August 26th, 2010
I love that quote for a million reasons.
1. Curious people are alive. This is what i want to be.
2. I can easily fall into asking questions like, “Why can’t you take the garbage out this week? Why is it only Monday? Why isn’t my career happening faster? Why is this awful thing happening to me/my kid/my best friend/Pakistan?
These are questions that leave me humming in a lousy place.
3. I appreciate the reminder to choose my questions carefully.
Here are some of the questions that serve me well:
What matters most to me at this point in my life?
Can I trust that I am enough, as is, to create the kind of life I want?
Do I trust in a beneficent universe or not?
Am i choosing this relationship/work/path forward out of love or fear?
What are the questions that serve you well? I’d love to hear.
Thanks, as always, for the conversation,
kristin
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August 16th, 2010
There’s this question that nags when I contemplate big changes. By big i mean changing professions, life partners, countries to live in – the changes that affect me and everyone around me for a good long time.
The question that nags is: am i doing this because it is exactly what my heart wants most, or am i changing my outside world because i can’t find internal peace and satisfaction. Yikes.
I’d love to recommend a book by Michael A. Singer entitled The Untethered Soul: a journey beyond yourself.
In the book, Singer beautifully describes the brain battle that goes on in our heads day in and day out. I should leave my job. No i shouldn’t. But i want to. But it’s stable. But it’s boring. But it pays well. What will Bob think? God, i’m a flake. But i’m happy overall. Blah, blah, to blahfinity.
He suggests we personify this head noise as a roommate, in which case we’d kick that nut out within about two hours of listening to her insane, repetitive monologue. That insane roommate is our mind.
He also suggests a simple, practical way to dissociate from that roommate and find the quiet, simple, loving centre of ourselves.
Every time your mind says, god, i don’t know if i can do it, i don’t think he’s the one for me, etc., your heart shuts down. You can feel this. It’s a tight-chest-and-jaw, fatiguing thing. As soon as you feel that, leave your mind to duke it out. Don’t stop it (you can’t stop it), just leave it.
Take your energy to your centre – your heart, the observer, the witness of the battle. Again, you can feel this. You can breathe. Your heart, chest, and face are relaxed and open. This removal of your energy from the mind shortens the battle by turning its power off. It leaves you with a blissfully quiet head. Do this a thousand times a day.
Finding the centre is the key.
If you have a method of finding that centre already – meditation, prayer, a cabin in the woods, a Buddha in your bathroom – go there.
If you don’t, and you’re looking for a method, consider the book.
Either way, don’t go to the insane roommate for advice on whether to leap. You won’t get a word in edgewise and you won’t come away any clearer.
Go to your heart.
Let me know what you think.
Thank you for the conversation,
kristin
3 Comments:
August 3rd, 2010
I’m leaving my profession this fall after 20 years. I woke up one day knowing it was time.
No big deal for the superheroes of this world, but if you’re at all like me, you’ll understand the tightening of the gut and the shallow breathing that show up occasionally at my house since I made the decision.
Why the tight gut? I think it boils down to a shaky relationship with trust.
Trust that I’ll be able to earn an income. Trust that I’m not just being flaky, fickle, (and a few other great f-words), ungrateful, and irresponsible.
Mostly trust in the goodness of this universe, and in my own instincts, the ones that told me it’s time.
Just about everything we see and hear teaches us to trust Someone Else rather than to trust ourselves, don’t you think?
It’s why we trust doctors who give us 3 minutes (oh sure, that’s enough to diagnose me and take care of my beautiful body, why not?), why we used to trust priests, and why we accept (even without trust) being governed by people who tell untruths as a matter of strategic course.
It’s why we stay too long in jobs and relationships. (I haven’t loved you since the Cuban Missile Crisis. I stayed for the kids. Now I’m staying for the dog.)
It’s why we don’t stand up for ourselves with bosses, clients, and our own families. Not to mention people who come to the door selling lousy cookies, fake hydro contracts, and religious salvation.
It’s why we accept less than we want.
It’s why we don’t leap when we have the urge to leap.
I’m 48. I will go mad if I don’t fully trust myself and this universe at some point.
So I’m going to trust this instinct to change my life, having no idea what will come next. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Do you trust your own instincts? Have you learned something about that along the way?
I’d love to hear.
Thanks to All Things Good, and thank you for the conversation,
kristin
6 Comments:
July 23rd, 2010
My daughter has been in China. Hiking, exploring, loving the culture and the food, devastated by the poverty. It was a life-changing adventure.
Perfectly timed, too. She’s been doing a Master’s degree. Some day she loves it, some days she’s unsure about whether she wants to continue.
She said something while describing her trip that I thought might interest you.
During her travels she met a group of international PhD students who had just arrived in Bejing to do a year of study. They come from a variety of countries and specialize in a wide variety of subjects.
All of them are interested in changing the world for the better in their own, not-so-small ways (cleaner water, human rights, etc.).
Kali met the first of them on the subway and then had dinner with them.
She said the dinner changed the course of her life.
