Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Searching for Kindred Spirits

What's one challenge you face when interacting with people? Sometimes, the biggest dissonance for me is when I can see what is motivating the other person, but they themselves can't see it. It seems like they are not even aware of what's driving them. Sometimes though, I felt doubtful about my own perceptions because I had the belief that everybody is equally aware of what is happening inside them. 

They aren't. The blank space we can feel as sensitive people is because we are much more in touch with the unconscious aspects of our own selves, and as a result, of other people's selves. We know emotions in the most nuanced way. The downside of that is that we can get overwhelmed by this knowing, by wanting to process things deeply. But the upside is that we can take the emotional temperature of a room without even thinking about it. 

Because it comes naturally to us, we sometimes feel at a loss when it doesn't come naturally to other people. That's why we can be left feeling that we looked after someone else's needs, but very few people look after our own. This is why we can start getting resentful.

We need people who can see the world like us. We need kindred spirits, people who truly get us. On one hand, interacting with people who are different from you can stretch your horizons, expose you to new ways of being. But deep friendships are built on commonalities, on a similar world-view. 

If we have to convince others that the world we see is as real and they can't see it, our needs to be heard and understood go unmet. Our need to connect in a real, authentic way go unmet. We might be continuing with looking for meaning in such connections, connections where we can't seem to only barely touch the being of the other person, because we might have a belief that truly loving people accept everyone into their lives. 

But maybe part of loving is about realizing that people find their own people, and everyone has different needs. Maybe part of our love can be directed toward nourishing our own selves as well. Maybe when we accept that not everyone is a good fit for us, we can let go of the need to force things where they are not working. 

Maybe we can also examine other beliefs about friendship. Maybe a friend is not just someone who matches us in outer specifics, like age, life stage, or gender, but can be anybody whose heart resonates to the same things ours does. As Anne Shirley, the heroine of one of my favorite children's book series did, maybe we also need to be on the look out for our kindred spirits and when we find them, to realize that they are indeed precious, that they are they ones who feel right, who seem to understand who we are.      

Monday, April 27, 2015

A Trail of Breadcrumbs

I have made the best decisions when I have followed my intuition. I have made the worst when I have willed my way through situations that didn't feel right. This feeling, that was so easy to rationalize away, was first a nudge and then an insistent hammering. But I was used to discounting my feelings, and so I pushed against them mightily, instead of heeding them and changing direction.

Our feelings provide intuitive hints. But sometimes, they arrive in such a flock that it is hard to sift through them and see which feeling talks about which thing. As I am learning to tune in, I feel that following intuitive hunches might be like following a trail of breadcrumbs. We don't know where they will lead. Maybe they will lead nowhere. Maybe they will get us to the next point.

What's important is that we are open to following them in the first place. Experimenting seems to be important. And reality checking. Intuition seems to be linked to trusting our curiosities, turning over rocks, looking underneath things. Maybe the magic is that we stayed open to clues and asked questions about them, and in the asking, moved several steps forward. 

What we ultimately did was either prove or disprove these hunches. But we first gave ourselves permission to follow them.

I wrote earlier about this exercise that I have been doing to allow intuition into my life. Some of it seems to be working, as little shifts happen. I am more aware, more observant, more responsive. Just the willingness to explore and the shift in attention seems to be greasing some wheels, opening some doors.  

Thursday, April 23, 2015

If you are not competitive, can you still succeed?

We all have certain beliefs about our sensitivity. Some of them have dripped down to our very core and color everything we look at. Lately, I have been thinking about self-acceptance and feeling that in many ways, I have just gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick. Many things that I think are wrong with me are just faulty beliefs that keep on living because I haven't pulled them right out of the ground. 

One of my unspoken beliefs is about competition, about the fact that you need to be competitive to be successful. I am not competitive and that has always felt like a disadvantage. Maybe you have this belief too. 

Maybe you, like me, come from a culture and were raised in an environment that placed a high value on competition. Maybe, like me, you have felt marginalized because of something else that you are (such as being a creative person), and so it all built up and you thought that everything that you were added up to something less than what was required to succeed.

