Allow Yourself to Fail

As I carried a box of office accumulation from my office on one of my last days of work, I ran into a colleague who didn't realize that I was making my exit from the organization.  I told her I was entering a transition period during which I would explore new career options.  She, and a number of others before her, remarked how courageous it was of me to leave my current position before having a new one in hand.  I didn't think it courageous at all.  To continue to be bored with my work seemed among the worst option that I faced; I just didn't want to do that any more.

As she and I continued to talk, I related five or six areas of interest that had been sparked in me.  I said I wanted to explore each of them in some way until I found a place where I wanted to land for a while.  I would try it out, and, if I enjoyed it and felt like I was making a contribution, I would continue.  If I didn't enjoy it, I hadn't lost anything, except maybe a few weeks or months.  I would move to another option on my list.  I was quite excited about the menu of options before me. And, I was excited by the adventure of trying new things.

When both health coaching and refugee involvement--both items on my list--bombarded me with opportunities in early January, I was excited.  I truly enjoyed being in learning mode with both.  I truly felt fully alive.  Then I finished the class about 10 days ago.  As a bonus for completion, the organization offered us a significant discount on a number of items, including additional classes, that would help establish our health coaching practices...when purchased within two weeks of the completion of the first course.

I've been to the site a few times.  I've stewed a lot.  Is this really what I want to do? What about all those other things on my list that I haven't had the opportunity to explore yet?  Do I want to abandon the executive, life, and spiritual coaching, which have been the foci of my work over 25 years, or do I want health coaching to be one more offering?  This hadn't been unhealthy or obsessive overthinking, and often not even conscious questioning, but more like a soundtrack to my daily life.

Since I have decided to do more focused self-exploration during the 40-day Lenten season, I decided to start the process by drawing a "transformation" card* to focus my meditation.  "Allow Yourself to Fail," it read. Among other admonitions, it continued, "Redefine 'failure' as 'steps toward progress'--a means of learning."*

I am rarely concerned about making mistakes, and I often joke that I prefer to work in pencil instead of pen because it allows me to fix mistakes more easily.  However, I realized that in regard to this transition that I'd allowed myself to fall into the trap of limiting my options. I recalled the conversation I related above and wondered where I had let my sense of exploratory adventure go.  All of a sudden, I had narrowed myself to a "Is it a yes or is it a no?" with regard to a health coaching practice.

Ah!  I don't need to do that: additional meaning for "Allow Yourself to Fail."  I have a graduate degree in management, and my marketing machine is a well-oiled one.  When I started my consulting business in the early 1990s, the editor of the local business journal called me.  He wanted to do an article about my marketing because he said everywhere he'd turned in the last two months, he'd hear something about me or read something about me.  I know how to do that...well.

What I don't know how to do so well is not market, not have cards and brochures, not have a business plan--all the things that people do to keep their businesses from failing.  You've got to be fully in--fully committed to your success all the books say.  But I was more interested in sticking my toe in the water to check the temperature rather than jumping off the high dive.  To "Allow Yourself to Fail" doesn't mean that I  have to fail: it just means that I am willing to give myself that possibility.

Which is exactly where I was when I ran into the colleague when I was moving out of my office in December.  "If it doesn't work, what did I lose?"  I will now allow myself to shake free of all that Graduate School of Management programming and stick my toe in several pools of water before deciding where to dive in.

I recognize this pattern other places in my life.  Something from outside of me pressures me to make a decision--a commitment--to something before I am really ready.  Then I figure out how to "do it right," which inevitably puts me on a course from which it is difficult to deviate.  Before I know it, I am years into something I didn't want to be doing.  This time I really want to shop carefully.  I want to make a decision that is correct for me, not because of external pressure...and then I want to allow myself to fail.








*www.ToolkitForTransformation.com

My Set Point

I was listening to a podcast the other day about fat.  I would say that it is an occupational hazard now that I am officially a certified health coach, but truthfully, I've always been interested in understanding our bodies.  (And, yes, I did successfully complete my training.)  The woman who had been researching the fat organ--yes, fat is an organ--said that we all had a "set-point" for our weight. Unless we were consciously engaged in practices to change the set-point, our bodies go back to their "normal," which for many is a few pounds heavier than we might like to be.

