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Archive for the ‘Personal Development’ Category

Wounds and Wisdom

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , on January 2, 2014| 2 Comments »

I saw a quotation some time ago on Facebook, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I’d decided to blog about it for my first post of 2014. Then a week or two ago, it popped up again, shared by someone different, a sign of the resonance of the idea.

“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” -Carl Jung

I don’t believe that we can unilaterally leave our pasts behind us. We carry them with us, whether we’re aware of it or not, whether we want to or not, no matter how far we travel. The past happened, and we can either deny that fact and muddle along in blindness, or we can work towards knowledge and acceptance. What happens to us does change us.

But.

We still have choices. We get to choose who we’re going to strive to become. We get to choose how we’re going to move forward. We can choose to let our pasts define us OR we can choose to define ourselves on our own terms.

Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney via Compfight cc

I used to be afraid that my experiences would cause me to close myself off, that I would become bitter and jaded. But because I was aware of that possibility and decided I didn’t want it for myself, I worked hard to ensure it didn’t happen. I got to choose which way to send myself. And now, more than a decade later, I might occasionally experience a touch of cynicism, but that’s it. No overwhelming bitterness, no hatred of the world, and in some ways I’m more open than I’ve ever been.

We can’t always control what happens in our lives. We can’t control the decisions of others. But we can make choices about how we’re going to act and what we’re going to try to focus on. We can’t always prevent unproductive thoughts, but we can notice that we’re having the unproductive thoughts, recognize them for what they are, and deliberately replace them with more helpful thoughts.

The past has given us wounds and wisdom. It has given us strength and scars. And now every moment is an opportunity to use that wisdom and honor those scars and take control of our personal stories.

I’ll leave you with another quotation that feels right for this year:

“There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.” – G.K. Chesterton

May you all have beauty around your next corner, as well as the mindfulness to enjoy the radiance before you reach it.

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Asking for What You Need

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , on November 27, 2013| 2 Comments »

There was no post on Tuesday this week because I sprained my ankle, and my head was too boggled by dealing with that to have extra room for other thoughts that I could write about. So I’m just going to have a single post during this holiday week and call it good. And it’s going to be about something I spend a lot of time thinking about and practicing: asking for what we need.

Asking for what I need is most immediately on my mind because of the sprained ankle. I live in a building on the third floor. There is an elevator, thank goodness, but it is a long hallway down from my condo, and then another medium distance from there to a car or a dog-friendly outside area. Not the easiest. And Nala demands being taking outside a minimum of three to four times a day, so…yeah. There is going to be a lot of asking for what I need, namely help, in the immediate future.

The sprained ankle as personal growth exercise. How’s that for a silver lining?

I’ve been practicing asking for what I need for some time now. I often find it uncomfortable, but I am convinced it, along with setting boundaries and taking care of myself, is the only way to leave my people pleasing past behind me. I sometimes even put myself before others now, and I feel only somewhat guilty about it. Go me!

But after a lifetime of putting others first, smoothing things over, and prioritizing others’ comfort above my own, it certainly is unsettling to ask for what I need instead. It’s not as if these new behaviors I’m using meet with universal approval and warm, fuzzy feelings. Sometimes they cause conflict! And using these behaviors in an appropriate and kind way is surprisingly tricky. Sometimes I screw up! And other times I really don’t know what to do, only what I would have done in a past that is no longer relevant. So sometimes I can’t make up my mind!

Yeah, change is hard. I’m like a toddler learning how to walk. Well, really I think I’m slightly more experienced now, so maybe I’m more like a four-year-old who can walk but falls and skins her knee a lot.

Maybe next year I can graduate to being able to run, only I’ll sometimes forget to pay attention or get too excited and wham into the door frame instead.

Learning to walk. Photo Credit: cindy47452 via Compfight cc

I’m writing about this because I see people struggling with similar issues all around me. This is difficult stuff. I talk about it with my friends all the time. And I think it helps to know that it’s hard for other people too.

