Powerful honesty

I have this friend. I have known her a long time. Nearly half my life. She has this thing; she is blatantly honest.

I wonder if you think that is a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing? From experience I think it’s a good thing, if you can take it. The older I get, and the longer we are friends, the more I rely on her honest opinion.

She is prepared to disagree, politely of course, on anything of importance. Openly and tactfully laying her cards on the table when something is awry. More than once I credit this with saving our friendship from crashing into the rocky shore of our opposing political views, divergent lifestyles and different views on life and the world. More than once her honesty has also rescued me from swirling confusion and dominoes of bad decisions.

Although her honesty is a blessing, it is sometimes a difficult pill to swallow. Not because of what she has to say, but because our pride, inadequacies and fears make honesty confronting some times. Herein lies the second layer of blessing; her honesty makes me a better person. A more aware, more compassionate, stronger person.

If only more people were courageous enough to be powerfully honest.

Sense of self

As the days roll on, I am lucky enough to witness my toddler create his sense of self. He has begun using sentences with ‘me’ and ‘mine’. He also refuses help and asserts his opinions with the all too annoying “No!” and “Yuck!”. Despite its infancy, his self-esteem seems imperviable. I wonder how long it will stay that way and what I can do to help.

When he does something ‘naughty’, he comes to me, admits his wrong doing and then gives me a cuddle. If he is chastised or punished, he assumes the millisecond it is over that he gets cuddles, and loving attention again. He interrupts almost every hug his father and I share with a ‘love oo’, his chubby little arms outstretched, knowing in his bones he will be embraced too.

I love watching him, and his infectious belief that the whole world loves him, at work on the street. Fearlessly he smiles and greets strangers ‘Hello’. Smiles and bats his eyelashes and is offered any number of treats from chocolates and marshmallows, to stamps, toys and books. At such a young age he works a room so well I learn just by watching him and people who are less than friendly seem to not even register.

He takes risks. He values only love and fun. He expects the world to support him. He anticipates love from all directions.

Every day I feel as though I am seated at the foot of the Master. With close study he may teach me perfect self esteem.

Musings on Grace

I firmly believe that it takes a village to raise a child. In a ‘village’ children grow up at the feet of elders, learning vital lessons. Adults in a ‘village’ mentor and teach adolescents, instructing them in the skills and knowledge that they will need to contribute to the village in adulthood. Sadly I feel that my generation grew up largely without that village. This is not a criticism of our for-mothers; they were focused on creating a society where we (as women) would be valued as equals. It is because of them that we have an opportunity now to instruct the daughters of our new ‘village’ in all the skills of an adult and not just half of them.

As a result of growing up without the village microcosm we are drastically short of role models we can aspire to emulate, again not because our mothers are not ‘role models’ but because our paths are likely to be very different to theirs. Young women are in search of mentors and are coming up short. The ‘self help’ genre is growing exponentially as women reach out for help, desperately craving guidance and support.

I am fortunate in that I have had the loving guidance of mentors throughout my journey thus far. There is no substitute for experience; lessons only become permanent when one has lived them and been transformed by the experience. But the transformation isn’t automatic, the generation of women who repeatedly turn to inappropriate relationships, emotional eating and ‘retail therapy’ are a testament to that. The disconnect is that the skills necessary to courageously face life, walk towards our dreams and learn from adversity were the ones we never learnt at the feet of our elders.

We identify women of grace that we wish to grow like, but lack the vocabulary to identify what it is about their person that we value. The closest words we have to describe what it is we want are; beauty, respect, success and charisma. So we blindly stumble in search of what we think will bring us these; physical ‘perfection’, celebrity and the adoration of men. But we have the cart before the horse. Celebrity (lasting celebrity and not infamy) and adoration are the by-products of a life lived gracefully with purpose.

The deceptive nature of grace is that it ‘appears’ effortless. It seems as though it is a gift bestowed at birth when it is an attitude and a set of skills. Grace is a carriage, a way of being, that has nothing to do with external beauty. Though a graceful woman does possess a ‘glow’ that is often mistaken for, or perceived as beauty. There are guidelines, tools and secrets that graceful women live by and demonstrate, that when applied to our lives, transform them as though they have been bewitched by a fairy godmother’s wand.