If you have felt at a disadvantage because you are not competitive, or thought: Why am I not motivated by competition like other people?, then something that has been crystallizing for me might help you. Maybe what's been holding you back is not some quality you lack, but the inner resistance you feel when you push against your own truth. 

Recently, I read Better than Before, New York Times Bestselling Author Gretchen Rubin's latest book (which is another New York Times bestseller), and something she said underlined what I have been feeling. The book is about habit change, and she tells us that successful habits are built on the foundation of our fundamental nature. What works for one person does not work for the other. There is no one-size-fits-all. 

She also says that she is not a competitive person, and so, that cannot be the motivating drive for her. As far as success goes, she has made it. She is both successful and non-competitive. I think what that points to is that we sometimes forget that passion and competition are not always sitting on the same side of the fence. 

You can love something so much that it can be intrinsically satisfying. And what we love to do, we also keep on practicing. It's something we are deeply interested in, something we think about in a nuanced way, something we keep adding layers to. It's also something we can get very good at.

That's something important for me to remember as a sensitive person. Just because competitiveness is the ideal in society today does not mean that a different value, a different perspective cannot work. Sometimes, I have internalized the weight given to this outer value and found myself lacking, but the truth is that it is comparisons that drain us of our strengths.

If you are not competitive, bottom line is that it won't motivate you. It is a substitute for what really works with you, and by accepting it, you are laying a false structure on which to build things. Maybe that's what's wrong. Maybe that's what's not working. 

One way of accepting ourselves as sensitive people is accepting that our qualities are a constellation that moves in rhythm. We need to re-examine what we have been telling ourselves and re-frame our trait in the light of what we know now, instead of letting the past echo through our lives.

Of course, the problem of succeeding and even what it means is much larger than correcting this one belief. But this could be a good starting point. When we can honor our own way of being and live from that place, that's already success.

If you were to drop this belief, what would you gain? Where could you see yourself going? How would you feel?

If this resonated with you, please pass this on and share this post with anyone who might enjoy it.    

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

The Knife of Perfectionism

This morning, I read something on the lovely Brainpickings website by the fierce and kind Pema Chodron. This is what she says: "The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself. The other problem is that our hangups, unfortunately or fortunately, contain our wealth. Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom."

This feels true, although I don't understand it completely. It resonates with this growing part of me that is learning to accept her first tries and is not so hung up on making things perfect. This is also that part of me that is learning to trust herself and her own perceptions. It is learning that my first feelings, my first thoughts and my first hunches are often true.

It is second-guessing that gets me into trouble. It is overthinking that stops me in my tracks. There are times that we need to consider, need to think. But there are also times when our feelings and thoughts swirl up in a cloud and block our view of what it is that we need to do next.

They cause us to doubt whether we are moving in the right direction or what we are doing is indeed enough.

This morning, I read another piece on Brainpickings that talks about Picasso and his thoughts on intuition and how creativity works. Something in it stuck out for me. In the piece, he is quoted talking about Matisse whose work he admired professionally and who was also a personal friend. Matisse followed a painfully methodical creative process, and this is what Picasso thought about it: "Matisse does a drawing, then he recopies it. He recopies it five times, ten times, each time with cleaner lines. He is persuaded that the last one, the most spare, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and yet, usually it’s the first. When it comes to drawing, nothing is better than the first sketch."

Picasso thinks of the first creative intuition as the best. What we are alighting upon is the work of instinct, of our purest senses. When we re-do it to fit some convention, we might be draining the juice right out of it. That's what I am learning about intuition, that the purest intuition is about learning to trust your own perceptions. My research is showing me that just like prolific artistes, successful entrepreneurs and business-people are ones that are most in touch with their original thoughts, with their own nuances of feelings.

What perfectionism does is take a knife to many of our most original, most intuitive ideas. It tells us that we are not enough, that we'll never be enough, that we have to do things over and over again to get to something of value. It tells us that we have little or no talent, that we have to search desperately for answers, that these answers will always remain out of our reach.

My favorite teacher and kindred spirit Julia Cameron tells us that perfectionism is not the pursuit of the best in us, it is the pursuit of the worst. Perfectionism is different from striving for excellence.We can become excellent at what we do only if we are willing to make mistakes, if we are willing to keep trying and learning. But perfectionism blocks this process. It brings everything to a grinding halt. We are stuck when we belabor over something we think needs to be just right before we are allowed to move ahead.

