Mirror, Mirror (or, the failure to lighten up...)

I'm completely failing to lighten up and stop taking things so seriously. Last night, after committing myself to positive thinking and feelings of abundance, I ended up irritable, edgy and critical...and felt criticized as well.

Today, I'm completely resisting being here. I'm resenting the budget meeting, the department meeting and the heap of documents that MUST be edited last minute to meet someone else's unrealistic deadline.

I'm also angry at myself for choosing this state of mind, for buying the noise that my ego is making and believing all the negative thoughts and judgements that are in my head. I feel overloaded with responsibility just when I want to feel celebratory.

Part of this, I know, comes with being a highly sensitive person, or intuitive empath. I pick up on energy, thoughts and feelings of those around me, so much so that I often have a very hard time separating what I am picking up from others from what is really my own. I often act as a mood mirror for others, reflecting what is going on with them in my feelings...except often neither of us understands the mirroring that is going on when it is happening.
I think I learned this mirroring, as I suppose we all do, as a child. As I grew, I learned that in order to gain favor from, be accepted by, or stay out of disfavor with authority figures, I should mirror their energy and way of relating. And, so chameleon-like, I have made my way through the world, pleasing authorities by being "just like them." Except I'm not. I'm just mirroring. And it's costing me myself.

I notice more and more how whenever I am in my office, I can feel the energy of my boss next door. A prim and proper woman, she is one of the most emotionally closed-off people I have ever known. I don't even think she knows how shut down she is, because I have a feeling in her life outside of work she is warm and caring.

But I know how closed off she is, because I am too. I have worked for her for two years, and have in effect  been assimilated (how's that Star Trek geeks?) So now, what was her frequency is also mine - guarded, reactionary, either defensive or completely devoid of emotion...and the endless orating. Ugh. She reminds me of my parents in many ways.

Yeah, karma. Awareness is the first step...

My taking-things-too-seriously and believing I have to mirror her energy - essentially in order to fly under the radar and not have to interact with her more than is absolutely necessary - brings up stuff I haven't dealt with across the rest of my life. Part of me wants to pendulum the other way and start acting out in order to try to, break the mirror. But I have a feeling doing that would bring me more than seven years bad luck...

So I'll settle with watching and being aware, noticing when I am mirroring and questioning whether I own what I am feeling because I am feeling it or because I am choosing to take it on...take responsibility for it onto myself, even if it is not mine.

And now for that budget meeting. Feel the chill...

For Serious

I came in to work today and found myself surrounded by all the typical nonsense that comes with the average Monday. People all in a bunch about a bunch of nothing, rushing around looking constipated and irritated. And, even though no one said anything to me until late in the morning, their funked up energy rubbed off on me and I started to feel bunched up myself. (As an empath, I often have a hard time not letting other people's energies infiltrate my boundaries.)

I found myself thinking all kinds of shriveled up, grinch-like thoughts, judging myself and others and mentally screaming I DON'T WANNA at everything that came my way. I mean, come on. It's the HOLIDAYS. A time to celebrate abundance and have a little cheer. Yet here we are, all grinchy and grouchy. The only thing we feel we have an abundance of is work.

I realized that one of my core values - humor - has been in grave danger lately. I  have been taking life WAY too seriously. So seriously, in fact, that I had to go looking online for some suggestions about how to lighten up. And I found a great blog post with just that title. It has some great reminders in it of things I already know, but forget on a regular basis.

I also think I might buy and wear a Santa Claus beard or elf ears tomorrow and wear them to every meeting I have with the too-serious crowd. Guzzle some prune juice, people. It's time to get loose! I mean SERIOUSLY...

People-Pleasing Paradox

As I was planning for an art workshop I was going to give for our department at work (we do what we call "lunch and learns" where members of the team present on a top outside their area of work, usually a hobby or skill) I noticed that I was all balled up and tense about it...What was that about? I love doing my workshop because it's all about giving people freedom. Why was I not feeling happy and free and excited about it?

Then I realized I was worried about the reactions of the two or three snarky, sarcastic and critical members of our department to what I was going to present. These guys and their "too cool for school" attitudes made me really stop and think - actually question - the content and approach I was going to take. Imagining their sneers and snickers, I nixed a reading I usually did at the beginning of the workshop to give people context and freedom to play and make ugly art. I started to retool things in a way that I thought might be more palatable to the nay-sayers.

And then, I started to think about the others in the group. The 98% who are open, curious, fun-loving, want to learn and already like and support me. Why was I worried about those unhappy few who had a chip on their shoulder about everything? Why was I catering to negativity, giving it more power? Why cheat those who are open for the sake of those who are closed? And furthermore, why sell out and stifle the voice of my authentic self in order to try to please those who might find me and what I bring untenable?

That really hit home, and I started to look at my life. Across the board, I was wasting time and energy trying to people-please the people who are least likely to ever be pleased by anyone or anything. And, of course, by doing that, I am selling myself short and pleasing no one. Especially me.

In the amazing way the universe works, the very next morning, the morning of my workshop, Seth Godin posted about the very same theme.

Lady Gaga doesn't care if Seth listens to her. Why should I care if a couple of negative-nasties like what I do? Why throw energy away like that? So I didn't. I did my workshop they way I wanted to do it, with all of me showing and vulnerable (interestingly, the folks I was worried about weren't even there that day!)

