Vulnerability Shift, Day 4

Egad, I’m feeling a strong resistance to today’s assignment in my Vulnerability Shift program. It’s about awareness.

“As a human being, you have the unique ability to shape your reality and evolution through conscious awareness. ” -Sarah Andrews, tour guide through Vulnerability Shifting.

Well, OK. I can totally agree with that. I know too much about hidden and denied emotions pulling the strings from the shadows to not validate the power of choosing conscious awareness. In fact, I’m all for it! But she wants us to share the awareness.

My reaction is to regress to being 9 years old and stick out my tongue! :p

So I’m going to report on that feeling. It’s horrifically uncomfortable! I feel butterflies in my stomach and tension in my shoulders. These sensations weren’t there before because before I read my assignment I had just finished meditating and my morning cup of tea. I was the picture of Zen. Clearly my body is reacting to thoughts I am thinking about sharing the results of my awareness exercise.

So what’s that about? It comes from an expectation of being judged, ridiculed, or criticized. And from the resulting story I might (let’s face it, I have 4 decades of practice doing this, it’s certainly a possibility!) tell myself that I’m not good enough. Logically I know that my self worth has nothing to do with what other people think of me, or say to me for that matter. Yet within the hidden recesses of my mind there still exists a little girl who is afraid of mean girls at school or being scolded by an authority figure.

So today I will spend some time with that wounded inner child and reassure her that we are safe and that no matter what other people think or say, we will continue to be safe. Seriously, who do I want in charge of my decision making, a young girl afraid of being hurt or the powerful woman who is divinely guided and supported and confident in her security?

 

Reinventing Happiness

Every day I see more and more clearly how happiness is a choice. It comes from the beliefs I hold in my mind rather than the circumstances arriving from the outside. As the ruler of my own universe, I get to choose how I will react to every event in my life. I have chosen to see with the eyes of love and it seems that even though my life looks the same from the outside, I am way happier on the inside. This article beautifully clarifies how I have been able to do that through a series of micro-steps.

10 things that people who love their lives are doing differently

What the…?

Stressie Bessie. That’s what I’ve named my shadow self who occasionally rises to the surface when I have more to do than I have time to do it. She screams like a banshee in my head, eradicating any sense of serenity or kindness. We have done battle countless times over three decades. Today I decided on a different approach. I used empathy. And it totally worked!

This morning I woke up to a sky streaked with orange and pink. I decided to go for a walk down to the ocean to absorb these cosmic juices and bask in the day’s first rays of light. Along the way I was greeted by butterflies, dragonflies, and hummingbirds. I admired my neighbors’ gardens and breathed the clean ocean air. It was a magical moment filled with divine communion. When I returned home, I enjoyed a leisurely morning of devotion to my self-care routine. Hydration, prayer, intention setting, mantra, meditation, nutrition, and connection. Everything was sailing along smoothly.

Then for some reason, I was compelled to clean out clutter from my small utility closet. I planned to go to yoga in 30 minutes, and thought I could finish this task and get myself ready without any problems. Well, I was wrong. As I watched the clock ticking onward, I realized that it was time to get dressed, pack my gear, and prepare to ride my bike to class. Yet, I wasn’t done. In fact, my efforts had made a bigger mess, and now the stuff I had cleaned out of the closet was in the middle of my living room.

Cue Bessie.

Bessie arrives when I’m doing one thing, but know I need to be doing something else. For the most part, I have banished the word “should” from my vocabulary and choose to do what’s in my highest good, or completely let go and allow myself to enjoy the alternative. (Such as yesterday when I savored a chocolate chip cookie just two days after completing a detox cleanse. I gave myself permission to have a treat and fully cherished each bite rather than allowing guilt to creep in and ruin the moment.) Generally I am able to make peace with my schedule and decide to accept or postpone any given activity. Yet I have a streak of perfectionism that continues to create struggle and stress. Obviously that clutter could have waited until a more appropriate time. But some inner force was demanding that I complete what I started, and dang it, now I was late.

I realized I hadn’t brushed my teeth. Or filled my water bottle. I raced around and threw everything together, slung my mat over my shoulder, and hauled ass on my bike. As luck would have it, it was a sunny, warm, spectacular day and hundreds of people were out enjoying it. Suddenly they all became My Enemies. These people were in my way, slowing me down, blocking my mad dash to get to yoga class so I could relax, dammit! (Yes, I am aware of the irony here!) I wasn’t overtly rude, but the peaceful, loving emanations of the morning evaporated fully and instead I gave off an air of stress and hurry. A bug flew up my nose. My pants got caught in the chain. My favorite, white yoga pants. GRRRR!!!

Somehow I arrived with a few minutes to spare. It took me the full hour to return to some semblance of serenity. I was agitated throughout the whole class, looking at the clock, mourning the grease on my pants. Bessie had won another fight, and the cost was the pleasure I normally receive while on my mat. It was at the very end of class, during the final relaxation pose that I decided to befriend Bessie. I counsel my clients all the time about how to manage stress. Yet somehow, I was judgmental and demanding of myself, expecting perfection (Hellooooo, I am a relaxation expert! I should handling this better.), and fighting a loosing battle against myself. After a few deep breaths, and an internal compassionate dialog, I felt Bessie leave and my  default mode of calm and easy-going return.

