Boundaries

Washington is in the middle of a week of brutally hot weather, exceeding 100 degrees and shattering long-standing records.  With the humidity, our heat indices have been even more relentless. Yet this morning I've been quite comfortably luxuriating on my north-facing balcony with a slight breeze. I breakfasted outdoors, a guilty pleasure I've enjoyed most of my adult life.  As I did so, I found my mind drifting back to several patios, decks, and balconies on which I had breakfasted and to the friends with whom I had  shared stories and laughed as we ate.

Before eating, I had finished a novel that I started a month ago on my staycation. In it the main characters started the book as boys, and by the end, they had become old men with failing eyesight. The book left me in a reflective space, which may have spawned my breakfast reverie.  I've been thinking about this post for some time. For once I am not going to use the excuse of no time to write. If you had asked I wouldn't have known why I hadn't written, but this morning I know that I just hadn't had enough perspective.

I believe the expression "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" came from the I Ching, but I also believe that a number of Eastern philosophies hold something similar to be true. During my outdoor breakfast contemplation this morning, the pieces began to fall into place for me.  I, as the student, must be ready because lots of opportunities to learn a similar lesson have appeared.

During my four-month detail last fall and early winter, I became keenly aware that my life had spun totally out of control in recent years--to the extent that my physical and mental health were being compromised and my relationships were back-burnered, awaiting that precious "time" for nurturing. Certainly, time for writing, which really nourishes my soul, had become a low priority. I fell asleep from exhaustion when I tried to meditate. I had to be away from my long-standing, abusive work environment to get the perspective to recognize that.

In those treasured four months, I was able to see what had evaded me for so long. In my situation I had lost either the self-respect or the self-confidence to set and stick to my boundaries.  When I returned to my permanent job, I wrote in big block letters with a box around them on the whiteboard behind my desk, where I looked at it every time I entered my office, "boundary clarity."

In a matter of days, I was tested.  An unsustainable level of dark work again began flowing at me from very high places. Encouraged by my "boundary clarity" reminder, I began telling my clients that I would work with them, but it would be three months, four months, and even five months later.  I brought in a contractor to do work with one client organization, which had needs that wouldn't wait. Still, the darkness and the volume of the work were too much.

Within a month I knew something had to change.  After several conversations with my new boss, it became clear that the organization was more concerned about keeping my very senior customers happy than in keeping me healthy and happy. No relief would be coming, but I was assured that I was very good at this work.  After an unusually frightening dream about the same time, I knew I had to leave.  I began the process of planning for an end-of-the-summer departure.  I was quite transparent with my boss and his boss about planning for an August separation.

I had no other job from which to make money, and I really need serious income for several years yet I knew I needed to take care of myself. My friends worried a bit more than I did about how I would live, but as soon as I got very clear about needing to move on, I had faith that something would work out.  My big focus was on getting my clients, most of whom I'd worked with for years, to a good transition point. I learned about a month ago that the boss didn't really think I'd go, but he obviously doesn't know my courage when my spiritual path has become clear to me, and it had become very clear to me.

As soon as I had become very clear, out of the blue I received a call from a potential employer.  Job announcements began falling into my email inbox with regularity.  Even USAJobs, which has seldom had appropriate jobs, sent me a promising vacancy announcement. I am now just five weeks from my departure date, and I have two very strong prospects, each of which allows me to work in my "sweet spot," and each of which will be a significant increase in income.  Perhaps as encouraging is that along the way as I networked with former bosses and colleagues, I found great sources for independent contract work.

In parallel, I realized how my work situation has made me unavailable for time with friends and even to pursue a primary relationship.  In fact, for the first time in a long time, I added up how many years it had been since I'd had more than a date or two with someone.  It wasn't an acceptable number.  I began focusing my intention on at least meeting some men.  I had first dates with people I would have just checked off my list a year ago.  Most of them weren't serious prospects, but I was at least getting out and sending the Universe a message that I was serious.

Along the way, something else happened.  While I just didn't have much in common with most of these men, there was another category.  The only way I can describe them is "Really?!"  The one who pronounced that he had two other women in his life but would like to add others. "Really?!" There was one who was married but said his wife was OK with him dating others. "Really?!"  Last week, there was one who seriously treated me like a child. "Really?!"  I wanted to add, "What do I look like?" but the truth is, I probably looked like a doormat, both at work and in my personal life.