Nothing needs to be perfect. Nothing needs to be won. We need to keep doing, keep moving ahead. The movement does not need to follow some pre-set routine. We are allowed to take two steps forward, one step back. We are allowed to make good things and not-so-good ones. We are allowed to do things because we love them, and not because we need to please anybody by shaping it into some accepted form.

We can choose to live with Julia's heartening motto: "Progress, not perfection."  We can choose that we want to grow, and not be tied with a noose to this idea of never feeling good enough.

If you are on the same path as me, think about how letting go of perfectionism would help you. Would it allow you to move ahead in your work, so you can actually find a new perspective instead of getting stuck at an earlier point? Or maybe it would free up your energy so that you can spend it on things that matter instead of frittering it away? 

You and I, we both need to come to this place, so we can release our hesitation and step inside our work and our lives. We need to stop boxing ourselves in and making ourselves small. We are seeing the rents the knife of perfectionism has made in our lives and we are taking it out now, once and for all.  

Friday, April 17, 2015

If you are so sensitive, how can you say No?

I have been experimenting with saying No a lot more. Although it's becoming easier, it takes some energy and makes me irritable. Why did the person ask? It's as if my anger at the cost it takes to say No comes lashing out at the terribleness of this poor person. Why are they making me feel so bad? 

It's almost like I am having a mini-existential crisis. If I am not this nice, accommodating person, who am I? Maybe when you say No, that's what you feel as well. Feelings of having done something bad wash over you. Like me, maybe, you have a lot of your identity tied in being "nice." 

What does it mean exactly, being nice? I think the reason I could start saying No was because I realized that one of the reasons I was reluctant to say No was because I was projecting myself onto the other person. I have been said No to in some big ways in the past. I felt that the other person would feel the same way, and so I avoided No at all costs. 

Part of what I was avoiding was reactivating my own feelings, my own memories of being said No to. And so, with that clarity, I realized that playing nice was a little bit about burying my own pain, and not as much about the other person, so it wasn't very giving ultimately. 

I was not looking at the real need of the person, which sometimes wasn't as acute. I was seeing myself in them and in some twisted way, trying to help that part of me. 

This was, of course, just one part of my problems with saying No. The other part was this. I had the belief that if you are a good person, you say Yes. You say Yes to what other people ask of you. You say Yes as a default response, without considering what it costs you. 

In fact, mostly, I never thought of the cost. I thought that if I am good and thoughtful and nice, good things would automatically happen to me. That was the magical thinking of the child. But in reality, what happened was that while some good things did happen, giving away my energy and time in a thousand little ways, without any direction, depleted my own self. It left me resentful and angry. 

What we have been told about our hearts is wrong, I think. It is not always giving that keeps them alive. I think what keeps them alive is maintaining the right flow of energy -- giving unconditionally on the one hand and receiving the nourishment you need on the other. 

You need to receive. And you need to receive what you need, not just what someone offers you. You have your own unique needs. And you need some different lessons in giving. You might need to remind yourself to give discerningly, so that you don't give "on demand." That usually happens when someone else is happy doing the taking.

You might have to sacrifice the belief that we should always give without calculation. Our time and energy is limited. A Yes to one thing or person is often a default No to another person or thing that is not as loud, not as demanding. 

Maybe the people and things in your life that are important but that don't speak up as insistently can be your motivation. When we say Yes without thinking, they suffer. It is up to us, as sensitive people, to become more discerning about who really needs our energy, and how we can really contribute in the world. 

Giving pieces of yourself away does not help anyone. You have something valuable to give, and saying No is part of what will help both you and me to make a whole offering, and not give pieces of ourselves away for nothing. 

I am telling myself.  I am a sensitive person. I can say No. This will help build a better structure in my life. It will help me feel more safe and secure. Claiming my own piece of land will help me cultivate what's really important to me. When that grows, that will be the thing that can most help other people. That will be the thing that is mine to give. 

