Back to Basics

 changing habits, self-help  8 Responses »
Sep 282007
 

I’d say most bloggers (or maybe most people in Western culture) tend to live in their heads. Me too.
As I read the comments to my last post I started spinning some fancy theories at first. At one point I even told my husband, “You know, maybe the problem is that I don’t have the kind of life that allows me to get lost in anything.” He reminded me that it was me who made my life what it is. I do have a problem with getting lost in something (not literally, I find that quite easy, figuratively) but I’ll think about that some other time. After much thinking and talking and writing (because sometimes I’m a bit slow) it all came down to, “Maybe I’m feeling a little low and unmotivated because I’m so tired.” And my tiredness dies not stem from something like chronic fatigue syndrome, as my mother thought, but as I have written often before from the simple fact that I don’t go to bed early enough.

Yesterday I “tried” going to bed earlier and I succeeded, only it wasn’t early enough. Judging by the way this has been going since 2005 (when I slept enough every night for about three months) I’d guess that today I’ll be a little later than yesterday and tomorrow I will be back at my much too late bedtime.

This morning I pulled a card from one of my oracle decks which I do most days and there it was: “Back to Basics”. In the booklet it says things like:

If you neglect your basic needs, your higher awareness will diminish, leaving you to operate on adrenaline and anxiety.

Duh. And there are some questions for me as well as for you:

Are you taking loving care of your body without guilt? Are you getting enough sleep, drinking enough water, eating healthy and lovingly prepared food, and getting adequate exercise?

I even have thought of keeping track of my new “going to bed on time”-habit on my blog. But that seems so pathetic. Maybe I’ll go back to the old “sticker on the calendar”-method of motivation and keeping track. And maybe in a month or so I can report back and tell, “I did it! I’m feeling fabulous! I slept eight hours a night for four weeks in a row!”

Somehow I doubt it though. And 8 hours still isn’t enough for me, it’s just better than my usual 6 1/2. What I need is 9 hours. I know I’m insatiable. Do you even know how many hours of sleep you need?

(And speaking of healthy and lovingly prepared food, my dear husband stepped in and cooked a marvelous minestrone (which I forgot to photograph, but I was hungry). And he even cooked it on top of the wood stove!

(And just when I had posted this I read a post by Gretchen from the happiness project:”One easy key to happiness: get more sleep. That means turning off the light!” The universe is definitely trying to tell me something. She cites studies saying that sleep has a major influence on your mood, and getting one more hour of sleep would make you happier than more money…)

How can one learn to enjoy the process?

 changing habits, creativity, self-help  12 Responses »
Sep 242007
 

I had one of those epiphanies a couple of months ago about the creative process. Or life maybe.

I always thought that if you are a real artist you enjoy the whole process of making art from start to finish. I thought for example that real musicians (unlike me) enjoy practicing. Maybe not every single minute of it but seven out of their eight hours a day of it for sure. I have to force myself to play. And every day I have to do it again.

I have heard that it takes 27 days to form a habit. Haha, really funny that. I have had practiced daily for months or years without it becoming a habit.

But back to that epiphany: Lisa Liam wrote somewhere in her blog that she dislikes cutting out the pieces for sewing. And she loves sewing so much that she has made it into her profession. I had thought it was only me! Disliking the cutting, swearing all through the sewing and leaving the almost finished piece for months without sewing on the buttons. Or dreading blocking and sewing the knitting together so much that I’d rather stop knitting the sweater with half a sleeve unfinished.

Or having to kick myself to practice by setting a kitchen timer and saying, “You won’t leave this keyboard until the bell rings. No, no daydreaming. Play. – I can hear that you’re not really working. Get back. Do your scales.” And it’s even a little harder with making music because you’re never finished. It’s just like being an athlete in training.

Or never writing anything but the beginning of a story. Only signing up for NaNoWriMo made me finish a first draft. I recently spoke to a fellow NaNo-participant about signing up for the next one (I’m still undecided, but this time I’ll tell my husband first.), and he said, “The hardest part is starting to write for the day. Once you have written a few sentences it just keeps going.”
Ha! As if! With every writing project apart from writing blog posts I had to force myself to write every single paragraph. Not that I didn’t have periods of free flowing prose where all I had to do was typing fast enough to keep up but once I reached my quota for the day I couldn’t get away from writing fast enough.

So for me doing something that fills me with joy isn’t necessarily about doing things that are fun or pleasurable. The question is why I keep on doing these things even though I find them tedious and hard? There comes Robert Heinlein to mind who said that he felt awful when writing but even more awful when not. (That’s somewhere in his biography which I can’t access now because it’s in the room my son is sleeping in.) I always compare this to climbing a mountain (or going for a walk) versus plopping down in front of TV all day.

The difference is how you feel about life and yourself at the end of the day. The climb or the walk makes you feel strong, confident, happy, and tired in a good way. Sitting on a couch watching TV all day might be pleasurable but at the end of the day you feel sluggish, drowsy, and unsatisfied.