As I meandered back home on the trail, smiling at the happy folks who crossed my path, I realized that I could have saved myself from all that suffering. There was no one to blame. I was responsible for creating the whole scene, and I vowed to make better choices in the future. I set an intention to honor my priorities when planning the day, and leave unnecessary tasks for a day off. I would give myself a buffer zone in my schedule so I didn’t need to rush to get to my next location. And I would treat myself with compassion when I forgot or was stressed. I would allow myself the gift of understanding and kindness and remember that my shadow self, as much as I would prefer otherwise, was a part of me that also needed love and acceptance. Next time Bessie shows up, I will offer her a cup of tea and listen to the message she has to share.

 

Zero Waste

I’m reading the book, Zero Waste Home, by Bea Johnson. The subtitle, “The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste” pretty much says it all. While I have been recycling everything possible diligently for over a decade and feeding food scraps to my pet worms for several years, I believe I can do better. After all, recycling is not the panacea many believe it to be. Sure, plastic water bottles are recyclable where I live. Yet, I believe they contaminate the questionably-pure-to-begin-with tap water they contain with chemicals & a funny taste. And wouldn’t it be better all around if they had never been manufactured from petroleum, using vast quantities of water and fossil fuels while creating pollution so as to never need to picked up by a gas-guzzling truck to be process using more valuable resources? Is it possible to reduce all waste; both the landfill pile and the recycling pile?

For me, the obvious answer is YES! I CAN do better. The question is, where do I draw the line? Do I forsake favorite treats because of the packaging they come in? Do I forgo social events that are not on the bus route? Do I, God forbid, stop buying toilet paper? Clearly not. For me, it is a question of balance. As an Economics major, I am familiar with the process of cost-benefit analysis. As a lover of the Earth and all its inhabitants, I am able to expand this process to include the cost any product or service has on the planet in addition to the financial cost. For me, it is an exercise in awareness & conscious choice.

For example, I think nothing of washing & reusing plastic produce bags ad infinitum. I take my own bags to the farmers market & grocery store & do my very best to not accept responsibility for any extra bags that are not absolutely necessary. Yet, yesterday I was really wanting some strawberries for my smoothie. This is a daily ritual I have of making a quick, healthy, easily portable lunch. It gets me through a full day of giving massages without compromising my budget, digestive system, or energy level. I’ve gotten rather tired of apples & oranges as the locally available seasonal fruit & organic berries are not yet happening here. I had a strong craving for berries in my smoothie & a conflict with my value for buying local, fresh, unpackaged produce whenever possible. I gave it some serious thought & realized the benefit outweighed the cost. I really did consider all my options, & ended up buying frozen berries in plastic bags. Not consistent with the zero waste model, but completely in alignment with my home health care regime.

Similarly, I love coconut anything. Coconut oil, coconut water, coconut milk, coconut butter, dried & shredded coconut. Yet all these products are shipped thousands of miles from a tropical place & packaged in a variety of materials. Even the coconut itself, while not requiring a can or wrapper, has a substantial carbon footprint via the fuel spent transporting it. Yet I’m not willing to give it up. Sacrifice is not strategy that works for me, rather choosing the option with the least impact on the environment is. I’m learning to make my own coconut milk from dried shreds to reduce the amount of cans I add to the recycling bin & have found a dehydrated coconut “water” that brilliantly only ships the essential, non-watery portion of the coconut. A friend picks up bulk coconut oil for me from a co-op in a nearby city. I’m still getting my coconut fix, but choosing options that consider the cost to the planet as well as to my purse & my dietary needs.

I am hoping that more people will consider these questions. Can I do better? Can I buy this locally? Can I reuse the packaging? Do I really need this bag? Is this product available without any packaging somewhere nearby? Can I plan better or organize more carefully to get what I need in a more conscious way? Do I really need this? Can I cut back on my contribution to the recycling plant & the landfill? Do I really need single-use disposable products? What is best for both me & my family AND the environment? I suspect that most of us CAN do better, & that once we begin asking these questions, the road to reducing (if not eliminating) waste will become clear.

Not a Wink

I didn’t sleep last night. Not one flippin’ wink. It’s pretty amazing what runs through your head in the middle of the night when you’re wide awake with nothing to do. It’s not at all like staying up all night for something fun & exciting, which is generally a choice people make. I don’t know anyone who has ever decided to lie in bed all night completely alert. At first I analyzed all the potential reasons for my wakefulness. Was it late night electronic usage? Do I need to adjust my nighttime nutritional supplements?  Certainly, it wasn’t the yerba mate I drank at 11am, but maybe the kombucha at 3pm? While the cause of this episode is mildly relevant to future prevention, it really served no purpose to me last night.

Then I moved on to the torturous calculations of: if I fall asleep in the next 30 minutes, I’ll get 6 hours of sleep, & that’s really enough for me. I can survive on that. 5 hours? No? 4 & 1/2? Of course, knowing that my alarm was set for 5:30am so I could get to the gym early & stick to my new workout commitment only added to my mental agony. I briefly considered turning off my alarm & foregoing the morning cardio, maybe I could get there at lunch time? As it turns out, I didn’t need the alarm. Around 1am, I realized my attachment to the idea that I should be sleeping was what caused me to suffer. I was actually quite comfortable & enjoying the serenity. This epiphany allowed me to settle into a peaceful, meditative state & to gracefully rise before the alarm sounded feeling rested & renewed.