If you’re struggling to set boundaries or to ask for what you need or to take care of yourself even when you’re under pressure not to, I want to tell you I believe in what you’re doing. When you’re able to go for it, I want to cheer and applaud. And when you try and just can’t do it, I want to hold out my hand to you and help you back up so you can try again later.

We are none of us alone in our quest to better understand, express, and take care of ourselves.

Enjoy the rest of your week, and if you celebrate Thanksgiving, have a great one. I’ll see you all next week! 

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How a Character Flaw Saved My Life

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , on November 21, 2013| 2 Comments »

“You’ve got to love the house you’re in.” – Moonface, from the album Julia with Blue Jeans On

So many flaws, so many mistakes, so many unfavorable comparisons just waiting to be made.

We don’t get a free pass for our choices.

But loving ourselves has to come first. And not just the good parts either, but the ugly, dark, and nasty bits. The things other people have been most critical of. The most unloveable aspects need the love the most of all.

Most of those shadows inside ourselves exist for a reason. Some of them, maybe even many of them, are not all bad.

When I was a kid, I heard all the time about how stubborn I was. Certainly I wasn’t being stubborn on purpose, but it seemed to be built into my character. Apparently my stubbornness caused my family no end of irritation.

I was stubborn just like this mule. Photo Credit: giuliomarziale [www.maurizioagelli.com] via Compfight cc

You know what else my stubbornness did? It kept me alive. When I was a neglected adolescent, it would have been so easy for me to become a statistic. But I watched the chaos around me, and I would not make the choice to join the downward spiral. I dug in my heels in my most stubborn manner, and I would not. So here I am.

Now, I know that my stubbornness can make things unpleasant or difficult for the people around me. I try to rein it in when I notice it or when it is pointed out. But I love the hell out of my stubbornness. I love that it kept me safe when I needed it most. I love that it’s helped me finish a musical and three novels. I love that it keeps me going when the chips are down. I love that it’s kept me focused on the things in life that are beautiful and magic and good instead of only seeing the grim and the difficult and the painful.

My stubbornness has shaped the person I am today in ways for which I am most profoundly grateful.

Let’s pick a harder one: anger. Who among us has not done or said something out of anger that we wish we could undo or unsay? It is so difficult sometimes to handle anger with grace.

But what is anger? It is a warning system. It is a red flag that something is wrong. Maybe it is telling us that we aren’t being treated well. Maybe it is telling us that we are unsafe. Maybe it is telling us that this person has no interest in helping us. And knowing these things is important.

That doesn’t give us a pass for learning to deal with anger in a productive way and learning how to read anger’s signals so we know what it’s really saying. We are still responsible for our behavior. But knowing that anger is just trying to keep us safe makes it a lot easier to love. And that love, in turn, makes it easier to control the anger instead of allowing it to control us.

So when we talk about loving the house that we’re in, we’re talking about all the parts of that house. Sure, we appreciate the sunlight and the counter space and the gas range. But we’re also talking about the leaky roof and the inadequate closet space and the way the circuit breaker overloads when you run the microwave and the hair dryer at the same time.

It’s our job to learn to love it all.

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Hold Tight While I Feel You Bleed

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , on November 14, 2013| 2 Comments »

I’ve been thinking a lot about empathy lately, and then today I saw Stina Leicht’s beautiful post about empathy and the fine balance required in remembering that everyone is simultaneously different and the same. So I decided I’d write about empathy, and then I surprised myself by how vulnerable I feel writing about the topic.

Heart in hand

I’ve realized lately that I have a high amount of empathy. This is not something I’ve known about myself all my life, so I still don’t feel completely easy with the knowledge. It makes a lot of sense, though. One of my strengths as a music teacher was my ability to make my students feel comfortable and supported, even while they were exposing themselves with their singing. As a writer, I enjoy delving deeply into the heads of my characters. And certainly for my adult life, it’s generally been fairly simple for me to put myself into other people’s positions and to see many sides and perspectives of an issue. It’s comfortable like slipping into a broken-in pair of shoes.

Having high empathy is a very mixed experience. My empathy has brought me many of my greatest joys and also many of my hardest challenges. At its best, it truly is a gift without compare. Being able to create connections and be truly present with people is a deeply meaningful and satisfying act. On some level we all want to tell our stories, and there’s a powerful resonance that can be achieved by being a loving witness to that.

