Deepest Treasure

Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure. - Rainer Maria Rilke

Some of the most wondrous things and times in our lives have come immediately after facing our fears and not backing away. Fear is what makes up the boundaries of our comfort zones. It’s like the maps of old where along the edges they would write “Here be dragons”, to let sailors know that no one knew what lay beyond the borders of the map. But the borders of the map blocked off the New World. The borders of your comfort zone can block off a New Life.

A lot of people live on the surface of life. They don’t bother with things that make them uncomfortable. They work at their safe jobs, drive home, turn on the distraction, and fall asleep mentally and emotionally long before their bodies do. And in the mornings, they do it all again. They back away from adversity or new things or change. Why? They think they have it all. And yet, these are the same people who are constantly trying to keep up with the Joneses. Why? Because the Joneses have more than they do. It’s amazing how a person can “have it all”, until their neighbor gets a new car. And then they want a new car. A new car is their dream. Or a new TV or lawn mower or whatever.

Even their dreams are small.

Their comfort zones are small, and their dreams are small. If they’re going to spend enough money to get a new car, why not go to France instead? They obviously have a perfectly good (if a few years old) car in their own garage. Why keep following in the footsteps of their neighbors? Why not live a little differently? Or if not France, what about dance lessons or music lessons or saving the money and joining a public speaking group? They want to be noticed and different and admired, but only in exactly the same way that they notice and admire other people. Different really doesn’t quite make it from their claims to their true wishes.

What about you?

Are your dreams small? Is your comfort zone small? Do you want them to be small? Are they are large as you want? Is fear stopping you? Fear is only an emotion, and not always a rational one at that. Fear has its place, but not as a dream stopper. Fear of black ice so you drive carefully, that’s a good fear. Fear of the snarling dog foaming at the mouth coming towards you, that’s a good fear. Fear of taking dance lessons? Not really a good fear. Fear of going to France? Not really a good fear. Could something awful happen in a foreign land where you don’t know anyone and you don’t speak the language? Why, yes, bad things could happen, including things that wouldn’t happen in your native country. But, you can take precautions against those bad things, just like you take precautions against black ice and rabid dogs. Don’t let it stop you from going to France or joining a choir or finishing your degree.

Small dreams come true. But, you know what? So do big dreams. And if your dreams are going to come true, which would you rather have? Face your fears, slay your dragons, find your treasure, build your Future. You can do this.

Life Or Nothing

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. - Helen Keller

You have a choice. You constantly have choices. You may not think you do. You may have so many restrictions upon you that your only choice is your attitude. But you always have a choice. At least one. How will you see today? As a day of drudgery or one of adventure? Will you dare to live or will you merely exist? Will you choose to be defeated, or will you hold on?

You have a choice. And the most insidious, the sneakiest, the most wonderful thing about this is that you don’t have to change your life in order to make a different choice. You just have to change your living. And this choice is the most important choice, one that feeds or hinders all others. It is the one of attitude.

And if you play it right, if you do nothing differently except think, if you show outwardly nothing of the change of choice you’ve made inside yourself, then no one will know. Except you. They may suspect. But since you’re doing the same things as you did yesterday, how would they know? If you’re truly in so bad a situation (and some of you are) that you dare now smile if you’re not allowed, dare not frown when sad, dare not shed any tears or express an opinion, then keep it all inside you. Make your choice of attitude and realization, and change the way you live your life, even if you don’t change your life.

The realization is that you have a choice. Once you realize that, things get both a lot tougher and a lot easier. It’s tougher because now the control is in your hands, and you can’t blame someone else for it. It’s easier because now that you realize you have the control, you can make that choice. Do you look at life as a victim or a survivor? Do you see yourself as imprisoned, or merely biding your time here until you have somewhere else to go, someplace better? Do you see yourself as powerless or powerful? Are you the central character of your life, or have you given that role over to someone else?

