A letter from your future self

I was reading a book on accomplishing goals this morning and came across an exercise where you imagine yourself one year in the future and then write a letter to the you of today.  It’s a fun thing to think about.  I’m sure there are variants of this exercise out there in various books about visualization and manifesting but something made it stand out to me today.

Five years ago when I was trying to fit into big corporate America I would have certainly hoped that the coming year would bring more money, better projects, true love,  and everything else I’ve ever wanted. I’ve always had plenty on the want list and the to-do list but even so the odds were that the next year wouldn’t look all that different from the current one.  I might have renovated a room or made it to a travel destination but the day to day stuff didn’t vary that much.

This last year I’ve made so many changes and taken so many risks that the one thing I’m certain of is that one year from today will look different from today. I’m not sure how or in what way but there is so much in motion now that it can’t possibly stay the same. Some projects will succeed and move into a new phase, others will fail and be put away. This blog (had better) settle into a pattern that feels right to me and the readers.  All that change is a little bit scary but mostly one big relief – I’ve finally stopped treading water! I may not be swimming with great style but even flailing around tends to attract help. Big risks simply can’t be maintained as risks for very long – they turn into other things before you know it.

I’m not sure what my 2010 self has to say to my 2009 self besides beaming pride for trying all these things and promises that true love stands a better chance of appearing in the next twelve months than it did five years ago.  The more “me” I am the more likely that the right things will come into my life.

What does your future self have to tell you?

Technorati Tags: design your life, risk taking, visualization

Volunteering is not a cure

There is a lot of advice out there that has about as much depth as the message in a greeting card.  It sounds good on the surface but when you go to apply it, something doesn’t fit.  Years ago I was unhappy with the region where I was living and where my career was going so I looked around for some tips on feeling better.  What I found was a lot of advice, similar to this article by Susan Jeffers that promised that the path to feeling better about just about anything was to stop thinking about yourself and volunteer for anything – just serving others would fix everything. The real problem with this kind of advice that speaks to ‘everyone’ is that if you’re a person that doesn’t fit that mold it’s not socially acceptable to speak up.  When was the last person you heard say ‘I volunteered at X and I hated it.”

While I’m all for volunteering as a form of social participation, it isn’t a treatment for depression or any other form of mental illness or social anxiety unless it’s being coordinated by a counseling professional. Sometimes a little more thought about self, and dealing with personal issues, may need to come before extensive thinking about others.  Again, an issue of balance more than one extreme over another.  If you hate your job and you volunteer after work to feel better about it – wouldn’t everyone be better off if you found a job you liked and did only a little volunteering?  Angry, frustrated, unhappy volunteers can be a drain on the very people they’re trying to help.  And in a sense, they’re not there for others but rather to use them to make themselves feel better.

The other fallacy that’s out there is that all volunteering is the same. It isn’t by a long shot.  I’ve tried enough of them to know it’s ok to say this one isn’t for me and try something else.  Organizations hate that because they hate training as much as any company but everyone will win when you find the right fit and you will eventually.  Sometimes it’s a matter of the work, sometimes it’s values or maybe just the way it’s run.  I briefly volunteered for an organization that did horse-back riding therapy for disabled kids – I shared the values, loved working with the kids and had no experience with horses whatsoever which the organization just waved away.  When a horse reared away from another inexperienced handler in front of an oncoming car I had to conclude that their need for volunteers had outweighed good safety standards and training.  Sometimes good intentions aren’t enough. The organization closed down a few years later.  I love the volunteering that I’m doing now – it suits my skills, my personality and my lifestyle.  In part that’s because I took time out ( a few years) to work on myself and what I wanted out of life first.

If you volunteer and love what you’re doing, great!  But if you’ve not felt ‘that feeling’ that ‘everyone’ describes then maybe that’s a sign that you have other things that need your attention more; maybe you need to volunteer with yourself for awhile or find another opportunity to give your time that may be a better fit.  Keep any existing commitments though – it’s not doing anyone a good turn to just walk out.