When I asked how, she said it was the conversations whirling around the table. The curiosity of these people, their ambition, their desire to do good, their humour, kindness – all of it filled her with some kind of certainty.
These are my people, she said. I’ve never felt that so strongly before.
She came home knowing that continuing with school is the right thing, and that studying internationally is the road forward.
It made me wonder whether we can all learn where we belong by describing “our people”.
My kids are my people. Many of my friends are. Some of my patients are.
What do you know about who your people are? Are you working with them now? Are they somewhere in your life? I’d love to hear.
Thanks for the conversation,
kristin
One Comment:
July 7th, 2010
A woman came into my clinic this week and shook me up.
She’d just returned from a two week retreat/course/mini-sabbatical.
It was two weeks of being fed well and looked after while going through some self-discovery process. The kind of thing that makes you look at yourself, the parts you love and the parts you don’t. What’s working and what isn’t in your life. Whether you actually love what you’re doing with your life or not, and what you can do about that.
She looks radiant. She sparkles, for god’s sake. I wish somebody had taken LDL levels and blood pressure and all the rest of it, because she is healthier than she’s been for the seven years I’ve known her.
Which made me think, what are we really doing with our lives?
We work hard, we say, in order to create a life for ourselves and our kids, to create some kind of wellbeing. To create a future. I get that.
But something about it isn’t working.
My clinic, like any other clinic, like walk-in clinics, like hospitals, is filled with people who are there because of stress (psychological, environmental, emotional, physical, post-traumatic, dietary, blah, blah, etc.). Period. It’s the biggest contributor I know to physical pain, degeneration, disease. Stress is the Big Aggravator.
So we “fight” stress. (Which sounds pretty stressful to me.)
When it’s too much we eat like hell, watch reality shows, drink, shop, medicate (lotta mother’s little helpers helping the day go by out there), do whatever it takes to take time out of the whole tornado whenever we can.
Even if we “fight” stress in “healthy” ways – with treadmills, therapists, “coping strategies”, baggies of carrots and celery and low-fat yoghurt – aren’t we still just demented boxers who are working at better technique?
Why not put the gloves down?
I look at my friend’s radiance and genuine wellbeing, and I think, that’s what we need to create a real future for ourselves and our kids.
We need real time in, not anaesthetized time out.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for the conversation,
kristin
3 Comments:
June 28th, 2010
I was at a theatre workshop over the weekend during which we presented audition monologues. Scary as hell, incredible learning. Wish you’d been there.
Here are some lessons for life, health, and business from that event:
1. Get in or get out. Nothing is worse than watching or working with someone who doesn’t care. And nothing is more attractive than someone who loves what they’re doing so much that you can taste it in the air around them.
2. Risk is beautiful. Courage is beautiful. Both of them make people radiant.
3. Looking like an untalented, incompetent idiot is a horrible, horrible feeling. It’s going to happen to me at some point if I decide to be courageous.
So decide: courage, risk, and falling on my ugliest loser face from time to time OR safety, a very small life, zero development of my gifts, and never ever finding out who I really am.You pick.
4. Realizing that I don’t die when I “fail flamboyantly”- when people think I’m an idiot for trying, when what I produce is mediocre or worse – surviving that sets me free. And freedom is the best gig ever.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for the conversation,
kristin
One Comment:
June 17th, 2010
Here’s something that excites me this week, in terms of choice and human talent.
I have a friend who works at Value Village. In theatre we love VV , where you can get clothes and furniture for an entire cast and crew for about $8. Used fedoras, romance novels, 8-track stereos, kitchen sinks. You name it.
Jane, I’ll call her, knows most of the regulars. She asks you how the kids are doing at university, or how the bathroom redecorating is going.
People love her. Of course they do. She takes great care of relationships at the store.
Then comes a new manager. He’s decided upselling is a great idea.
You know upselling: would you like fries with that burger? Shoe polish with those shoes? A doughnut with that coffee?.
Great idea when the offer makes sense.
Here’s the new non-sense at Value Village.
A pile of batteries will be at Jane’s cash register this morning. She has to offer them to each customer, no matter what, and she’ll be penalized if she doesn’t meet a quota.
This’ll mean her saying to you, would you like a battery with that nightgown? Or, hey, would you love some shoelaces with that paperback?
This is not a joke.
And you’ll look at her, confused, trying to figure out why you need shoelaces in order to read War and Peace or what batteries have to do with your pyjamas.
If you have a curious brain, you’ll ask her what the heck is going on.
So she’ll lose the time she used to have to ask you about the kids.
She’s miserable, of course. She calls it soul-sucking. This is not good business.
Business is about relationships between people, first and foremost, and about offering you something you want in a way that makes us all happy.
I’d eat Kraft Dinner for life before involving my spirit in the nonsense going on at VV.
Here’s the most important thing.
I hope my friend remembers not waste time and energy blaming her manager.
It is always my choice to stay or go.
Preserving my spirit at work is my responsibility.
Let me know what you think, and thanks for the conversation,
kristin
(What makes us happy makes us well.)
