self-help

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: creativity, midlife-crisis, self-help

I just had an epiphany and recognized one of my major stressors: almost finished is not enough. Well, it was my mother’s birthday and I needed a gift. As always I was very early with the thinking and planning, then ordered a book on amazon on time. But then I had an idea: wouldn’t it be a good idea to give her a copy of the song that I sang at my sister’s wedding and that we recorded almost by chance in September? Good idea. Six days before her birthday we even mixed the song and I burned it on CD.

Then it happened (and I fall for this trap every single time): I thought, “Oh, I’m almost done.” and forgot about it. Put a little reminder in my PDA to mail it two days before her birthday. On the mailing day I had to do this:

1. Burn the CD again, so I didn’t have to give her my only copy.
2. Design a cover and print it.
3. Find a jewel case without scratches.
4. Find an envelope.
5. Find the drawings my son had made for her.
6. Find the photo CD that I had meant to give her for months.
7. Write a few kind words, and maybe find a birthday card. (I solved this by writing directly on the drawings.)
8. Find a marker and put her address on the envelope.
9. Find a stamp and find out how much postage it costs.
10. Go to post office before 5 p.m.

Okay. All of this took 90 minutes! (Never underestimate the time for anything done with computers.) For one measly present. that was “almost finished”. So imagine me doing Christmas presents. And birthday presents for most of my husband’s family who un-conveniently were born around New Year.

I did fell all smug before, because I have done almost all my Christmas shopping. But I’m not so sure anymore. It might be a good idea to look at everything again before Christmas actually comes around. Maybe there are more presents who need a little 90-minute attention.

My husband (who is often wiser than I) says that it takes the same amount of energy to do something from start to “almost finished” as it does to do the last ten percent of it. That would mean my “almost finished” is “only half done”. Argh.

Technorati Tags: self-help, time-management, to-do-list

So now, I’m confessing, I am addicted to self-help books. I finally realized this, when I had signed up for the eCourse “Ten days to better blogging” or something, then didn’t do my homework and saw that I hadn’t done my homework on the following self-help thingies too:

1. the “The Vein of Gold”-programm
2. “Take Time for Your Life”
3. “Trust Your Vibes: Secret Tools for Six-Sensory Living”
4. some assignments from Christine Kane

The Vein of Gold-programm I have been trying to do since – let me think – 1999. Yep, that’s about right. I started it twice, and have done five of the tasks so far. I’m on page 65. The book has 368 pages. So, seven times six, it might take me the next 42 years to complete this. I have to say in my favor that one of the tasks involved writing down the story of my life. The document has a total of 118 pages and 47,724 words. In between the starting and the finishing of this task I wrote three versions of my dissertation, got pregnant and had a child. “Vein of Gold” is a book by Julia Cameron to help you unblock your creativity.

This extraordinary book of learning through doing features inspiring teachings on the creative process and more than hundred imaginative, involving, and energizing tasks. Each task engages the readers in “inner play”, leading to authentic growth, renewal, and healing.

Read that, “more than a hundred” tasks. Um.

The “Take time for your life”-book by Cheryl Richardson I took up on the suggestion of Christine. I thought, polishing my time-management-skills might be good for me, since I’m struggling a little bit with the “make time for my music”-part. And reading is always fun. I took off on the first weeks assignments, then had to set it aside. Ah, looking through my journal I can say, the last task I attempted was “look for a coaching group”. On July 3. But of this year, that’s quite a relief. As far as I recall, I tried to join a Life Makeover Group in my vicinity twice. No reply. And while I’d appreciate having like-minded people around, I’m not willing to start a group of my own.

“Trust your vibes”: Oh, I love Sonia Choquette’s books about as much as Julia Cameron’s. But I never really worked with one. Recently I have been listening to her radio show, and thought it would be a good thing to pull the book out again, and maybe do one or two of the exercises. So far, I’m at the start of part 3 of 9. It’s a little easier to do than the other two programs since it doesn’t require the completion of certain tasks before going further.

The one “assignment” by Christine I have been wanting to do for this month is the monthly goal-setting. Though I never did it “right”, it helped a lot in July. Well, there is quite a bit of month still left…

I really like self-help books and some of them have helped me tremendously. Like “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” and “Why Weight?: A Guide to Ending Compulsive Eating” by Geneen Roth. But sometimes I think that they are still another form of procrastination and of thinking too much. What Sonia Choquette calls “mental constipation”. Sometimes I feel that I’m – as Leanne Ely once put it – trying to read myself thin. Only I’m trying to read myself spiritual, creative and efficient.