Now, this post really has nothing to do with fat, but more with the concept of a "set-point," as a state of mind with which we are familiar or comfortable in whatever we are doing.  I am a reasonable neatnik, although I truly hate to clean.  It takes about two weeks for my apartment to get cluttered enough that I am uncomfortable with it.  I take 60 to 90 minutes to declutter and do some superficial cleaning, and then I can heave a sigh of relief and feel like my home is mine again.  That point had arrived earlier this evening. There's something in my that becomes uncomfortable if I get too far from that neatnik/not cleanik zone.

About an hour ago, I had my kick-back moment when I reclaimed my home. It was in that delicious reverie that I realized I'd been struggling this week.  My set point in life has been "on overdrive." When I first married, my husband described me as a mosquito on speed.  We had lived three hours apart before marrying, and there are some things that we don't learn when we only see our intendeds on weekends and vacations.  I hit the ground running in the morning, and I pretty much ran until we were finished cleaning the kitchen after dinner.  Then, I would relax.

Since 2001, I've worked very long hours and had very little time to take care of me, until now.  Yet, even in this transition time, I took only a week of meditation before driving head-first into the health coach training, which, along with refugee meetings, has pretty much consumed me.  I have been getting a full eight hours of sleep each night and exercising most days.  I have even written for this blog most days.

But, since my final exam on Wednesday afternoon, I've been struggling with what to do with myself. I have my lists of "things to do" and "things to explore," which I've been working.  I did my taxes today. (Yeah for refunds!) I spent yesterday taking care of a lot of insurance paperwork. A friend had me over for wine and snacks last night. I worked with a personal trainer this morning for the first time since college.  It's not like I have been bored. Yet all this "to-do list" activity feels like more of my overdrive set-point.

A few days ago I had a wonderful conversation with a friend who retired last summer, and she goes to coffee and movies with friends on weekdays. What a delightful idea!  I am not there yet. I have been looking forward to a matinee tomorrow--Saturday--after reclaiming my apartment and doing taxes.

Even in high school and college, I was an honor student, active in a lot of school activities and working a part-time job. Before that I had a healthy set of household chores that I had to do around school and church activities as a kid. I am not sure I can remember a time when I didn't need to be on overdrive.

I don't need to be on overdrive any more.  I don't want to be on overdrive any more...but that is my set-point.  Even as I look at my lists of activities, I realize they are to keep me moving and busy.  I expect that some of this harkens back to the strong Protestant Work Ethic upbringing I had in the hard-working Midwest of my early years.  Relaxation was a sin.  Really.  We were expected to be doing things.  Play even had to be productive.

Breaking out of that early programming is a challenge, so I feel like I am in a bit of freefall now. I know that I'd like to slow down and enjoy life.  I'd love to read the book that my book club has chosen for the first week of March, but there is something so uneasy for me about just sitting and reading a book. And, I've been struggling.  I've actually been struggling all week, but I think I just finally recognized it this evening.

What comes to mind are the old wind-up dolls of my childhood.  If you cranked a key on the doll's back, she would walk for awhile. At first she'd walk very fast, but eventually, she would wind down and stop walking.  The overdrive me is like the doll on full-wind-up mode.  I don't want to completely wind down, but I would like to crank my set-point back to somewhere in-between. Somewhere between the mosquito on speed and staying in bed all day would be perfect.  I realize there is a lot of leeway there, and I am still figuring out what my sweet spot is.  I am an active person, and I want to keep that.  I would also like to read that book and go to a weekday matinee.

This feels very important to me because I think starting up a health-coaching practice could be a very slippery slope, if I haven't learned how to be more relaxed about life before I do so. I expect I was continue to struggle for a bit as I learn to reset.

Inner Compulsions

I listened to several podcasts, including the DR Show podcast, today while running errands and walking.  One of Diane Rehm's guests was Sharon Begley, who has written a book on compulsion. She's written a book on the topic.  She talked about our device-driven compulsions, which I've written about in the blog as "addictions."  She describes the anxiety that people experience when they are not able to constantly check their devices.

Begley also talked about inwardly-driven compulsions, such as the compulsion to write. She used the examples of classic writers John Milton and Ernest Hemingway, who claimed the deeply driven need to write every day.

