personal growth – Page 3

looking up

I have had to learn to make decisions. Not everyday decisions like whether to have eggs or oatmeal, but the big, hard decisions. I was so programmed to look up, to let the part of my brain that handled hard calls lay dormant. I would absolve myself of the responsibility for making the wrong choice by staying passive. It was a mystery how some people could see things so clearly and just make a call. Pick the gray tile. Switch our son’s school. Sign the long lease. I was scared of making the wrong choices, my overly analytical brain wanted to feed me all sides of every possibility all the time, giving me just as many reasons to go left as it did to go right. One day after asking my husband for the umpteenth time “What do you think we should do about…”, I woke up to what I was doing. I kept looking up for the answers, and lucky or not for me, my husband would most often solve the problem for me. I asked him, “How do you make the right decision so easily?”. His answer was so simple, “I don’t always know if it is the right decision, but until you make it, and let it play out, you don’t know. If it is right, great, you got there sooner. If it is wrong, great too, you know so you can adjust and change it.”

It was not some big mystery, there was no missing gene in my makeup, it was just the act of deciding. Newsflash to my brain: He didn’t always know which choice was better! What a relief to find this out! I began noticing opportunities for me to practice my new awareness, and becoming more confident in my ability to make choices. It is a muscle you can build. It has to start with letting go of being attached to being right all the time. Being okay with making mistakes. Stepping into uncertainty, and letting go of the outcome.

do it now

You must get involved to make an impact. No one is impressed with the won-loss record of a referee. – Napoleon Hill

One of the things that has changed my life, increased my joy, eliminated dread, and given me incredible satisfaction is making “Do it now” part of my philosophy. It is the secret to staying motivated to exercise, the thought that keeps me focused on speaking my truth, the mindset that has virtually killed procrastination for me. It has gotten me more in touch with my intuition, the inner voice that guides me in the best direction for my growth and well being. This translates on a daily basis into expressing myself by showing appreciation when I feel it, by giving a compliment when I think it, by saying yes to opportunities that come my way without pausing to “think”. In leading my team, it places the responsibility for leadership squarely on my shoulders, as I use “do it now” to acknowledging them for their progress, to train on the spot when the opportunity arises, to hand over the reins when they are ready to take them.

Procrastination is curable, motivation is achievable, you alone can take charge of your life and find fulfillment. Start today, do it now.

its not personal

When they don’t follow up with a promise, when they are late, when they spread rumors, when they don’t do what you expect, or perform to your standards. When they criticize, when they reprimand, when they judge, when they reject you. All of the things that get your hackles up, that hurt your feelings, that leave you feeling disappointed, they are not personal. Everyone is operating to the best of their ability based on their current awareness. Sometimes we are pulled or pushed or happen into circumstances that leave us feeling deflated. Or hurt, disappointed, angry. It’s hard work to pull yourself up and out of the place where you are reacting.

Life will continue to bring you opportunities to learn the lessons you need to learn. The lessons can be tough, they can be painful, they can send us into that place where our chest hurts as old wounds get triggered. Old wounds like “I’m not good enough” or “She loves him more” or “I’m a failure”. But if you can remind yourself that ALL of us are working from the highest place we can, based on our current awareness, and that what people do or say “to you” is not personal. They are also just reacting to their own wounds, and the lesson for you is to be loving, to let the arrows bounce off of you, to see in them the same struggles that you have yourself. This is another step in becoming more self aware. Seeing your reactions for what they are, and letting go. It will continue to show up, but if you continue to let go each time the wounds begin to heal.

hold a place

He was quiet and I could sense he was dealing with some disturbing energy. One of my challenges has been to maintain my neutrality, my positivity, my cool, when people around me are upset. We all have the ability to know, to feel, when someone is dealing with difficult emotions. The danger is always that emotions are like magnets, and it takes self awareness and the ability to remain centered to stay put and not get sucked in. Sucked in to reacting with anger, or worry, or any fluctuation in your own mood. This is especially difficult when one of our hot spots gets triggered. You know what they are, the core issues that seem to repeatedly come up in your life. The need to be right, the need for everyone to like you, the need to be the best, the need to have more, the need to be in control…we all have some variation of these needs/wants, the roots buried deep in our personal story.

So here was my test. My son was upset, the ultra sensitive mom radar was beeping as I intuitively felt his mood. The first thing that popped into my head was “*Alert*Alert*Equilibrium compromised*Dig*Ask questions*Fix*”. My instinct, conditioned I am sure by years of practice, was to fix it. To delve in immediately and see what I could change in his world to bring him back into the comfort zone. “Hold a place for him” was my second thought, thankfully before I could act on the first. I have read about “Holding a place”, but until this moment it was a vague theory that I kind of knew what it meant but not really. In that moment I realized it is a choice to sit back, quiet the voice in your head, and be present for someone. It makes no difference if it is your child, your spouse, your coworker, or even the person waiting behind you in line.

