The C word is a big one for me right now because it seems to be impacting my life in a not so positive way.  If it’s impacting you as well then keep reading my friend.

Thursday was a day off for me but the day started at the same time it always does. What was different was that the usual Thursday evening exercise was done in the morning. After greeting one of the personal trainers and having a subsequent conversation he asked me what my goals were. I said “I’m glad you asked that”. I needed to break one final barrier in this year and half quest for weight loss.  Then he started asking me the magic questions, how’s your diet? Do you drink enough water, how’s your cardio and your weight training. I told him what my program was looking like and he said the magic words “looks like you need some consistency”. He certainly didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know and subsequently signed me up for a session next week to do an assessment.  Yet the conversation really put a stamp on what had been troubling me.

In putting a critical eye on the rest of my life I can see areas in which consistency is lacking and these are areas that are of real importance to me. My passion is writing, however for the last two months, maybe three there’s been no consistency. I like to set a schedule for the tasks that I need to complete on my day job because when I follow it, I’m very productive and less stressed. I’ll set and follow a schedule for a couple of days and then fall off the wagon due to some sort of interruption. In other words, I’m not consistently productive on my job. Another area that’s a biggie is the general task list and appointments. I consistently over schedule myself to do things and consistently underestimate the time required to get them done and the resources available to do them.  Finally there’s the consistency of the people I deal with on a daily basis.  There are those who start off adding value and fall off, those who consistently make things difficult and thankfully those who are consistently on target, available and engaged. I’d like to deal more with the latter but in relations with folk, you can’t change their behavior, you can only change the response that you have to the behavior. Change isn’t always necessary, but it certainly is when your response has a negative impact on them, you or both.

What does it really boil down to? It boils down to a level of commitment and accountability for you and for me.  In a job situation there’s a built in level of accountability that comes with the job: bosses, performance reviews, peer reviews and client/customer feedback. Basically you know that if you don’t perform to the level required, you’ll hear about it from any or all of the above groups.  Commitment and accountability become a little more slack (at least in my case) when it is of a self-imposed nature. How does one remain consistent at whatever it is, when you are the only one that is holding yourself accountable? By introducing the P word into your life, practice.  Failure to get something done, do something correctly or stick to something etc is a big deterrent to giving it a try again. There’s another saying “practice makes perfect” and I don’t know if there’s such a thing as that on this earth, but what I do know is that practice is 1)repetitive, 2)builds good habits, 3)improves skill and what this whole thing is about 4)introduces and then maintains consistency.

If you’re not handling yourself, your life, your stuff with consistency, it can quickly spiral out of control. Introduce some control back into your life. Practice consistency until it becomes a habit. That’s certainly what I’m going to do.

Are you an independent woman/man? Out there doing it, making it happen on your own? How successful are you at it doing it all alone? I would take a gander that you’ve faced some difficulties.  As a soon to be divorced middle age female I have seen all manner of STRUGGLE in the last year, it’s been no cakewalk. So many things have gone wrong, so many things have been broken and in need of a fix.  In my previous life if something was broken I could ask him to fix it, if I had a bad dream and woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with my heart pounding I could tap him and say, “hey, just had a bad dream, can I talk about it.”  I’m not living in that world now.  In leaving that dependency had to be and has been broken.  No longer dependent on assistance from a spouse, I had to figure out, how in the world to live and live well on my own.  I had to ask the questions: How does one person handle all the stuff that two have handled for so many years?  If I have a question, who do I ask? Does being on your own really mean being alone and duking it out in the cold world on my own? These were tough questions, especially when the knowledge is short and the resources appear to be even shorter. What I found out though is that I’m really not alone in all this and I am so glad about it.