I had dinner last week with two people who are readers of this blog, and they talked about my "discipline" with writing it.  I laughed off the comments because I feel totally undisciplined about my writing...even my books.  I've often described the months before I locked my doors and wrote Leading from the Heart as my pregnancy.  Something was gestating within me, was growing, and couldn't be stopped. I had no choice but to deliver. I literally felt that I would go crazy if I didn't write even though I sat down not fully aware of what might come out. I think it was my way of saying what Milton and Hemingway described, not that I am comparing my writing to that of those masters.

When I get in the rhythm of writing, most of the time I really can't stop myself.  When I say I am undisciplined, it is because I feel like I am channeling something deep inside myself which bypasses my brain.  Even my books felt to me as if I was typing as fast as I could to see what would appear on the computer screen.  I've also felt a little embarrassed that I didn't put in lots of disciplined research, but I won't apologize for writing what is in my soul.  That is my compulsion.

Over the years, I've spawned a number of visual artists, each producing amazing work, which I sense bubbles from within them in a way that I imagine is much like my writing is for me.  I recall a coaching client coming for our session one day with a sheet wrapped around a painting that she didn't want anyone to see because it was totally different than anything she'd seen before and thought that it didn't count as "real art."  Of course, it did: it was her art.  Another former coaching client has been experimenting with a new medium and is producing some truly remarkable work which is unlike anything I've seen before.

While I almost never know before I sit and look at the empty blogger page each night what it is I will write, once it begins coming, it is effortless and bursts from within me, sometimes at a fearsome pace. I wrote 32 pages in one day when writing The Game Called Life: I truly don't know how I did it. So, despite the impressions that my friends had about my discipline with this blog, the only discipline that I bring is making myself sit down each evening.  And, I suppose that is a genuine discipline, and it is one that I haven't had for a couple years.

What is unique in this time for me is that I don't feel any bigger projects gestating: I don't feel something that I am compelled to say. I miss that rush, but it almost feels like that was of a different time, and what I feel drawn to right now is sitting each evening and sharing what I know in my heart. Maybe that is all I should be feeling as Valentine's Day approaches. The arrow that Cupid seems to have aimed at me is the love of writing and sharing that "compulsively."

90% is Just Showing Up

A friend came over for dinner this evening.  One of our favorite restaurateurs has opened a new place in my neighborhood.  We walked down for a glass of wine to check the place out before coming back to "play in the kitchen": we both enjoy cooking.

To mark a landmark birthday for me a few years ago, the two of us took a meandering trip around Tuscany.  It was probably my best trip ever, although I have to say that I did grow weary of tourist-laden "hill towns" after a couple of them.  One day as we were driving in the countryside, we saw a sign for a town we hadn't heard of and which didn't show up on our map.  We decided to check it out. It wasn't without tourists but more like dozens instead of thousands, and there were actually unique shops and restaurants.  We found a little side street and wandered into the best dining experience of my life.

As a cook, when I have a great dish in a restaurant, I immediately make notes so I can try to reproduce it when I return.  I believe our wild boar with chocolate, pine nuts, and aromatic spices and tagliatelle in white truffle sauce was the best mean I've ever had.  (So good that I didn't even note the dessert, which is usually the focus of my attention.)  I still have my hand-scribbled notes attempting to capture its essence for later experimentation.

There are cooks who could just walk into the kitchen with those ingredients and start creating.  I am not one of them.  I am good at following recipes, and I am better than average at taking a recipe and modifying it until it hardly resembles the original.  But, I do need something with which to start. After years of searching, I finally found an adaptable recipe, and we played with it.  We smelled lots of aromatic spices--mace, allspice, clove, nutmeg--to try to figure out which had probably been in the Italian version.  We aren't there yet, but we are moving in the right direction.

I had promised to write for at least 15 minutes a day, but by the time we dined, watched a movie and my friend left, I was tired...and uninspired.  Since my TV sabbatical last week, I haven't watched much, so I caught a favorite show on demand.  I was still not feeling it.

I sat and prayed and meditated.  I shared my intention to keep my commitment and to write something every day.  By the time 18 minutes of meditation had passed, what was clearly on my mind was the phrase "90 percent is just showing up," inspired by Woody Allen's "80 percent of life is just showing up."  Apparently, my guides think that showing up is more important than Allen did.

