Monthly Archives: July 2014

Lesson Four: Order is Important

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Everyone is different.  Some people may thrive on chaos and lack of scheduling.  Those people aren’t me. Maybe it is the mathematician in me, but I like order, I like planning, and I thrive on having a schedule.  That doesn’t mean I am not adventurous or spontaneous, because I am certainly both of those things.  There is lots of room in my life for flexibility and changing plans.  But I enjoy the planning also.

One of the things I have been most influenced by on this year of self-discovery, is coming to understand that I like things orderly in my life.  I like to get up at the same time every day, even on the weekends, I meditate, make my bed, exercise, and then make coffee.  Every day.  If I don’t, I am kind of floundering all day long, and nothing seems to get accomplished. It is like I didn’t shut yesterday off and I am still in it.  I have to have a way to start my day with a routine, no matter where in the world I am. It works for me. It is kind of like resetting my life to a new day.  The mistakes of yesterday are past, today I am starting anew.  I reset my compass and then embrace the new day.

I also have realized that, although I am not a neat freak, I like order in my environment.  As I start owning more possessions again, it makes me anxious.  I am looking forward to having a house of my own again, at the same time, I am terrified of having to purchase furniture and decorate it.  Clutter makes me crazy.  There is peace in order.  There is peace in having a small amount of possessions so that I know what I have and where everything is when I am looking for it. At least that is true for me.

One of the major lessons I have learned this year is that I want my life to be about simplicity  That goes for the amount of possessions I own as well as where I end up deciding to live.  When I lived in a high rise condo, it made my life difficult for the things I love to do.  Just getting my bikes out was a huge chore.  They were either in the storage unit or in the middle of my living room on the 7th floor and we weren’t allowed to take them in the elevator.  Thus every time I rode, which was every day, it was this ordeal.  It took a huge commitment on my part. Same with skiing, kayaking, etc.  I want my life to be simple.  I want a garage where I can work on my own gear, a small townhouse where I don’t have to do yard work but with outdoor space where I can have a container garden.  Someplace that is easy to access the roads l love to ride, the water I love to paddle, and the mountain I love to ski on.  I haven’t found it yet, but I am closer.

This year I learned that I want to spend less time and resources of my life taking care of “stuff” and have more to devote to taking care of myself and the people I love.  Every day I want to practice mindfulness, letting go of attachment, reducing suffering (my own and others) and increasing happiness. I want my life to be about kindness and compassion.  For me, I can’t do any of those things from a cluttered environment filled with a bunch of unnecessary stuff, and that includes both physical things as well as intellectual and emotional ones.

So I have this cleared out life.  I cleared out my physical possessions, challenged the places where I was emotionally stuck, and got a new job to challenge myself intellectually.  Now, how do I put the pieces back together again in a way that is conducive to how I want to live the last 1/3 of my life?  That is the question.

Lesson Three: Take Bigger Steps

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P1060845In Madrid, struggling to figure out who I was and what to hell I was doing in Madrid, I texted Matt and said I was taking two steps forward and three backwards. Matt’s answer, “take bigger steps”. At the time it made me laugh and I thought he was just being funny. I had no idea how profound those words really were until much later.

My plan after leaving Madrid was to travel around Spain and I was just stuck as to where to go and what to see. I hadn’t left the US as a tourist but as a traveler and there is a huge difference. People kept giving me advice as tourists. (go here, see that, do this) but traveling with no definitive itinerary and no plan isn’t the same thing as being a tourist. So I was floundering. Matt’s next words to me were “come to Nepal” P1070237which is where he and his lovely girlfriend Amanda happened to be at the time. Lonely and ready to see someone familiar, I threw my stuff together, left Madrid and flew to Katmandu. What I didn’t realize at the time was, I just took a much bigger step. It was a step which, eventually, would propel me forward out of floundering in a major way. My time in Nepal was magic. It was a catalyst for healing my soul, developing my identity, fueling my passion for life, and getting in touch with my spirituality in a profound way.

himalayasI didn’t realize how much Nepal had changed me until I got back to Seattle months later. Coming down from the mountaintop experience where I had clarity about my life and all I was seeking, I had to then return to my actual life with its challenges and opportunities. Trying to integrate the new growth with the old life was probably the most difficult period of all of my sabbatical. From January to April, I struggled more than I can ever remember. I would use the word depression but I wasn’t sad, just stymied. I couldn’t figure out where the girl I had left on top of Sarangkot, the girl who did yoga and mediated every day and then climbed mountains for fun, I couldn’t seem to find that girl again. And that is the girl I wanted to be. Instead, with no structure to my days, I was on the couch in my pajamas at 7:30 pm after never even getting dressed all day. I was again moving two steps forward and three back.

DCIM100GOPROIt was mid April and I realized I had to take bigger steps. Movement is life and I had to start moving, physically, mentally and emotionally. The next day, I was up at 4 am for meditation, to greet the day, and was at the gym at 5 am. I have started my day the same way on the majority of mornings since. And guess what? That girl that I left on top of Sarangkot? She’s back.