Still, even knowing this, I’d like to change my perspective in a way that I could just enjoy the walk, or the process without feeling bad most of the way. That’s why I made “effortlessness” my word of the year. And I don’t think this is all about being blocked, or my inner critic giving me a hard time. Maybe this is about me thinking that life should somehow be easier. Maybe it’s time to grow up. Without becoming all dead serious and dividing my days into tiny little slices, into a sequence of to-dos. I tried that and while I got a lot of things done it never was enough and I managed to squeeze the joy out of life.

So, do you have any ideas? Are you good about enjoying the process? Did you learn that somehow, or were you always like that?

Sleep deprivation is the new binge eating

 changing habits, life, self-help  14 Responses »
Jul 142007
 

I have had an eating disorder for about 25 years of my life. I used to be a compulsive overeater. While I’m still compulsive now and then, and I’m still overeating from time to time, those days are gone. Poof. Well, not exactly poof, it took some years and some work, and then some more work, and then I had to bring out my inner parent and now I’m all better. (And if you’re interested in any of that you can look at changing habits.)

But I’ve found something new! Sleep deprivation. Makes you feel even worse than having eaten 1 1/2 bags of potato chips, a bag of gummy bears and lots of chocolate in one sitting. Just train yourself to go to bed at 11.30 when you have to get up at 6.45, when you need about 8 1/2 hours of sleep and voilà, there’s your new obsession.

First you don’t get out of bed on time because you haven’t slept enough yet. Then you stumble through your day, bleary-eyed and barely conscious. You promise yourself a midday nap only to find something really important to do, like for example reading blogs, and that’s it for the nap. You promise yourself to be good from now on, to go to bed on time. “Ah, tonight”, you think, “tonight I’ll snuggle in my cosy bed just when I’m getting tired and then close my eyes. Bliss!”. For the whole day you think of bed. In a wholly platonic way. Sleep. Sleep! SLEEP! Interestingly when evening comes around, you get awake again. There’s just this one thing more to do before going to bed. After all it isn’t that late. And it’s not good to go to bed too early of course. So you still have, let’s say, 30 minutes. So you can start to watch an episode of “Angel”. And of course you will be really good today and stop watching it right in the middle. Don’t you? Only this time it’s that interesting, never mind that you already know it. And if you stay up just a little longer you’ll be past some critical point in your knitting. Or you talk to your husband and just forget the time… Never mind the reason, the result is always the same: You go to bed at 11.30. Rinse and repeat.

After a while you are too tired to exercise. You are too tired to play with your son. You are impatient and cranky. You are too tired to make music. In fact, you are too tired for doing anything much, and everything you do takes twice the time it should take because you’re so slow. You get so tired that you shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car anymore.

So why do you continue going to bed too late? Even though you know that you never can sleep in? And you know that sleeping in isn’t good for you either. better to have a consistent routine, like, going to bed at 10.30 and getting up at 6.45. (We’re not talking about you pre-motherly goal of having nine hours of deep, relaxing, and uninterrupted sleep every night here. Just eight hours for a start.)

In a way, it’s perfect. You get to complain, which is always good, so that people don’t get jealous at you. You life has focus and you never have to shift it because nothing changes. When you’re tired it only shows how hard you work and what amazing things you do. Of course you can’t be expected to do anything for anybody before being rested. You don’t have to be creative because you’re much too tired for that. Better to dream about your projects than have them fall short in any way. You get to eat more because you’re always hungry. And since you’re so low on energy you just deserve a little chocolate to make you feel better. And then, of course, a beer in the evening to help you sleep better. Never mind that alcohol doesn’t help with sleep. At least it feels relaxing.

This of course is wholly fictional and doesn’t bear any resemblance to real, ahem, almost forty-ish singers any of us knows.

How to be creative when you don’t have the time (part 3)

 creativity, self-help  14 Responses »
Jun 162007
 

It’s been a while but I didn’t forget. In the first two installments of this series I wrote about finding the time, and finding resources. I promised to write about physical space but since then I have come to think that that isn’t exactly thrilling. So I’ll write about that briefly and then go on to talk about finding the space for creativity in your mind. And then, maybe, there might be a last post about inspiration.

3. Finding physical space

Most creative things don’ need that much space. Again, writing is a winner, sit down anywhere with notebook and pen, and voilà, instant creativity. For music space isn’t the issue unless you want to play drum set or grand piano. Sculpting is harder but then, if you stick with your play-doh…

When I was sewing my grocery bag a student came early. My whole teaching room was full, with the fabric and the sewing machine and the ironing board. And she said that she loved sewing too, but that one really needed time for this, and a place where one can leave it all. She had a veery longing gaze in her eyes.

