Gratitude Practice Bulls**t

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Self care, mindfulness, gratitude practices…the fad-words of therapy and self improvement. I hate that good things get co-opted and lose meaning when they become trendy.

The gratitude practice thing has been on my mind lately. The way I’ve tended to see it presented: name 3 good things before bed every day! Journal! Etc. Well, the way I see this show up for people is, “I know I should just try to be more grateful,” and “So many people have it worse off, I know I should be happy,” and overall just feeling bad for NOT being grateful, or feeling like a failure when they can’t. I’ve experienced depression. Naming a good thing is different from feeling a good thing, and trying to force it tends to feel like “My feelings are wrong”. How is that supposed to help anything?

I know that, in the long term, if someone can keep up with a journal practice of naming gratitudes like that, it can change a thought process. However, I also know how difficult that can be when you’re not feeling it. Going against the grain, requiring discipline, sometimes these are not really within reach.

What I realized recently, for myself, is to focus on the PRACTICE aspect instead of the GRATITUDE aspect. Instead of forcing the gratitude, if I engage in the things I feel grateful for, I, guess what? FEEL GRATEFUL!

Maybe this is just a repackaging of dopa-mining. While this is a new and growing acknowledged need, at least for people with ADHD, we still have a culture of work-before-play and the concept that discipline and work should come before joy. But if this packaging helps, I’m all for it. Of course it helps a bit that my gratitude practice, running, kinda fits into a “should” as well. Exercise is healthy, I’ve paired it with pickup errands, it’s currently checking off a todo item of a training plan, etc.

By doing a thing I enjoy, the gratitude comes easily. Running has been a gratitude practice for me for decades now, albeit one I haven’t always had access to, and I’ve only just realized it as a gratitude practice. Yes, going through years of NOT being able to run due to chronic illness makes me extra grateful for the sheer fact when I’m out, but it’s not just that. (3 months back and I’m finally past the phase of tearing up every time I’m out.) I glee at the beauty of the big poofy clouds and blue skies. I smile at the ornament someone put on the teeny little bush. I awe at the colors of autumn leaves or spring flowers and the dewdrops on berries that look like little beards. I stop to take a picture of the pickles in the Little Free Rock Library. I wave at neighbors. I feel smug about completing a run before the rain starts. I’m grateful for generous neighbors and laugh at the objects I attempt to run with. I pause to watch the buffleheads dip below the serene pond. I get the endorphins of the running itself, and the influence of the inspiring music on my playlist. The gratitude comes on its own.

A Little Free library, shaped like a house with 4 floors, branch pillars, rocks, and 3D printed pickles.
Little Free Rock Library in my neighborhood

In our capitalistic economy of trade, the impression that sacrifice has to come first, needing to “earn” the ability to feel good is strong. There is a lot of strife in the world today and survivor’s guilt, privilege guilt, might suggest we should lean into suffering. Who am I to be out running in joy instead of out joining protests?

Well, it’s not “instead of”. When I get home from a run, I’ve shaken off stagnation inertia. I feel my own ability to have impact and less helpless. I have a desire to connect. I’ve nourished myself so I have more to give. I’ve had time away from the news to gain perspective that despite suffering, there is peace to be had in glimpses by nature. Me depriving myself of gratitude does not make things better for anyone. On a more personally spiritual side, I have a belief that the creation of joy is its own magic to send positive energy and love into the world.

If you consider creating gratitude instead of finding it, what does that look like for you? Does it make “have a gratitude practice” sound more appealing? How does it connect you with others?

Berries with raindrop beards!

Difficulty in Celebrating

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I’ve long felt the culture around me has lost sight of the significance of marking rites of passage. I’ve blogged before on the value of Divorce Parties. More recently, in a community I’m in, my teacher* encouraged us to celebrate progress around a project. What did I do to celebrate?…..I fell into tears of grief and sadness!

Difficulty celebrating is not new for me. I cried at my college graduation, not from leaving friends behind or honoring the work I did to graduate a year early with honors, but, because I still felt like I was letting my parents down. There was a leadership award I had not pursued, so I must not have tried my best. I “should have done more to make them proud.”

