Saturday, August 25, 2012

Chemical warfare

Mmmmm, a banana barge.
(I remember making these when I
 worked at Carvel as a teenager!)
I am being put to the test this week. Even though I haven't been travelling, there are a number of assignments that I have been working hard on. A lot is riding on them, so I've been weighing each word, slide, and sales argument with "a golden scale" (Swedish expression). The stakes have gotten higher, and at the same time, I know for certain that not all of my attempts are going to be successful. I will in fact be falling flat on my face from time to time, now more than ever.

This results in me turning into a nuclear reactor with steadily rising toxic levels. The demands I place upon myself in combination with my fear of failure turn me into a poster-child for stress reactions. Yoga has taught me to recognize the signals: burning sensation in my gut, increased pressure on my chest, heart pumping faster, tension in jaws, and an acidic taste in my mouth. It's like I can envision the release of adrenaline into my veins, that in turn leads to a heavy shower of cortisol being poured out into my system. If this keeps up, my insuline levels could be affected which opens an even greater Pandora's box of health ailments.

So what can I do? No, seriously, what should I do?!

This is how I am attempting to remedy the situation in a true trial & error fashion:
  • Try to create harmony when possible, but above all, be more accepting when things aren't exactly the way I want them to be = be less reactive.
  • Remember that when I get upset about something, that my feelings only make up one perspective; there are probably a million other ways to read a situation.
  • Recognize that when I am starting to stress, I can be grateful for my practice that has taught me to be more attuned to what my body is communicating to me.
  • Accept that I am going to fail, and that it won't be the end of the world. There's something to be said about having enough faith to realize that things will still somehow work themselves out in the end, as long as my intentions and efforts are true.
  • Remember what's important in life.
One things that's been helping me a lot the past couple of months, is that when I roll out my mat, I pour out everything into my practice. If I'm stressed, I offer that. If I'm angry, I offer that. If I'm frustrated, I offer that. If I'm exhausted, I offer that. Sometimes, I offer all of the above.

And when all else fails, there's always ice cream.

Om shanti om. Peace to you all.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Wanted: Positive motivation

Picture from Google
While doing yoga yesterday, I wondered what I was feeling right then and there. What was motivating me?

The answer: fear. *Dang it!*

Fear is my strongest motivator. Fear of regret. Fear of what could happen if missing this session led to a snowball-effect of more missed sessions. Fear of how my ageing body would handle the ageing process if I didn't practice (I found out two years ago that I have a hole in the cartilage of one knee, and I suspect the other knee is not any better.). And when Fear comes around, it brings along its siamese twin Worry. Next to my Should-dos, Fear/Worry are the most present actors in my mind.

Should I ignore my fear? Does this mean I yoga for the wrong reason if I succumb to it? I may be wrong, but fear sometimes get a bad rap because it's not like it doesn't serve a purpose. Seriously, if I could lie on the couch and eat Ben & Jerry's all day without gaining an ounce, chances are my yoga mat would end up on e-bay faster than you could say "Half-Baked". What Fear/Worry do is remind me that the consequences of MY choices are MY doing. And my fear of regretting a missed mat session because I don't feel like it arises because experience has taught me that I will feel better 99.99999% of the time if I just do it. That's not so much worry as it is intuition or just plain lessons learned from the school of been-there-done-that!

Regardless if it's true fear, intuition, or empiric knowledge, I've still given these emotions too much power. Yes, they get me to do arm-balances and backbends that aren't always the most comfortable, but they cheer me on in the wrong way. They taunt me with daydreams about a future I know nothing about and lure me into the trap of rehearsing unhappiness (something I brought up in an earlier post). And that energy, that on the surface may seem to be moving me forward, in fact, is keeping me from being present.

Because when I in the middle of my session yesterday finally took a moment to notice myself and my surroundings: rays of sunlight peeking through blinds, the smell of the wooden floor, the beautiful Lotus flower mural before me, my heart open and lifted in extended mountain pose, I realized that THIS is where I should be.

In the words of Baron Baptiste, "If you aren't NOW HERE, you are NOWHERE!"

