Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
- Samuel Beckett
“Fail better”. I like that. It appeals to me. That portion of the quote is the part that got me to keep it in my quotes list. It gets to the heart of the matter, really. That there is no true failure other than to give up. You go off a diet? Get back on (or make a lifestyle change, which is better, but people have been arguing about that for a while). Next time you fall off the wagon, eat one bag of potato chips instead of two. Or eat just the potato chips, forget the dip. Or drink down a glass of lemonade with your binge instead of the soda. When you fall off the wagon this time, make it better than last time.
Are you trying to quit smoking? Did you have a cigarette today anyway? Okay. You smoked a cigarette. That does not change that you are trying to quit smoking unless you let it. Don’t let it. Let it be a small failure, a stumbling block along the way to being a non-smoker. It doesn’t have to be the end of your journey to being a non-smoker, just a flat tire. Change the flat tire and continue on the journey. Don’t let a single flat tire stop you in achieving your goal. Don’t let a hundred flat tires stop you. It isn’t important that you become a non-smoker this month versus three years from now. What’s important is that you become a non-smoker at all.
Don’t give up. Use each time as a way of making your change better.
Smoking – why did you smoke that cigarette? Were you hanging around with Joan again, and she took you to that bar where they still allow people to smoke indoors and it all just looked so good? Don’t go there. Find a different bar that doesn’t allow people to smoke. And if Joan insists that you go to that bar, do something else with Joan. Let Joan smoke on her own time, and when she’s with you, do something else. It could be that Joan’s a huge amount of fun when she’s at a bar, and you really really enjoy the adventures and hijinks you guys get into when the two of you are at a bar. Do you enjoy it more than you enjoy the benefits of not smoking? Maybe you’ll need to find a compromise. Maybe there are other adventures – non-smoking adventures – to be had. Perhaps there are adventures with other people to be had. Maybe you’ll have to figure out how not to smoke when you’re in that bar (you can practice without Joan, that way you can leave when the craving becomes overwhelming). Or maybe you’ll decide that you can smoke, but only with Joan, and only at that bar. It’s up to you. Use this “failure” as a lesson in what causes you to smoke, and avoid those triggers, or figure out a different way to satisfy whatever gets satisfied by smoking. Then, next time, you can fail better.
Eating – why did you eat the two bags of potato chips with dip and a soda? Perhaps it was dinner time, and you didn’t feel like cooking? Or you would have cooked if there had been any food in the house and clean dishes with which to cook? Maybe you were feeling bad and needed some comfort food. Maybe you were watching a movie on TV, and you always eat potato chips when you watch a movie on TV. There are ways to change these “problems”. They aren’t really problems afterall, just excuse-riddled issues that can be resolved. Invest in some frozen dinners, and you’ll always have something to cook for dinner. Check out Flylady (see links to the right) and her link to Saving Dinner, which will teach you how to shop for food and cook easy meals. Or if you don’t like their system, find another one. Type in “menu planning” into Yahoo or Google or whatever you use, and you’ll find plenty of options. Some of them will even include shopping lists for their menus, so you’ll always have the right food on hand (if you go shopping, that is). If you don’t have the money, check out their free samples and supplement it with a trip to the library for some of the books. No clean dishes? Flylady can help with that, too (unless, like in my household, dishes are someone else’s chore, in which case, you’ll just have to suck it up). Or, make doing dishes more interesting. Get a mini TV and put it into your kitchen so you can watch it while you do dishes. Invest in some chocolate covered cherries (or some other small, delicious treat), and you can have one (just one!) if and only if you do a load of dishes – from putting in the dirty ones to setting up the dishwasher to drying and putting away the clean ones. Or use some non-food reward if it’d work better for you. Comfort food is tougher. There aren’t a whole lot of substitutes, food-wise, for comfort food. You can find healthier alternatives, of course. The internet can help you there. Or perhaps you can find something else that’s comforting. A walk. A phone call to a good friend. Hand-writing a letter to someone who cares. A good cry. A pet. If you always eat when you’re watching a movie, change what you eat. The experts suggest raw vegetables. I have to tell you, I don’t like celery raw. It’s one of the most