“Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.”
~ Susan David
Let's Do It
If I were to stand on the street corner with a sign, it would say:
Do
Your
Work
We all have work to do if we are going to become the best version of ourselves, and whatever it takes to do that, it’s worth doing.
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Lost In Translation
A sign of wisdom is not believing everything you think. A sign of emotional intelligence is not internalizing everything you feel. Thoughts and emotions are possibilities to entertain, not certainties to take for granted. Question them before you accept them.
Have you ever had the experience of listening to another person, usually someone close to you, and hearing one thing only to find out that they were saying something completely different?
Me too.
All.
The.
Time.
It’s like we have a private internal app that converts what someone else says into a different language entirely. A language that we are so familiar with that we don’t think to question it. We simply believe that what we heard is what they meant to say. They meant to judge us, criticize us, correct us, or hurt our feelings, and then we respond accordingly by reacting, defending, retreating, or any number of personal protective mechanisms. At that point, their internal translation app (because we all have one) kicks into gear and converts our response into their internal language. In other words, no pun intended, a lot can get lost in translation.
It’s a crazy, self-perpetuated, vicious cycle that can only be stopped when we are willing to consider that what we heard isn’t necessarily what they said, and then have the courage to go find out.
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You Could
Strapping on my snow shoes outside of Timberline Lodge to head out on my own, I was musing on where to go. Tom, busy getting his skis on to spend a few hours on the slopes, said, You could climb to Silcox Hut.
What?
Silcox Hut is a small rustic lodge nestled into the flanks of Mt. Hood. It sits at about 7000 ft, and to get there from the Lodge means trekking straight uphill for little over a mile while gaining 1000 ft of elevation in the process.
Tom headed for the chair lift, and I headed for the official, mostly flat, snow shoe trail, not intending to head up the steep slope that would get me to Silcox Hut.
The thing is though, I’ve always wanted to see it up close and personal.
After a few steps on the trail, I let me gaze settle on the roof line of the hut way, way, way up the hill, which is when it began to sink in.
I could climb to Silcox Hut.
I could climb to Silcox Hut.
I could climb to Silcox Hut.
With that thought, I set out to do something I’d wanted to do for a long, long time, discovering a few key things along the way:
Make a decision. The first step to accomplishing that long-held desire was to decide to go there. I even said it out loud to no one but me, and maybe God. “I am going to climb to Silcox Hut.” When we give voice to something we could do, we are one giant step closer to actually doing it.
Set milestones. There were trail markers all the way up the slope. Looking up the mountain, I’d pick one as my next resting spot. Sometimes I’d go farther, but I never stopped before at least reaching my next goal. Breaking things up into pieces keeps us moving in the right direction.
Take note of how far you’ve come. Every time I stopped to rest, my gaze would naturally go to how much farther I had to go, and how much steeper the slope seemed to be getting with every step. It made all the difference to look back over my shoulder and take in the distance I had already covered. The antidote to giving up is to remember how far we’ve come.
Linger at the top. Rather than turn around and head back down, I lingered at the top, soaking in the feeling of accomplishment, and the way my lungs and muscles felt for having worked hard on my behalf. The pleasure derived from doing something we set out to do stays with us, reminding us to keep going, even when the going gets tough.
Is there something you’ve long wanted to do?
Well.
You could.
Silcox Hut: Mt. Hood
The Backstory
Lately I’ve been catching myself making assumptions about other people. Looking through the lens of how I see the world, I make my mind up about how they see the world, and proceed accordingly. I’m realizing that I’m missing something important: the backstory
According to wikipedia, the backstory as a literary device provides the background leading up to the present plot. In acting is is the behind the scenes history of a character to help the actor better understand the role they are playing.
Every one of us has a backstory. Experiences that shape who we are today. Personal histories that influence what we believe, what we value, and how we behave.
Before jumping to conclusions about one another, let’s remember that there is always a backstory. And until we know what it is, we don’t have the whole story.
Photo: Juan Pablo Serrano Arenas on Pexels
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Green-Screening Your Life
This morning I texted good friends a photo of us from our snowshoeing adventure on the flanks of Mt. Hood. It was a glorious Pacific NW day, with brilliant blue skies, blazing sunshine, and Wy-East, as he is known to our Native American sisters and brothers, was out in all his glory. It was the kind of day that takes your breath away and reminds you of how amazing it is to be alive, and I wanted to share it.
Almost immediately a text came zooming back.
That’s some impressive green screen work... 😂
It made me laugh out loud.
But you know…he has a point.