This year I am working on embodying grace a little more… what about you?

My black holes

I may not have mentioned in the past, but I have little black holes in my cognition. Areas where a normal person would understand a specific topic are totally blank within me and I am left confounded as to how in the hell someone could possibly conceive of such a thing.

Here are a few of those black spots, that for the life of me I cannot wrap my head around. The instances where i try, my brain explodes and goes walking around on its own two legs:

Violence

Violence, for example ultimate fighting/cage fighting. I mean really who thought that this was a good idea? How can people watch it or participate in it? While I am a pacifist and don’t believe that violence is ever the answer I can understand that at times it happens. But to encourage violence to cause injury for no reason but enjoyment? I simply cannot understand this.

I know many a soldier and trust me, they don’t relish violence. They would much rather avoid it if they can. They do their job, they serve their mates and their country but they don’t have a blood thirst. Martial Arts too avoids conflict as much as possible. Combat training is used as a path to controlling the base desires of the body and even the greatest of military minds SunTzu said that he who goes to battle has already lost. Fighting for the sake of fighting? I can’t see the fun or even glory in fighting for nothing. No disrespect to the fighters… I just don’t understand them

‘Earning’ respect

I have had some discussions recently with friends about respect. I find it an interesting topic of conversation. There seems to be a consensus that respect can be earned by deeds. That the actions of a person can, somehow, be tallied up, judged. The result indicating whether or not others should respecting them. What the? Are we really serious? Do we mean to say that an outsider can arbitrarily perceive and judge another by their deeds and then decide not to respect them? Again, I have difficulty understanding this. Who do we think we are?

Every human being is deserving of respect. Full stop. Respect is a function of respecting others and as such is an extension of character not deeds. We do what we have to do, no body has the right to judge us or disrespect us. And if they try they only succeed in disrespecting themselves.

Abusing the body

I will admit up front that I am not the most physical person. I would much rather exercise my mental, emotional or spiritual self than the body. But I am getting better. Fueling the body, exercising the body, pushing the body all seem relatively valid to me. But pushing the body beyond rational limits? All I can say is ‘why?’ By all means push through the pain barrier, find your physical limits if you must, but once you’ve found them, it doesn’t make sense to me to push the body beyond its clear signals to ‘Stop!’ to the point that you risk damaging it.

Our secret weapon

I know in my bones that nothing life will ever offer me will be as fearsome as my worries are. Not because my worries are terrible, horrifying or gruesome, but because in my worries I underestimate myself.

As a teenager, and even in my early 20′s my greatest fear wasn’t losing my job, being physically attacked walking home in the dark or  getting food poisoning from eating a bad kebab after a big night out. My greatest fear was losing my identity to ‘Wife and Mother’. This, I worried, would be a fate worse than death.

I was plagued by images of an unhappy me. I would be balancing budgets, changing nappies, cooking daily and not working outside the family home. I imagined that this suburban hell would repress my unrepressable spirit. I was sure that if I was to dedicate myself to the role and responsibility of a householder that there would be no return, and my soul would be crushed.

It sounds dramatic, I know, but I would still argue realistic. Girls of my generation were pushed hard as children, told that our brains and careers would be our salvation, our ticket out of domestic subservience. Well, maybe it was worded more like ‘If you work hard you can do anything you want. You could be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a nurse or even an engineer. You have so much potential. Don’t waste it.’ Waste our potential on what? The roles not listed, like wife and mother perhaps?

It turns out though that suburban wife and mother was not enough to repress my spirit. I know that now because I am there. It is no walk in the park either. My fears about the never-ending list of tasks to complete and the remarkably short time to actually do them was spot on. As was my fear that the needs of my partner and especially a small child can at times feel suffocating. What my fears didn’t account for was the strength of my spirit. My spirit is still strong enough to fight for time and space to express my individuality.