Thursday, April 16, 2015

A Field Report: Intuition Exercise

I wrote recently about an exercise that allowed for intuitive insights to occur.

The theory goes like this. Although we can't make intuition happen, we can get into a space where intuitive insights are more likely to happen. 


The exercise that I wrote about tells us that the ideal conditions for intuition are paved by relaxation and a state of flexible attention, giving us access to a place in which we can loosely spread our attention over a larger area, instead of just directing it at one point. 

The way we do it is by imagining different distances in our bodies, the point between the elbow and the wrist or the knee and the ankle for example. Then, we imagine our attention spreading across these spaces. 

I have done this exercise a few times now, and here's what's happened so far. There's no right way to do the exercise, so I just went with what felt right. In places where I didn't quite even sense my body, I tried to feel the tense places. Where I felt some energy, the image of shifting sand popped up in my head. I visualized my way through that area, the sand moving and taking form in that space. The image helped me move my attention, and it seemed like it came out of the unconscious as a metaphor for what was happening in my body. 

In the same way, I visualized my spine filling with air, and I had some felt sense of it. At one point, I combined this exercise with deep pelvic breathing. It was amazing how the two seemed to work together with wonderful synergy. 

I relaxed within minutes, and it was empowering to feel that I could do that at will. When I was focusing on my lower body at one point, my back, which was tense and scrunched up, loosened and relaxed. I touched on the fact that my body was one system, and working on one part affected the other. 

Did I get more intuitive hunches? I am not sure. I felt a difference in my intention to follow whispers of feeling. I felt like my mind had quieted down a bit, and as if I could access my body, even its numbed out parts just a little. I felt my energy collecting a little, and not getting scattered by things that go on outside. 

My sense is that something in the exercise is working and will work. I will do it more, and see where it takes me. Often, I have stopped myself in exploring and my first goal has been safety, even when dealing with myself. But digging inside my own caves is probably the most illuminating and rewarding thing I can think of doing right now. 

Friday, April 10, 2015

Standing in a Fresh Lake, Thirsty

"I disappoint many people, and sometimes myself, by not being more obviously spiritual. I don't go to church and rarely meditate in a formal way. I wear ordinary clothes and eat an ordinary diet. I have an aversion to much of the language I hear and read from today's spiritual sources." Thus begins the poetically-titled piece This Fractured, Heavenly World in a back issue of the Spirituality and Health magazine. 

It is by the wonderful and wise Thomas Moore, one of my most recent writing loves. In this short piece, he first tells us where he gets these wonderfully light attitudes from. Partly, he says, they come from his father. Moore paints an evocative picture of the man. He tells us that his father, who died two months after turning 100 years old, was a deeply religious and spiritual man. 

In fact, he was one of the most spiritual people he has ever known. A devout Catholic, he went to Mass at every opportunity, and yet, he was also someone who "wouldn't suffer piousness." Moore tells us of a time that his father went to a church meeting just to stir up some discussion and to represent contrarian views. 

"He loved people, enjoyed the simple things, had a constant curiosity about how the world works, and loved being around children and playing with them. He was also a born teacher who took every opportunity to help others learn. He was a plumber and lived a plumber's spirituality." 

With such a stellar example, how could Moore's spirituality not grow in a similar form? "Years ago, an image from the Sufis struck me and has guided me. Looking for God, they say, is like someone standing in a lake of fresh water and being thirsty. It is foolish to seek the sacred and the divine when we live in a world that is holy and saturated with divinity, if only we had the eyes to see it." 

Moore tells us, "I don't want to be "spiritual," and I don't want to be "worldly." I want whatever results when you thoroughly mix the two." 

We have to recognize that the mundane and the sacred share the same space, he says. That's the profound paradox that we need to touch. The routines of our lives have a sacred thread running right through them. As we look up from watering our plants and see a crane flying above, that is a sacred moment, a communion. When we create a meal for someone we love, that is an offering. When we touch upon the joy of practicing our talents, that is the bursting forth of our joy. 

What we can't quite touch is the reason dancers dance, singers sing, and musicians make music. It's the same reason that architects design buildings, what Goethe called frozen music. It's the spirit we touch on when we do what we love, in work or in play. We are expressing the echoes of some music deep inside us. 

