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Soul + Wisdom

Gifts From a Year

I’m going about this New Year’s business all wrong, I know — aren’t I supposed to leave 2014 in the dust and head boldly into 2015? I guess it’s taken until the end of the holidays to give me enough clarity and calm to see the lessons of 2014.

The thing about insights is that they always seem to carry over into the next year or two, or even three — it’s a little like going deeper and deeper into the ocean, one strata of pressure at a time. (I’d love to read a book analyzing the life cycle of insights, actually — does anyone have any suggestions?) So perhaps it’s okay to reckon a little later with what a year has taught me, now that the dust has cleared and I can see a little more clearly.

I think last year was the first where I realized just what an anxious little human I can be. I’m not talking clinical anxiety, but the garden everyday mental static that can really pull and tug at your peace of mind. Last year I felt such a lot of it — over so many seemingly out-of-control areas of my life that interlocked with one another — and for the first time I felt sometimes I just couldn’t deal because I was so overwhelmed.

The crazy thing was that so many of the changes and circumstances were so positive — love, family, creative opportunities — but there was just so much unexpected stuff alongside it all that it made me worry and fret to the point of not enjoying anything.

I forgot where I read this, but I remember reading somewhere that physiologically speaking, from the body’s perspective, anxiety and excitement resemble each other so much that they are almost identical biological responses — there’s the elevated heartbeat, the shortness of breath, a tightening in the chest. The biggest difference is the mental story we lay over it. Excitement is a kind of burst of wild anticipation of joy, opportunity and happiness; anxiety is an anticipation of failure, calamity, catastrophe. One response is joy-based, but the other arises from fear.

When I read this, something inside me clicked: a lot of my anxiety was fear of fucking everything up. I was facing a lot of wonderful life changes but I was practicing for failure already in my imagination; I had no faith in the resilience and endurance of happiness.

I had learned this fear early on; I’ve written in my newsletter about growing up with an anxious parent, and I had, despite many of my best efforts, internalized this tendency as well. In a way, this humbled me. I think many of us fear becoming our parents on some level, but if the New Age adage of “what you resists, persists,” then here was my comeuppance to the arrogance to think I could escape my familial legacy. It gave me a sense of compassion, though — for myself and for my parents, because it’s not easy to escape anxiety. And for myself, because on some level, it made me feel better. Of course I’d be so anxious in the face of such dramatic emotional, financial and creative tidal changes happening all at once! Those are the instincts I inherited, the quickest tools to draw upon when faced with the nervous tiger that is anxiety.

Anxiety, too, reflects a strange, almost dysmorphic relationship to time. By projecting your past fears into a future of failure and disaster, you’re psychologically existing in two temporal dimensions at the same time…past and future, duh! Your poor brain is taking input from one and putting it into the other. Of course, what gets squeezed out of the equation? The present moment, which is where gurus, psychologists and all sorts of wise types say is the only real time we truly possess.

Ironically enough, getting back to the present moment during an anxiety attack is one of the few ways I’ve found to stave it off. Luckily, my other familial legacy is Buddhism, and meditation does help, even the cheat-y kinds of meditations I do. Yoga helps, as does doing anything physically challenging. A beautiful walk, a heartfelt conversation, making art, riding horses or otherwise spending time with creatures with a gift for being in the moment — they help to keep your attention in the here and now. Which helps, honestly.

I also think mental states like anxiety can be triggered or exacerbated by hunger, thirst and being tired, so sometimes I have to be hypervigilant about making sure I’m not hungry, thirsty or sleepy. Sometimes I just tell myself I need to make it through the day, the hour, the minute — not every action I take has to have its long-term effects accounted for before I take it. Sometimes it is okay, and human, and real, to be fragile and vulnerable and to not have the answers or all the ducks lined up in a row. We all do our best, and hope that’s enough.