Of course everyone of us would like to have a crafts room but then it is possible to do it flylady-style too. She has a rolling suitcase for every project. She pulls everything out when she works on it and when she is finished for the day she puts everything back. Which is exactly what I should have done that day. I plan to empty one of the wooden boxes I have around the house and use that as my “current-sewing-project-in-progress”-box. I’ll put it under the box with all the flutes and the xylophone in it.

(And this was the point where I had written this whole post from beginning to finish while my son was first sitting in the bathtub and then later while I was waiting for him to fall asleep, and I was very good, saving it every other paragraph, and happily typing away on my palm and then it said “unexpected error” and all the rest of it is gone. Very frustrating. Sigh. But no, I won’t give up. So here’s the recreation of the rest. Who knows maybe it’ll be a little shorter.)

So, let’s talk about the big issue:

4. Finding the space in your mind

For most of us this may be the biggest obstacle of all. Our minds are full to the brim with little things and little people. Especially the little people can make the task of finding mind space really challenging. Our minds are constantly cluttered with things to do, things not to forget, places to go, people we met, things we talked about, thinks we read about, … So here are a few tips to help:

Find a little time for yourself in the morning:
Every morning I get up half an hour early to do 9 1/2 minutes of sitting meditation. You might ask, “Why does it take 30 minutes to do 10 minutes of meditation?” Well, I’m not very fast in the morning. But when I am, I also write a little in my journal. I have written about meditation elsewhere, and it really helps to clear the mind, but if you don’t want to, anything helps. Get up a little early and write into a journal, or sit down with your cup of coffee and look out of the window, or take a short walk. Just take a little time alone to hear yourself think, feel yourself before the day starts. (And if you have a child that senses when you get up, either leave it with your partner (if you can), or try to make this time as peaceful as possible with the child.)

Find a little time for yourself in the evening:
Again, just sitting down, turning off TV, radio, or mindless chatter helps. Taking a look out of the window, maybe a little walk. I like to sit down in the evenings and write into my gratitude journal. Mad Hatter sits down and blogs (Um, or not, I just read her blog and she is on blog-vacation.). Either way, taking a step back helps to clear the mind.

Find a little time for yourself during the day
Take the peace and quiet wherever you find it. Do the dishes and let your mind wander, hang up laundry with your baby in a sling, put your child in the stroller and go for a walk, sit down at the kitchen table while the children play in the next room, use the tiny scraps of time that you have, put your thinking and your creativity in the nooks and crannies of your day, and you will see that all those scraps together might result in a big, colorful quilt of thinking and creativity.

Start with clearing the physical space
You can also start with de-cluttering. Nothing refreshens the mind better than a little cleaning or de-cluttering. Only be careful not to stop there. Housework never ends. Just let your hands do the work and feel your thoughts lighten.

Move
One of the best things for me to get out of a rut, get my mind working again, think something over, or solve a problem is a walk. All exercise is good for this. (Well, up to a certain point.) But especially good are those that have a rhythm to it and don’t require thinking. Like walking, running or riding a bike. Or maybe yoga. (Okay, not rhythmic and un-thinking as such, but it helps. I know it.)

If you want to find more mind space it also helps to turn off TV, radio, and also – gasp – the computer. All those things can be very stimulating too. But there has to be a little extra space for ideas, and dreams. So you can go and be creative.

And when you have done all that, or maybe only some of that, all you need is a notepad and pen so you can write down your ideas. And then, some other time, you make something out of those ideas. But first you have to have that space in your mind. Which exactly is the reason why we all get such good ideas in the shower or while driving. There even are waterproof notepads for that but in my experience if the idea is really that good you’ll probably still know it, once you’re dry and dressed.

So now that we have cleared our minds and started thinking, it becomes easier. Remember when you fell in love and couldn’t think about anything else but that person? That’s how it feels when you start a new creative project. And then life comes in the way, and procrastination. Of which I will write another day. The only thing that we still need for being creative is inspiration. That will be the conclusion of the creativity-series.

How to be creative when you don’t have the time (part 2)

 creativity, self-help  10 Responses »
May 222007
 

First thank you for your comments on part 1 of this which mostly dealt with the question of “how to find the time”. Of course all that made me think about the time issue some more. And on the question of “What is creativity anyway?”. But though I’ll definitely come back to that I’ll continue with how to find resources and space today. (The problem with this series might be to find a way to stop writing it since it is basically the main theme of my blog anyway. Or the main theme of my life.) So, back on schedule.

2. Find resources

Different creative endeavors call for different kinds of resources, of course. As I gave you the advice to grab any minute you could get, when you try to find the time of course now I won’t tell you that you need a big studio, a pristine workplace and only the best tools to get started. So, here are a couple of ideas:

For the aspiring writer: get a notebook and pen. This is one of the things that I really love about writing. It is low cost, clean, easy and quiet. And you can do it anywhere. While you can look for the perfect pen forever you also can use what you have on hand. It is good to have a fast writing pen, but you don’t really need to. While I love my new, shiny, flowery Waterman fountain pen, I have used ordinary pencils for ages. (And when you want to have a new, shiny fountain pen like I do, do what I did: first select one that isn’t too expensive, second ask your parents to give it to you as a Christmas present.).