But high empathy is tricky to manage. I’ve talked to other people with high empathy, and it appears that many of us have a chameleon-like ability to be who is required. We are the people who can figure out the right thing to say. We are the people who know how to smooth everything out. We can turn our own emotions and needs off like a switch if that’s what we think is necessary. We are the people who can sit quietly and reflect the other person back at themselves without the judgment that would make that too painful.

Unfortunately, we are the people who need the strongest boundaries, and we are the people to whom those boundaries come the least naturally.

Without those boundaries, we become people-pleasing, codependent, or emotionally drained. We can see the other side so clearly that we can accidentally neglect our own perspective or place less value on it. Being so aware of different options and viewpoints can paralyze us into indecision. We can lose ourselves in trying to be who someone else wants us to be. Nothing good lies down that path.

I’m going to tell you a secret about highly empathetic people. We want what we give. Sometimes we want it desperately. We want other people to see us the way we see them. We want other people to listen to us the way we listen to them. We want people to slip into our shoes sometimes too, and we want our experiences to be validated the way we’ve validated so many other people’s experiences.

In the end, we’re just like everybody else. We all want to be recognized for who we are.

The blooper photo: Nala really wanted to be involved.

The blooper photo: Nala really wanted to be involved.

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Ask yourself: Do you want to be in this situation?

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , on November 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

James Altucher wrote one of those popular list posts of things he learned from being a day trader. It is really interesting, as his posts often are. Two of his points particularly caught my attention:

  • “Say “no.”… You have to decide every moment if this is the situation you want to be in.”
  • ““This is crazy” means you’re crazy. …I know when I feel like, “ugh, this situation is insane” that the first place I need to look is at me.”

I like these points, and I think they go together well. Because when a situation feels insane, it’s probably particularly important to decide if that’s really the situation you want to be in. And those are the situations in which the skill of saying no is going to be particularly valuable.

The second point is crucial because it’s so easy not to look at ourselves. Sometimes we want to look anywhere BUT ourselves. But ultimately the situations in which we find ourselves are often about us. They are about us whenever we have a choice.

Even if it’s a painful choice. Those count too. Saying no can be one of the hardest things to do. Deciding to remove ourselves from a situation is often deeply unpleasant. Making different choices than we usually do can take huge amounts of effort.

Which road do you take? Photo Credit: simonsterg via Compfight cc

Sometimes we feel so attached to the way things have been or the way we wanted things to be that it takes awhile to make this choice. Sometimes after making the choice, we feel regret. We second guess. We wonder how it might have been if we’d chosen differently.

But really all that matters is the choice we’re confronted with right now. We can’t do anything about those other choices. We’ll never know how things would have gone if we’d chosen differently. We can’t go back and change things.

Sometimes we’re tempted to blame other people. We look at their behavior, and we want to point fingers and say, “Look! There is where the problem is.” And I’m not saying people don’t do some crappy things to each other sometimes. They do, and it sucks, and we don’t have to be okay with that kind of thing.

But in the end, we still usually have a choice, and so it becomes about us too. We get to decide if we’re willing to be in a relationship with this person. We get to set and hold boundaries. We get to say no. We get to say this is no longer a way I’m willing to be treated.

And what we’ll tolerate and what we won’t tolerate? The message that sends is about ourselves. So then the question becomes, are we choosing to send ourselves hate mail? Or today, are we going to send a love letter?

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We Are Our Habits

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Theodora Goss recently wrote one of those lists of what she’s learned in her life. The entire post is worth a read, but I was particularly interested in her #9:

“Your habits create who you are.”

I completely agree with Dora. Our habits are the building blocks of our lives and of our identities. I actually love this truth because while changing habits can be difficult, it is very possible. So that means if we don’t like our lives or identities, we can work towards doing something about that.