I am convinced that this unaccounted for ingredient, my real potential, will bode me well in all of life’s ‘hells’. Because I can’t imagine how high my spirit will fly in the face of adversity, but I can’t help but live it.

Shopping and zen

For a long time I have said that our local shopping centre was built on a portal to hell. Nothing good ever happened there. It simply sucked the life, cheer, money and joy from you. It is a place I avoid as much as possible.

Despite my best intentions and planning, it was necessary to visit this dreaded place on christmas eve. Yes, we ventured out to the stores on Christmas Eve. Oh the Insanity! There was traffic on the roads, few parking spaces and people everywhere. I had a concise list to work through that meant I would be visiting around half a dozen stores.

People were throwing insults at each other, running trolleys into unsuspecting ankles, exchanging hollow Christmas wishes, cutting people off in the queues at the register and absent-mindedly blocking walkways. My partner was so grumpy (in response to the less than cheerful environment) I had resorted to calling him “Bah! Humbug!”, and he was answering to it.

The interesting thing, and the point of the post, is that I didn’t notice any of this. Well, I guess I noticed it because I can recall it, but it had no effect on me. No effect at all. I happily went about my business, gathering all the missing pieces for my Christmas Day celebrations without a thought or judgement about what was happening around me. I had no agenda or expectation, simply a task to complete.

The result -  I was home in an hour and a half from when I left my driveway. I was cheerful all morning. I got a parking straight away. Everybody was nice to me. The experience was possibly one of my most relaxed at the mall… ever!

I was in a zen like state! A walking meditation through the mall. Totally untouched by stress ad angst around me. Now if only I can live my whole life that way...

A decade ago today…

Your whole world can change in a minute. A second, even. A single decision can shape your life. Or at least I used to think so. Now days before the ‘noughties’ comes to a close I’m not so sure.

A decade ago, today, I was faced with the biggest challenge of my life. No I am not talking about a regular rite of passage either. It was traumatic. I knew right then that my life had changed forever. But it took days, months and even years for the fallout to settle and for all of the consequences to manifest. I spent years putting my life back together. I was certain, absolutely certain, that some of the changes were irrevocable. I was sure, and told many times, that this one event would define and dominate my life forever. That a decision (made by someone else no less) had changed me.

We were wrong. The tragedy has been totally erased from my life. All that remains are faint physical scars. Yes I have been changed by the experience. I am stronger and wiser than I would have been otherwise. But the essence of who I am, and indeed, who I was always going to be never changed. The things that define me now, the corner stones of my life, are the things I was told as a result of the tragedy I would never achieve.

Like a bubbling stream we move around the boulders in our path, ever flowing towards the ocean. The path of least resistance, our natural desire, delivers us time and time again to where we were always going to go. No boulder can harm the stream or define it, and in time the water will wear it down until that boulder is indistinguishable from the rest of the pebbles.

A decade ago, today, I was faced with the biggest challenge of my life. Looking back it was no different to every other challenge – it just took longer to overcome.

My peace with discipline

I have always thought discipline was over rated. Perhaps because I have been surrounded by military men most of my life, I have always seen discipline as soul crushing and authoritarian. My mother taught me to question everything and to rebel if need be. (Funny story; I spoke to my Mum about that advice the other day and she laughed. Apparently she had never said that, but that was the meaning I took from her philosophy of not treading the trodden path. Anyhow…)

Growing up I hated the idea of being a sheep. The thought of just ‘swallowing’ what the authoritarians around me were serving up was horrifying. The irony is that I just ended up following alternative, self-appointed, authority figures instead. The discipline enforced by authority figures really is soul crushing. It makes no difference whether you choose the disciplinarian or not. Discipline enforced externally it is cheap.

Now that I am a parent, I have begun to understand the importance for discipline. No, I am certainly not one of those mothers who you see smacking her child (publically or privately), but my toddler needs a firm word every other minute or so. At 18 months he is already finding and pushing boundaries and I find that he is comfortable when he knows where the line in the sand is.