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Multiple personalities


Picture from Google
 Sometimes I have more personalities than the Sally Field character from the movie "Sybil" (I think she had 16 or so). Today was a gloomy day both inside and out. It actually felt like the black clouds filled to the brim with cold and heavy raindrops were inside my heart. Your typical pity party. I learned while taking a class in improving my patience last year that that melancholy inner being is a part of my inner child, the part that doesn't feel she received enough love and validation when she was young.

You don't have to watch many episodes of Dr. Phil to realize that there's a myriad of people who didn't get what they needed while growing up. His advice in these situations is that we as individuals sometimes have to give ourselves that which we did not receive from, say, our parents. Another part of me, that which I call my silence since she only makes herself heard when I am still (usually in meditation), thinks that's mighty sound advice. My silence seems to exist outside of myself, and I wonder at times if she's what Buddhists consider to be spirit? In any case, my silence is the soothing voice of reason that reiterates all the tokens of wisdom I try to pick up here and there. She's never condescending, but she doesn't exactly take command either. So when I'm blue, she reminds me to be mindful, that it's ok to be blue, that it will eventually pass, and that seen from another perspective, maybe things aren't so bad. It's sort of a spiritual "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning."

Yoga is my aspirin. But it's a tough bottle to open. I have to convince my physical body to be willing to subject itself to something my ego really isn't up for. My ego coaxes my body to pull the covers over my head. But then good sense puts on her coach cap and whistle and says, "Let's give it a shot first before we give up." My intellectual self knows that if my physical body manages to get moving, then the endorphine rush that follows physical exertion might be enough to get the storm front to pass. But my good sense has to be smart about it. She has to be willing to let me lose my focus now and again, encourage me to choose modifications, and graciously allow me to slowly ease into my session.

Nice to be able to enjoy only party cloudy skies now.

Namaste.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Stuck in the 80's

Picture from Google
My husband sometimes jokes about it being high time to exchange my forty-plus-self for a couple of younger, hotter 20-something-dolls. Lucky for me he's a high school teacher, so by the end of every school year, he's had it with hormone-ridden teenagers.

There is, however, another kind of glue that helps us stick together. That is, despite the fact we grew up in different cultures on opposite sides of the Atlantic, we both come from the same generation; so we still, in fact, share a lot of common ground. And although we've both changed immensely since our teen-years, our adolescence was still the time when we were most impressionable as we sought out to find and define ourselves as individuals. And our music served as a beacon (perhaps misguided at times) while we fumbled around in the dark. The power of that music, that separated me and my peers from my parents' generation, was the first, sure step towards our emancipation. I think that's why I still crank up the volume everytime an 80's song pops up on the radio; it takes me back to a time when anything was possible, and we were the ones who were going to conquer the world.

But who wants to be a lone conquerer? At the same time, we longed to belong and still do, to this day. For me and P, listening to 80's music or watching a brat-pack film together is one way for us to connect while keeping us young at heart.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

"If you've never failed, you've never tried anything new."

I've made a real effort the past couple of days to do more of my "should-dos", and it's gone pretty well. I've even gone out on a limb a couple of times and tried to do the opposite of what I normally do. This is a rare course of action for me since leaving my comfort zone inevitably makes me feel vulnerable. And when I'm feeling vulnerable, my deep-seeded fear of failure makes itself known. Mostly I fear doing something wrong. Ridiculous, I know, since I do things wrong all the freakin' time. Still, I have a knack for chastising myself whenever I think I've screwed up.

Today, I rolled out my mat after my Tuesday had gone from good to really frustrating. Since I knew my motivation wasn't on top, I decided to play my teacher's DVD for the first time. I was even going to do the sequence that I had learned during my advanced teacher training, but have since avoided like the plague for fear of having to acknowledge that my body wouldn't be capable of assuming various positions. Turns out I was right. Whether it's because my arms are too short, my hips are too stiff, and/or my waist that is voluminous, I just couldn't bind myself in most of this program's forward folds. But instead of feeling defeated, I felt OK. To be honest, it hadn't gone as badly as I feared. There were even some moves that I was surprised I was able to do. And for once, I didn't feel that my lack of success had any reflection on me personally.