Technorati Tags: how to be happy, volunteering

The ego isn’t necessarily evil

I’ve recently concluded that the ego is getting an undeservedly bad rap, if it even really exists. It’s not like the ego is a kidney that can be identified on an x-ray;  Freud came up with the term and like most pioneers he got a lot of things wrong. But we continue to carry the concept forward and I’ve read several authors recently that proclaim it to be the number one obstacle to well, just about everything. The argument made by established self-help authors like Wayne Dyer and wanna be gurus like Ekhart Tolle is that humans are made in the image of [insert preferred spiritual source] which does not have an ego and therefore we gain elevation and enlightenment if we move closer to said spiritual source by eliminating the ego as much as possible.  I’m paraphrasing pretty heavily but you’ve probably encountered this concept somewhere already.  The flaw in this argument is that we all have egos and thus if we were created in a source’s image or divided from that source, or designed in any way then the ego may be misunderstood, like having an appendix, but it’s there for a reason and serving a necessary purpose. Any time we seek to sublimate or deny a core part of ourselves we create negative consequences which is something Freud acknowledged as well.

That doesn’t mean I’m advocating for “egotistical” behaviors – that’s simply going overboard in the opposite direction.  And most of the truly ego-overloaded people I’ve known had rock-bottom self-esteem underneath all the bravado.  I think the universal challenge in being human that is being overlooked is the one of finding balance: the right midpoint between “I” and “we”, how to follow your bliss and still get the garbage out, play and work, work (of any sort) and care for children/pets/elderly, traveling to expand your horizons and staying home to cultivate them.

In place of the ego and the id, I prefer to think in terms of Martha Beck’s ‘social self’ and ‘essential self’, the first being equivalent to the ego in terms of being in charge of social interactions and behavior – why we wear deodorant, try not to say mean but true things, and all the other stuff that wouldn’t be an issue if you lived alone on a desert island with no expectation of seeing anyone ever again. Whereas the essential self is the sense of “me-ness”  that would still exist on that desert island, ageless, eternally delighted with sparkle crayons, etc.  Here too, there is a balancing act but there is acknowledged value in both aspects – one part without the other would be fundamentally unwhole.  We are, after all, each created whole.  We don’t see physical growth from baby to teenager and beyond as the correction of flaws so why should spiritual and personal growth be any different?

That’s my take on it, you may see it differently – please share your thoughts in the comments:-)

Technorati Tags: guru, Health and Happiness, life design

Perspective can be tricky

Every few years I get myself up before dawn, pack my camera bag, and head out to the tulip fields in Skagit Valley. I don’t go every year because I don’t want it to become so repetitious that I fail to see in new ways. Even in the early hours before anything is open, there are other photographers about and people trying to avoid the traffic rush, but it’s rare to hear another voice. There is something about being in the quiet fields in the early morning that lends itself to deep thinking and slightly quirky analogies.

The scholar Joseph Campbell described three groups of people in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces :

• Those who heed a powerful inner call and slog through life’s misfortunes in pursuit of it
• “The multitude of men and women [who] choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines”
• And “those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight truly is desperate”

I think it’s fair to say that the last group contributes a fair number of cases to the family court system. Too often in trying to help, we speak from a single point of reference, similar to looking down tulip rows to the horizon.  There’s no getting around the fact that the curve of the earth combined with the nature of the human eye will create the optical illusion that parallel rows appear to angle towards each other to a single point on the horizon.  It seems like an inevitable destination. The illusion is so powerful that even knowing this, most of us are still a little startled if we walk straight down the row into the field only to find that it doesn’t finish anywhere near the landmark that originally marked that point. A person standing ten rows away will see the rows come together at a different place although possibly with the same erroneous landmark. The reality is that each row ends in a different spot and that whatever the goal, both parties are probably going to have to step over some rows to achieve it.