As I pondered the phrase, I realized that there are a lot of things in life that we commit to do, but when the time comes, we try to weasel out of our promises.  We avoid. We put it off. We just don't show up. Keeping our commitments is foundational to integrity.  A missed commitment creates a "pinprick in our integrity."  The next day another pinprick. Next week another.  Pretty soon, we have a "hole in our integrity the size of the one in the Titanic," as Lizzie in The Game Called Life  said.

Today, I showed up to keep my commitment to write...and to protect my integrity.

Whatever Is Going On With Me?

There was a time when television shows started new seasons a week or two after Labor Day in September, and the season ended in late spring.  We'd get "reshows" all summer, which wasn't so bad because who wants to be in watching TV in the summer, and then the cycle would start over again. We developed long-term relationships with characters; they could be almost like family.

I am not exactly sure when that began to change because I didn't have TV reception for many years, and when getting cable cost me almost nothing when I subscribed to internet service, I went many more years before I started watching again.  In recent years there seem to be two patterns of TV series.  One at least nods to the old pattern, where the season is now-later fall, ending in now-earlier spring, but anytime we have holidays or big events on other channels (World Series, the Oscars, the Grammys,) we get reruns.  Sometimes for no apparent reason the program will go into reruns or go completely dark for a few weeks.

The second pattern, which seems to be increasingly common, is a six- to eight-week set of shows, followed by a 44- to 46-week wait for the next bundle of new programming.  Occasionally, the programs will have two little bundles a year with long waits in between.

Since my job has now rendered me pretty useless from exhaustion in the evenings, and I have discovered the "on demand" feature so I can watch programs that are on after my bedtime, I find that I watch way too much TV.  I have, however, discovered some high-quality programs when I am willing to sort through all the junk that poorly imitates art. Because some of these bundles come and go very quickly and often with no apparent rhythm to me, I have began searching the web for announcements of new season dates.  One such program that I discovered in its bundle last year is "Finding Your Roots."

"Finding Your Roots" is the brainchild of host Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the African-American Harvard professor who made headlines a few years ago when he was arrested for breaking into his own home when he got locked out.  Besides being a Harvard professor, Gates is an Emmy Award winning documentarian, literary critic, and book award winner. In "Finding Your Roots" Gates hosts two to three prominent individuals, often from the same genre--artists one week, politicians another, talk-show hosts still another.

During the program he explores the ancestry of each guest--good, bad, and ugly.  You had a slave owner in the background, it will come out.  You have direct lineage to Abraham or Charlemagne, he will share it. You had a relative who managed to survive pogroms in the Ukraine or Russia or concentration camps, we learn about it.

I am not sure why I have found the program so compelling because, except for my American Indian great grandmother, I've had almost no interest in my own personal ancestry.  My interest had been mildly tweaked, and I've found particularly interesting how the DNA testing process can actually link by name long lost cousins.

Crossing the trajectory of this "season" of "Finding Your Roots" has been the introduction by a friend to me of the "Outlander" series, which is set in 18th Century Scotland. While I have been led to believe that on both sides of my family that I am mostly Scottish and Irish, my interest in learning more has been yawning until the last two or three weeks.  Suddenly, I am intrigued to learn more about those ancestors who came to the colonies long before they thought of becoming a country.  As I see some of their trials, I want to know more.  Although I've always been interested in history, I don't think I've ever had any exposure to the history of that region, and I want to learn about it.

Beyond my ancestry and the interweaving of together of different TV programs, what I am really feeling particularly compelling about the whole set of circumstances is that it feels like the Universe has conspired to get me passionate about something in which I had absolutely no interest until just a few weeks ago.  Similar things have happened before when I feel bombarded by information about something that I knew nothing about previously.

Noticing is important.  In order to live the life of spiritual intention, we have to notice, pay attention, and follow the threads that are thrown onto our paths.  So last night when one of those pop-up ads appeared on my computer screen offering a "deal" on the DNA testing, I followed it and learned a lot more about how it works...even the finding of long lost cousins part.  I bit. It just seemed like what I was supposed to do.

I have a rule of three in life, when three apparently "coincidental" occurrences happen about the same time, I notice and do something about it.  For instance, I recently bumped into the same person who I haven't seen for some time three times.  I scheduled lunch.

Many of my spiritual coaching clients have said to me that the Universe doesn't speak to them.  Of course, it does, I would say, but you have to speak its language.  The language of coincidences or sparked passions is how the Universe speaks to us.  Noticing is how we listen.