And then you obviously do have access to a computer. You can use that too but it isn’t as portable or easy. Books and classes and all that can help but they don’t necessarily do. In the end it all comes down to pen on paper or fingers on keyboard. Taking a class or reading a book about writing helps you think about it but, well, only doing gets things done.

For the aspiring musician: of course this is something I’m really experienced in. It’s my job to help people become musicians. But really, you don’t need a teacher. In fact you need less than you think.

  • The best musical instrument is your voice. Most of us have one right here. “But I can’t sing!” you say. Don’t worry, you can. Only when you have a voice that’s constantly scratchy or hoarse have it checked by a physician. For everybody else it only takes practice. How to practice? Easy. Just sing. Sing to the radio, sing in the shower, join a local choir, then sing some more, then try to sing the song you heard on the radio, fail, sing some more. If you’re singing out of tune and you hear it yourself, congratulations you have everything you need. Try listening to yourself while you sing. No, really listening. And if you don’t like the sound of your voice, sing some more and try to experiment with your sound. When it hurts or you lose your voice stop. Then try again but this time a little gentler.
  • The next best might be the guitar. Ask around and find somebody who has an old guitar that he doesn’t play anymore. Buy some new strings and find someone to put them on the guitar for you. Find a guitar book (the person who gave you the guitar probably has one), find someone to show you where to start with chords, play. Though I’m teaching beginning guitar students how to play chords, you really don’t need a teacher. You can learn a lot all by yourself.
  • Also not so hard to find: a piano or keyboard. One of your relatives might have one sitting in the living room gathering dust. You only have to move it. Nowadays a lot of people have a keyboard somewhere around that they bought for the children. Borrow it.
  • For the aspiring composer: get a cheap tape recorder, or if you want to get fancy use your computer. I have one with an inbuilt microphone and it comes with recording software. It even has a sort of synthesizer and loops. Julia Cameron taught herself how to write songs by singing them into a tape recorder and later picking the melodies out on a toy keyboard.

So you get my drift: borrow something or use what you already have. Don’t think that you need a grand piano, a piano teacher and a voice teacher. You don’t have to be able to write down musical notes. I once taught myself how to play the trumpet. I borrowed a trumpet and a beginner’s book. A friend showed me how to get a sound out of the instrument and then I just tried and tried and tried. Usually I waited until everybody was out of the house, but then I just made horrible farting noises until I got it.

To me that’s the main problem with making music, it makes noise. But nobody says anything about your singing in the shower. Sing in the car, no problem. And your children will get used to it. I once knew a woman who played her drums in the evening when her children w ere asleep. Those children were used to get to sleep while she banged on her drum set in the adjacent room. (I don’t think this is the best way to do it, but when it’s the only way you can do it, do it that way.)

For the aspiring artist: again, notebook and pen, or pencil. At first you don’t have to get fancy. Use crayons, use your children’s art supplies. In fact fancy art supplies might get in the way. When I expressed interest in learning how to draw my sister gave me a boy of pastel chalks. They’re lovely but I still have to use them. And you know why? First, I’m still not sure that I deserve them and second she told me you had to put some kind of finish to them when you’re done and I don’t know how. (Well, I know because she told me but I have yet to buy hair spray.) Do pastels go rancid? Maybe I should get into the spirit of this and draw something in pastels the next week.

For the aspiring sculptor: use play-doh. Or sign up for pottery class. Go outside, come back with a piece of wood. Find a pocket knife. Make something with paper-mâchè.

For the aspiring film-maker: write a script, draw sketches of what things should look like. Draw them even when you can’t draw. Borrow a video camera, make pictures, use photoshop and make a stop-motion film. Use your play-doh again. Or your children’s action figures. Whatever.

For the aspiring actor: act in front of the mirror, find acting classes, go to improvisation theater.

I think you get my drift. Start easy, start with what you already have. Don’t wait till you have the expensive single lens digital camera before you take pictures. When you find that you’re taking lots and lots of picture, save money and buy a better one. Buy it used. Like I did with my bag-sewing-project use the old sewing machine that drives you crazy. Or do it like my sister. She’d rather have no sewing machine than a bad one and so she is making her beautiful quilts by hand. And yes, sewing and taking pictures count as creative. Knitting too.

I’m sorry, this is too long again. So part three will be about finding the space for creativity. Physical space that is. I’ll deal with mental space in part, um, three or four.

(Anybody tired of this? I could throw in a short post about shoes or about how my son is driving me crazy if you want. Or a follow-up on the sugar-front or on the “no pink shoes for my son“-story.)

How to be creative when you don’t have the time (part 1)

 creativity, self-help  16 Responses »
May 202007
 

Just do it. Time’s not the problem. Now be creative.

Well, though that’s about right, it isn’t very helpful, isn’t it?