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The nice thing about the past few weeks is that life has gotten very quiet, and it’s been perfect — everything is a lot calmer and I feel so much less mental and emotional static with more “white space” in my schedule and mind. I don’t doubt that the nervous tiger will be back — I don’t think there is any cure, and to hope for one is almost like inviting anxiety to have a permanent seat at the dinner table — but it is nice to hit it at the ebb point. Hope everyone’s New Year is proceeding beautifully!

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Posted in Soul + Wisdom on Tuesday, January 20th, 2015 | No Comments »

Years That Ask Questions and Years That Answer

Ah, yes, a happy new year — a fresh beginning, a set of resolutions, a word-of-the-year, a reset/renew, a detox, a turning of the page. Only, for me, not this round.

Don’t get me wrong: I still did my little hippie productivity yearly planner, I still set up my little time-keeping/scheduling system, I have goals and desires and things I’d like to accomplish. But in 2015, I’m cutting myself some slack.

Not that I’m pooh-poohing anyone who’s embarking on a type-A super-planning kind of thing in terms of setting up their new year. There are some years that call for that — years where time is malleable, putty in your hands, able to be molded and filled with whatever your endeavor. Where intention and action align with ease, and everything on your to-do list seems to expand and move you to growth.

I think of these as kind of “Athenian” years — you know, after the Greek goddess of wisdom, the great war strategist and city-builder and patroness of craftspeople, the great grey-eyed lady of discernment and skilled action. These are years that weave threads into fabric, fabric into useful shapes and garments — years that build, solidify, consolidate.

But then there are other kinds of years. To keep with the Greek goddess groove (bear with me here, I’m feeling Jungian!), perhaps you could call some years “Persephone” years — years of walking in shadow, treading the underworld, confronting fears, anxieties, sadness and unresolved wounds and griefs.

(Of course, you can expand this whole metaphor towards the entire mythological pantheon — I’ve definitely had my Artemisian years of trawling the psychological wilderness in a glorious solitude, as well as those super-fun, glamorous Aphrodite years of romance, good times and carousing!)

Looking back at my 2014, though, I realized a lot of my angst was wanting to have an Athenian year so badly, but being immersed in a huge Persephone kind of year. Beyond the actual specifics of the circumstances and events, underneath I was grappling with a sense of disappointment and failure that my intentions were so derailed. I still did a lot of what I wanted, but I also was so overwhelmed with stress, anxiety and fear that I couldn’t savor any accomplishment or experience very much. It kind of sucked. There’s no use knocking off items on your bucket list or to-do list or whatever if the experience of them is so clouded and polluted with negative emotions.

So for 2015, yes, I still have intentions and goals and such, but I’m holding onto them lightly. Already, looking ahead, I can see huge mountains to scale on the path. The big changes set into motion last year are still unfolding, and even bigger ones are coming — ones whose outcomes and tranformations I can’t predict in the least. In the face of such challenges, I think all I can do is be present as possible, be kind and gentle to myself and others around me and have as much fun and joy as I can. I think that’s just the perfect amount of enough to begin my New Year.

Zora Neale Hurston actually has one of my favorite quotes about years, and it’s one that gives the title to this post:

There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.

Whatever year you desire, I hope yours is off to a beautiful start!

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Posted in Soul + Wisdom on Saturday, January 3rd, 2015 | No Comments »

The Care and Feeding of Your Sad Little Panda

I’ve been sort of a droopy little person these past few weeks. Part of it is the time change and the season — such a bummer that it gets so dark so early! — and part of it is moving, the end-of-year pile-up of obligations, work and events, some health/medical stuff and such.

I had been holding up well in all the sturm-und-drang, keeping things organized and humming along….but it’s funny how the smallest thing can derail you, the things you don’t expect and plan for and anticipate. Comcast royally fucked up my moving order and prematurely disconnected the Internet from my old home before I could move into my new address. Yes, a First World Problem, I know, but I work from home via the Internet, so it really messes with my operations. And when I realized the problem was basically a quagmire that would require freaking HOURS to unravel — time I don’t have! — I basically had a full-on meltdown: tears, sobbing, that feeling of wanting to lock myself in a dark room. So much for aspirations of Zen composure! Since then, everything’s kind of set me off, and I have no real sense of equanimity.