I don’t know how many photographs of tulip rows marching towards that vanishing point are taken each year but it’s a lot.  I can tell that because almost all of the other photographers have their cameras safely attached to a tripod at chest height. It easily could be that they are seeing something that I’m not, but I can guarantee that they aren’t seeing what I am because it’s impossible to do so from that kind of vertical and horizontal distance.  Unfortunately there are a lot of photography books that imply that a tripod is what distinguishes a ‘real’ photographer from a tourist and it quickly becomes habit along with avoiding the mud (some of those unconscious civic rules Campbell referred to.) But sometimes getting your knees dirty and breaking a few of the unspoken rules can lead to a whole new perspective.  Suddenly the tulips aren’t diminutive and sweet but giants reaching for the sky or an entire universe of water droplets on a single petal. In the same way, some kids need the rules of organized sports while others could be more positively influenced by watching Star Trek reruns and others still by being given a camera. Trying out different perspectives may open new doors and new solutions.

Technorati Tags: hero saga, lessons from the garden, optical illusions, perspective

Are we hard wired to be followers?

There’s some irony in the fact that some of the most interesting news on TV these days is only on early Sunday morning, far earlier than I normally am voluntarily conscious on a weekend -CBS’ Sunday Morning starts at 7am in my neck of the woods.  I was however, glad I caught it this week as there was an interesting story on how brain scans show that when we are given advice by an ‘expert’ such as  TV pundit, our decision making centers shut down.  A similar story citing the same study is online at Wired.com. This explains a few things about the economy and politics, but only starts more questions about why the heck we’re wired this way.  And what do we do about it?

I’m sure I’m not the only one that would prefer to keep any and all experts in the advisory capacity rather than delegate my decisions. But I have to acknowledge that I often find myself wanting advice that provides a clear road map rather than just concepts on how to accomplish something. I’ve noticed others yearning for this as well so  I’m guessing the two are related. That makes it all the more important to be able to integrate advice without blindly following.

Years ago I went to a David Copperfield performance in a small town. My friend and I got there early and saw three or four people approached by staff and led away, only to see them return to their seats before the performance started.  Sure enough, these were the ‘random’ people brought up on stage for various magic tricks.  Even though I didn’t know exactly what had happened backstage, I wasn’t nearly as in awe as I would have been otherwise.  I already knew that something had happened to make the magic possible. Just a little bit of forewarning can dispell much of the illusion.  So maybe if we all observe ourselves observing the experts and the pundits some of that intellectual paralysis the scientists observed will also begin to dissipate.  I wonder what different choices we all might make?

Technorati Tags: self discovery

A year to do something

For some yet-to-be-ascertained reason, Julia Child has been on my mind for the last few months. It could be that her career transition from secret service to chef  could teach me a few things about making major changes or maybe just that I’ve been self-analyzing too much and the fact that we have the same initials is enough.  In any event, when I saw the movie trailer for Julie&Julia coming out this summer I paid attention.

The premise is based on a book which is based on the blog, The Julie/Julia Project, of spending one year cooking everything in Julia Child’s book, presumably with some expectation of great insight or achievement.  It occurred to me that I’ve passed this theme, ‘a year doing ____’ several times in the past six months. From Judith Levine’s year without spending to the blog, The Happiness Project , a continuation of a year studying happiness. And these are just the ones that garnered book deals.  There are photographers who have spent a year taking a picture of the same tree or scene every day for a year and people that have taken off for the wilds of another continent for a year, some getting book deals, but most not. These kinds of experiments aren’t really all that new; Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was in the same vein although he hung out at Walden Pond for 26 months and I don’t believe he had a specific calendar in mind when he started, although he did see it as an experiment.

So is this synchronicity or a delaying tactic for not getting other things done?