There are two parts to this creativity thing. One is in your head and the other one is physical. For today I’d like to start with the practical aspect of it. Why, you might say, do you do that? What I really need to know is where to get ideas and how to get into the groove and such. Bear with me, just try it from the other side. It will work. And if it doesn’t I will be talking about the head stuff in another post. So in order to be creative you need three things on the physical plane: time, resources and space.

1. Find the time

This of course seems to be the hardest task of all the three. We never have time for anything. On the other hand there seems to be enough time around for everybody and so maybe we just have to learn to spend it wisely.

So, what do you want to do? Compose a symphony? Make a film as a writer/director? Bake a cake? Write a nine novel fantasy series? Which one of those projects do you think is most likely to see daylight? The cake? I think so too. Why the cake? Well, given the right equipment, a cookbook, the ingredients and about 90 minutes of time almost everybody can make a cake.

Does that mean that every one of the other projects needs a year of sabbatical? Most people don’t get to have those and if you are a parent or a procrastinator like me then the sabbatical wouldn’t help you because even a year without your paid job would leave your life pretty full. So you’d have to break your project into nice little chunks. Instead of writing a nine novel fantasy series you better just start thinking about your fantasy world. Wow. That was easy. And when did you do that? In bed before sleep? While taking a shower? While driving? Good. That’s how it should be. In addition to that you could also sit down and make a map. Oh wait, better just make a quick sketch of a map. Write down your character’s name. Or just sit down and write. No time to sit down? Write standing. Get a little tape recorder and speak in there. Or, – why don’t you just open a text editor right now and jot down a little something? Yes, now, I’ll wait. See, you just spent 30 seconds on your novel.

For the part of creativity that consists of making things up in your head you don’t need time as such.
You only need a little room in your head to think about them. Mostly while you’re doing something else. For the actual doing, the painting, the writing, the sculpting you don’t need three weeks without work or interruption. To prove this thousands of people everywhere in the world participate in NaNoWriMo each year. That means in November (of all months) thousands of people sit down and write an average of 1,667 words a day each day on top of their jobs and other responsibilities. They move their lives around to make the time it takes to write.

That’s the sprinter’s approach to creative projects.
Find the time by forcing the creative project into your life. Use the power of the deadline. Surfing the adrenaline surge and getting more and more behind with everything else, neglecting friends and family and not sleeping enough. You can’t live like that every day of the year. Some people can’t even for a month. The good thing is that you don’t have to take it all at once.

So now I’ll introduce you to the marathon walker’s guide to creativity:
Set aside a little piece of time every day to do whatever you want to do. Write, practice scales, make a sketch. Don’t sit down and think, “I’ll do this huge phenomenal project.” it won’t work. Just say to yourself, “Only 15 minutes.” Set a timer if you must. Do it every day. Well, plan to do it every day and then be content with having it done five times a week. That’s life. But don’t plan to do it only five times a week. That won’t work. You can even plan to do it once a week but it probably won’t work either. Sunday comes around, only this Sunday you don’t have time because it’s your grandmother’s birthday and there you are, the month has gone by and you haven’t been creative.

At first I recommend making it a habit like brushing your teeth. You know there was a time when you didn’t brush your teeth. Somebody else did it for you. Nowadays I doubt you would go to sleep without brushing them. But it took a while, didn’t it? You can use all the motivational help you can get. Give yourself stickers, tell somebody and make yourself accountable, or join a group (if anybody is interested in founding “songwriters anonymous”, send me an e-mail).

You can find the time by cutting back on things like reading magazines, watching TV, or running to the grocery store for the fifth time in a week because you didn’t make a shopping list. And a lot of people find that doing the creative thing first thing in the morning helps. Only not if you want to sing. Singing is better after breakfast. Believe me. And then you can spend the rest of your day feeling happy because you already were creative.

And keep in mind that professional artists don’t have the time either.
Look at musicians: they are doing one show after the other, traveling around, doing interviews, taking care of the business side of their lives (or communicating with the people who take care of the business side). But they are writing songs anyway. It’s not like they enter the studio, shut the door, let the song writing begin and emerge a week later with a finished CD. I think they too have to squeeze it in. They write on the road, in hotel rooms, on buses, and during sound check.

It’s not like I’m the first one ever to write about this, but usually the advice goes like, “set aside an hour each day”. When you’re a parent, or a parent with a paid job, this is where they lose you. You hear “set aside and hour”, laugh hysterically and go away. So I say, “Just sit down for a minute or two.” Just start somewhere. And if you manage to do something creative then it will be better than having done nothing. And soon enough you will find yourself immersed in your creative project.

Come on. Five minutes. You do have five minutes, don’t you?