There’s some folk my life, family, friends, church members whom I love dearly, who have been a wealth of information, a shoulder to cry on, and a sounding board for all manner of ideas as well as plenty of foolishness and carrying on.  I learned that there is no reason on this earth for me to feel/think/act as though I was under some sort of punishment for making the decision that I made. I finally got it that, even though I do most times decide to cry alone, if I wanted to cry/scream or express any other sort of emotion I could do it with those that I know, and love and trust, they were right there for me. I was hesitant to do so in the beginning, but I dipped my toe in anyway and found out what real love was, what family was. I count them all family. I also got a better sense of my spiritual self, I got to know that part of me in a very different very personal way because in the proverbial “midnight hour” there was no one but me and God and I couldn’t be more thankful for that relationship.

 Independence is good, learning how to get it on your own is fabulous, understanding that there’s no mandate for superman/woman-hood at the end of a long-term partnership was the most important lesson for me.  So again I ask the question, are you out there trying to do it all on your own? You don’t have to; will you ask someone to help you right now? Will you call on the one in whom you believe to see you through? Give it a try, you’ll be just fine for the effort.

I am a fan of the Dog Whisperer. One thing that he always tells owners with so-called out of control dogs, that run the house and run the owner is that the owner/pack leader has to set rules boundaries and limitations.  Doing so allows the dog to be a dog, but to do so under the leadership of the owner.  This makes life better for both the dog and the owner.  I believe that Cesar Millan is on to something. Rules, boundaries and limitations are just as applicable to humans as they are to dogs.

Unless you’re a survivalist or other person of that ilk who lives in isolation and is totally self sufficient, you’re going to be in contact with people. These people can be family, friends, co-workers or other people whom you may do business with or have some sort of contact. These people will make all sorts of demands on your time, your money, your energy and yes your patience. These demands are often amplified the closer the relationship is between you and the person making said demands can sometimes lead to misunderstandings between you and the individual(s) and ultimately have an adverse effect on you.  Adverse effects can come in the form of interruptions of tasks you’re trying to complete, loss of time spent on something that is only beneficial for the other party, anger (on your part) because perhaps you really didn’t want to deal with what was brought to you in the first place.  Now these examples are not given to discourage you from doing something for someone else.  One of the best things, maybe the best thing we can do while here on this earth is serve other people, when there is absolutely nothing in it for us. What I am saying is that in order to do so, in order TO serve, rules, boundaries and limitations should be set in order to make that service more fruitful.

How do they come into play?

Rules are born out of law, on a human level, these are personal laws that we hold true for ourselves.  Maybe your personal rule for instance is, not accepting phone calls after 10:00 pm unless it’s an emergency, because that’s your downtime/family time/sleep time.  In order for the rule to stick, the rule has to be known/communicated.  You can’t be mad at someone calling you to chitchat at 10:30 when they don’t know you don’t take calls.  Therefore communication is the key, communicate early, often and clearly. Make sure that you are understood, because folks will try to break the rules.

There is an aspect of my job that quite frankly, I loathe, it’s something that is absolutely critical but because of its repetitive and tedious nature I face the task with dread every day.  For a long time I only talked about how much I hate doing it, how the stuff never ends, blah blah blah then finally I decided to address the situation by find out from the people who know whether there was a different approach to take in order to obtain the information required. To my pleasure it was determined that there was, to my dismay it was determined that this different methodology couldn’t be used just yet because there’s going to be a system upgrade, at that moment my bubble burst.

Head down, tail between legs I went right back to complaining about having to do that task and how much work is required to do it and how it won’t ever all be done.  The problem really wasn’t the task so much as it was, what I thought about it.  I’ve been in this situation before at a previous job. I’d gotten a promotion, one with greater responsibility and more ”important” work, however one part of it required me to do something repetitive and tedious on a daily basis. I was appalled at having to do it, I thought, surely this cannot be a part of THIS job, but it was.  What made me change my mind about it in that job is that I actually dug a little deeper into how that work was generated in the first place, learning about what the information I was seeing every day actually meant, generating stats based on that work, and finally breaking it up into chunks that were more manageable. By doing this I was able to drop that notion that the work wasn’t important enough for me to do. I mean really who did I think I was anyway?