While my ego would rejoice in a book deal, I find that I’m more intrigued by the thought of trying to stick to something every day for a year.  There are plenty of things that I’ve done for longer than that but none that I can say I touched on a daily basis.  Just as there are projects that I’ve started and completed in far less time.  I’m doubtful of my ability to carry through on a year’s commitment to a project that isn’t work related.  Mostly because my bookshelves are riddled with blank books, each purchased with the intent that this was going to be the one that started the diary I would keep up. But also, I think I feel a little intimidated at the thought of ending something. In some ways it seems easier to contemplate a project that goes on forever, like that work-out routine I keep trying to implement, or moving somewhere exotic for an unspecified number of years than it does to set the end date before I even begin.

And then there’s that big problem of what the project is.  It wouldn’t be much fun to be a copycat and it’s not a good time for me to be taking off for Borneo anytime soon. Nor do I have money or time to spare. So what I need is a project that doesn’t take up much time but could last a year, doesn’t cost money, can be done locally and hasn’t been made into a book  yet. And that I’m interested in doing and that won’t turn into a job…  Maybe I could take a year thinking up ideas for how to spend a year? Yeah, maybe not.  I guess I’d better go off and think about this some more. Maybe inspiration will strike!

to be continued…

Technorati Tags: synchronicity, year-long projects

How to use psychics and horoscopes as ‘mirrors’ for clarity

As strange as it sounds, the paranormal end of things can be a readily accessible and useful tool.  Not because they can or can not predict the future (I’m not going there!)  but because how you react to the prediction can you tell you a great deal about yourself.  Humans do a great deal of subconscious analysis based on comparison. When there is nothing to compare it to then we may not give much thought to how we feel about a particular topic.

Horoscopes can randomly throw all kinds of  predictions our way.  For example, a typical daily horoscope might say – ‘tonight you’ll be out dancing ’til dawn and be the light of the party’ or something to that effect.  If your reaction is along the lines of ‘heck no, I’m going to bed right after watching Survivor’  AND you feel more pleased with the evening you’ve planned for yourself, then you know you’re following your heart.  On the other hand if you react with ‘I wish – I’d love to do that but I’m stuck at home like Cinderella’ then maybe you need to do something to spice up your social life and figure out how to get out of the house a little more often.

Even the more subtle ones like the one I read this morning that promised financial worries would end this week can still give you insights.  I wish I could say that finances aren’t even a minor concern!  What I can say, is that what flitted across my mind’s eye was the projects I needed to get done this week to make that happen.  What registered is that I know what’s important and what I need to do. The horoscope just served as a mirror to reflect my thoughts back at me with a little more focus and clarity.

If you’ve no idea where to read your horoscope, there’s a variety at  www.tarot.com.

Technorati Tags: self discovery

How a floor plan can map your mind too

How we perceive our environment really does say as much about how we think as it does about our choice of homes.  And memory can be a funny thing.  Drawing a floor plan of your home can tell you a lot about your subconscious values and associations.  It’s a rare person that remembers things exactly as they are so this is about what you can learn from the discrepancies, rather than if there are any. This exercise may teach you a lot or a little about yourself and like many things you’ll likely get more out of it the more time you take with it.  Although even a quick run through can be revealing. It’s definitely fun and can be interesting to compare results with someone you live with or a friend whose home you know well. Find some graph paper to help keep your lines straight and then dive in. One tip is if you make one square on the graph paper equal to 12 inches you won’t need to tape too many pages together.

Step 1: From memory, draw a floor plan of your home, including all the levels, doors, windows, closets. etc.  It’s great to do this one at work or at a coffee shop where you won’t be tempted to cheat by walking around. Make it as accurate as possible and then put it away.

Step 2: When you have some time and preferably an assistant for the measuring tape, draw a second floor plan of your home by going room to room and measuring the walls, windows,  door widths etc.