Maybe articulating the notes will help us find where it comes from. And at the very least, going over the notes gives some comfort. They waft up from a place we can't see, and yet, can dimly sense. 

Now, there's this opening to a larger self, to feelings of connection. It feels like such a relief from the frozen, archaic space that often holds us in sway. 

Thursday, April 9, 2015

An Exercise for Authenticity

When I was younger, not sure what to wrap myself around and grow, I listened to the cacophony of different voices inside and couldn't figure out how to reconcile them all. They all seemed so different from each other, these different parts of me. I couldn't hold this tension, this feeling that inside me were many different people. I couldn't see how to bring them all together. And so, I flattened parts of me into one. 

Some of this was also because I conformed and gave in to the loud voices outside. But some of it was just to quickly arrive at a solution, to figure out what exactly I was supposed to be. The stress of not knowing, not having that clarity felt terrifying. 

In the past few months, some changes have been afoot. I have started dancing again, something that defines my essence more than anything else. I have been getting in touch with my real feelings beyond the haze of being nice, and started gaining a felt sense of how I used to feel before getting other people's approval became such a driver. 

The word "Authenticity" has been dancing in my consciousness, coming up from the depths of my own self and vibrating in the stories I am finding around me. Dipping through the lovely Julia Cameron's book The Vein of Gold, I chanced upon a little exercise that speaks to me right now. 

It might speak to you as well, if you are feeling some cracks. You are noticing the difference between the official version of who you are and who you really are. Maybe you are feeling fragile too, and just a little crazy. You are changing your moves and that feels uncomfortable and unsafe. 

I hope we both safely land on the shore on the other side. Maybe this exercise can be part of your raft. It goes like this. Number a piece of paper from one to twenty. Then fill out the sentence, "On the one hand, I'd love to ....."; on the other hand, I'd love to ....." twenty times.  

This feels like freedom, a declaration of my different loves, and an invitation to stretch what all encompasses me. Too often, I have said, "I'm not the kind of person to..." "I'm not the kind of person" puts a label on me, puts me into a small box, makes my options limited.  

I'm not the kind of person is also a way of making an excuse, of keeping myself stagnant. I am not the kind of person who questions other people. I'm not the kind of person who changes her definition of giving. I am not the kind of person who says No. I am not the kind of person who can confront and challenge when someone confronts and challenges me. 

But maybe I am. Maybe I can be. On the one hand, I'd love to please everyone. On the other hand, I'd love to say No without feeling guilty. On the one hand, I'd love to give to others. On the other hand, I'd love to claim all my time for myself and give to myself for a change. On the one hand, I'd love to fit in and be harmonious. On the other, I'd love to stand out and reveal who I am. 

On a lighter note, on the one hand, I'd love to experiment with the way I dress. On the other hand, I'd love to hone in on my own style. On the one hand, I'd love to wear high heels. On the other hand, I would love to dress down. 

It's freeing to feel a possibility of different ways of being co-existing. I love heels. I love comfort. I love to please people. But too much pleasing has been killing me. I also love to please myself. This feels like lying beneath a very large expansive fabric, feeling that I can expand the ways in which I respond, that I don't need to stay within some arbitrary lines I drew for myself. 

Here's what my beloved Julia says about the exercise and what it can do. "Do you feel the stretching of your consciousness as you embrace apparent opposites? Can you see that you can encompass more emotional range than you may have realized?" Can you see that? Can you? I have some sense of it. I hope to see it more, to see that I can be nice and good and strong and fierce and militant and peaceful. 

All these different things can live inside me and be accessible to me, and I can be more expansive and less boxed in. I can be a little bigger than I have been till now.  

Friday, April 3, 2015

An Exercise for Developing Intuition

Making decisions has been hard for me. I have gotten better at it, but I am still searching for ways to decide  that feel right. I know that too much information can paralyze me, leaving me sorting through options. Is this better? Someone else is doing that. Should I do that as well? What is right for me?

One big piece of this struggling to decide is struggling to listen to the voice inside. It seems like there are too many clamoring voices. How do I know which voice is an intuitive nudge and which one is just wishful thinking? I need to find a way to get to that place of awareness where that answer becomes clear.