June 7th, 2010
My kids have finally driven me crazy. It wasn’t the baby thing or the teenage thing. They’ll be 23 and 21 this summer.
It was them becoming shockingly, mouth-droppingly inspiring human beings that did me in.
My daughter is in China for 5 weeks of adventure. Because she can, she says. She’s taking a break from a master’s degree. The most important thing in doing this degree, she tells me, is making sure that it remains her own adventure every single day. She refuses to do any part of it because of anyone else’s expectations or hopes.
Her self-assuredness takes my breath away.
My son has always wanted to be an actor. Two years ago, he quit one theatre program 5 months in, knowing it was absolutely wrong for him. It was a tough time.
What he did know was that he loved living in Toronto and loved acting. So he got his own apartment, waited tables, and acted anywhere he could.
Something like a year later, he cleared his thousandth table and thought, I don’t want to be a waiter for the rest of my life.
He applied to the best theatre school in Canada, auditioned along with 400 others for 12 spots, and got in. We screamed for minutes on the phone when he heard the news.
I am happier than a whirling dervish for them both.
But.
They make me horribly aware that there are places in my life where I have not aimed high enough. Where I have not taken huge chances to pursue the things I want most. I don’t know that I’ve ever SAID all the things I want most, even to myself, for god’s sake, for fear of failing while looking like an idiot.
I could tear my skin off, this makes me so crazy.
So.
I’ve decided to change some big things. By being more honest about what I want to do and what I no longer want to do. I am going to make this my own adventure.
And I’m scared. I thought it was our job to inspire them, not the other way ’round.
My daughter’s last words before leaving for China were, be bwave, mum. Be bwave.
Tell me. If you were any bwaver, would your life change in any way?
I’d love to hear.
Thanks for the conversation,
kristin
4 Comments:
May 27th, 2010
I keep thinking of this naked guy I had a thing with last week. I wish I could see him again.
I was at a theatre festival, and I was strung out.
By strung out, I mean that I was doing theatre with heaps of people from dawn till the wee hours each morning.
I was feeding meatballs and Nanaimo bars at midnight to an increasingly resentful gut.
And I’d had no solitary time. None. I couldn’t breathe.
I found myself in the hallway outside my hotel room one morning at 5am. My roommate was snoring and I was going insane for the need of some quiet.
I did a bit of yoga in the hallway. That felt good.
I thought I’d meditate for a few minutes, thought I’d try to relax for the first time in days.
I lay on my back in the hallway, palms facing up. I closed my eyes and took one breath.
Then I heard the scream.
The door across the hall was open, and a naked man stood there, mouth wide open. He’d come out of his room to retrieve the newspaper outside his door.
My guess is he thought he’d have some privacy at 5am.
I screamed back.
He screamed again. This time he screamed, I’m sorry. Then he turned and fled back into his room.
I couldn’t meditate after that. (Could you???)
But I’m meditating on it now.
Here’s what I’d like to say to the guy now:
Hey. I’m sorry about the other morning. I’ll bet we were both looking for a bit of quiet time. Quiet time is hard to find in a hotel, in a city that isn’t your own.
Come to think of it, quiet time is hard to find anywhere, anytime, even if you live by yourself.
I’d like to tell him that I think quiet time is worth screaming for, and I feel we’re kindred spirits.
In fact I wonder if we’re all naked, kindred spirits looking for a place to breathe.
Thanks to the naked guy, and thanks to you for the conversation,
kristin
May 13th, 2010
I shouldn’t be writing this. No question. I should be on a chair at home staring at a speck on the wall.
I’ve just come home from a four day meditation retreat.
You know the kind.
They take your watch, your phone, your wallet, and your keys when you get there.
You don’t talk unless it is a part of the meditation.
You don’t talk when someone meets you in a hallway.
You don’t talk while you eat miniscule, grainy, leafy meals.
You don’t talk to your roommate. Just nod and get in and out of the bathroom quickly, and into bed. Which is just as well because these days go from maybe 5 or 6 am (there are no watches to look at) to perhaps 10 or 11pm.
You meditate your face off in between.
This sounds awful.
I loved it.
Loved the quiet, loved meals being made for me, and portions being chosen for me. (I assure you I would have chosen portions seven or eight times larger. I would have chosen desserts, too.)
I loved the singular focus of the work, the focusing on one thing all day instead of making breakfast, who walks the dog, where’s my clean shirt, god is it that time already, ooh, I ate too much porridge, jesus, look at my hair, etc. And all of that before leaving for the office to begin a day of ridiculous multi-multitasking.
I love the way my head emptied and stayed empty.
I loved the way my stomach and body felt like a really great dream. Effortlessly.
I love the way, at the end of it all, I stared at my car and my phone and wondered why I own those things.
I love the way I felt about myself, my lovely man, my kids, and my dog when I arrived home.
Do yourself a favour. Meditate.
Some way, somehow, give it a whirl.
It transforms.
Thanks for the conversation,
kristin
will this issue be important in 10 minute, 10 days, and 10 months?
2010-08-26 21:42:29 by Janice Hughes