When you are stuck and you feel like you are doing the right things to be on the path you want to walk but you don’t seem to be moving anywhere, take bigger steps. It is funny how that is actually true in so many things. Physically, I had plateaued in my fitness. I added Tabata training to my regular working and that propelled my fitness level upward. Intellectually, I needed a challenge so I changed jobs and jumped into a visualization project that is totally stumping me and, even though it is frustrating, I can’t put it down. It is a huge intellectual challenge for me and I am loving it. Emotionally, pushing myself to go back to therapy after I swore I would never trust another mental health care professional again, was a giant step forward. All these things have helped me get to a place where I am stronger in all those areas than I have ever been in my whole life. It is a great place to be. I feel integrated and whole, that my internal view of who I am meets the external life that I display. It is a pretty awesome place to be.

You don’t have to jump off mountains or get up at 5 am. But you do have to keep moving, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Whatever your challenge is in your life, wherever you feel stuck and can’t figure out what to do, take bigger steps. Do something that will defibrillate that area. Challenge yourself physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Movement is life. Live it.

Lesson two: Sometimes a woman has to let her garden get out of control to see what sticks

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P1100291Once, when I working on my yard and garden, I apologized for it being a little out of control with new plants springing up everywhere. I am used to gardens being orderly rows, not a chaos of wildflowers growing up everywhere. My friend Deb said “sometimes a woman has to let her garden get out of control to see what likes growing there, to see what sticks.”. And that is sabbatical lesson number two.

My friend Matt has never given me a tangible gift in the 7 years that we have been friends. He has paid for dinner a few times, he tried to pay for a paragliding lesson once but I paid him back, but he has never given me something that I can touch for a present. Simultaneously, he has given me the best gift I have ever received in my life.

1930132_577478386628_7110_nFor most of my life, I strove for perfection. I had goals and expectations for my behavior that were ridiculously high and I met them. There was no space for spontaneity, no time for emotion, no allowance being out of control. People would have described me as dependable, stalwart, and driven. Then my life got divided by zero and life as I knew it fell apart. Throughout the next year as I tried to Band-aid it back together with marriage therapy, I grew more spontaneous, but slowly, in a planned controlled way. I didn’t really understand truly letting go, to not be constrained by standards of polite society. And then, I met Matt.

One of the first times I ever allowed myself to loosen the grip on perfection around Matt was after a Sunday morning kayaking pool session. Matt wanted to go to brunch but I didn’t have any hair ties to contain my wild “Albert Einstein mad-scientist” hair. He said don’t worry about it, just come to brunch. Since it was a new friendship, I was torn between wanting to spend time with my friend but worried about him rejecting me or making fun of me. I decided to trust him and see where it all fell out. So we are sitting at a nice restaurant, outside in the sun, with all the other well-dressed Sunday brunch goers. I am dressed in a t-shirt and shorts and have wet hair. As my hair dried, it got crazier and crazier and I got more and more self-conscious until one moment Matt looks over and says, “you’re hair is so wild, it is awesome”. Gotta love that kid. Hundreds of times in our friendship, that same type of scenario played out. He watched and encouraged me to engage in some of the most outrageous behaviors. And I was always rewarded with his unconditional acceptance.

One way I am outrageous is with all my “woo-woo” theories that I am always coming up with. My friends just roll their eyes when I get started on a new one. For example: I believe in using all of my senses as I walk through life, one of which (often overlooked) is the sense of smell. My theory is that perfume and cologne can kill a relationship. When we get to know someone, one of the things we filter them is through their scent, for example I loved the way my ex smelled. I believe that the problem with perfume and cologne is that they mask our natural scent.  But when you get to know someone and like how they smell with fragrance on, what happens when they aren’t wearing any? Will that change the way you feel in a subtle way?

398075_10100938615998033_716093949_nThe cologne is an example of something we use to mask who we really are. Whether with cologne or outrageous behavior, this is the lesson. I only want people in my life who want to be with the authentic me. I don’t want to have to keep putting on airs or living a farce to be included as someone’s friend. What I have learned is to be myself, to be wild, crazy, and unrestrained. Those who want to be in my life will gravitate toward me, whether I am “perfect” or perfectly crazy. They have to want the whole package. If they don’t, then I move them to the outer periphery. There are only be a few people in my life who can handle my “crazy” and my crazy gives them the freedom to let their vulnerability show in return. Those are the few people I want to find and keep. The rest need to be let go.

Your “crazy” is a filter, it filters out those who want to truly be part of your life from those who only superficially want to be there. We need both kinds of people, but we give our hearts to the people who accept us as we are, authentically in all our crazy glory. I believe there are many people who never allow anyone to be that close to them in their whole lives. They never can give up the control and worry over what society will think of them if they allow their true selves to show. They are too hung up on being criticized and rejected.

One of the great aspects of this lesson is that I have learned not to take rejection personally anymore. When a relationship ends, I can hear Matt’s voice say, “it just wasn’t the right fit, try again”. I realize that not everyone is going to gravitate toward me and that is okay. Let them go be free to find the people they can be authentic with. My self-esteem will still be intact.

201836_965318866313_7885418_oThe gift Matt gave me is in allowing me to see what life looks like when we do let someone in that close. Life changes when we live with that kind of authenticity and whole-heartedness. It is richer, fuller, just more vibrant in every way. I now have a small core group of friends who truly know me and who I can be absolutely outrageous around. I wouldn’t trade them for 1000 superficial friends. I trust my friends love me and care about me always.

So let your garden get out of control and see what sticks. The joy and beauty of your life will open up in ways you never imagined.