So you say, “But I can’t write an opera in five minutes!” No, you can’t but let’s do the math: 5 minutes a day, 5 times a week, that’s 25 times 52, well maybe two weeks off for vacation and Christmas, that’s 1,250 minutes a year, that’s 20 hours. If I’m really working on it I can write about 600 words per hour. So that would be 12,000 words a year. Not a novel but a short story for sure. And do you really think you would stop at five minutes? Because let’s face it if it goes smoothly you’d surely spend up to 15 minutes on your writing at one sitting. So, maybe not an opera. But a song for sure. See? Okay. I know these kind of calculations are ridiculous. But keep in mind that doing a little every day helps a lot to get results. If you doubt it go to woolgathering. A woman wanted to learn how to draw. So she bought a notebook and a pen, sat down and drew. One drawing a day. You can see how her skill evolves. And you can do it too.

For how to find resources and space, see part 2.

How to become a happy person

 self-help  12 Responses »
Mar 292007
 

This post was prompted by a recent post by my friend De of “sober briquet“. She started it by a quote saying: “Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. ” I disagree. And I’m not the only one so I’d like to point everybody to Gretchen’s blog, the happiness project, and especially to her post about the John Stuart Mill-quote, her “Tips for how NOT to be happy” and while I’m linking all over the place you might find this post about “The Three Secrets to Happiness” on zen habits interesting too.

I started out quite unhappy by the way. When my husband and I first met we found that even real love with marriage couldn’t make us entirely happy. I talked about it at that time. I thought it was inbuilt. There was something inside of me, a part of my soul that was never quite happy. I also used to be jealous, shrill, judgmental, nervous, impatient and sarcastic.

At that time I even was a little proud of it. It set me apart. It made me special. Never to be content. I thought this was what made me creative and what made me strive. I was afraid of losing it. Afraid of being happy because I thought I’d turn into someone who just sits there grinning, achieving nothing. Well, I was wrong. I can’t say when it happened exactly but nowadays I find that I’m even happy when I’m feeling utterly depressed. I can’t explain why or how but I can point to some of the changes I have made during that time which have helped.

So, what does it mean, being happy? Does it mean that I’m going through my day in a state of coital bliss wearing rose-colored glasses? Certainly not. To me it means being aware of a part of me that always feels in tune with the universe. The part that feels safe and loved no matter what. The part of me that still marvels at life. A part that can’t be hurt. To give you an example I tell you of a moment when I suddenly realized that I was happy.:

My son was a baby then, a couple of months old. I was standing outside the wine store with him sleeping in the stroller. I was waiting for my husband who bought wine. It was raining, there were a lot of cars, it was loud, I was having cramps, was tired and hungry. And suddenly upon standing there I felt happy. Despite all those circumstances. And not because my son was sleeping but because in standing there I felt alive. And I knew all was well.

See, I can’t really explain it. But I take happiness whenever it happens and try to notice it. And the more I think about it the more tips I find. I could just link to Christine Kane‘s blog and say, “Look there. Heed her advice. You’ll be happier for it.”. And I can tell you a couple of things that helped me:

Speak to yourself as if you were your best friend
After I started thinking about compulsive eating and reading Geneen Roth’s books I realized how much time I spent criticizing myself. Especially my appearance. I used to think about how fat I was all day long. Then I thought, “I have a good life, I have a healthy son, a good job, a marvelous husband, is it really important how I look? And if it is, why don’t I do something about it?” and every time I found myself thinking something like, “Your belly is really fat.” I didn’t even bother to scold me for that but turned my thoughts to my music. “I wonder how that song could be improved.”

I try to be polite to myself. You wouldn’t tell a friend, “You’re lazy. You never get anything done. And I know you said you’re gonna lose weight, but be honest, it will never work.” Which brings me to the second little thing:

Be polite and nice
Really. It does make a difference. The old “treat others as you would like to be treated yourself”-rule.

Exercise
I used to be a couch potato. Never made an unnecessary movement. My cardio-vascular system got so week that I wasn’t able to climb a flight of stairs without huffing and puffing. When I realized that I started forcing me into exercise. I hated every minute of it but I liked to be strong and fit. It took me three or four attempts by the way. I’m stubborn. Each time I was so proud for exercising three times a week for a couple of months and then it would all fall apart. I started my final round eight years ago and now I can say that movement really is a part of my life. Easy stuff like walking errands instead of taking the car, 15 minutes of a workout DVD. The animal part of me feels much better when I’m in my body. When I feel capable. When I know that my feet can carry me everywhere even if it might take awhile.

Sometimes less is more
When I gave up my aspirations to become both a scientist and a musician a heavy load was lifted from my shoulders. As much as I try (and despite my old tagline of “I want it all”) I can’t do everything at once. And I don’t have to. I am allowed to do what I love even if there is no social status attached to it.