I’ve come a long way from living my life for others, but the times I’ve leaned into celebrating have often been derailed. I’m a December baby, so birthday celebrations are overshadowed by Christmas. My divorce party was overshadowed by my birthday. The things I’ve been most proud of in my life are not the things my family understand to have value. So celebration has become fraught for me, with anticipation of disappointment or feeling Unseen…and that little voice creeps up to say, “See? You must not deserve it.”

So I had tears, and let that part of me be Seen in the group. I grieved the past times I’ve not been able to celebrate, so I can make room for the joy. It is a reminder that in all transitions, there are both gains and losses. Grief and celebration are two sides of the same coin, honoring rites of passage. Those tears honored the letting go of the fears and impostor syndrome that made the project difficult. Now that that’s done, NOW I can feel the pride of accomplishment and inspiration of the work. Now, I can seize the joy and celebrate, and find amusement in the extra way I had to claim the celebration as Mine with a different timeline. Goodbye strife, congratulations Me on a job well done, with extra credit to boot!

* Gratitude to Francesca de Grandis, for creating a safe space and community and fostering growth and healing!

The Value of Holding

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Containment. It’s a focus of organization and tidying efforts, the purpose of books and journals, homes, and wombs. We value independence and often part of what gets us there is being held and supported. It is space to learn and develop the skills we need before venturing out. It is also a place to return to when we need to rest and recoup.

Schools don’t often hold us in the way we need, for adulting skills, homeownership, life challenges. This is part of what we can create in a coaching relationship. It is a unique sandbox to explore real desires, values, and implementation of new ideas. We can have fun in the playground of exploring using your voice in the real world in a fulfilling way.

I grew up inheriting perfectionism from my family; this makes trying new things quite anxiety inducing. Youtube instructions are helpful, but it’s not the same as having Dad there when I attempt a home repair. The “what ifs” of doing it wrong, water spewing everywhere!! might be minimal chance, but a high cost to deal with. Presence and handholding can make all the difference.

One tool I’ve been learning is to embrace, “I’m trying a hard thing, it’s ok for it to feel hard.” This permission to feel the challenge takes some work. Being a good student in school, I learned things “should be easy.” If they weren’t, it meant somehow that I was defective and shameful, not simply “new at it”.

I also break things into steps. Some steps are scarier than others. If I can at least tackle some of the easy steps, I can get started, instead of the fear paralyzing me. Once I’m started, sometimes I feel the courage to try “a little bit more” and make a lot more progress!

How have you tackled scary new challenges? What did you find helpful?

Have you ever considered how fear of success might be holding you back?

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Fear of failure is a more commonly known topic. But fear of success is a very real thing as well. Exploring our tendencies to sabotage the things we want can be useful.

What do you imagine *success* looks like in your case? Sometimes we put it so high on the pedestal, we get neck pain looking up at it. We can imagine a fear of heights at the top, so to speak.

We’ve become so familiar with struggle and strife, and our society has put so much pressure on an ethic of hard work that sometimes we get lost in simply working hard for the sake of being hard working, and the imagined elevation, success, or respect that that entails. Sometimes “success” is envisioned to finally mean not having to work so hard..which has the appeal of rest, but then, oh no, might mean we’re not hard working anymore!

Or it’s a matter of purpose. We’ve been striving for so long, if we finally achieve…then what? What do we do with our lives once we “make it”? It can be scary to not know what that next aim is. Maybe the tension we carry is how we know who we are, and we lose our sense of self without something to strive for.

One “in” to understanding any fear of success you may have is to state the outcome definitively. “I WILL _______”. You will get a sense of how much you believe it as truth, but the fear may pop up and say hello. I tried this around a grant I had applied to. What I thought was a fear of failure and unworthiness was in good part, a fear of all the responsibilities I envisioned would come with my stated goals, and I was shying away from that responsibility!

Once we identify the thoughts that are holding us back, we can make changes. Maybe it’s further defining the goals, becoming more specific, or exploring other ways it could look…or other ways we can *get support* to not carry the weight of it all by ourselves. Talking about our goals with others can both keep us in touch with our sense of inspiration and clear blocks delaying our process. If you’re interested in having a conversation, reach out to me and we can schedule a time to chat!