frequently heard vegetables, one of the most common for me, that you ought to eat. It’s good for you and you can add peanut butter on it and it has next to no calories (or something like that). Yay. I don’t care. I don’t like the stringiness of it, and I don’t find the taste worth the investment of time to de-string the celery. It’s taken me a long time to realize this. But you know what I do like? Radishes. Particularly when they’re cut into halves and quarters, because then you can eat just part of a radish, if you want. Some of the radishes I get at the grocery store are huge, and I don’t want to eat a whole one. But, if I take five minutes, I can wash and cut up an entire bag of radishes and have it ready to eat over the next several days (which is about how long it’d take me to eat a small bag of radishes). Maybe it’s neither radishes nor celery for you. Perhaps you prefer beets or turnips or cucumbers or any of a number of other things. Just find something you will eat (not just can, but will), and eat that instead of potato chips, or eat half vegetables and half potato chips, or something. Just so you eat healthier now than you were eating a year ago. That’s all you have to do. Some experts say eat 4-6 servings of fruit a day. Some experts say eat 1-2 servings of fruit a day because of the sugar content. I say, if it takes fruit to keep you from eating a candy bar, then eat fruit. Because fruit will be better for you. And raw fruit that isn’t in a can or in syrup. Preferably with the skin on. But if not, so be it. If the only way you eat fruit is out of a can with heavy syrup, better that than some of the junk you could be eating. And you can modify that as you want. Light syrup. Experimenting with other fruits that are easier to eat raw. Whatever it takes for you to eat healthier today than you did a year ago, because who you are today is the only competition you need.
As for everything else, the theory’s the same. Figure out why you’re doing the “bad habit”, and then stop or alter the “why”. Do you go out to have sex with miscellaneous stranger Q the day after you talk on the phone with your controlling parents, every time you talk with your parents? Stop talking with your parents. Write them a letter instead, and if they call, say you have someone coming over. Don’t let them control you. You are wonderful and amazing, and you are in control of yourself, not them. Does Bob buy you a drink whenever you see him down by the bar and he refuses to buy you any of the “pansy stuff” as he refers to the non-alcoholic knock-offs? Tell him no. Or if he’s one of those overly-sensitive types who can’t take no for an answer, make a deal with the bartender sometime when Bob’s not around – when Bob buys you a drink, make it a non-alcoholic one that just looks like alcohol. What Bob doesn’t know won’t hurt you (though are you sure you want to hang around someone who wants to control your drinking habits in that manner?). Do hours fly by whenever you’re on the computer to the extent that you forget to clean the house or do the dishes or pick up your husband from the airport or sleep and other things like that? Don’t get on the computer until you’ve done “enough” for the day, and then reward yourself with computer time. Or get one of those electronic plug-in timers where it’ll turn something on or off at a particular time (like people get for lights when they go away on vacation). Attach it to your computer and set it for a time you definitely need to be off the computer by. If you want to save your work, you’ll have to get off the computer by that time, or at least pause long enough to hit ctrl-S or press the “save game” button in the menu. That’s a bit drastic, though, and it could be damaging to your computer if you space out again and the computer suddenly gets “unplugged”. Better to set a timer like an egg-timer next to you on the computer desk and stop when it goes off. Or within 5 minutes of when it goes off so that you have time to save your game or your work or whatever. The temptation to just reset the timer because “it’s still early” or “traffic should be light, I’ll have enough time” or “I’ll do it tomorrow” will be very strong. But you can be stronger. And if not, take some even more drastic measures and uninstall that piece of software that is eating up your life. Just as the sex-addict shouldn’t let her parents control her, you don’t need to have the computer controlling you. You deserve a full and happy life, and there is more to life than computer.
Find out why you are “failing” and use that to fail better next time. If you do that, then you have no failures, just lessons. Good luck.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
Junk Food for the Soul
Each of us is a unique, creative individual. But we often blur that uniqueness with sugar, alcohol, drugs, overwork, underplay, bad relations, toxic sex, underexercise, over-TV, undersleep – many and varied forms of junk food for the soul.