I like to be nice to people.  If I have ever been rude, it was either because I was tired or didn't realize what I was doing.  In each of these cases, I just walked out.  The last one in the middle of dinner at a famous-chef restaurant that I really love. As a serious foodie, that should have been hard, but it wasn't. Following each of these, someone more interesting followed.  I'm still not there yet, but...progress.

In the 2006 movie "The Holiday," one of two female leads, Iris, played by Kate Winslet, has also been down on her confidence and has allowed her former boyfriend to walk all over her.  In the movie, she meets an octogenarian, who is former screenwriter.  He begins "assigning" her movie viewing of classic films, all of which have strong women leads.  After said boyfriend crosses the line yet one more time, she kicks him out of her life.  He is incredulous.  "What's gotten into you, Iris?" he asks.

After a pause, she replies, "I think it is something resembling gumption." And, away she sends him.

As I've been contemplating this post over the last few weeks, that scene and those words have played over and again in my mind.  Where did my gumption go, and more importantly, how did I let it go. I have been a strong woman most of my adult life.  Anyone who has known me before this century would certainly have laughed at the thought that I didn't have confidence.  A former dance partner once remarked (paraphrased for the general audience) "You have more moxie than any man I know."

"Where did it go?" is still a question I ponder, but mostly, I don't care. What I am passionate about is sustaining it into what feels to me like the next phase of my life--one that promises to be the best ever.

While both personally and professionally my life has been about helping others, I now know that I can't sustain my help for others if I don't take care of my first.  How many coaching clients have I reminded that the airlines always warn us to put the oxygen mask over our own faces before attempting to help children around us. On this turn of the hero's journey, I've gotten this lesson differently than I had before.  Saying "Sorry, I can't help me, I need to take care of myself," really is uncomfortable to even consider, but, whatever comes next, that is a clear boundary that I must enforce.

Do Something Different

Yesterday I wrote about feeling the prickliness of being in the middle of a transformation phase.  There is an unsettledness that has been with me for months, but I didn't realize how many months until I looked back for an earlier post in which I described "feeling pregnant" in anticipation of something new coming. (Pregnant, 11/2/13)  I have been having these feelings for six months.

Patience has not been one of my strong suits.  Once I've been able to decide what the next step is, I want to be on with it.  Waiting for months is counter-rational for me.  That is exactly the problem.  When we grow spiritually, by definition, the process is a counter-rational one.  The Universe functions on its own time schedule, not ours.  I understand that, AND I am ready to be through this transition.

Yet, I am attempting to be very intentional about allowing the process and not forcing it. 

This morning I had my monthly call with a Canadian friend who shares the spiritual journey.  I shared with him my frustration with feeling pregnant for months and being prickly with people I really like.  I asked him for suggestions about how to move the process.  Almost immediately, he responded to approach life differently.  "Walk up the stairs backwards, or get into the shower from the opposite end."

His words resonated with me immediately.  I recalled final guidance at the end of a personal growth seminar 25 years ago in which the leader said, "Do something different." 

I headed out to run errands by walking up the hill behind my building backwards.  Later I walked up three flights of stairs backwards.  Both stimulated observations.  In each case, I had to really pay attention.  That meant that I had to be really present; if I hadn't concentrated, I think I might have fallen.  Walking up the hill, which I climb at least two or three times a week, I noticed things in the woods that I hadn't noticed before.  I am not sure whether I just haven't paid attention before or if it was looking down instead of up that was responsible.  The stairs that I usually bolt up effortlessly two at a time winded me when I climbed backwards.  Both the hill and the stairs seemed much longer than usual.

I was hungry so I ate dinner much earlier than usual...just because I was hungry. Instead of my usual salad, I ate pizza.  And, although this was my day to clean the house, I took a nap instead.

Now I am not sure what all of this has to do with accelerating my transition, but I am certain that anything that forces me to be more present and to listen to my inner needs/desires rather than going through the day on autopilot is a good thing, even if my chores weren't completed. 

I am a night owl, and I usually relish the weekends so I can stay up and be on "my" schedule, instead of the one driven by the rest of the world.  But, tonight it is early, and I am feeling tired. I have a book I'd like to finish.  I think I'll do something different and go to bed early and read.  Who knows what my dreams will bring when I am really paying attention?

Hanging On To What I Don't Want

I rarely give advice when I am coaching.  I prefer to let the session be a self-discovery process.  On those occasions when I do give advice, however, what usually happens sometime between instantly and five minutes later is that I realize the advice I gave my coaching client is advice I should have given myself.