Still, you know me, wringing out some kind of insight in a rather shitty situation. Even in all the glory of my meltdown drama, I couldn’t help but observe that part of me is always fighting how I feel, especially when I’m not feeling all puppies-and-rainbows. I grew up being told always to “cheer up” or “think positive” when I was sad; I know my parents meant well, but I internalized this feeling that having “negative” emotions were a BAD THING and a burden to those around me. It’s not just my parents, though; we live in a culture where we absolutely must be fine all the time.

So now, when I feel crappy, I immediately want to rush in and fix it, just because it is so unbearable to feel so crappy. Who wants to feel sad or angry or awkward? No wonder we immediately rush into fixing how we feel, whether it’s shopping, exercise, chocolate, essential oils, your libertine substance of choice or whatever. Sometimes you just need relief, and there are lots of “100 things to do when you hear the sad trombones” types of lists out there that cater to relieving sadness.

Lately though, I find the best thing is to just let myself be sad. Not really wallow or get paralyzed by it, but just acknowledge the full shittiness of the way I feel and let myself sit with it for awhile, letting it work its way through my system. Telling myself: It’s okay to have a grey day, it’s okay to sit in bed for awhile and cry. It’s fine to have a few days of accomplishing nothing, being unproductive, dissatisfied. So that’s what I did — I went about my days and my tasks, but I didn’t force myself to cheer up, be positive, exercise to get my endorphins up, or whatever. I just did soothing things, slept a lot, felt blue and stayed quiet. And then, after awhile, the sad-panda feeling passed and I woke up feeling…right. Like I’d honored myself and my need to be sad. And was left with a nice open space inside of me, filled with a genuine peace and quiet.

That’s life, what the Buddhists call dukkha, or just the discomforts and dissatisfactions that come from everyday existence. Just kind of let myself be quiet instead of throwing myself into the busyness of solving or fixing things. It’s a little scary and uncomfortable, but it passes through you so much faster than immediately going for that psychic Band-aid. And then after a few hours, or a few days, it just kinds of mists away.

That’s one of the gifts of the constant ebb and flow of existence: if life is impermanent, then as much as we’re told that we can’t grasp onto the things in life we want to stay, the things that frustrate us don’t last forever as well. There’s always motion in emotions.

Of course, sometimes you just need cheering up: you need that silly comedy, that retail therapy, that panacea. But every now and then, maybe sometimes it’s fine to just let yourself be absolutely truthful to yourself and just be sad — and see what lessons, thoughts and realizations bubble up from that.

Tags: emotions, sad pandas, sadness,
Posted in Soul + Wisdom on Wednesday, December 10th, 2014 | No Comments »

On Auditioning New Beliefs

Beliefs are funny things to me. When I was younger, beliefs were like flags on the moon, poles in the sand, ways to stake out your self in the world: I believe this, therefore I am. You can believe in God; you can believe in karma; you can believe in divine retribution, feminism, positive thinking, social justice, attachment parenting, crystal healing, astrology, creationism. Sometimes you inherit beliefs; sometimes you come to adopt them. But they form part of your identity.

As I get older, though, I find part of the process of growing up and (hopefully) wiser is unearthing the beliefs you didn’t even realize you have, those unconscious yet deeply rooted mental assumptions that help you interpret the world. A lot of these hidden beliefs — at least in my experience — satellite themselves around areas like sex, love and money — you know, those chthonic, shadowy areas where compulsions and contradictions lodge themselves. Which, of course, makes them even more fascinating to me, these areas being so taboo and shrouded in a kind of dark silence in our culture. The areas hold beliefs like: Men will hurt me. I can’t trust women. If they really get to know me, they’ll think I’m a fraud. Being rich makes me a terrible person. I don’t deserve this money, this happiness, this stability. I can’t trust anyone. People let me down. People suck. Happiness is an illusion, or for chumps.