-Julia Cameron
Did you see yourself in that quote? I certainly do. I don’t do drugs, and I don’t drink alcohol, but most of the rest of them apply to me. And I agree, they are junk food for the soul. They are the greasy potato chips of time. If you’re hungry, you may decide to snack on some greasy potato chips. They taste good, at the time. They don’t satisfy your nutritional needs. They add unhealthy things to your body and increase the amount of calories you’ll have to burn off. In the long run, and sometimes in the short run, they don’t do you any good. But they taste good for a moment. And the above activities may distract you from your life, from your misery, from what you don’t want to think about, but only for the moment, and in the long run, they do you more harm than good.
If there is one thing that you should take away from this blog it is this: You are good enough. So many of the problems in this world are caused by people having low self esteem and doing nothing about it or trying to put others down to make themselves feel better. “I may suck, but at least I’m not as bad as him!” It doesn’t change the fact that you think you suck (which you don’t), but you don’t have to have it at the front of your mind.
You are good enough, and you deserve a good life, and you deserve a good future, and you can affect the Future. You can change it, you can give birth to it, and you are an active part of it, whether you are active or not. What you do or don’t do affects your life and the lives around you, and that is what gives birth to the Future.
You are good enough, and you deserve better than the junk food for the soul. It isn’t easy to wean yourself away from these things, that is true. It will take time, practice, and patience. And you will have minor stumbling blocks along the way. As long as you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and continue on, you will do fine. No one does a diet perfectly, not a food diet or a junk food for the soul diet. There will be days that you need “just a little something”, but take it from someone who has been there. The longer you go without your “fix” and the more you are aware of your desire and the results of the “fix” (and you can choose to be aware), the less you’ll find that the “fix” will give you what you desire - distraction. Now, some people will take that to mean that you just have to increase the intensity of the “fix”. If one drink no longer does it, then have two. If going out partying two nights a week isn’t enough, go out five. If several hours in front of the TV isn’t fixing your life, then there must be a talk show on channel 57 that will address just that topic. But it doesn’t work. Because it doesn’t give you what you want. What you want is the pain to stop. What you want is for your life to improve. But what you’re getting is just a rest stop on this trip called life. You’re just getting a small break. The pain and the quality of your life will still be there when you get back, if they haven’t gotten worse. A drug addict can’t improve his life with more drugs. A TV addict can’t improve his life with more TV. A sex addict can’t improve his life with more sex. All it will do is provide a short period of time when you think that you aren’t thinking about it. But are you really not thinking about it? With any part of your brain? Or is it always at the back of your head, waiting to speak to you if you don’t drown it first in whatever your choice of addictions is?
You deserve better than junk food. It may seem comforting and the only thing that understands you and can bring you pleasure, but it doesn’t really bring you pleasure. It numbs the pain, and that is all. Compare to the pain you feel, numbness is a blessing at times, but you deserve better. You deserve real pleasure. You deserve to feel good. You deserve to feel great. And you can’t get that from anyone or anything but yourself.
Doing what needs to be done in order to get to the pleasure, in order to eliminate the pain in your life, is a scary thing, but you can do it. You are strong enough to take the next step. That step may be the teeniest, tiniest baby step of all times. It may be a millimeter or a nanometer or perhaps just a hair’s breadth, but you can do it. You can do what you need to do next.
Is sugar your fix? Is that what you use to numb the pain, to distract you from what is wrong in your life? It was for me for a long time. I got a wake-up call from my doctor just about a year ago, and I’ve been changing my life since. That which used to taste incredible to me is now too sweet, and I welcome the change even as I mourn it. I miss enjoying the sweet candies I used to love, but I’m glad my body is healthier and is looking for healthier things to eat. (Red grapes, by the way, can be incredibly sweet and are much healthier for you than candy bars.) It took the wake up call from my doctor, though. I thought about getting back to a healthier weight for years, but I didn’t do it until I had to. It may be true for you, too. But, you can prepare yourself for the “have to” event, just as I did. You can prepare yourself with thoughts. You can think about what kind of changes you’ll make if you have to. You can think about what the “have to” even will be. For me, it was weighing 60 pounds more than I’d like to. All the way up to that point, I didn’t have to in my opinion. But that weight combined with my doctor’s warnings were enough. I had to at that point. What will it be for you? When you weigh a certain amount? Or your pants or dress size is a certain number? Or you get winded walking up a flight of stairs? What will be your “have to” event? Whatever it is, however far off into the future it may be, be sure to have one. People have literally died from not having a “have to” event. They just let it keep going and going until it was too late.
Perhaps it’s alcohol, a very insidious thing. It physically addicts you just as its effects mentally addict you. But you are stronger than it. The big leap would be to cut yourself off cold turkey, but that’s not the only step you can take. Maybe you can limit the amount of money you spend on alcohol or the number of drinks you have in a day or the time of day you begin drinking. Maybe that’s too much for you, too. Maybe you need to start with your thoughts, also. Don’t tell yourself “I will stop after this drink” if you know you won’t. Don’t make promises to yourself that you won’t keep. It’ll just make you feel worse later, and you don’t need that. Instead, before each drink, think. Think, “I choose to drink this.” Do just that. Make yourself mindful of your drinking. Don’t just pour yourself another beer or grab another wine cooler or order another scotch. Think. Just for half a second. It won’t delay your drink enough to matter to your addictions, but it will matter tremendously for your strength to stop. You can be insidious, too. You don’t want not to remember how many drinks you had the previous night. Don’t let the alcohol control you. It’s your life, your body, your money, your time. You get to do with it what you want, and don’t let alcohol change that. Just think. Even just once in a night. Let that be your next step. It doesn’t seem like it’ll do anything, but thoughts are insidious, too. It’s amazing what you can do with them.
And that works for everything else, too. That’s one of the reasons why people who go on diets are encouraged to write down everything they eat in a day, because they don’t realize it. Their actions bypass their thoughts. By writing it down, the dieters realize how much they eat and when and what. It brings food to their consciousness.
You may ask “But how does that apply to sex or bad relationships? Certainly people know when they’re having sex!” That’s a very good point. But have you ever known anyone who couldn’t tell you how many lovers they’ve had? Or someone who wouldn’t be able to tell you the first and last names of everyone they’ve had sex with? They were there, of course. This was a part of their lives. They should be able to remember. But they don’t, because the actions weren’t important enough for them to think about, or rather their actions were too important for them to think about. If they thought about what they were doing, then they might stop, and they didn’t want to stop, because stopping meant feeling the pain, and that was the point – avoiding the pain. Or someone who is always forgiving their spouse or significant other? Who couldn’t tell you really what the fight was about the previous night that you heard through their walls? Who wouldn’t be able to tell you the number of times that the other person insulted them or broke a promise or whatever form of abuse they choose? Because they don’t want to think about it. If they thought about it, they’d have to do something about it – even if that something is to choose not to do anything. If they don’t think about it, they don’t have to make that choice, and the choice is painful. Acknowledging the truth about their relationship is not something they want to do. If they thought, they’d have to feel the pain, and they don’t want to do that.
But that’s the sneaky thing about pain. It’ll stay with you until you feel it. Until you acknowledge it, it will stay with you either in your mind or your body. How can it stay in your body, you ask? Ulcers. High blood pressure. Weakened immune system due to stress. Others have theories about how the body stores memories, and some of the stuff is rather fascinating. Pain is sneaky, and it demands attention, and the only attention it will accept is for you to feel it, either directly or through problems you have. Have you ever had a memory that will not go away? And it’s something you don’t like? Pain is making you remember it. It wants the attention. Unfortunately, when you give it attention, that memory doesn’t always go away. If that’s the case, then it’s usually a sign of something deeper, something more problematic, something even worse that you don’t want to face. Is that memory part of a pattern? Did someone break their word to you in the memory, and it keeps coming up because you aren’t seeing that this is an isolated incident? Did you break your word to someone in the memory, and it keeps coming up because you’re afraid that your integrity is crumbling and the memory is a warning sign? Sometimes, the same memory or the same pain or the same thought will keep coming up because it’s the tip of the iceberg, and that’s a scary thought, but just as you don’t have to take all the steps at the same time, you also don’t have to tackle the iceberg all at once. You can chip away at it until its icecubes that melt in the sun. Icebergs take a long time to make, and they can take a long time to dissolve, but how much better will your life be at the end of the iceberg? How much worse off than you are now will you be if you ignore the iceberg?
If you cannot quit or cannot reduce what you’re addicted to, then think about quitting and reducing. And if you cannot think about that, then think about thinking about it. Make a date with yourself. “Next Tuesday at 6:30, I will think about going on a diet/not having sex with strangers/not watching so much TV/etc. for five minutes.” Remind yourself of this date every so often. Keep the date, as best you can. Maybe you can’t make the full five minutes. Maybe you’ll only make one, and that’s with your mind wandering to other things frequently. That’s okay. You’re thinking about it more than you had previously. Make another date. Make it for another five minutes. See if you can last the entire time this time.
And if thinking about quitting or reducing is too much and if thinking about thinking about it seems too weird, then choose. When you turn on the TV, at the start of each program, think to yourself, “I choose to watch this next program.” “I choose to spend the next hour watching TV.” When you grab the ice cream from the freezer, think, “I choose to eat this ice cream.” When you get dressed up to go out and nail yourself some tail, think, “I choose to have sex tonight.” Make your actions conscious choices, not unconscious addictions. Choose to do these things, because you want to, not because you need to. Regain your power. Even that hair’s breadth of a step is still a step. You can do it. You are worth it.
You are an amazing person. You just need to un-bury yourself from beneath the junk food in your soul.
-Julia Cameron
Did you see yourself in that quote? I certainly do. I don’t do drugs, and I don’t drink alcohol, but most of the rest of them apply to me. And I agree, they are junk food for the soul. They are the greasy potato chips of time. If you’re hungry, you may decide to snack on some greasy potato chips. They taste good, at the time. They don’t satisfy your nutritional needs. They add unhealthy things to your body and increase the amount of calories you’ll have to burn off. In the long run, and sometimes in the short run, they don’t do you any good. But they taste good for a moment. And the above activities may distract you from your life, from your misery, from what you don’t want to think about, but only for the moment, and in the long run, they do you more harm than good.
If there is one thing that you should take away from this blog it is this: You are good enough. So many of the problems in this world are caused by people having low self esteem and doing nothing about it or trying to put others down to make themselves feel better. “I may suck, but at least I’m not as bad as him!” It doesn’t change the fact that you think you suck (which you don’t), but you don’t have to have it at the front of your mind.
You are good enough, and you deserve a good life, and you deserve a good future, and you can affect the Future. You can change it, you can give birth to it, and you are an active part of it, whether you are active or not. What you do or don’t do affects your life and the lives around you, and that is what gives birth to the Future.
You are good enough, and you deserve better than the junk food for the soul. It isn’t easy to wean yourself away from these things, that is true. It will take time, practice, and patience. And you will have minor stumbling blocks along the way. As long as you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and continue on, you will do fine. No one does a diet perfectly, not a food diet or a junk food for the soul diet. There will be days that you need “just a little something”, but take it from someone who has been there. The longer you go without your “fix” and the more you are aware of your desire and the results of the “fix” (and you can choose to be aware), the less you’ll find that the “fix” will give you what you desire - distraction. Now, some people will take that to mean that you just have to increase the intensity of the “fix”. If one drink no longer does it, then have two. If going out partying two nights a week isn’t enough, go out five. If several hours in front of the TV isn’t fixing your life, then there must be a talk show on channel 57 that will address just that topic. But it doesn’t work. Because it doesn’t give you what you want. What you want is the pain to stop. What you want is for your life to improve. But what you’re getting is just a rest stop on this trip called life. You’re just getting a small break. The pain and the quality of your life will still be there when you get back, if they haven’t gotten worse. A drug addict can’t improve his life with more drugs. A TV addict can’t improve his life with more TV. A sex addict can’t improve his life with more sex. All it will do is provide a short period of time when you think that you aren’t thinking about it. But are you really not thinking about it? With any part of your brain? Or is it always at the back of your head, waiting to speak to you if you don’t drown it first in whatever your choice of addictions is?
You deserve better than junk food. It may seem comforting and the only thing that understands you and can bring you pleasure, but it doesn’t really bring you pleasure. It numbs the pain, and that is all. Compare to the pain you feel, numbness is a blessing at times, but you deserve better. You deserve real pleasure. You deserve to feel good. You deserve to feel great. And you can’t get that from anyone or anything but yourself.
Doing what needs to be done in order to get to the pleasure, in order to eliminate the pain in your life, is a scary thing, but you can do it. You are strong enough to take the next step. That step may be the teeniest, tiniest baby step of all times. It may be a millimeter or a nanometer or perhaps just a hair’s breadth, but you can do it. You can do what you need to do next.
Is sugar your fix? Is that what you use to numb the pain, to distract you from what is wrong in your life? It was for me for a long time. I got a wake-up call from my doctor just about a year ago, and I’ve been changing my life since. That which used to taste incredible to me is now too sweet, and I welcome the change even as I mourn it. I miss enjoying the sweet candies I used to love, but I’m glad my body is healthier and is looking for healthier things to eat. (Red grapes, by the way, can be incredibly sweet and are much healthier for you than candy bars.) It took the wake up call from my doctor, though. I thought about getting back to a healthier weight for years, but I didn’t do it until I had to. It may be true for you, too. But, you can prepare yourself for the “have to” event, just as I did. You can prepare yourself with thoughts. You can think about what kind of changes you’ll make if you have to. You can think about what the “have to” even will be. For me, it was weighing 60 pounds more than I’d like to. All the way up to that point, I didn’t have to in my opinion. But that weight combined with my doctor’s warnings were enough. I had to at that point. What will it be for you? When you weigh a certain amount? Or your pants or dress size is a certain number? Or you get winded walking up a flight of stairs? What will be your “have to” event? Whatever it is, however far off into the future it may be, be sure to have one. People have literally died from not having a “have to” event. They just let it keep going and going until it was too late.
Perhaps it’s alcohol, a very insidious thing. It physically addicts you just as its effects mentally addict you. But you are stronger than it. The big leap would be to cut yourself off cold turkey, but that’s not the only step you can take. Maybe you can limit the amount of money you spend on alcohol or the number of drinks you have in a day or the time of day you begin drinking. Maybe that’s too much for you, too. Maybe you need to start with your thoughts, also. Don’t tell yourself “I will stop after this drink” if you know you won’t. Don’t make promises to yourself that you won’t keep. It’ll just make you feel worse later, and you don’t need that. Instead, before each drink, think. Think, “I choose to drink this.” Do just that. Make yourself mindful of your drinking. Don’t just pour yourself another beer or grab another wine cooler or order another scotch. Think. Just for half a second. It won’t delay your drink enough to matter to your addictions, but it will matter tremendously for your strength to stop. You can be insidious, too. You don’t want not to remember how many drinks you had the previous night. Don’t let the alcohol control you. It’s your life, your body, your money, your time. You get to do with it what you want, and don’t let alcohol change that. Just think. Even just once in a night. Let that be your next step. It doesn’t seem like it’ll do anything, but thoughts are insidious, too. It’s amazing what you can do with them.
And that works for everything else, too. That’s one of the reasons why people who go on diets are encouraged to write down everything they eat in a day, because they don’t realize it. Their actions bypass their thoughts. By writing it down, the dieters realize how much they eat and when and what. It brings food to their consciousness.