Anticipation...

I haven't seen "my babies" since January.  They aren't really my babies, but the two- and five-year-old girls currently on their way to my home won my heart at birth--theirs, not mine.  Between constraints on each end, it has been way too long since I've seen them.  We planned this visit months ago.  As the time has approach, my anticipation has increased.  Over the last week, I've gotten more and more excited.  If I calculate properly, they are probably 30 minutes away, and I am beside myself.

Years ago I heard that half the fun of a trip was planning.  I am not a planner, and I really love being spontaneous on trips.  Yet, I am fully aware that some of my best travel adventures are the result of enough research to figure out where the potential awaited.  As my life has become more and more harried, my planning and research for trips has gotten shorter and shorter. 

A doctor's appointment the day before my first trip to Italy resulted in a two-hour round trip Metro ride from the office and back, giving me my first two hours of "research."  On the way out that morning, I'd grabbed one of the tourist guides that I'd acquired months early but hadn't opened.  As I chugged from one end of the Metro almost to the other, I read about Ravenna, the birthplace of mosaics.  On a whim, my friend and I drove across the boot of Italy for an amazing two days in Ravenna.  We wouldn't have wanted to miss it, but for my doctor's appointment, we wouldn't have known what it offered.

On my way to Spain two years ago, I started my research on the plane east to Europe.  I was so busy getting things under control before my vacation that I just didn't think I had time...until I was on my way.  I was packing on my way out the door, too.

I know that this will be a wonderful weekend, but I also know how much fun the planning has been.  Looking forward to their faces...planning and preparing special foods that I think the family will like...picking a special Chianti Classico to share with their dad...thinking about what I think the family will enjoy on their visit to DC.   It's been wonderful.

The really amazing thing to me is how in my body I've been today.  I should have worked, but I didn't.  When their departure was delayed, I could have worked, but decided not to.  I wanted to fully anticipate the visit.  I made preparations, but mostly I anticipated the joy of their hugs, giggles and squeals, and passion.  My heart has gotten bigger and bigger. 

I just got a text that they are on the beltway.  I feel giddy: like a young girl in love.  Actually, I think that I am: I am in love with these girls, and I am totally enjoying the experience of anticipating them.  My heart felt bigger and fluttery.  There was a tickle in my throat and even some butterflies in my stomach as I anticipated.

This day has been rich because I've allowed myself to feel the joy of anticipation.  As I think back about trips when I took time and space for anticipation, there was much more excitement.  The last few vacations I've taken have felt very matter of fact and rushed because I have forgotten or lost the power of anticipation.

This fall I am going to Greece.  There have been two guide books on my desk for almost two months.  Until this moment, when I opened one to see the date on the receipt, I hadn't opened either. Today, it dawned on me how much I've been missing by not consciously making  time to prepare for my trips.   I will do so, I promise.

In the meantime, I've received a call from the girls' mother that they are here. Now is time to switch from anticipation to full-on enjoyment.

A Good Belly Laugh

Twice this week I've caught PBS reruns of earlier presentations of the Mark Twain Award for American Humor. Earlier this week the recognition was for Tina Fey, and tonight Carol Burnett was the object of the salute.

I laughed at the earlier show, but tonight as I watched old skits from The Carol Burnett Show in the 1960s and 70s, I had several serious belly laughs, which, on more than one occasion, brought me both to stitches and tears. Now on extremely attractive octogenarian, neither Burnett's quick wit nor her singing voice had lost their edge. What a talent!

Good belly laughs are seriously under-valued most of the time, and, at least in my world, they are preciously rare. A good laugh relieves stress and relaxes us, and research shows that people learn better and are more creative after laughing. What's not to like about a good belly laugh?!

I like to think that God has a sense of humor. In fact, I am fairly certain that is the case. If we step back and look at the things that we try willfully to control, only to discover later that the very thing we resisted is the best thing that ever happened to us, can't you just hear divine laughter. And there are the times when I've laughed so I didn't cry only to discover that a chuckle was the perfect response.

One of the things I've discovered (and lamented) about living alone and working in a job that is sobering is that I just don't laugh enough so I've set about being intentional about bringing some serious laughs into my life every day. They give me perspective and help me unwind...and help me see the world a bit more like I think God sees it.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone