Flowing with the current

I sure spend a lot of time in resistance. I’ve known that for a while,
and I noticed it in myself again this morning. I woke up and
immediately the “I don’t wanna” mantra began. I don’t wanna get up. I
don’t wanna take a shower. I don’t wanna walk the dogs. I don’t wanna
get dressed. I DEFINITELY don’t wanna go to work…I don’t wanna have
that meeting. I don’t wanna deal with that person. I don’t wanna have
to pretend this is important to me any more.


Instantly and habitually, the cycle of negativity drags me through my
day. The choice to resist is a choice I made long ago, when I believed
and truly felt as though I didn’t have choices. So if I didn’t have
the power to choose what I “had” to do (go to work, adhere to office
hours, pretend the boss is smart) to survive, I decided to subvert all
of that by choosing to have a lousy attitude and be passive
aggressive. I’ll show up, I’ll do what I’m supposed to, but I sure as
hell won’t like it. AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME.


Looking back, I can pretty much pin-point the moment in time when that
started too. When we are young and enthusiastic, just out of college,
our first work experience can make or break our feelings about work.
And our first boss is pivitol in shaping that experience. My first
boss was 28 when I was 22. She was smart and driven. And crazy. We
worked for a small tourism bureau near where I grew up. She ran the
place and hired me to take over its failing communications and
marketing efforts. I was just out of college, young and creative and
excited. I believed I was good at what I did and would be trusted to
do it, and she told me I would. But she was crazy. Often I would be
on the phone and she would listen to my side of the conversations from
her office across the hall, BELLOWING to me what to say and what not
to say. One day I’d had it and I told her that if she wanted to be on
the calls then be on the calls but to stop yelling at me from across
the hall. “I can’t take it anymore,” I said.


She came in to my office and closed the door. She said to me, and I
will never forget it: ”You WILL take it and you will NEVER speak to me
that way again. And furthermore, when I ask what you think about
something, I expect you to know whether I want you to tell me what you
really think or what I want to hear.” After that conversation, I shut
down. I shut down my enthusiasm. I shut down my energy. I shut down
the light inside me about my job and started to see it as a cynic
would. Externally I was showing up. Internally I was in resistance.


And now, as I look at the pattern of discontent that has permeated my
work life, I see a pattern of initial hope followed by disappointment
or disillusionmen culminating in internal resistance. And I beat
myself senseless over it. I label myself as lazy. I am not lazy. I
label myself as a victim. I am not a victim. I label myself as
helpless. I am not helpless. I am simply in resistance.


I have seen and heard and read so much about being present. I so love
the work of Byron Katie. I so aspire to her surrender to, and moreover
loving, what is. I am inspired by Eckhart Tolle and every once in a
while can achieve the peace and power of NOW. I heard this morning in
a radio rebroadcast of the Oprah show from yesterday, author Geneen
Roth speaking about this same struggle and how we battle it with
over-eating. She said, “To the extent that you’re wanting the
situation to change, you are going to be living in frustration. You’re
going to be living in some kind of anguish, and you’re going to be
fighting with yourself and the way things are. Whenever you fight with
something, you feel miserable.”


And I do. I have been fighting and feeling miserable for far too long.
And choosing to do so. Choosing to do so for so long that it has
become a habit. But I have changed other habits. I can change this one
too, one moment at a time, by recognizing when I am trying to resist
the flow of what is and dropping down instead to flow with it, even if
it sucks. And it sometimes will suck, and sometimes I will fail. But I
need to be gentle and move from the failure (and my tendency to then
use that to once again throw me into resistance) to acceptance and
again back to flow.


Let go. Let go and flow.