You may ask “But how does that apply to sex or bad relationships? Certainly people know when they’re having sex!” That’s a very good point. But have you ever known anyone who couldn’t tell you how many lovers they’ve had? Or someone who wouldn’t be able to tell you the first and last names of everyone they’ve had sex with? They were there, of course. This was a part of their lives. They should be able to remember. But they don’t, because the actions weren’t important enough for them to think about, or rather their actions were too important for them to think about. If they thought about what they were doing, then they might stop, and they didn’t want to stop, because stopping meant feeling the pain, and that was the point – avoiding the pain. Or someone who is always forgiving their spouse or significant other? Who couldn’t tell you really what the fight was about the previous night that you heard through their walls? Who wouldn’t be able to tell you the number of times that the other person insulted them or broke a promise or whatever form of abuse they choose? Because they don’t want to think about it. If they thought about it, they’d have to do something about it – even if that something is to choose not to do anything. If they don’t think about it, they don’t have to make that choice, and the choice is painful. Acknowledging the truth about their relationship is not something they want to do. If they thought, they’d have to feel the pain, and they don’t want to do that.
But that’s the sneaky thing about pain. It’ll stay with you until you feel it. Until you acknowledge it, it will stay with you either in your mind or your body. How can it stay in your body, you ask? Ulcers. High blood pressure. Weakened immune system due to stress. Others have theories about how the body stores memories, and some of the stuff is rather fascinating. Pain is sneaky, and it demands attention, and the only attention it will accept is for you to feel it, either directly or through problems you have. Have you ever had a memory that will not go away? And it’s something you don’t like? Pain is making you remember it. It wants the attention. Unfortunately, when you give it attention, that memory doesn’t always go away. If that’s the case, then it’s usually a sign of something deeper, something more problematic, something even worse that you don’t want to face. Is that memory part of a pattern? Did someone break their word to you in the memory, and it keeps coming up because you aren’t seeing that this is an isolated incident? Did you break your word to someone in the memory, and it keeps coming up because you’re afraid that your integrity is crumbling and the memory is a warning sign? Sometimes, the same memory or the same pain or the same thought will keep coming up because it’s the tip of the iceberg, and that’s a scary thought, but just as you don’t have to take all the steps at the same time, you also don’t have to tackle the iceberg all at once. You can chip away at it until its icecubes that melt in the sun. Icebergs take a long time to make, and they can take a long time to dissolve, but how much better will your life be at the end of the iceberg? How much worse off than you are now will you be if you ignore the iceberg?
If you cannot quit or cannot reduce what you’re addicted to, then think about quitting and reducing. And if you cannot think about that, then think about thinking about it. Make a date with yourself. “Next Tuesday at 6:30, I will think about going on a diet/not having sex with strangers/not watching so much TV/etc. for five minutes.” Remind yourself of this date every so often. Keep the date, as best you can. Maybe you can’t make the full five minutes. Maybe you’ll only make one, and that’s with your mind wandering to other things frequently. That’s okay. You’re thinking about it more than you had previously. Make another date. Make it for another five minutes. See if you can last the entire time this time.
And if thinking about quitting or reducing is too much and if thinking about thinking about it seems too weird, then choose. When you turn on the TV, at the start of each program, think to yourself, “I choose to watch this next program.” “I choose to spend the next hour watching TV.” When you grab the ice cream from the freezer, think, “I choose to eat this ice cream.” When you get dressed up to go out and nail yourself some tail, think, “I choose to have sex tonight.” Make your actions conscious choices, not unconscious addictions. Choose to do these things, because you want to, not because you need to. Regain your power. Even that hair’s breadth of a step is still a step. You can do it. You are worth it.
You are an amazing person. You just need to un-bury yourself from beneath the junk food in your soul.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Hatred
Hatred is a cancer that eats you from inside. More like a fire that consumes what it burns but merely heats what is outside of it. If you think that your hatred or your anger punishes someone else, then you are blind to how much it is consuming you, warping you, destroying you. If you hate someone and the person doesn’t know it, how are they affected? Perhaps they detect a distance between you, perhaps a coldness. But it’s like a fire within you that they cannot feel. And if they do know that you hate them? Then they are merely observers around the fire, feeling its warmth, its heat, but not being consumed. Not like you are. Fire will turn wood to ash, into something dead. Fire will warp metal until its original purpose is not longer known, until it is twisted and misshapen, and that’s what anger and hatred will do to you. The person you hate merely feels the effects of the hatred, like a person sitting near a fire feels its warmth. But you are like the wood, the kindling, the paper that started the fire. You are being consumed and destroyed by the anger and hatred. You are worth more than that.