Photo Credit: Celestine Chua via Compfight cc

Take the identity of being a writer, for example. (How could I not go there?) Some people are satisfied with the daydream of being a writer, which is fine but unlikely to bring about the reality. But for people who seriously want to claim the writer identity, it’s all about habits. It’s about making the time to write on a regular basis. It’s about making a commitment to finish projects. It’s about revising and reading other people’s work and thinking critically and educating yourself to become better. All those activities can be developed into habits over time.

This works for personality traits to a certain extent, too. We all have our original set points for different traits, and some of us will have to work harder than others to change and maintain those points, or will have limits to where we can move those points. But we can choose to encourage new habits that develop a certain trait. I used to be quite shy when I was younger, but I decided it wasn’t really very fun to be shy. So I practiced meeting people, I practiced inviting people to do things, I said yes to invitations, and I cultivated new hobbies that encouraged me to be social. I still have my shy moments, but now I often look at those moments as a challenge or game that I can try to succeed at as opposed to a miserable experience. And really, most of the time I’m not very shy at all because of the habits I eventually formed. I’ve talked to several other people who have had similar experiences.

And finally, habits even affect the kind of thoughts we have. That’s what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is all about. If we decide we want to be more positive, we can explicitly practice framing our thoughts in more positive ways until it becomes second nature. If we want more self esteem, we can practice thinking kinder thoughts about ourselves until, you’ve got it, those thoughts become second nature (or at least more frequent). Sometimes a lot of how we see the world is affected by our individual thought patterns, which are really just habits of thinking we’ve picked up over time.

When I think about it, I realize how strongly my habits shape my life, from how I spend my time to what and how I think to what my actual expressed priorities are. Of course, habits can arise FROM those priorities as well as shape what those priorities are. I think that’s why I care so much about living an examined life, so I can be more conscious about choosing those priorities and figuring out how to express them rather than have priorities happen TO me.

What habits have you chosen to develop? What habits do you want to change?

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Happiness or Meaning: Which Would You Choose?

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2013| 2 Comments »

A Happy Life:

I have few or no worries and low stress. I am healthy and pain-free. I don’t have to deal with change very often. I spend time doing pleasant activities: reading books, playing games, watching movies, eating good food, making music, doing fun work, hanging out with friends. I go on fun outings on the weekends. I have enough money to do what I want to do.

A Meaningful Life:

I don’t walk away from something only because it is difficult. I embrace change when it is necessary. I enjoy challenges. I prioritize time for the things that matter to me: building close connections with others, helping others, working towards artistic mastery, creating things, doing work I’m invested in, learning more about the world and about myself, feeling gratitude and appreciation for the little things, evoking emotions and uncovering truth. While I still search for a balance in order to take care of myself, I make trade-offs in order to live in line with my priorities.

*****

I don’t think these two lives are necessarily mutually exclusive, but they do sometimes come into conflict with each other. And when I’m being honest with myself, I know that the happy life, while sometimes tempting, also sounds…empty. I’d enjoy it for a while, sure, but if that was all there was for me, I’d get restless.

When I think back on my life so far, what gives me the most personal satisfaction are not the pleasant activities I’ve done. I can hardly remember most of them. Most of the things I’m actively glad I did were challenging and not always comfortable. I’m glad I moved to London for a year. I’m glad I studied music. I’m glad I got to travel. I’m glad for the relationships I formed, with students, family, friends, romantic partners. I’m glad I taught. I’m glad I wrote a musical, and short stories, and novels. I’m glad I got a dog. None of those things were easy, and none of them were unadulterated happiness (although the dog was close!). But they are what matter to me.

Photo Credit: seyed mostafa zamani via Compfight cc

I was struck by something in the Atlantic article “There’s more to life than being happy:”

“Having negative events happen to you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life.”

Now there’s a silver lining if ever I’ve heard one. Right after reading the above article, I happened across my friend Myke Cole’s essay on PTSD, and he also talks about finding meaning in the face of adversity:

“We have to find a way to construct significance, to help a changed person forge a path in a world that hasn’t changed along with them.”

This is how we move forward in the world, through the meaning we create, through the choices we make. The more I think about this idea, the more clarity I find. Buddhism talks a lot about the inevitability of suffering. But the suffering can give birth to meaning, and that meaning? It’s a truly beautiful thing.