And make no mistake, you are the one who makes that choice. Do your parents think the world of your little sister and nothing of you? So what? That’s their choice. Do not make their choice the center of your world. First, see yourself as wonderful and then find other people who share that opinion. Your parents can keep their opinion. You don’t have to agree or fight. Are you in an abusive relationship where the other person insists that you wait on them hand and foot, always taking them into consideration no matter what you do? You can still make the choice about how you think and whether or not you leave, and if so how. Suicide is unfortunately the choice that some abuse victims make, whether it be by knife, car accident, starvation, or refusing to see a doctor until they are too sick to be cured. Abuse survivors, on the other hand, do not choose suicide as how they will leave, if they choose to leave. They figure out a way to make it out with their bodies and more importantly their spirits intact.

Any other scenarios where you are not the central character of your life can pretty much be referred to those two cases. Annoying coworker who seems to get promotions and raises more often than you? See the first case. Annoying boss who thinks that work should be your life rather than your job? See the second case.

Realize you have the choice to make your life what you want, and then choose your attitude. With your attitude in place and consciously chosen, you can then create your life more easily, more readily, and more happily. Realize, choose, and give birth to your Future.

The Next Step

Writing is like driving at night. You cannot see beyond your headlights…but you can make the whole trip that way. - E.L. Doctorow

Sometimes, you can see your goal and everything between here and there. You can see where the path twists and turns. You can see the roadblocks ahead and prepare for them. You can slow down at the bumpy parts and speed up on the straight areas.

And then night falls.

Night can be exhaustion (and is usually accompanied by exhaustion). It can be a more urgent priority (sick kid, sick parent, sick yourself, car accident, house fire, etc.). It can be an unexpected obstacle (the local college doesn’t offer that degree, you get fired, the program you’d signed up for gets cancelled, something goes out of business, etc.). It can be confusion (I thought I’d know what to do once I got to this point).

Night is the time when you know what your Future looks like, but you just can’t see how to get there from here.

But night doesn’t last, unless you sit on your butt and give up. If you choose to stay in the night, then night will stay with you. But if you continue on, the dawn will come, and things will be clear again.

Take care of the emergency (just be sure to set boundaries and take care of yourself at the same time!). Figure out another way around the obstacle. Do some more research, if you’re confused. Keep alert to possibilities and options. They’re all around us. Read the newspapers and the signs at the library. Check out the books on your subject; perhaps they’ll have an idea you hadn’t thought of before. Talk to supportive people about your dream (and keep it defended against negative people); they may know someone or something you don’t. Night time is when our bodies rest and prepare themselves for the coming day. Use your night to figure out the next step and prepare to take it once you can.

Energy

Sometimes the only thing we do to avoid success is refuse to be energetic on our own behalf. - Barbara Sher

Have you ever been to a football game? If you’re tuned into other people’s energy levels or in least bit empathic, it can be quite a heady experience. The energy everyone expends at a good football game is immense. The players play hard, the coaches coach, the cheerleaders cheer, and the fans go wild, and everyone spends a whole lot of energy doing it. It’s what they want to do, for entertainment, for a job, or for their passion. At least, for some people it’s their passion. Some people want to be football players, coaches, cheerleaders, or fans, and if their Future contains that, that’s great by them. But for others, it’s just entertainment. It’s just a way to socialize and unwind from a long day or a long week. Or it’s just a job that they have right now until something else comes along. The game serves its purpose, but not the person’s purpose in life.

You see those people, and then you step back and take a look at the rest of their life. Where else do they spend as much energy as they do at that football game? With their buddies at the bar? In bed? Ranting and complaining? Are any of those their purpose in life? The basis on which they will build their Future? Probably not. They are energetic, and they are passionate, but not about themselves or their lives.

What about you? Where do you spend your time and energy? On entertainment? On a job that’s “just a job”? Or on your passion, your purpose, your Future? Give it some thought.

