The Power to Act

Archive for March, 2010

The times they are a changing! There is something new afoot welling up inside of me.  For over a year now I’ve physically felt tides pulling the sands out from under my feet, leaving me unsteady and off balance in conversations.  There were clues along the way that things were changing. I would leave meetings with friends feeling depleted and hollow, rather than nourished and up-lifted.  It would convenient to say that it has everything to do with the people I’ve been in conversation with, but that is not the case.  There is nothing wrong with them at all; they are brilliant and caring!  It has everything to do with me and how I’ve historically shown up in relationships.  What I do know is that what worked in the past is no longer working for me! How do I know?   The emptiness I feel in my body and a mood of resentment that has started to creep into my consciousness.

I recall a similar shift that happened when I was in my forties.  Being newly widowed, I realized that every time I went to dinner with my girlfriends the conversation of laundry detergent or some similar household product would come up.  Once I realized it was not going away, I got annoyed.   Was this a new conversation or was I just recognizing it for the first time. If we’ve always talked about it, why hadn’t I noticed it before?  Was there a relationship between the change in my marital status and the type of conversations I could tolerate?  Had the level of conversation settled on the safe and Read the rest of this entry »

Life has both highs and lows; no one gets to live their life without pain, and yet we live our life as if we could.  Chances are that if you breathe you’ve experienced something difficult in your life.  It may be the death or serious illness of a loved one or perhaps a messy divorce.  It could be a major disappointment like being passed over for a promotion that you just knew was yours for the having.  In any event, there is no way of avoiding paying the pied piper as far as pain goes. With that being said I must ask myself; if pain is a given, then why do I still rail against it or move for a quick fix?

When I take on the possibility that I am avoiding pain myself, I realize that there are many ways that I still move away from the uncomfortable and painful feelings in my life.  My avoidance technique of choice has been to exit stage door right.  I may do this by physically moving away from a painful argument, or by doing retail therapy.  I can entertain myself and avoid addressing uncomfortable feelings that are seeping up by walking through racks of pretty clothes.  It was an unconscious pattern to keep the reaper of Read the rest of this entry »

Yummy, that’s what the instructor said that experiences could be. His words hit me with the force of a well placed Tae Kwon Do kick. I was stunned. I’ve never connected life’s experiences with the word yummy! I’m still not sure what to make of it. What I do know is that his words keep coming back to me when I least expect it. Like an uninvited guest that demands attention, his words erupt into my psyche. Over the years I’ve learned to pay attention to what my mind relentlessly puts in front of me.

It was at a training last weekend and we were studying the Pearl; an essential essence that is at the core of all human beings. It is part of who we are when we come into the world, but we lose connection with it as we traverse the mountain called childhood. Things such as joy, trust, lightness and a sense of adventure or an assuredness of being okay in the world, are unconsciously give up for security and parental approval.  Pearly essence is foundational to Read the rest of this entry »

Two days ago my 92 year old Aunt Ruth fell while moving from the table.  Now, if this were to happen to any other 92 year old woman, it may have been tragic, but not my Aunt Ruth because she still has an indomitable spirit and physical resiliency.   She got up, dusted herself off and went out to breakfast with a girl friend.  Her concession was to return home after breakfast to rest.  She felt a little unstable and unsettled from the fall and wanted the comfort of her cane for awhile and the safety of her familiar surroundings.  Her complaint was that she realized that she needed to stop and get her bearings before she moved around, while my complaint was that she was my aunt by marriage, so I couldn’t inherit her genes. At ninety, after years of constant excruciating pain, she had knee replacement and wondered why she waited so long.   She is like the energizer bunny – she just keeps going.

If my Aunt Ruth is a study of movement in action, then my Mother was a study of the importance of taking care of herself.  As a young mother and wife she used every ounce of her energy to make a home and rear her growing family. In her early years things like neatness and order drove her, but in her Read the rest of this entry »

Today on my way to Tae Kwon Do I found myself putting on my blinker ready to accelerate past the cars in front of me driving the speed limit.  When I come across a car that is going slow the thoughts that race across my mind are not fit for print. It’s like they got up today with the sole intention to be an obstacle in the road of life. I know its crazy thinking but anxiety arises and I find myself tensing up.  I feel cramped and blocked.  Noticing the tension I asked myself “Why am I speeding?”  I say that I want to live life at a slower pace so why am I rushing ahead? I like the feeling of being at peace within and I know this is another opportunity to align my actions with my intentions.   So I passed on passing and relaxed back into my driving.

In thinking about my unconscious need to speed up two things came to mind.  First, there was an incident over the weekend when it took all I had inside of me not to shout at my husband to ‘speed it up.’  We were going to our friend’s home for dinner and I was obsessing on the possibility of our being five minutes late. I was really getting energized about it! Fortunately Read the rest of this entry »