the Kelleys will share any helpful insights in getting out of my trap. I think they will not. If they had answers, then I wouldn't need to do my spiritual work. I am certain that I must remember that I don't have to be trapped.  I simply need to metaphorically turn and look the other way in my life where I can find a Don't-Care-How-It-Looks, Feels-Good work situation. And, I am certain that I will find it when I tap into my passion again.  Who knows? It might turn out to be a Looks Good, Feels Good role.