As always I’m ambivalent on this. Doing the exercises helps. But they are not a means of their own. They’re meant to help me to do something specific. So, when I don’t do the specific thing because the self-help exercises are taking up all my time and energy …

Okay, here’s my plan:

1. Forget about “Vein of Gold” for the moment. It has been sitting on the shelf for months now, it can sit there a little longer.
2. Go to the next chapter of “Take time for your life” without having found a community. Do the next task on the list.
3. Next weekend read the next chapter of “Trust your vibes”.
4. Today, write down my monthly goals for October any way I can. Skip the “Do it right.”-attitude.
5. Do assignment 1 and 3 of the “10 days to a better blog”-course. Skip number two.

Sometimes I wonder, if everybody tends to heap herself with tasks and projects all the time. Or is it only me?

Technorati Tags: books, self-help

Lately I’ve been thinking again about friendship and meeting people and being lonely. Which I am. I’m longing for friends. But then there is not much space in my life for people. So I found out that maybe it’s also my fault that I’m not having millions of friends. (Is that possible? Being really connected with millions? Nah.)

So, how not to make friends:

• when you’re outside your home, plug in your earphones and listen to you MP3-player all the time
• when you’re with people, avoid eye contact
• when somebody’s speaking to you, instantly say something that signals that you’re feeling superior. (Like last week, when another preschoolers mother complained that van Gogh is not an appropriate topic for preschoolers and I said, “Oh, my husband immediately showed him the van Gogh-book. My son loves these art books.”)
• when you meet another preschooler’s mother that you like, tell her, “We have to meet during summer break! I’ll phone you.”. Then forget all about it, until you meet her after summer break and she says, “I guess we didn’t meet after all, didn’t we?”
• when you’re bringing and fetching your child, always rush in and out without a minute to spare
• when somebody wants your number to call you and meet say, “Well, I don’t think I’ll be having time for anything until November.”

How to lose the few friends you already have:

• never, ever return phone calls
• phone a friend in August, because you suddenly remembered that she left a message at the end of June. Talk to her, promise her to phone her again two weeks later, because you want to visit her. Think about her every day. Don’t call her. Decide to write a letter. Procrastinate about letter writing for weeks. (Note: Just today I wrote it. Phew.)
• after getting a letter of a friend who’s not feeling very good right now – do nothing. When she follows it with an e-mail – do nothing. Leave a message on her voice mail promising to call again and then – wait for her to write another e-mail. then write a blog-post.(Which makes a kind of sense since she is reading this blog, but still.)
• when a friend of yours is moving, don’t help at all. Phone her once after the move, promise to visit her soon, then do nothing.

Here are the biggies:

• when your best female friend ever introduces you to a guy, then tells you, “He’s interested in me, but I don’t know.” tell her that he is a loser and she’s better off without him. Be surprised, when you don’t hear from her again. A year later receive a card from her: “You former best friend and the loser announce the birth of their first child.”
• when one of your best friends in school is getting married to a woman you never met before, look at her very disapprovingly. Tell him that you think she is way to young for him, and that she only got pregnant to trap him. Tell him that he’ll be sorry that he married her. Wonder for twelve years why you never heard of him again.
• when another of you best female friends ever tells you that she’s no longer interested in the guy, she had a relationship with and still shares a house with, believe her and make out with her ex in front of her. Be surprised when she never talks to you again.

After all of these proofs of your superior social skills, complain that you don’t have friends and that all the people you meet are boring and dumb. Wonder why nobody ever knocks at your door in order to be your friend. Turn to the friendly internet and blogger communities. Rarely comment, never send anybody an e-mail. Never follow any comments up.

Duh.

Technorati Tags: friendship

I became a member of yet another group of bloggers. This time it’s a group called blogjolt that is focusing on mothers who work at home. Each Thursday a member’s blog gets ‘blogjolted’ by being linked to. SAdly I’ve been a member of blogjolt for weeks without blogjolting anyone.

This Thursday’s blog to be jolted is written by Jill Koenig. On her goalblog she offers advice on goal setting and time-management for super-achievers. While I’m still lacking in the time-management department, I never thought that I might lack goal-setting skills. I always thought, my problem lay in the gap between the setting of the goal and the achievement of the goal.

Maybe I should subscribe to her newsletter and profit from her free advice on time-management. (Sadly, there is no permalink, just go to her blog.)

The other blog to be jolted looks really nice. Unlike most of the jolted blogs it’s not a business blog either, but one of the personal mommyblogs that I like best. BlondeMom’s question “Do you ever take your kids in on your day off?” was a no-brainer for me.
Of course! I’m waiting for that all week! Time for me! Time for music! Time to do the grocery shopping. And my son loves kindergarten. (Actually he started crying, when we told him he couldn’t go due to his cold. “But I don’t have fever, I don’t have fever. I can’t have fever, because then I can’t go to kindergarten!”)

Technorati Tags: time-manegement, blogjolt, daycare