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Not All Happiness Advice Applies to You

Posted in Personal Development, tagged , , , , , on September 17, 2013| 1 Comment »

There’s been a spate of recent research and popular science writing on happiness and what affects it (and what doesn’t affect it). I find this research to be fascinating stuff in its own right, and often a great leaping point. I write about it a fair amount, but I don’t think of what I’m writing to be scientific.

I actually think I write about philosophy. The philosophy of happiness, if you will. I use my own personal experience, the personal experience of others, the philosophy of others, and scientific studies that show certain trends, and I put it all in a blender, and you read the results.

I want to emphasize, though, that I don’t think that what makes me happier will make everyone in the entire world happier. If having a more fulfilling life is something you’re interested in, then collecting different viewpoints and ideas is one way of pushing forward your own quest. Maybe some of the theories and ideas I talk about will inspire or resonate with you.

But when ideas about individual happiness are presented as scientific fact or a fait accompli, then the issue becomes more confused. Which is why I was really happy to read the recent Scientific American blog post by Jamil Zaki entitled “Psychological studies are not about you.” Dr. Zaki decries popular science writing that implies that the studies cited are about individuals. Indeed, he says:

“…Psychological studies… can tell us about how changes in behavior (again, think generosity) might affect the well-being of whole populations…. Most sciences—including psychology—are much better suited to these broad applications than to telling any one person about their life.”

This is because psychological studies mostly involve groups and use statistics. So their findings focus on large-scale trends as opposed to the individual. For example, on average, people may increase their happiness by a certain amount if they engage in gratitude practice. But you as an individual might find that using gratitude practice increases your happiness a lot more than that, or alternately that is doesn’t have a very strong effect at all. Neither of those things make you at all strange since the study in question was talking about averages over a certain population.

Then of course there are the controversies where there are differing points of view. For example, there is a theory of happiness called the set point theory of happiness, or the hedonic treadmill, that states that people have a predetermined happiness set point. There have been a few famous studies, one that looked at people who had been paralyzed and ultimately returned to the same levels of happiness they had been at prior to injury and another that looked at lottery winners that returned to their pre-winnings level of happiness.

But now there are studies showing that this isn’t always the case: that indeed, sometimes people who win the lottery do have increased happiness over a period of time, and sometimes people who divorce do have increased happiness afterwards. There are also examples of individuals having permanently decreased happiness levels. There is more discussion about the forty percent of happiness levels that aren’t controlled by genetics but by intentional activity. And even if the set point theory of happiness is statistically present over a large population, that doesn’t mean it will necessarily apply to you personally. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.

Which isn’t to say that reading about these studies or about other people’s personal anecdotes or philosophies can’t be enlightening and helpful. Just as with writing advice, we’re allowed to take whatever works for us and throw everything else away. We each get to learn about the unique combination of what makes us tick and make decisions based on that self knowledge.

What advice about happiness and fulfillment hasn’t worked for you? What advice has?

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The Crappy Person Cycle

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , on September 12, 2013| 7 Comments »

The blog post that I have found to be the most influential on my life is James Altucher’s How to Deal with Crappy People (and its follow-up How to Deal with Crappy People Part 2).

I don’t remember when I read it, probably a couple of years ago, and it was a revelation to me. Just the bare fact that there are crappy people who exist and we’re allowed to acknowledge this as truth was amazing to me. And that we are actually allowed to do something about it besides silently suffering? Wow. Heady stuff.

Then I read this article last week on The Problem of Being Too Nice (an issue I’ve written a little about myself). And I realized why receiving permission from that James Altucher article to call a spade a spade was so important.

Here’s the problem. If you come from a certain background, a background that generally includes at least a few influential and crappy people (usually but not always involving a dysfunctional family), then you become more likely to attract other crappy people. You turn into a Crappy People Magnet. And you’re so used to being around crappy people, and dealing with them, and having crappy things happen, that it all becomes normalized. You assume everyone is like that, and it’s all on you to make everything work out anyway. You can’t tell who is crappy and who isn’t. They just all blur together into an incoherent pile of people.