When any human being that is in your life is upset, angry, hurt, depressed, you can be the anchor. You can be the place where they feel safe. You can be the unconditional acceptance that we all need by choosing to listen without judgment, to be present without offering a solution, to hear without reacting. This is what it means to hold a place.

change the channel

Imagine a room. This room has a comfy chair in the center, the kind with a floral print or soft velvety fabric that your grandma may have had. It’s cushy and broken in with down stuffed pillows and rocks a little, and sits in the middle of the room. In the far corner of the room is a TV. This is not a flatscreen, plasma, HD, modern style TV. It’s an old one. The kind of TV you see in old movies, that sits on a stand and looks like a box. It has a dial to change the channels, and maybe even some antennas sticking up from the top. It is beige and a bit dusty, but the picture is still clear and the sound surrounds you.

The room is your mind, and you are sitting in the comfy chair, watching the TV. And you think this is your life. The TV show may be all about stress and all of the things you have to do, how much further along everyone else is than you, all of the stuff you don’t have and never will, and every rejection and failure you ever experienced. Every once in a while a commercial comes on and you are granted a reprieve from the day to day, you see flashes of hope, mini vacations from your current reality.

What I am going to suggest is that you pull yourself out of that comfy chair, and change the channel. If you don’t like what you are seeing, change it. Get up and turn the dial and look for the good. Look for the opportunities, for the kindness, for the abundance. There are multiple channels broadcasting simultaneously, and the shows are hypnotic. So hypnotic that we get sucked into them and believe them to be the only reality we can see. It can be hard to grasp the idea that you can change the channel, that you can take control and shift your focus, but once you realize that not only is it possible, but also necessary to your well being, you can begin to be freed from the tyranny of being controlled by your surroundings.

I use the imagery of changing the channel as a tangible method to shifting my focus. I know that if I am feeling down, or overwhelmed, or out of time, sad, stressed, angry…The channel I am watching will continue showing more of the same. I take a deep breath, pull myself out of that chair, (though sometimes it wants to pull me back down) and change the channel. I change it first to gratitude. I begin saying thank you for the variations that life brings my way, because it shows me how blessed I am. Thank you for the many demands on my time, because it teaches me to focus on the important things. Thank you for the challenges, because they help me to grow.

I am not going to say that it is easy, but with practice it does get easier. It gets easier to catch yourself and remember to change the channel, though sometimes I need a nudge. The best part is that I know there is so much more than the small TV in the corner of my mind. I stand up from the chair, and I look around my mind, and I see a door. I have tried at times to open it, pushing against it, trying to force it to open, but it resists. The more I push the more shut it is. So I let go. I stopped searching for the key, pushing for the answer, asking everyone else what to do. I stood back, arms at my side, and let go. What happens next is that the door begins to open. As light begins to shine into the room, I can see a small plaque next to the door that says “door opens in”.

From here begins the journey into consciously getting to know myself by looking in and letting go.

obscurity

From a very young age we are taught that the more attention we received, especially for being a “good boy” or “good girl”, the more we were praised and accepted by those that mattered to us. We will even choose “bad” behaviors to get attention, as any parent (or pet owner!) knows. The better we did at fitting in, excelling at school and earning the gold star, being the best player on the team, earning the trophy, the more status we received. This began the pattern of searching for acknowledgment from the outside world, through comparing ourselves to how we rate with others.

The yearning to be famous is evidenced all over social media, as we broadcast the snippets of our perfect moments, creating the illusion of a glamorous life. These fragments of captured realities are a double edge sword, showing the rest of the world what is possible at the same time as it says “I have this and you don’t”. There is nothing wrong with wanting more than you have, this is how we reach goals we set. The awareness that has to happen, however, to truly appreciate what you attain, is that you already have everything you need right now. If you are constantly seeking, approval, fame, more, love, money, peace, they will always stay just out of your reach. The only way to truly have any of the things you seek is to see them in your life right now.

From the Tao de Ching
“Fish cannot leave deep waters” – for when they rise to the surface to see the world, the net swoops down and catches them. Practice living under the radar, stop measuring yourself against others, abstain from drawing attention to yourself, allow others to shine

prove them right or prove them wrong

Which one are you? Does it depend on who you are trying to prove it to? I wanted to prove to my landlord at our first location that they were right to believe in us. I wanted to prove to my family that the money and time and help they gave us along the way was worth it. But I also wanted to prove them wrong, (“them” left unnamed), who thought we would fail. They ones who doubted, who thought it was too much work, too hard, that failure was inevitable. That it would never work, that bet against us. Ultimately proving yourself is all about external stuff, and if that is what it takes to get you moving forward, that’s okay. Until you realize that no matter how much you achieve or succeed or learn, there will be an ever growing ratio of people to prove right and people to prove wrong. Hit the light switch. Look at what you are doing, which is looking outside for the pat on the back, the “good job”, the “I knew they could do it”. Raise you hand above your head, bend your elbow, and give yourself the pat that you have been striving for. Feels good.

intelligence vs. awareness

I am a reasonably intelligent person, but by no means more so than average. My formal education has consisted of 12 years of school, with an attempt and fail at college. In spite of my ambivalence towards “school”, I love to learn. It took me a very long time to realize this, and to embrace the fact that although I didn’t follow the path that was preached as the way to success, college, grad school, career, I am living the life of my dreams.