So, I think I have finally made my peace with discipline. Self discipline is an enriching quality that builds our confidence. It reminds us we are capable of good judgement and committment. It helps us remain strong in the face of uncertainty. Self discipline keeps us true to our inner compass. Genuine authentic external authority is similar. It helps us to develop the capacity for self-discipline and to decide where our own personal boundaries are. But authority and discipline for the sake of it simply crush the soul.

My goal for me is to cultivate my self-discipline by following my better judgement. My goal for my son is to always and only embody authentic discipline for him, and not to crush his burgeoning spirit with unnecessary rules.

My peace with discipline

I have always thought discipline was over rated. Perhaps because I have been surrounded by military men most of my life, I have always seen discipline as soul crushing and authoritarian. My mother taught me to question everything and to rebel if need be. (Funny story; I spoke to my Mum about that advice the other day and she laughed. Apparently she had never said that, but that was the meaning I took from her philosophy of not treading the trodden path. Anyhow…)

Growing up I hated the idea of being a sheep. The thought of just ‘swallowing’ what the authoritarians around me were serving up was horrifying. The irony is that I just ended up following alternative, self-appointed, authority figures instead. The discipline enforced by authority figures really is soul crushing. It makes no difference whether you choose the disciplinarian or not. Discipline is enforced externally it is cheap.

Now that I am a parent, I have begun to understand the importance for discipline. No, I am certainly not one of those mothers who you see smacking her child (publically or privately), but my toddler needs a firm word every other minute or so. At 18 months he is already finding and pushing boundaries and I find that he is comfortable when he knows where the line in the sand is.

So, I think I have finally made my peace with discipline. Self discipline is an enriching quality that builds our confidence. It reminds us we are capable of good judgement and committment. It helps us remain strong in the face of uncertainty. Self discipline keeps us true to our inner compass. Genuine authentic external authority is similar. It helps us to develop the capacity for self-discipline and to decide where our own personal boundaries are. But authority and discipline for the sake of it simply crush the soul.

My goal for me is to cultivate my self-discipline by following my better judgement. My goal for my son it to always and only embody authentic discipline for him, and not to crush his burgeoning spirit with unnecessary rules.

The paradox of delirium

It is 2:46am and I am just sitting down to blog. One of my favourite songs from high school is playing on the radio and my kitchen and bathroom, despite 11 hours of work on them in the past 2 days, looks the same as they did on Tuesday.

I feel like I could run a marathon… well I guess this is how it would feel if I was ever ready to run a marathon. Which is unlikely. I think I would sooner birth an alien life form than be capable of a marathon, but I digress. My point is I am not tired. Instead of weary I am feeling that particular kind of restlessness you feel eating breakfast before a big trip – eating faster won’t achieve anything other than indigestion, but none the less you are chomping at the bit to get things underway. I know I have worked because my feet are sore and my back is aching. My skin has a beautiful glow to it, that on closer inspection is just dust particles stuck to the film of perspiration (yes ladies perspire, they don’t sweat) on my skin. I am finding it difficult to focus, as the paragraph above demonstrates beautifully, but I am not tired.

This is delirium.

Delirium is terrible and wonderful state that I haven’t experienced for a while. I remember as a teenager reaching this state just before the hangover kicked in after a HUGE night where nobody slept until after the sun came up. I remember delirium overcoming me after crying until the tears ran dry and the pillow felt like a sponge. I remember this feeling creeping in after a weekend where the only times my partner and I ventured out of the bedroom was for water and to go to the bathroom. (Yes, love really can sustain you. For a few days at least.) This is how it felt the night my son was born.

Delirium allows you to function, but without focus.

Your conscious mind is sleeping on the job (it just puts the body on autopilot) and your whimsical, emotional, symbolic unconscious mind has control.

Perhaps that is why I found myself almost tearful looking at my tidy kitchen. Very little has changed, but every single object has been removed, cleaned, vetted and returned. Everything has a place and a purpose. My favourite little corner of the world (my kitchen) could not be more perfect.

Lesson: Inner peace is most often not achieved through meditation (unless you are a monk). The rest of us find peace in the ordinary.