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project was the first one to get me to really reflect on this subject when she wrote about challenging herself to find fun in failure. By the way, I am lightyears from ever taking failure lightheartedly. But something else struck me that I read on her blog tonight; it was a comment from a reader who had formulated her own "commandment": Don't rehearse unhappiness. Wow. It's amazing the impact just a few words can have, because these hit me like a ton a bricks. The volumes of dialogue and scenes that I have played out in my mind, doing exactly this. I'm talking about daydreams that make Ingemar Bergman seem like a regular Pollyanna. Now I have a new commandment, too.

I am also thankful for George Takei's FB post on "Famous Failures" from earlier today, which also offered wise thoughts and an alternative take on this whole failure thing.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Should-do lists


Picture from Google

At least 85% of my thoughts are comprised of ever-looming should-do lists. Naturally, each and every point should be placed on the much more prestigious "to-do" list, but since I never seem to get any of them done on a regular basis, well, then, that sort of ends that discussion.

When I started listing these items one by one, it soon struck me that one list alone wouldn't suffice. There are, in fact, just as many categories of should-do lists as there are should-do tasks! 

A sample of categories off the top of my head:

1. Things I should-do for my personal well-being
2. Things I should-do to keep get my home in order.
3. Things I should-do to be better organized for work.
4. Things I should-do to be a better mother
5. Things I shoud-do to be a better wife.
6. Things I should-do to be a better friend.

*sigh* It's no wonder I feel so inefficient...

Being the self-help junkie that I am, I firmly believe that making conscious, healthy choices is the key to leading a happy life. At the same time, the stress of living up to such high standards is enough to suffocate anyone. Let's say I was going to dedicate all my time and energy to completing the first list, things I should-do for my personal well-being, then this is how a day in my life would be:
 
1. I would meditate.
2. I would take a long, morning walk.
3. I would wear nice (i.e. ironed) clothes. with done-up hair and made-up face.
4. I would do some yoga, or some other kind of work out.
5. I would take a shower and spend an hour in the sauna.
6. I would blog.
7. I would paint.
8. I would make healthy meals from scratch.
9. And of course, I would be in bed by 9:30 P.M.
 
Ok, so I am exaggerating to some extent, but deep down, this is no joke. Note that items such as facebook, shopping, and café-visits aren't even on the list, since this enlightened life I strive for is supposed to be down-scale. Yeah, right.
 
On the other hand, truth be told, I usually manage to find more than enough time to facebook, while my bursting closets tell the tale of a girl who never turns down the chance to save on clearance! Is it then possible to redirect at least some of the time used on mindless and/or useless acitivities to doing things that may require more effort, but would feel more enriching? And manage to do it without feeling like I'm stressing myself towards an early grave?
 
Then maybe a number of my should-dos could be promoted to to-dos.
 
And maybe, just maybe, even make the nirvanic been-there-done-THAT-list.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Summer daze

It's 9 P.M. For once, I am just sitting quietly alone in our easy chair by an open window. It's dusk; the sky is a mix of light pink and blue and lined with purple clouds. A lone grasshopper is putting on a solo act in the bushes (my crickets substitute).

At another point in my life, I may not have allowed myself the luxury of just being here, enjoying this moment. Are there other things I could be doing? Absolutely. How about that meditation practice that I've managed put on hold? Still on hold. Because, you know what? For now, I'll settle for being mindful and enjoy the sweetness of Santosha, the social discipline of contentment. Change that - right or wrong, I prefer it.

As always, there's work that could be done, clothes that need to be folded, projects that I promised myself would be started. But luckily for me and my indulgent, lazy self, there's enough of a household system at work that I can feel a small sense of order in our surroundings - far from perfect, but enough to keep me from going into a guilt-ridden rage of straightening up. Have my standards sunk so low? Probably to some degree. But most of all, I feel like there's more space around me, within me, so that the pressures normally associated with seemingly endless to-do lists lose their steam.

I start back to work in a few days. The two major private projects I was going to tackle while I was on vacation were never even started. But tonight, in this moment, whether I'm right or wrong, I couldn't care less.