Bored in the Face of Shoulds

Are you ever bored? It’s actually rather easy to become bored. Most people do it at least once in their lives, some as often as several times a week. Being bored does not mean that you have nothing to do. Usually, it’s the opposite. You have things to do, but they’re not the things you want to do. They are the “shoulds”. I should unload the dishwasher. I should review my notes for the test (or meeting) tomorrow. I should take care of the thing I said I’d do today. But I don’t want to. Boredom, at least in this affluent country of the United States of America, comes more often from having something you should do and nothing really want to do. At least, not at this moment.

There are other boredoms, too. There’s the day-in-day-out boredom of being in a job that doesn’t challenge or excite you. There’s the boredom of waiting in line. There’s the boredom of life today being the exact copy of life yesterday and of life tomorrow. These boredoms are easy to take care of, though. For the first, find a new job. For the second, get a walkman or an ipod or hum under your breath. For the last, build and create your Future. When you create your Future, your tomorrow will be different from yesterday.

But back to the original topic – getting bored when there’s plenty to do, but you just don’t feel like doing any of it. It can occur even when there’s fun stuff to do (watch a movie, put together a puzzle, call a friend), but you’re just not in the mood for any of it. What do you do then?

Being bored is a huge time waster. You can sit on your butt and wonder, “What should I do?” Eventually, that will be answered for you, because you’ll have wasted an hour or more just sitting there, and you can no longer avoid all those shoulds that you had been avoiding before. You’ll have to do the laundry, because you have no more clean clothes. You’ll have to unload the dishwasher, because you don’t have any other clean dishes. You’ll have to review your notes, or at the very least it’ll become to late to do anything about it, and that “should” gets taken off your list anyway. So, what do you do?

You do the should. I know, I know. You don’t want to. The good news is, there’s a catch. That wasn’t the complete sentence, but I wanted to make certain you were paying attention. You do the should until you think of something you would actually enjoy doing. In the case of reviewing notes, that can be difficult, because when we are bored, our minds tend to wander, and that makes intellectual activity a problem. However, we are in luck in that there are very few times that any of us is plagued by just one should. Most of us have plenty of shoulds to go around. And if you’re just too bored to do the one that requires thinking, do the one that doesn’t. And if you don’t have one that doesn’t require thinking, I’m impressed. Because at that point, all your dishes are clean and put away, all of your laundry is done and put away, all your floors are swept or vacuumed, the pets and plants have been taken care of, there is no dust in your house, all of your bills have been paid and your checkbooks have been balanced, your toilets are clean as are your shower and tub, all your library books and videos have been returned, the groceries have been bought, your windows are washed, and your bed has been made. I don’t think that I’ve had all of those things happen in my home at the same time ever.

This is where a little planning can come in handy. Your Future is a wondrous place, and I’m certain that there are things that you can do to create it. Big things, little things, and medium-sized things. Make a list of all of the things you need to or want to do in order to create your Future and keep that list handy for when you get bored. Do one of those things, and if they’re all too big to do, use your boring time to make the steps smaller.

Do a should or do a creative step. Even if you are still bored when you’re done, at least you got it finished. Congratulations on that.

Let it go

How do you let it go when someone has hurt you? How do you let it go when there is a pain in your heart that no amount of crying lessens, that no amount of time seems to dull? How do you let go of something that keeps popping into your head, no matter what else you try to think of?

Or, how do you make the choice to let it go? Some people are not plagued by old wounds and remembered slights. Instead, they relish them, relive them, recount them to others and themselves over and over. They enjoy the pain, though they claim to be plagued by it. They play the martyr. These are not people interested in the Future. They are mired in the past, dragging it with them wherever they go. First thing you have to do to build the Future? Prepare for it in the Present, and you can’t do that if you’re living in the past.

Those of you who read this blog are the ones who want to create the Future and are willing to let go of at least some of the past hurts and pains. So, we’ll just continue on as if you aren’t one of the people in the second paragraph (or at least aren’t that way about everything), and we’ll go back to the first. How do you let go?