And everyone loved it. Including me.

Visioning

My last post was about getting clear on my core values. I can't tell you what an impact that has already had on helping me feel more grounded and confident about who I am and where I'm going!

Step two of my goal-setting process was to write my personal vision, because if you don't know where you're going in the big-picture, you can't really set up goals to help you succeed. In the Velocity session I attended, they encouraged us to write a Painted Picture vision - a very detailed and specific vision about what our lives would look like in the year 2013.

I started to do that, but realized what I was writing felt contrived and awkward. I wasn't in the right state of mind. I was stuck in my head! So instead, I started to focus on how I wanted to FEEL as I move toward my vision for my life. I tapped into the feelings I was having in my heart and gut, and I wrote down a whole list of words to describe those feelings and then made them into a word cloud. (I did this on my own in PowerPoint, but you can have a computer do it for you if you visit Wordle.)

I also made a visual of my personal mantra, something I came up with several years ago during coaching training. It really kind of zips up my core values and vision into a neat little package.  

I will get around to writing my vision down. I just needed to do this work first. And I figured putting it out in the world like this (to all my 8 readers - Ha....but it's true) might just help me make it real.

Thanks (all 8 of you) for supporting me with your eyes!

Re-e-VALUE-ating

Over the weekend, I attended a seminar given by a colleague who is starting a business called Velocity to help people be more successful with goal-setting and achievement. I'm pretty loose in that area...usually preferring to go with the flow. It's in my nature to resist anything that feels confining, rigid, prescriptive or something I "should" do. Usually if I set my mind to something, I get it done. Why formalize it? But I have to admit to a decided lack of discipline in certain areas of my life that having measurable goals and an action plan around might help.

During the workshop, the facilitators talked about the importance of knowing your personal core values. We all have them. But most of the time they operate under the surface of our lives. Why not bring them into the light and use them to gut-check every decision? Successful businesses do this - using their core values to ensure alignment between their offerings, their audience and their staff. So the theory goes that if my goals are going to be successful, they have to align with my core values. Makes sense. After all, I'm not really going to be motivated by something that doesn't really hit me where I live.

Yesterday was a rainy, dreary day - the perfect day to curl up next to the fire and play with concepts. I love doing this anyway, so this was a special treat. I started with a scribbled list that I wrote down during the workshop, then added to it, subtracted from it, combined some things, whittled it down and finally identified 10 values that I then started to prioritize. Halfway through, I realized that some of the items on my list weren't really MY values, but instead my beliefs about what my values should be. So I re-e-VALUE-ated.

At the end, these are the values I put on paper and hung next to my desk:

• Life-Long Learning - Growth comes from experience, curiosity and inquiry.
• Self Awareness, Self Reliance, Authenticity - Know thyself. Trust thyself. Be thyself.
• Relationships - Nurture the inner circle. Widen the outer circle.
• Creativity & Freedom - Possibilities are endless.
• Every Voice Counts -  Every perception is real and valid.
• Humor - Life is too important to take seriously.

Tonight, it's on to my personal vision...Should be fun!

You Need a Little Emptiness Before You Know What is Real

Sister Hazel gets credit for the title of my post (from their song "Lay it Down".) Those guys have some lyrics that really speak to me, and on this particular night that line fits just right.

As an introvert and highly sensitive person, I often crave alone time to rest, let myself settle and recharge my batteries. But I realized today that most times when I do get my precious down time, I fill it with junk. It seems that no sooner do I settle myself on the couch with myself when I am plagued with the desire for something (not someone, but something) to fill the space with me or take the edge off. I reach for a glass of wine, a cookie, the remote or the laptop...or all of the above. Instead of being in the space with myself, all I end up doing is blunting the experience with habit, some might say addiction.

It's odd to me that I am seeking now to escape my own company when growing up, I was the one I spent the most time with. I holed up in my room and filled the hours with reading, drawing, make-believe performances,  imaginative play with my dolls and stuffed animals. Those days I discovered so much about myself. But slowly--and then rapidly--those days dwindled as I felt the social pressure to be with people (my ex-husband's family found my need to withdraw from time to time "rude"...) I am seeing now, as my quality, creative, regenerative, pensive, restorative alone time dwindled, so did my real, intimate knowing of myself.

It's time to find myself again. I'm pretty sure I'm not at the bottom of the cookie jar or bottle of wine, and I'm sure as hell not finding myself in any of those "reality" shows (although I suppose that's not wholly true, because I don't tend to watch things that don't resonate for one reason or another with me.) The me that's on Facebook is the me everyone sees, but I want to be with the me I used to be...get back to the me of me. The me of it all, as pop culture would say.

I think in this life we get lost and found a countless number of times, as things ripple and shift around us (and on us, as those of us in midlife know all too well!)

I found a site called tricycle, which explains that in Buddhism:
"Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to, and takes nothing away from, the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them."



No analysis. No action. No judgment. No worries. No stories about anything that add suffering. That sounds lovely. I'm very good at adding suffering to my experience. It's been a while since I've given myself space, a little emptiness to know again what is real. Or to know nothing but the emptiness...