Poop for Yourself

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My blogging here has obviously fallen by the wayside. It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped having “thoughts” but I’ve found myself in the very circular loop of not bothering to write, if I don’t have an audience, and of course I won’t have an audience if I don’t say anything. The more social media grows, well, I can’t say I have any desires to be an “influencer”. My fears pop up of being “canceled” or, really, in any way misinterpreted or “wrong”. And since I can’t be perfect, and SEO is something of an everchanging mystery to me that I don’t really have desire to learn, it’s easier to just back away quietly.

So for now, this journal isn’t for you, it’s for me! My coaching relationships move along in their real-time formats, one on one with people, and I get good feedback. I like *conversation* not monologuing. I like knowing how my words land, that I’m speaking about something useful, that I’m being helpful. I don’t get that from a one-way blog.

One thing I’ve told my self-employment clients is to keep a business journal. Since I’ve probably adequately let this site die off to the point of not having any readers, for now I’m going to use this place *as* part of my business journal! Relationships are powerful, and I am trying to develop a relationship to my website. That means engagement. Familiarity with writing more frequently. What do I want to use this space for?

Something I’ve been working on personally lately, is to stop getting caught in decision paralysis. I can be something of a perfectionist and a public forum and SEO evaluators play into that. I’ve learned I can get a lot more done if I stop caring so much about making it perfect. Progress, not perfection, and all that, but overdone phrases don’t land. For me, lately, it’s “Just give a :poop: (can I even use emojis here?) This mentality has been helpful lately. As I used to say…”S*** happens but it beats constipation.” I’ve spent too much time constipated and it’s not comfortable! So here’s my s*** for you to read :P

We didn’t interview three people before hiring for insulation work to be done, and now the job is done. I don’t time myself to “practice for a half hour” when I sit down at the piano, I just have a goal to do something with it daily- maybe one song/page, only more if I feel like it. *and it’s working*. So for now, frequency not quality. Poop can also make good fertilizer, so by spreading my words around here, maybe something green can grow.

Potato plants I grew in my backyard! It just took doing, not doing perfectly.

Power Thoughts

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My spiritual study today (Reading “Goddess Initiation” by Francesca de Grandis) was a reflection on a time I felt powerful, and recalling the feelings of it. My ability to stay with the recollection was fleeting, and I instead found myself going to my head, about the definition of power….which was also a useful exercise!

Power. What associations does it bring up? For me, I think of strength, energy, influence. Politics, misuse, power-over vs mutual-power in abuse dynamics. With those thoughts, it makes more sense why I have trouble staying with ‘feeling powerful’.

If I summon the experience of feeling powerful while rock climbing, the strength and accomplishment of having conquered a challenging route, I never linger in that feeling. I belay down and look to the next challenge, instead of truly embracing the sense of power in the moment. But if I go to the feeling I relate to my work with clients, I don’t ‘claim’ it. I feel honor, touched to be a part of my client’s growth, and I feel permeable. It’s the client’s work, so I don’t feel the power is mine.

I also have an aversion to misusing power. I’ve seen it, experienced it, and I do not want to subject anyone to it. I am one who believes in mutual power, supportiveness. It took me a long time to learn about personal power, permission for boundaries, and how my personal power doesn’t mean I have to clash with someone trying to have power over me, nor is it something to give it up to subdue them. And apparently this is my next phase of the work; not just utilizing personal power in fleeting moments, but wielding and embracing it. Learning to trust myself with right use of power, and perhaps spend more time feeling the potential, not just kinetic power. Cognitively, I know my potential is great, and so once again, something I shy away from with some intimidation. I sometimes push away my power as too much responsibility.

I wonder, and look forward to seeing, how embracing my power might change me. Power is also choice. I can imagine a greater assertiveness, an elevated level of life satisfaction when I take more initiative for hobbies. Mutual and supportive power are not the only forms to be nurtured. What small steps can you take in the next week to embrace your personal power?