There is nothing wrong with wanting more for your kids than you had, and this was the driving reason my parents had for working 7 days a week in the businesses they founded and operated to give us the opportunities that they did not have. They struggled and worked countless hours, days, years, in order to send us to private school, pay for piano lessons and any other extracurricular activities that we desired. Looking back I know that they sacrificed their own pleasures to make sure we never lacked. I know that I am incredibly blessed, not just because of the childhood that I had, but because of the example that they set for me. Once I got over the self inflicted regret over not following the path they had laid out for me of higher education, I was able to clearly see that I have learned the most valuable lessons from them as my teachers.

I have learned that hard work, consistency, kindness and gratitude are the secrets to a life of fulfillment, at least for me. I always give my all, this leaves no room for regret. I have learned to be real, to be honest always, and to not fear rejection. I strive to always be kind. Most of all, I have learned the secret of gratitude. So although I am not extra intelligent, I am becoming self aware. I am a constant student of my own nature, and as I continue to understand myself and my motivations, it gives me greater perspective on how to live my life. Awareness gives me the insight to see that I always have a choice, whether to react or to respond. To pause, look inside, and respond whenever I catch an erupting reaction, and to use the insights about myself to better understand the people I meet. Self awareness has the added side effect of turning on a part of your brain that helps you also become more aware of others and their needs, struggles, and desires.

Learning this about myself has taught me how much of an impact I am having on my own kids. I see them and I am grateful, proud. They are exemplifying the qualities that I see in my own parents, hard work, consistency, kindness, and gratitude. I practice love and acceptance with them, and work to release them from any expectations I may subconsciously project on them. I know that they alone are the determiners of their own personal path to a life of fulfillment, and for this awareness I am Blessed with a capital “B”.

give up to go up

When you truly understand leadership you realize that you have given up the right to wake up and think its about you. When you achieve a position, you may at first think it is, wondering about the perks, your time off, the parking space, what you are going to get. But in order to mature as a leader, to move from managing to leadership, you have to come to the realization that leadership is not about you. Its about helping the people who are looking up to you for guidance.

That being said, it does have to start with you. In order for me to get to this understanding, I had to first work on myself. I had to give up the notion that just because I was the boss, I knew best. I had to learn about myself, what motivates me, what triggers me, and how to be more open as a human being. I had to stop being a people pleaser, and instead change that into being a value adder. I had to learn that we all have basic human needs, and it all drills down to wanting to be loved. Learning about myself and how my subconscious works, operating just under the surface but controlling everything I do, has helped me to understand this about others as well. I am a servant leader. I am here to support and guide the people that are looking to me, to sometimes step in and take the reins when they need it, and to know when to let go. It is a constant dance, with mostly minor adjustments to stay the course, and less and less of the bigger interventions as the team grows and matures in their leadership abilities.

Leadership is a constant process, without a destination other than to be always learning and growing, serving and guiding.

comparisons

If you are comparing yourself to someone else, you will always fall short. Its a no win game if you are trying to be better than someone else. It can be a tough thing to unlearn. In school we are rewarded for being at the “top of the class” and I have always been super competitive. As I was coaching a leader one of the things this talented person was concerned with is not being able to perform as well as someone else in their organization. Even though they had proven themselves on multiple occasions to their employer through delivery of exceptional results, and were operating a a high level leadership, the deep insecurities we all share were erupting to the surface.

I believe that at a deep level, we share a fear that they are not good enough. Despite external markers of success, even the most confident people you know are often hiding from that old secret. It is a belief that many of us inadvertently picked up at some point in our youth. It could have been your well intending parents who praised your sibling for things you could not do, a rejection from an early crush or relationship, being picked last during PE time and time again, a teacher who labeled you as unmotivated, a not too kind stepparent that told you that you would never amount to anything, even loving parents who just wanted you to “be somebody”. There are as many causes as there are people, and I can assure you that the volume of the population that are trying to prove those people wrong is exceeded only by the number that are stuck still living those old stories.

What has to happen to be free of the insane belief that you are not good enough is to realize that you picked that up at a time when you were vulnerable, and that they are not a reflection of you. Instead, they are projections of other people’s own insecurities, and you don’t have to carry that torch. The way to be free from comparing yourself to others is to know that you are valuable in and of yourself. You are a unique individual like no one else on this planet, and if you are still alive it is because your work is not done. You have a purpose and a mission, even if you don’t see what it is yet. So stand up tall and give yourself the hug or pat on the back you need, and work to always be the best you that you can be. You will make mistakes, that’s ok. We are all human beings, and as such are perfect yet imperfect, and life is about making mistakes, learning and moving forward again.

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”
― Marcus Aurelius