Step 3: Now compare the floor plan from memory with the measured one.  It’s amazing how the brain can leave out the only doorway or an entire stairwell leading to the second floor.  What did you forget? If you forgot a door to a specific room, what is that telling you? Are you closing off that part of your life even if you haven’t physically barricaded the room?  What rooms did you make bigger or smaller than they are? What rooms did you get pretty much spot on?  It’s possible that rooms that you perceive as smaller, just have too much stuff in them and a little rearranging will leave your home and your psyche feeling more comfortable.

Was this a useful exercise? Please come back and share what you learned!

Technorati Tags: introspection, perception, perspective

How to broaden your perspective by changing just one word

I can’t take any credit for this one; I recently read it in The Art of Possibility and didn’t think much about it at first.  The simple concept suggested using ‘and’ instead of ‘but’ when joining two clauses.  It was a brief section in the book and I noted it mildly as I read on.  A few days later I started to realize just how often I use the word ‘but’ in a conjunctive sense.  For example:

• I want to drive to Alaska, but I also want to see the Greek islands
• I want to make money blogging, but I need to pay the bills now
• I want a loving relationship, but I appreciate some of the things that go with being single

These sound innocent enough except that I really use the word ‘but’ frequently. Ouch.  At first I didn’t even think that I’m limiting my options by doing this; more of setting a priority or qualifying the desire until I sat with these sentences having rephrased them with ‘and’ instead:

• I want to drive to Alaska, and I also want to see the Greek islands
• I want to make money blogging, and I need to pay the bills now
• I want a loving relationship, and I appreciate some of the things that go with being single

It doesn’t imply that I can do anything simultaneously or suggest anything impossible. Yet there’s a  subtle difference between the two sets of sentences. Maybe there’s a solution out there that involves both Alaska and the Greek islands that I wouldn’t find if I were only looking for one side of the equation. I don’t know yet.  What I do know is that the second set seems infinitely more open to possibility and the potential for abundance.  It doesn’t deny one thought or desire in favor of the other; it makes them more equal. So while I work on reducing my use of the ‘b’ word, try it for yourself and let me know if it makes a difference for you.

Technorati Tags: abundance, life design, removing limits, self discovery, self-talk

How to solve tough problems with a personalized formula for success

I came across an exercise not that long ago that suggested that you figure out how you’ve answered or solved big questions in the past when you were happy with the result. Then you could apply that formula to new problems and at least have something of a road map to go by.

Hmmm, nothing like a little analysis of analysis for fun.  When I sat down to do it however, the tricky part was coming up with examples where I had thought it through and was truly satisfied with how things turned out.  Lesson 1 was realizing that all too often I’ve not used any kind of a process and grabbed onto the first thing that came along, sometimes with good results and sometimes not.  But two major purchasing decisions did fit the requirements; my car and my house, so I used those to figure out how I’d gotten there and sure enough I do have a relatively consistent process!

1. Identify the need  I’m ready to own my own home
2. I make a list, of course I’m a compulsive list maker so this makes sense. But in this case it’s divided into strict requirements, nice-to-have’s, and parameters. The house had to have a basement and be built before 1945, it would be nice to have a fire place, and it should be somewhere  quiet and safe.
   
3. Then I research and seek outside expertise  real estate listings to see where old houses are available, find an agent via referral, get pre-approved etc.
4. Followed by refining the lists in step #2 quiet and safe with the appropriate commute now equals somewhere in the Northwest neighborhood
5. Seize timing – this one is harder to predict but it means being really ready and committed; checking real-estate listings daily and making an offer when a house meets the criteria without contributing any new problems
6. Fulfill the need – it may seem self-evident but it closes the circle and allows my brain to stop thinking about the problem, stop checking listings and most importantly not going into the land of ‘might-have-been’ or ‘if-only-I-had’.

The challenge now is to get in the habit of using this process to develop satisfactory solutions for problems as they crop up. It doesn’t remove intuition, but rather includes it in a more structured format and keeps it from being confused with fear.

What are your steps?

Technorati Tags: achieving goals, challenges, intuition, self-improvement

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