But it is easy to say the words “stop hating”. It’s something else entirely to actually do it.
You can start with distraction. The more time and energy you put into your hatred – through brooding or venting or acting out – the more you feed the fire within you, the more of yourself you put into the flames to become destroyed. You have a limited amount of time on this earth. Do not waste it on this hatred. Distract yourself from it. Find something you can be passionate about. You are a passionate person. Hate and anger are passionate emotions. Take your passion and apply it to something else. It may take you a while, and it may be that this something will distract you only momentarily, but that’s better than nothing. You keep at it, over and over again. Bit by bit, you take back your time from the hatred, from the anger, in little bits at a time. You take back your heart and your passion and your mind away from the things that are crippling you. You put them to more sustaining, giving things. In time, you will hate less and you will be angry less. It may take you a long while. Perhaps the first thing you try is not something that will help. Perhaps ballroom dancing or working on cars or working in the garden or volunteering at the hospital does not distract your mind or your heart. Then try something else. You are a passionate person. There is something else out there in the world that you can be passionate about.
This is for hatred and anger over things you can do nothing, or at least nothing moral. But if you’re in a horrendous situation, get out. Put your passion and time into creating a life that does not include whatever it is that is destroying you. If you are living with someone who abuses you, and you are angry over that, get out first. If you lived with someone who abused you and that was ten years ago and you haven’t seen that person since nor will you, and you’re still angry, then you need to figure out a way to put your passion into something else, something worth your time.
You are worth your time. If you are in a bad situation, put your passion into getting out. If you are in a great situation but cannot get over the past, distract yourself, perhaps get therapy, perhaps enter a sweat lodge or go on a retreat to recenter yourself and purge yourself. But you are worth more than hatred and anger will ever give you. You are an amazing person, and you deserve better. Hatred and anger are abusers, and they are abusing you. Throw them out of your life. You deserve a life of peace and positive passion.
But it is easy to say the words “stop hating”. It’s something else entirely to actually do it.
You can start with distraction. The more time and energy you put into your hatred – through brooding or venting or acting out – the more you feed the fire within you, the more of yourself you put into the flames to become destroyed. You have a limited amount of time on this earth. Do not waste it on this hatred. Distract yourself from it. Find something you can be passionate about. You are a passionate person. Hate and anger are passionate emotions. Take your passion and apply it to something else. It may take you a while, and it may be that this something will distract you only momentarily, but that’s better than nothing. You keep at it, over and over again. Bit by bit, you take back your time from the hatred, from the anger, in little bits at a time. You take back your heart and your passion and your mind away from the things that are crippling you. You put them to more sustaining, giving things. In time, you will hate less and you will be angry less. It may take you a long while. Perhaps the first thing you try is not something that will help. Perhaps ballroom dancing or working on cars or working in the garden or volunteering at the hospital does not distract your mind or your heart. Then try something else. You are a passionate person. There is something else out there in the world that you can be passionate about.
This is for hatred and anger over things you can do nothing, or at least nothing moral. But if you’re in a horrendous situation, get out. Put your passion and time into creating a life that does not include whatever it is that is destroying you. If you are living with someone who abuses you, and you are angry over that, get out first. If you lived with someone who abused you and that was ten years ago and you haven’t seen that person since nor will you, and you’re still angry, then you need to figure out a way to put your passion into something else, something worth your time.
You are worth your time. If you are in a bad situation, put your passion into getting out. If you are in a great situation but cannot get over the past, distract yourself, perhaps get therapy, perhaps enter a sweat lodge or go on a retreat to recenter yourself and purge yourself. But you are worth more than hatred and anger will ever give you. You are an amazing person, and you deserve better. Hatred and anger are abusers, and they are abusing you. Throw them out of your life. You deserve a life of peace and positive passion.
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