Photo Credit: jessicalsmyers via Compfight cc

With so many crappy people involved in your life, though, things never stabilize. There always seems to be stress and drama. You’re so rarely getting what you need that you get more and more tired. It takes all your energy to keep your head above water. And the worst part is you might eventually become a crappy person yourself. After all, it’s not like you’re learning healthy behaviors.

As a young girl, it was strongly instilled in me that everyone else was good and I should tolerate most behaviors. Even now I find writing about crappy people to be really uncomfortable. The people pleaser in me wants to make a million excuses for them. But the fact is, there’s a real difference between being an imperfect human who makes mistakes sometimes and being a crappy person. Maybe the crappy person is only crappy to some people. Maybe the crappy person won’t always be crappy. Maybe the crappy person has extenuating circumstances. It’s good to be compassionate. But…

It’s even better to take care of ourselves first.

I know there are plenty of happy people out there who mostly know other good and happy people. I am so glad they exist because they are excellent role models for those of us who have more of a struggle. But this post is not for them.

This post is for those of you who do have crappy people in your lives. This post is for those of you who need permission to call a spade a spade. This post is for those of you who might need to make some difficult decisions in order to take care of yourselves.

There are people out there who are kind and care about what you need. And life without so many crappy people? It isn’t perfect. There are some things about it that are sad.

But it’s also like being able to take a full breath of air for the first time.

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How to Overcome Fear

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 10, 2013| 7 Comments »

This summer I went to a workshop about dealing with fear, and I left it feeling disappointed. The teachers didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already known. They kept using examples that either weren’t really about fear or that were about being afraid of public speaking. So it wasn’t a talk geared for me.

Apparently fear of public speaking is the second most common fear in the United States. But to me, it just doesn’t seem like a big deal. I get nervous ahead of time, and I over-prepare, and I don’t always do a good job with it. But it’s so much better than having to sing operatic arias in a foreign language I don’t actually speak that contain high notes I can’t actually hit from memory and then have my performance critiqued in front of a group of fellow singers. That’s what I spent my college years doing. Which was still better than actual auditions.

So one way to manage fear is to do something a lot harder, and then easier things might not seem so bad. Another way is to do whatever you’re afraid to do A LOT. So basically you’re practicing your way out of fear.

But really I was disappointed in the talk because there is no easy answer. Whether you’re afraid of speaking in public or dying, uncertainty or being treated poorly, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. And I wish there was. Fear is such an uncomfortable emotion. It can both hold us back and make things a lot more miserable even as we trudge forward. It can warp the nature of reality itself, making things that might be true seem like they are actually true. And it can make us physically ill in a variety of ways.

Photo Credit: Funky64 (www.lucarossato.com) via Compfight cc

I have spent a lot of time being afraid. And ultimately it’s always the same thing that pushes me through.

Belief.

I remember once as a student, I was walking towards the music building where I had an audition. I think I was sick (I was almost always sick), and I already knew I wasn’t going to get the part. I thought to myself, Why are you even bothering? Why don’t you just go home? Why are you doing this to yourself?

But the answer was clear. I had decided to do this. I believed this was what I should be doing, even though I felt awful and I was really nervous and I knew I wouldn’t get the part. I had a vision of what I wanted my life to be, and this crappy audition experience was a part of that. So I went, and I did the audition, and I didn’t get the part, and I moved on.

Belief is still what gets me through fear. I fix my eyes on my idea of the future, and I clench my jaw, and I do what needs to be done to give myself a chance of getting there. The fear is still there, making things harder, making me pause and ask myself why I am putting myself through such difficulty. But I believe in my vision, and I hold onto that belief as if my life depends on it.

So I guess if I were to give a workshop on overcoming fear, I’d explore how to create a vision strong enough to withstand whatever fear can throw at us. I’d look for some exercises to promote self esteem, because in order to believe in a vision, I think we also have to believe in ourselves. And I’d talk about how to take care of ourselves and handle rejection and disappointment and failure and other obstacles in a resilient way that allows us to keep moving forward.

How do you overcome fear?

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