He-Man embracing his power!
He-Man embracing his power!

Awesome: May Be Habit-Forming

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This past year, COVID has thrown a lot of people out of routine. Habits can all the more supportive as a point of grounding! A friend of mine told me about “Atomic Habits,” by James Clear, and it enhanced my life more than I expected! Clear offers worksheets on his website that accompany his book. I downloaded them, but haven’t spent time with them, but the book still proved useful in making some habits.

Even without setting habits intentionally, I found two of them naturally emerge and stick. The benefit of simply reading the book brought the topic into mindfulness; I’ve found this true with other productivity books as well. By engaging with the material, I feel inspired. It surprised me how immediate the addition of these actions were! The habits are small, easy, and create an immediate sense of reward. These qualities naturally sustain them. I now have a more welcoming experience as I enter the bedroom, because the bed is made. When I leave the bedroom in the morning, I feel accomplished, in only a handful of minutes! I’ve built motivation to keep racking up the ‘wins’ and maybe even confident enough to tackle some harder tasks.

Clear’s book addresses the role and interplay of identity in habits, which is an astute and useful reminder. It refreshingly takes the habit out of the realm of success or failure (and therefore pressure and shame). In this case, habit tracking apps might have added to a sense of drudgery, and cost me an additional benefit. Instead of introducing a measure to judge my discipline, maintaining these habits gets to be a form of self-love. I now perform daily acts of service to myself and honor the commitment I’ve made, and that brings me joy.

In these tiny ways of aligning my actions with my desired identity, I’m saying I’m worthy of the quality of life the habits offer. Cutting corners can be easy, and when it happens in too many arenas, you lose the shape of life you intended. There are some days where self care feels harder, where life brings daunting challenges. Useful habits won’t prevent that, but they can help build some resiliency to managing big stress, because you’ve built in a system to remind you, “You matter.“

Have you read “Atomic Habits”? If so, what was your experience? Let’s keep talking about it and keeping our habits in focus! I’ll post an update about habits that didn’t stick so easily in the future (unless keeping up blogging is one of them ;) !

A Yayful Lack of Toilet Paper

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I ran out of toilet paper this morning.

And I’m glad!

Typically I do my grocery runs on the way home from the gym at night.  However with urgent priority status attained, it meant shopping earlier in the day.

Rather than just driving over to the store, I went for a more literal “grocery run”. The best part was the walk home.

 

  • I got sunlight
  • I got to say hi to strangers
  • I took pictures of pretty flowers
  • I smelled the roses!
  • I heard the rustling of the wind through the palm trees
  • I reflected on my decision to run to the groceries, how I wouldn’t have dreamed of such a thing as a kid.
  • My inner child came out and swung the bag of TP back and forth playfully

I didn’t quite get to the point of singing to myself, but there’s always next time. :) For now, it was a lovely break from staring at the computer and dealing with some other, seemingly endless tasks. This one I can call complete, and I can say I most definitely have smiled today.  The vibrancy of the world around us can be therapeutic! When was the last time you took a walk outside?

 

The Value of Novelty

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This year, I’ve decided to take on adventures of learning new skills. It’s easy to get lost in routines, doing the things we know, and sometimes we start taking them for granted, and feeling less benefit from them. There’s a lot of value in taking on new challenges and pushing outside of our comfort zones!

Taking on something new deliberately exposes us to uncertainty. The ability to tolerate, and maybe even embrace uncertainty is an ability that will serve us well in all aspects of life! It builds self trust and reduces worry. By being choiceful about exposure to uncertainty, we can be more likely to have a good experience with it. And by shifting our perceptions, we may be more likely to have an “adventure” than a “catastrophe”.

So, while I went into the first class unsure what to expect, not knowing anyone, I trusted it would all be ok, the instructor would not push us to anything dangerous, and I welcomed the new experience. Even this step, engaging in openness to trust someone to guide, can be a challenge for some people, and may carry its own benefits.