So, I have been reading about intuition and how to allow it to surface. One interesting exercise that I have come across is called Open Focus. It has been developed by Dr Lester Fehmi of the Princeton Medical Center. It goes something like this. We need to imagine the space between different points in the body. What we are trying to do is diffusing our attention and letting it cover a larger area, instead of  trying to focus on a single point. This helps reduce anxiety, tension and inhibition . It helps us lose our preoccupation with a sense of time. We feel more expansive, more attuned to the wisdom that gets lost in the chatter.

The questions go like this: Can you imagine the space between your eyes? Can you imagine the space between your ears? Can you imagine the space inside your throat, between your shoulders, between your hips? Can you imagine that the area between your ankles and knees is filled with space? Can you imagine that your spine is filled with space? And so on and so forth.

We are not trying to come up with some answer such as "There are two inches between my eyes." What we are trying to do is imagine and experience that space. If we only have a vague feeling or sense of it in the beginning, that's okay. There is no right way to do this. We are learning to let our attention become expansive and move over a larger area.

When we can do this, we can become more flexible about shifting from narrowly focusing on something to a state in which we lose self-consciousness and where time slows down. This is the kind of state we need to access to tap hidden stores. This is the space from which insights and images will start bubbling up.

Of course, we can't make ourselves have intuitive insights. But we can create a space where they are more likely to happen. This exercise is one way of clearing the way.

Would you be willing to give it a try? It might be that the intention to learn how to tune into intuition might actually make it more likely to happen.

As I work with this, I will keep you updated on how much it worked for me, or not.          

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Untying emotional knots

The littlest bird came and hovered near me the other day. I was sitting in the patio, reading. The sun shone overhead, and I felt entrained with the rhythm around me - the hum of birds, the little unnamed sounds that nature makes that seem to pull downwards, into the coolest, deepest well.  

There was a feeling of relaxing into my body. Time unspooled. I felt part of its wave and not like a disconnected fragment. I could sense a solidity in my body that I don't often have.

I don't feel like this often. I think I have been feeling it because I am giving voice and expression to some of my anger. I have been reading about feelings and the foundation seems to be that we can't selectively numb them.

Push one away, and our capacity to feel other feelings is diminished. Pushing anger deeper into the recesses makes it harder to feel happiness. Not feeling sadness feels like almost deciding not to feel joy.

So, I have been diving into the muck of my uncomfortable feelings, especially my anger.

It feels dangerous at times. What if it turns against me? What if I don't have the skills to navigate through its murky waters?

These are valid questions. With them, fear rises and tells me to stop making this effort. But as someone who has lived through many feelings, I also know that just turning my head away won't make something go away.

It will lie there, getting knotted and twisted. Paying attention to my feelings, learning what to do with them - how to express them healthily, all this might be much less risk than letting anger and fear fester inside.

Inside, they just get contorted. They create a thick wall that keeps everything good outside. They make me a stranger to myself. Just like joy connects me to myself, so does my anger and sadness connect me to very real things.

Just the other day, I was talking to someone, and I realized why I used to feel fear and anxiety almost all the time. I thought anger was so dangerous that I never let myself feel it. I dropped it as soon as it came up. But doing that meant not listening to its message.

Some boundary had been crossed. Some of my space had been invaded. But because I didn't let myself feel anger, I didn't take any action to heal that breach.

Of course, fear would come up in such a situation. How can it not? I had left myself undefended. There was cause to be fearful.

Now that I can see that healthy anger has a useful purpose, I feel regret for that foolhardy girl who left herself unsafe, unequipped to deal with life and the world outside.

I am still learning how to navigate anger safely, and it makes me scared many times. I know anger is powerful, and you can use power in many ways. You might use it to self-destruct.

But I am learning healthy ways, and finding that I am regaining other feelings as well. Sometimes, I touch sadness. Other times though, I touch upon feelings of joy and being completely at ease.

There are birds outside. Things are alive and humming with energy. Time seems slowed down because I don't want to hurry any longer. Who knows how long this feeling will last, this ease, but even some moments are worth the try.