Often these are beliefs we would never voice or agree with consciously, but when you look at the pattern of behavior — especially behavior or decisions you can’t understand with yourself, and you have to craft the most convoluted explanations to justify them to yourself and your friends — you realize these unconscious beliefs are what’s guiding your behavior.

It takes a lot of work to even see these beliefs, much less root them out and then change them. You could say it’s the work of a lifetime, really, and I’m sure people spend hours of reflection and therapy to do it, especially when you’re working with really intense areas of life and psyche. I think part of the process of getting wiser is realizing these kind of beliefs are more elastic and pliable than you think — though softening them can be brutally hard work.

But beliefs and assumptions underlie less loaded areas of life, and it’s a little more fun to play with them here. Like beliefs about something like fashion: I can’t wear pink; I’m not a prints person; black is for goths; older women can’t wear skirts above the knee; only neutrals can be chic. It’s sort of fun to challenge these periodically, and a pleasure to experiment with expanding your own boundaries — and it’s why half of my underwear drawer is crazy pink-based patterns, which is not something people would often guess about me. But there you go!

Lately I have been thinking over certain assumptions I’ve made about writing in particular, like what a “successful” writing session should look like, or how to write a novel. Some of these are borne by personal experience or given to me by instruction or education, like the idea that “real writers” write everyday, or write in the morning, or write for 2-3 hour blocks of uninterrupted yet caffeinated time. But of course people change and grow all the time, and shouldn’t we test these beliefs every now and then? And even if these beliefs are “true,” wouldn’t your conviction in them be stronger by testing them out again?

So I’ve been experimenting with new things in terms of writing that go against my ingrained beliefs on the craft. The first step: look at my behavior and try to root out what beliefs were motivating them. Like, some days I would scrap writing for myself altogether because I didn’t have a “quality block” of time for it…which only made me feel guilty deep down for skipping the day. Sure, a block would be ideal, w=but who often leads an ideal life, day in and day out? So I decided to challenge that recently, and audition the belief that “20 minutes is enough.” The result is, well, more writing and less guilt.

Another writing belief of mine to challenge a novel had to be drafted in a certain way. People assume novels are written chronically, and for the most part, I’ve been taught to write that way, even in draft form. But lately I’ve been working on just major scenes and turning points first, and it feels more fun and energetic. Words are flowing, characters are developing, worlds are building, and the result is just a lot more pleasure, not to mention a lot less time sitting there staring at the screen, wondering how I was going to get myself to the next interesting part.

And finally, I’m challenging my own internal notion that my creativity/writing energy is limited. I labored under the idea that there was only so much I could write a day, and if I wrote too much and too widely, I’d burn out. This belief affected me in that it created weird resentments and guilts: I’d feel angsty because I had to write so much for my job and couldn’t focus on my fiction. Or I’d feel weird about blogging when I felt like I should work on my novel, or vice versa.

Of course, there are only so many hours. But time, though related, is different from energy. But what if I played around with the idea that there’s more than enough energy for the novelizing, blogging and work-related writing. So I decided to fuck it all and write everything when I felt like it, and just pretend like I would never burn out as a writer.

I do find that writing begats more writing — especially if I don’t limit it to just a block of 2-3 hours of supposed quality time and feel good about writing in snatches here and there. Quality creative time isn’t related to duration, but the ability to focus and imagine vividly and clearly, so 20 minutes of clear focus is better than an hour of unfocused time. And part of creating that unimpeded focused yet keen mindset is, ironically, removing the weirdly outdated, subconscious emotional and mental noise that unchallenged beliefs and assumptions give you.

Deep down, I think that’s when you know a belief — no matter where in life — is no longer serving you — when it’s blocking you with guilt, unhappiness, resentment and fear. That’s when you know it’s time to play around with something else better. I can do that with writing or fashion fairly easily — and of course, it’s the work of a lifetime in other areas of life. But worth it, I think, because who doesn’t want to be free of guilt, resentment and other emotional headless horsemen?

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Posted in Creativity + Writing, Soul + Wisdom on Friday, October 31st, 2014 | No Comments »

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