Are you supportable? Ten steps to support in 2010.

I am fiercely independent and stubborn to a fault, but I have been supportable in the past. Currently though, I would say I am definitely difficult (near on impossible) to support.

I have willing and prepared family and friends, who would probably never say ‘No’ if I asked for help – so many of us do – but I rarely articulate what exactly they could do to help. When asked how I am doing my default response is ‘I’m fine’ which roughly translates to “I actually need support, but am too stubborn to ask for it”.

How to know if you are unsupportable like me:

• You lie about how you are doing i.e. “Yeah I’m ok. Everything is fine”
• You think that t is easier to just ‘stick it out’ than to ask for help
• You expect the help you get to be absolutely perfect and are disappointed when, lets say, the towels aren’t folded like you would fold them
• You keep telling yourself all you need is someone to talk to, not actual help
• You are hesitant to break the routine to try things a different, more supportive, way
• You keep telling yourself than in a few weeks when (insert dilemma here) is over, everything will be better

One of my goals for 2010 is to feel totally supported. So I will be changing a few things, from priorities to how I run my household and how I manage relationships to achieve that. (Friends and family that read this blog are broadly smiling or cringing in anticipation, depending on who they are as they read this, I am sure.)

Here is my game plan to a more supported life:

1. Recognise that the world would turn without me. So it is o.k for me to take time out for me – the sky won’t fall in.
2. Let go of the feelings of failure and guilt that arise when I ask for help. Needing help and time out is NORMAL.
3. Set up the family schedule so that time for me is already built-in. This will stop me apologising for doing what I need, like have an uninterrupted shower for example.
4. Take friends up on offers of babysitting etc.
5. Explain in advance what I need and how I am working to achieve it, so no-one accidentally works against me in attempt to help.
6. Preempt difficult times and take action to get support before I am desperate, rundown & exhausted.
7. Proritise yoga, meditation and writing just as high as getting the shopping done, catching up with friends and doing the chores.
8. Learn not to apologise for number 7 above.
9. Accept that things like having smooth legs and tidy nails, moisturised skin and getting hair cuts really do make me feel better, because they demonstrate I am worth taking care of, and make time for them regularly.
10. Cultivate a focused and relaxed mind that deals with what I am working on at the time and lets go of the millions of other things and thoughts that are going on simultaneously.

How are you focusing more on yourself in 2010?

7 reasons why gentler isn’t always easier

I like to do things the gentle way. I try diplomacy first. I move to reasoning second. I attempt healthy debate next. I am honest and upfront, slow to anger and always give the other the benefit of the doubt. By no means am I afraid of confrontation, standing up for myself or making a point (or making a scene) but only if it is absolutely necessary.

I haven’t always been this way. I used to yell first, insult second and always make a scene. I was clearly understood always, everybody knew where they stood with me and how I was feeling.

Having lived both sides of the coin I have arrived at a lesser known truth: Abrupt and abrasive is easier.

It is much easier to be closed minded. It is effortless to say what you think, when you think it. It is simple to assume your opinion is the only one that matters. It is easy to manage your relationships when you are looking out for number one; You are either hated for your rudeness or loved for your refreshing honesty. And for the most part you are respected for being frank and making your needs known.

Maintaining the same sense of honesty whilst being respectful, compassionate and gentle is much MUCH harder. Let me show you why:

1. To live the gentle way requires more strength of conviction, because you are aren’t yelling.
2. Managing your relationships with compassion is harder because you consider everybody’s needs.
3. Getting respect in a world that respects flashy and noisy is a longer road when you are humble and tread softly.
4. You require a bigger heart to live this way to extend the benefit of the doubt, time and time again without becoming jaded.
5. The balance between compassionate and doormat is an easy line to cross, so the gentle way needs much more self awareness.
6. To tread softly you must be willing to let go of others opinions, because you will inevitably be misunderstood by the abrupt and abrasive.
7. The gentle way teaches a profound sense of perspective; your immediate needs may not be as important as you had thought.

Which way to you live, rough and ready or compassionate and gentle? Have you found a balance between the two?