Today the advice was to be wary of hanging on to things that my client doesn't really want just because they are hers now.  Almost as the words were coming out of my mouth, I thought, "Kay, you should be listening to this advice yourself."

Over the years, there have been others that have tried to hang on when they shouldn't.  One pattern that I have experienced is the person who has a job they've never really liked or wanted but they've had it so long that they are terrified of leaving it or losing it.  One executive that I coached needed to tell his CEO something, which he knew would anger him.   I asked him what the worst thing that could happen would be.  He sat quietly for a few seconds and said, "I'd be fired."  He smiled, shook his head gently, and continued, "from a job I never really wanted.  Freedom: that is what would happen."  Hanging on to his own personal prison.

A heart surgeon was oppressed by the stress of the job.  When I asked him why he continued, "Because my father wanted me to be a heart surgeon, and my brothers are heart surgeons.  It's the 'family business': my father wanted me in the family business."  Hanging on to what he never wanted.

In the work I do, it is really quite common to have a new manager with functional expertise to micromanage their staff because they don't want to let go of what they are "expert" at doing in order to grow into a new role.  Unable to step up to what they've wanted because they are hanging on to what they had been yearning to leave.

There are lots of other examples, but in both my own life and in those of the many clients who have wrestled with letting go of something with which they are finished.  In many ways the leap of stepping into what we want and letting go of what we don't is one of faith--faith that the other side will be better than where we are and not some the-grass-is-greener illusion.

After I gave my client advice today, I pondered: what am I hanging on to that I don't want.  A laugh-out-loud moment followed: let me count them. It seemed for a bit that every thought passing through me brought another and another. 

A couple weeks ago I wrote about feeling like I was pregnant--about to give birth to something new, maybe even a whole new life. (11/2/13)  A woman about to give birth becomes something new: she becomes a mother.  That role doesn't come with an instruction manual.  She must risk moving into a totally new world with no assurance that she will do well...or even can do it at all.   The baby can't wait for her to calculate her odds for success; it will be born. 

In the instant that she becomes a mother, she lets go of who she was before the birth.  Unless, of course, that she decides that she can't do it.  Well, of course, that is crazy.  She can't decide when she is going into labor that she isn't going to have the baby.  I think that is where I am.  Yet my hands are locked in a white-knuckled grip on what I don't want.  Tonight I will ask for help--help letting go of what I don't want, so that I can give birth to this new life.

Going to school

My life has seemed to go in cycles.  For a few years life flows swimmingly.  Money, relationships, health, and career all work well. Then, for no apparent reason, one day it shifts, and life can be very difficult for the next few.  While I certainly think the easy times are much more fun, in truth, I am sure that the difficult ones are more important to the evolution of my soul. 

I think of the difficult times as when we are in "spiritual school."  It is easy to have faith when everything is easy. I have learned the most about faith when it is tested.  Like in the life of the Biblical Job, if we are able to remember that we are on a spiritual journey, we come out the other side stronger and closer to whatever we consider the divine.  When things really fall apart, we are going to spiritual graduate school.

When I was publishing a book each year, writing several newspaper columns, consulting globally, and delivering a reasonable number of keynote addresses, I had lots of people around me who loved me.  Then the economy went bust...and my business with it.  Suddenly, most of my "friends" evaporated.  I found out who my true friends were.  I would never have learned what makes a real friend without those times.

Similarly, I won't ever really learn about forgiveness and gratitude until I need to forgive someone for a particularly wicked deed and then take it one step further to expressing gratitude for the deed. Twenty years ago a friend and I would talk about "being in lesson" at moments like that.  We would know that there was a spiritual purpose for our challenging times.  The more challenging the times, the more we were sure we were "in lesson."

School goes in other cycles too.  A different friend and I were talking over dinner Sunday about the same lessons that seem to keep showing up in our lives every few years. In my belief system those repeating lessons are ones that our souls signed up to master.  But, with each cycle, we learn something different.

I am a bit reluctant to announce at this early stage, but I feel a difficult cycle is approaching an end.  You may recall that a few days ago, I wrote about feeling as if I were pregnant (11/2/12.)  I've been restless and keep feeling like I have been about to deliver something.  Today, I think my "baby" is an easier stage of life.  In several arenas in life, I feel little breakthroughs, harbingers of better times.  I feel as if it might almost be safe to relax.  Ah!