This goes together with an important one:

This is all the life I got
Of course I could wait for it to get better. But in the midst of life with a baby I realized that there would always be something wrong with it. That there never would be time to do the things I love if I didn’t make room for it. Everybody said, “Oh, it’s just so hard when the children are tiny. Just wait till he is in preschool.” Okay, so I wait three years. And then? Something else will come along for sure. Trust me on this. I know people who have spent their whole life waiting for circumstances to be right for creativity or fun or whatever. I know of at least two people telling themselves they’d pursue their hobbies in retirement. I sincerely doubt they will. So I started using tiny little spaces for the things I love. Ten minutes of singing practice. Ten minutes of meditation. Taking a twenty minute walk because I “don’t have time for real exercise”.

It doesn’t have to be perfect
Oddly enough lately the Buddhist saying that “life is suffering” has been soothing to me. If life is sometimes chaotic and people get hurt and things are never quite perfect that is okay. Because that’s how life is. Otherwise it is like trying to step into a stream without getting wet. You spend all your time complaining about your wet feet without realizing that being wet is the state of water.

I used to be trapped in a thinking that if only I could do everything right life would be perfect. But life isn’t perfect. It doesn’t have to be. It’s life and that’s enough. It’s not a race, you’re not supposed to come out best of your class or something. It is there to be lived. And if you dismiss what you experience because it’s not like you want it then you miss your life while it’s happening.

And this one leads to:

Be grateful
I remember the first time ever when somebody told me he kept his perspective by being grateful that he has enough to eat, a roof over his head and clothes to warm him. I was in the midst of some drama or other as always but I never forgot. There are a lot of people out there without that. We really are privileged. I am. Or as Jon Kabat-Zinn put it, “As long as you are alive there is more right with you than wrong.” So, off you go and start your gratitude journal. This is an order.

Since this is far too long already I’ll just cram the rest in here:

- Stop watching the news and worrying about things you can’t change.
- Start meditating.
- De-clutter, and
- do something creative.

And of course, live in the moment.

Technorati Tags: ,

Addiction

 self-help  17 Responses »
Mar 142007
 

Hello, my name is Susanne, and I am a sugar addict.

Well, only a couple of weeks ago I would have said there is no such thing but then I had to admit it.

Those conversations with my husband during the last few weeks were not all about gazing into each other’s eyes, holding hands, and declaring our deep and unconditional love; we also had to face some things about ourselves that we didn’t want to face before. We were certain our relationship was sound and extraordinarily happy, yet I felt compelled to buy books like “Getting the Love You Want”. A couple of days ago my husband threw the word codependency in and addiction and something in me clicked.

When I wrote about my depression (and I’m still reluctant to call it that because it is so mild) Esereth said there had to be a deep cause for that. It hit home with me but I didn’t see a cause. I have been thinking about it, trying to unearth something but all I got was “Depression is anger turned inward” on which I started writing a blog post until I remembered that Flylady had already written about that. I know that I am a very aggressive person. Mostly it stays put, I’m mild and polite and smiling and turn on myself with the things I do compulsively. Like eating and reading and computer games (which I had to give up) and watching TV and reading blogs. So most things I do compulsively are things one can do in moderation for fun. And cutting out all of them is not the point because then I’d find something else instead.

What I never thought about was what I am so angry about. Why am I aggressive? And then my husband said “codependency” and I remembered that I already knew that my father is an alcoholic. I just didn’t think about it anymore.

I thought a lot if I should write this or not. I try to only write things I’d tell people in person too but I wouldn’t like my parents to read this. I thought that maybe I should talk to my father first before telling it to all the world but I didn’t. I think I will have to confront him with it eventually but I don’t think this will change anything for him.

And before you all start feeling sorry for my poor mother who is married to an alcoholic in denial let me tell you that she has issues with addiction too. Just try to come between her and her nicotine. So I have to face it I inherited an addictive personality and the psychic wounds that go with growing up in a dysfunctional family.

Not visibly dysfunctional though. I don’t have a father who drinks himself into a stupor and passes out. He never lost a job because of it. When recently somebody said, “Well, every family has a secret.” I thought, not mine. Obviously I’m very versed in denial.

Now I remember how much my parents fought over putting like little fences and rules around the alcoholism. How my father wasn’t allowed to drink before he ate something. How he wasn’t allowed to have the cognac bottle on the living room table but had to put it back every time. How when my father was still working and I was still living at home the top priority of every family member was to feed him dinner as soon as he came home. So he wouldn’t drink his dinner. He never ate at work. He’d leave the house in the morning without breakfast, spend the whole day drinking coke, and come back home where he’d often end the day on beer and cognac before falling asleep in front of TV.

My father is mild, polite, intelligent, a little distant but very caring and emotional underneath. Once in a while he explodes. All his frustration and anger, all those repressed feelings come out in a burst and then that’s it. Only this week did I find out how frightened I am by the least bit of aggressive behavior. I accused my husband of talking to me in a way that I felt as if he hit me, and all he did was tell me things I didn’t want to hear in a very calm and reasonable way. Only then did I think of the two incidents where my father completely lost his temper with me and hit me and then sent me up into my room where I cowered in a corner, wept and thought the world was about to end. Only this time did I realize that I must have been only two years old, three at the most, and that the most hurtful thing about that probably was that nobody came after me to console me afterwards. Now I know why I often have the feeling to expose myself and make me vulnerable when my husband has the feeling that I’m distant and withdrawn.