It can be hard to tell real from fiction when it comes to what our lives actually look like. It is tempting to put ourselves in the best light possible, not wanting others to see our private struggles. We can carefully curate our lives with a backdrop that displays only that which is Instagram worthy, fearing what others might think if they saw the unfiltered truth of our everyday lives.
I’m not talking about disclosing in public spaces that which is in need of safe haven. There is way too much of that for anyone’s good. What I am advocating is that we find our people. Those with whom we can show up raw and uncensored, and speak our unfiltered truth. People who love us not in spite of our scars and imperfections, but at least in part, because of them. In other words, we need friends who can smell our green screen bullshit a mile away and gently, but firmly, call us on it. Because if I can’t tell you the real story of my life, then you might not tell me yours, and if we can’t see ourselves in one another’s stories, then where can we?
As tempted as I am with every passing year to use one of those nifty little apps that smoothe away my hard-earned lines and wrinkles, I sent this one off as is. What was great about this little text exchange today is that it came from a friend who already knows the real-meal-deal of who I am and what I struggle with. I guess you might call it the kind of friendship that is picture post card worthy. No green screen required.
Drinking Our Own Kool-Aid
According to some research, over 80% of our thoughts are negative, and most of those thoughts are on a continuous loop, returning to us again and again. The problem with our negative thoughts and stories is that we believe them, and the more we listen to these habitual stories, the more familiar, and in an odd way, comforting, they can become.
They are our stories, and we are sticking to them.
But.
Do we have to?
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: No, but it’s hard work giving them up.
If you’re like me, you are familiar with the stories that hold you captive, and recognizing them is our first step to letting them go. We need to cut ourselves a little slack if it takes some time to develop new ones, and we might need some professional help along the way. If so, let’s get it. It will be some of the best money we’ve ever spent.
Believing our stories that have been with us for God-knows-how-long is a little like drinking our own Kool-Aid. We don’t stop to consider that there might be better ways to quench our inner thirst.
Surrender
There comes a point when we have to let go of how we want it to be, and surrender to how it is. Not in a giving up sort of way, but a giving in to the truth as it stands right now. When we surrender, we stop pushing against what we face and work with it instead, we cease fighting against what we don’t want and begin moving toward what we do.
Get Moving
“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” ~ Richard Rohr
“You probably aren’t going to be able to think yourself out of this one Molly.”
Good words offered to me by a good friend during a recent conversation as I sat out on my front porch in the waning light in Washington, while he was on the other end of the phone in the waning light of southern California.
It is easy for me to get too involved with my own feelings for my own good, not to mention the good of everyone around me. I try and think my way to the other side of whatever it is, and, there is a time for sitting with our emotions in order to understand what they are telling us. But then it’s time to get moving, whether we feel like it or not, which, for the record, we probably won’t.
I’m not talking about running away from our emotions. They are, as the 13th century Persian poet, Rumi, reminds us in his poem, The Guesthouse, “…sent to us as a guide from beyond”. However, we all know that any guest can overstay their welcome.
Sitting too long has been referred to as the new smoking, and has been linked to all kinds of health risks. The same goes for sinking into the easy chair of our emotions. The longer we sit and think about them, the harder it is to get up.
In both cases, the key to our wellbeing is to get moving.
(With gratitude to DB)
Photo: invisiblepower on pexels.com
What's Love Got To Do With It?
Valentine’s Day can be rough.
It has become a commercially driven day to express our love for that “special someone” in just the right way.
But what if we don’t have a special someone? What if we have lost them in the myriad of painful ways that mean we are no longer able to share our lives with those we’ve loved? Under those circumstances, Valentine’s Day becomes a reminder of what we’ve lost.
But what if we are happily single? What if we are content sharing our heart with no one but ourselves? Under those circumstances Valentine’s Day can cause us to doubt our choice to go it alone as we field questions from total strangers about how we are going to celebrate a day in which being single seems like a problem.
But what if we don’t feel lovable? What if we have lost sight of our inherent worth simply because we are citizens of the planet, created in the image of the power behind it all, and sent here to love the world within our reach? Under those circumstances, Valentine’s Day becomes a reminder of how far we’ve drifted from our source and our soul.
But what if we don’t feel particularly dazzled by the one we love? What if we have found ourselves in one of those rough patches when it is glaringly obvious that love is as much, if not more of, a choice than a feeling? Under those circumstances Valentine’s Day becomes a reminder that love is far more complicated and much grittier than simple sayings on greeting cards and candy hearts.
Whenever money gets involved with love, it gets tricky. By some estimates consumers will spend in excess of $27 billion. That’s a lot of candy hearts.
So, what’s love got to do with it anyway?
When it comes to Valentine’s Day, who knows.
When it comes to life?
Everything.
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