While I look forward to easier times, I am cognizant of being truly grateful for the years I've been "in spiritual school," maybe this time for a spiritual post-doc. 

God's paintbrush

When I looked out my living room window this morning, the view just took my breath away.  I am fortunate enough to have a national park as my backdoor neighbor.  In the last few days the fall color has burst out in its full glory.  Closest to me are shades of orange and russet, but a cluster of  brilliant yellow trees stands right in the middle of my panorama.  Earlier today the sky was dark and brooding in the background, but a bright shaft of sunlight spotlighted that grove. 

As the morning has progressed, the sky has brightened to a beautiful robin's egg blue with puffy white clouds, providing a perfect frame for the oranges closest to me.  The wind blowing through the trees brings with it a similar tranquility to listening to the surf at the beach.

In the spring I have been equally taken with the tender lime greens of new leaves, interspersed with the violets of the native redbud trees.  What a wonder! And, especially after a long and hard winter, what a blast of hope predicting an unending progression of color that will follow all spring and summer...leading up to the beauty that grabbed me today. Only God's paintbrush could have created such wonders.

How is it that we have been blessed with such wonder?  It is certainly a gift and one that always lifts my heart when I am alert to that blessing.  This morning I believe I experienced still a different purposefulness of nature's beauty.

I start each day by taking a few moments (occasionally it takes more than a few) to connect with the vibrational feeling in my heart that I believe is my connection to Love or to God...or probably they are the same.  From what I have been able to tell, I can only do this when I am totally present.  If my mind is drifting to yesterday or last week or jumping ahead to later today or tomorrow, I cannot get that feeling.  So it was this morning that my mind seemed obsessed with something that happened in the past that I need to deal with tomorrow. Like a tennis match, my mind bounced from the past to the future back to the past...and so on...inconveniently skipping right over the "net" that is the present.

Determined not to start my day without being present and connected, I tried everything I could to will myself present. I tried for a very long time.  I couldn't do it.  Then I remembered to pray for help, and almost as I did, a snapshot of the landscape in the park flashed across my mind's eye. ("Remembering to Pray" 10/30/2013)  Even in my imagining it was so beautiful that I gasped, and the moment I did, I felt the connection in my heart.  After struggling for nearly an hour to connect, the beauty of God's paintbrush brought me into the present moment instantly.  And...I have stayed there all day.

I have certainly had the experience of awe and wonder in the mountains, the Grand Canyon, and countless other places in nature.  Today, I wonder if the purpose of those wonders is to call us present and to remind us of the omnipresence and timelessness of God's love for us, always there just for the price of recognizing it.

Pregnant?

I've just spent several minutes looking for a word.  I didn't find the right one.  I've felt funny today, and I am searching for a word to describe the feeling. 

Some ancient cultures celebrated depression.  They described that depression as a time when a person gathered courage to make a leap into a new phase of life.  I don't really feel depressed in the way that we usually use that word.  But, it does seem to me today like I am getting ready for a big change.   I should be pacing or something. So, I did what I do when I need to pace: I cooked for several hours.

What is the word?  I thought maybe it was "listless."  I looked it up to be sure. "Lacking energy, interest, or the willingness to make an effort."  Not that.  I've had plenty of energy.  I went for a long walk on a beautiful fall Saturday and enjoyed our first burst of fall color.  However, I do feel a lack of interest, and I've struggled to "make an effort," well, because I felt so strongly that change is coming that anything I would do today felt like it would be irrelevant tomorrow.

In these busy times where we are all supposed to have a goal or direction and keep moving in that way, we put little value on the transitions, and I am not sure that those transitions may not be much more important.  Whether it is gathering steam for a leap or grieving a loved one, those times when we just need to "be" are undervalued, and maybe even disparaged by some.  We need them to build courage for what is next.  We need them to help us get ready for a world that will be so different from the one in which we currently exist that we will not recognize it.

When I was a small child, my parents bred dogs, and on the day that the mother was about to give birth, she paced and was restless beyond belief. I think what I may be feeling today is...pregnant.  (Not in the having a baby sense.  I'm passed that.) Really feeling that I am about to give birth to something, and I don't know what it is.  It is exciting and at the same time terrifying.  Will I be able to stand up to the challenge of birthing this thing?  What will it look like? What will it mean for my life? While I am terrified, I am restless.  I want to get on with it, but the gestation period is clearly not complete. 

So I wait with pregnant anticipation to see what the Universe has in store for me.