A lot of the self-help books tell you to forgive, but I’m not sure that’s right. I was taught that you forgive someone when they’ve made amends for something, or when you’re willing to say that it’s no longer a bad thing. There are just some things that I can’t do that for. There are people who’ll say that “to forgive” means to let go of the hurt whether or not someone’s made amends or if it’s something that can ever be okay. That’s not what I was taught. Instead, if you can’t forgive the sin and if you can’t forgive the sinner, then let it go.

After all, if that’s what “forgive” means to some people, then we are in agreement. Let go of the anger, the hurt, the pain, and leave the past in the past.

What does this not mean? This doesn’t mean you haven’t changed. This doesn’t mean that you haven’t gone through something horrible. This doesn’t mean that you say it wasn’t that big of a deal or that it was okay or that you are willing to see that person again or treat them well or even wish them well (that’s a little more than I can do for some people, though it does feel really good when you can expend positive energy, even against those who have wronged you).

What does this mean? It means that you take what you can from the experience, use it to grow, learn, strengthen, and change, and leave the rest in the past. You let go of anything that’s not of use to you. You let go of the pain when it no longer serves a purpose. You keep the good, and you let go of the bad.

How? You focus. You focus on the positive aspects, when you have to think about it at all. You focus on the positive in your life, on building your Future. You give yourself something else to think about, so that you don’t dwell on it in the dark of the night or any other time. You find a mantra, an affirmation, a prayer, a koan, or anything else that you can use to fill your head with something positive and building, rather than mulling over something destructive and painful.

Is it really that simple? Yes. But it’s not easy. By all that exists in this universe, it ain’t easy. If it was, you would have done it long ago. But it can be done. Persist, build, and focus. In that way, you let go of the past, clear out your Present, and make room for your Future.

All or nothing? Why?

Why does it have to be all or nothing with some people? For some people, it’s a way of life. For most, it’s an occasional thing. But, just about everyone, at some point or another, will insist that some event or some characteristic or some something be all or nothing. But it doesn’t have to be.

There are a few situations in which all or nothing makes sense. Drug use, for example, and other addictions where a single slip can start a dangerous cycle. Fidelity in a relationship, if that is something you agree upon (there are some who are in a polygamous relationship). Honesty, for some (though others will allow white lies and times of privacy to intrude on the honesty between two people). Allergies, especially the more lethal ones. But all or nothing doesn’t belong in a lot of areas of life.

Diets, for example. To tell yourself that you are never allowed to have a cookie or an ice cream cone is ridiculous. To tell yourself that because you had one cookie, you may as well have a dozen is also ridiculous. Moderation in your diet will work better both for your metabolism and your will power. If you get a cookie now and again, it won’t hold so much power over you.

Anything that you are trying to control in your life, make it easier on yourself, if you can. Don’t have “just one drink”, especially not with that cute guy from accounting that you “haven’t really” been flirting with. Those are a couple of areas that you should keep as all or nothing. But there are plenty of other areas where you can lose the “all or nothing” mentality.

One big area that this affects is changes that you’d like to make in your life. A lot of people crash and burn because they try to make too many changes at once, or they make one change, but it’s radically different from their life as it was. Need to change your social life? Make one change until it sticks. Join one group? Go to one night out? Try one different place to go? Pick one thing and try it. If it’s good, keep it. If it’s not, get rid of it. It’s easier to figure out what isn’t working and what is when there’s only one difference you need to keep track of.

Need to change your diet? Go one dish at a time, one snack at a time, one food at a time. Need to change your job? Go in small changes – scout out the jab market and brush up on your resume. Increase your contacts within the field you choose. Do you want to change fields? Take one course, start reading one journal, attend one seminar. Make one change and stick with it.

If you feel like your entire life needs an overhaul, you still need to go slow. If you change your diet along with your job and your relationships, and suddenly you have headaches and you feel unsettled and unsure of yourself, how will you know what change is affecting you?

Very few people have a perfect life. Most people need or at least want some change. But you don’t have to make all of the changes at the same time. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You are allowed to change slowly and create the Future you want and need.