Now I know why I never drank a drop of alcohol when I still lived at home and never started smoking at all. I’m really, really angry at my family for pretending that all is well.

Alcohol is not the problem for me. I have a couple of addictive behaviors that I might have to give up or not. That’s not that important right now, but my relationship with sugar is worrying and so I decided to give it up.

And since this already is too long, I’ll write another post about that.

effortlessness

 self-help  12 Responses »
Dec 312006
 

I’m back. Meeting my parents has resulted in draining all thoughts out of my head as always. As a result I have a jumble of half-thoughts and half-posts in my head. So, instead of trying to write about the new things that I learned about myself and about my parents, the food, the presents and my son being sick on Christmas I’ll write about the word I chose instead of my New Year’s resolutions.

Today Christine Kane wrote about her ritual for the New Year. Instead of making resolutions she picks a word to focus on for every year. When I first read it I thought, “I could never focus on just one thing!” And that’s part of my problem. When I read her list of words though the one that spoke to me immediately was “effortlessness”. I even googled it to find the German translation: “Mühelosigkeit” And that in itself was an example for my quest for effortlessness, because usually when I need a word translated I go to that dictionary site that I haven’t even bookmarked. I have to think about its url and get it wrong every time. This time I just googled and there it was.

Since I’m coming from the land of deep protestant work ethics, it is hard for me to accept that even things that matter might come effortlessly. When I was a teenager I even said no to somebody who wanted me to sing backing vocals on his record. Just because I thought it had to be a mean joke. Because that was exactly what I wanted. Later I found out that it was a true offer. Pity.

Something in my mind still thinks that hard work and suffering is needed for everything important. I even managed to take the fun out of the things that I love most. Since I’m trying to change, and since I’m a Leo and don’t like to sweat and suffer, I have been trying to do what Sonia Choquette tells us to do; for the past months I have been asking the universe, and my spirit guides to help me. To send presents. And my life definitely has improved. My job in this is to be grateful and talk about what I received. I write down everything that has come my way in my gratitude journal.

Most things that I attempt to do still seem to be hard and strenuous. So for the next year I will focus on effortlessness. My life will be flowing in the right direction without the feeling of pushing a big stone uphill. Just wait and see. What will you be focusing on next year?

I wish you all the best. Thank you for visiting and reading. See you again next year.

Technorati Tags:

Why don’t you just relax a little?

 self-help  6 Responses »
Nov 172006
 

Ever since that post about friendship some time ago I’ve been having conversations with friends again. It’s amazing. And one of them I even met. And we talked. Of course. And she said to me,

“Why don’t you just relax a little? You don’t have to do all at once all the time.”

I told her that I’m striving because I’m not content with the way my live is. Or the way I am. But that’s not the whole truth. First of all, I know myself. I’ve been living with me for almost forty years and I can tell you this: Relaxing is very easy for me. Saying, “Oh, I worked so hard, I don’t have to be good all the time.” BHAM! Next thing I know I’m back where I started. Twenty pounds heavier, messy home, haven’t made music for weeks. And all that would be perfectly fine if I didn’t get so unhappy about it. And then there’s this:

All my life I’ve been having “great potential”. I was really proud of that. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But then, slowly, it dawned on me: Great potential means nothing if it remains potential forever. If it remains potential, you eventually will die a loser. I’ve had a great role model on this. My father is a intelligent man with big potential. My mother was attracted to him in the first place because of his sparkly conversation and the fact that all of the walls of his room were covered in sketches. He drew. Well, he gave it up when I was a little child and never picked up a pencil again. Because he wasn’t “good enough”. He had lots of interests and hobbies, but all he ever did was sleep on the couch with a book in his hand. I don’t say that my father is a loser, no. But it is a sad sight when somebody doesn’t do anything that he is longing for.

Another example: Since I am a music teacher I often happen to meet people at parties who tell me that they had always wanted to play the piano. My knee-jerk response to this is, “Well you can still do it.” And they are afraid, and they don’t and it breaks my heart to see the longing in their eyes.

I don’t want to become one of those people who end their lives regretting the things they didn’t do. I don’t want to wake up and think, “I always wanted to write songs, or a novel, but I never did. And now it’s too late.”

Yeah, this is called midlife-crisis. And I realized that there’d never be enough time, or space, or money. That I have to change now, and do the things I want to do, now. I’m not obsessed with it. It’s totally okay to write a novel and neglect the music for a month. But not for a year. And as my favorite piano teacher put it, “You’ll never regret not having watched every single episode of “Lindenstrasse“.” (German soap opera.)

But you will regret not trying to live your dreams. For sure.

Technorati Tags: , ,

 Older Entries  Newer Entries