Some people like having company when they try new things; some familiarity can sometimes be helpful, and sometimes it’s good to walk into newness completely alone. Through this process, I have made new friends, and it’s been fun to bond as classes and our skills progress. We share tips with each other about what works for us, and revel in how much progress has been made; the timidity and fear of the first day compared to our abilities now! So in addition to developing a new skill, I’ve also developed a new sense of community. Exposure to other people’s experiences, whether about the skill you’re embracing and how they learn, or other interests, is valuable.

Perhaps most importantly in this experience, I’ve learned about myself; my level of sociability, approachability, optimism, courage, my learning style, and how my self-esteem has grown. And I’ve incorporated something new into my personality by taking on a new hobby. As self employed, it’s easy to get lost in the sense of “I should always be working on my business”. This codependence isn’t healthy, however, and invites procrastination and stagnation. By making this shift to invest not just in my businesses, but also investing in myself, I feel like more of a whole, interesting person. I support my business not just to be successful, but also so my business can support me.

In the mental health field, “self care” is frequently discussed, but it can sometimes end up feeling like another homework assignment, without the amount of fulfillment that self development or self-nurturance may provide. There is a difference between engaging in a maintenance activity that might be somewhat relaxing, like coloring or a bubble bath, but not deepening, versus a sense of achievement and progress. Learning a new skill can have a longer half-life of joyful returns than an activity that brings satisfaction only when we are actively participating.

Continuing to engage in challenges has been encouraged to prevent cognitive decline in age. It exercises our brain, and reminds us our personalities and identities are not ‘set’, and therefore facilitate more willingness to engage in other new things. Challenge also helps give us perspective on life; when we do familiar things, it may be easy to go to judging ourselves when we make a mistake. We “should” know better. With a new challenge, however, ‘failure’ or mistakes are easier to accept. We can find more compassion for ourselves knowing that imperfection may be circumstantial; our expectations of ourselves may be more reasonable. If you struggle with perfectionism, taking on a new challenge may help!

Learning to Skate

Personally, I’ve found I particularly like about taking on new physical challenges, as there is a tangible experience of progress. Learning new information, knowing something, can be useful, but forgotten. When I am learning not just with my mind, but also in body, it feels more incorporated. I find it fascinating, the dual process of learning both mentally and physically; how something that starts out challenging becomes easy, how something scary becomes as innate as walking. Being able to do something I couldn’t do before, something more demonstrable, gives me more pride than ‘knowing’ something.

If it’s been a while since you’ve taken on a new skill, maybe it’s something to consider. What have you always wished you could do? Run a marathon? Knit? Speak a new language? Would you get satisfaction from taking a cooking class or learning to write an app? Is there some interest you’ve put off for the sake of ‘not enough time’ that you could actually be making some time for? What new learning adventure would you like to embark on? What new things have you tried recently, and how have they left you feeling inspired to do more with your time?

Get Out! The biggest challenge to fitness

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Some days I wake up wanting to stay in my cozy pajamas, make some eggs, and have a mocha. Today was one of those days. I saw the sunshine beckoning through the window, though, knowing that in this rainy season, this might be a good opportunity.

But..so comfy in my bed!

I spent a few minutes laying there, evaluating. Mentally reviewing my schedule for today. The possibility of exercise later in the day, while possible, did not feel likely to happen. And it wouldn’t include that glorious sunshine.

Today, the value of a somewhat cozy, indulgent morning could not outweigh the value of being able to say, “I ran today”. I ran to avoid future regret.

Intrinsic rewards for getting out.

Intrinsic rewards for getting out.

I approached the traffic light a half mile from my house and found it already to my direction, reinforcing that my run was a good decision. And then there was the sunshine, and the view. Yup, glad to be out.

It wasn’t the most fantastic run I’ve had. But as I drove to work, I reveled in the deeper effects of my choice. Motivation unlocked! Feeling confident, alive, positive! I want to hug the world! I’m eager to start on my tasks for the day!

One of the biggest challenges to fitness is frequently inertia. Making the decision to DO IT. Once started, the workout may be good or bad, but nothing can take away from you the fact that you stepped up and made a decision to honor yourself, and move toward your goals.

Empower yourself today! If you want help breaking that inertia and another voice of encouragement to start moving, reach out and let me inspire and support you!

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