To be clear, I wasn’t happy about my bubble being burst seeing that I had taken an action in order to change a situation. The beauty of the bursting, was even though I didn’t get the result that I was looking for, I did get a change. My mind and my approach were what changed and most times just changing those things can improve whatever situation or task that you’re facing.

Did someone just burst your bubble? It’s not the end of the world. The contents of that bubble may hold the key and or the change that you’re looking for just hang around for a minute and put some thought into what it really means, not what it looks like.

I was telling a story Saturday night about something that I had experienced in college.  It was a situation where I felt that I had been done wrong. I had done something for sure, but based on previous experience I felt that I should not have been treated so harshly.  This particular incident left such a bad taste in my mouth that it took me 17 years (finally got that number right) before I could see fit to let that thing go. You know what it is, it’s called a grudge.

I felt justified in my grudge trust me. Later information came out that I had been lied to about how it really went down and what decisions were made. That sent me into orbit and I made a promise to myself that I would NEVER revisit that thing ever again in my life.  What is true now in 2009 is that I did revisit it. Had I not, I never would have been able to move on.

Recognizing my participation in the mess was the first step, if I’d not been there and done that I would have not found myself in such a sticky situation.  Secondly I had to understand that why decisions were made in the manner that they were was irrelevant. Third, I had to forgive, that was the hardest part, because part of that equation was forgiving myself not only for the mistake but for holding onto it and the aftermath for so long.

Are you holding a grudge? Do you know what you’re missing out on? Should it matter? Yes absolutely. What you have already missed is the chance to connect and engage, to discover and learn, to benefit and to be beneficial. Why give up all of those things to hang on to something that doesn’t serve you or anyone else.

Let’s end the grudge match today.

Apparently, this continues the theme from yesterday’s post.

Today is Saturday, the day before Easter in fact, Happy Easter to you.  Last night I decided that I was not going to attend my Saturday morning activities and only attend the afternoon ones. I was tired and really just wanted to sleep in.  Shortly before 5:00 am my body said, it’s time for you to get up. I was duly upset by this because it did not fit at all within my PLAN. I tried to close my eyes again, they popped back open. I gave myself a 15 minute window to fall back asleep, it didn’t work. I turned the light on, grudgingly of course plugged in and started paying bills. The bills were not what was on my mind.

In fact there was nothing on my mind at all, nothing bothering me, no urgency that caused me to wake up.  What I realized is that my body was ready, even though my mind had already decided the previous night what the body was going to do.  I spend a lot of time trying to control my body via exercise, the foods I eat, the medications I take (or refuse to take) and the amount of sleep that I need.  Sleep is one that I struggle with more than anything. When I’m tired I don’t go to sleep, because it will “mess me up” for when I’m SUPPOSED to be asleep and that is the error of my ways.  I’m SUPPOSED to go to sleep not when my mind tells myself to but when I’m TIRED.  Of course, this is not always possible to do.  Falling asleep on the grind or behind the wheel or in a meeting is not an option, but in the home away from any outside responsibilities, sleeping is an okay thing to do.

The battle of the body and sleep shouldn’t be a battle at all.  Again putting the dukes down in a simple situation, sleeping vs. getting up makes it easier to recognize in much tougher situations when it’s time to surrender and roll with it instead of fighting a needless battle.

Is there something poking you right now encouraging you to move? Just because it’s not in your plan doesn’t mean you should battle it or refuse it.  Roll with it, once you get rolling you might just discover something fantastic, useful, productive and all other sorts of goodness.

I tried and tried and tried and tried to make it work. You heard that, I tried, because I believe that my spouse did not, given the circumstances if that was trying then I must be the Queen of England and we know that’s not true. At any rate the time has come to wrap it up. I took the baby steps now it’s time to take the leap get the signature and get it in.  I know I’m ready, I know this is what I want and I know that this is the best thing for me, can’t really be worried about whether it’s the best thing for him at this point, I spent an entire marriage worrying about him, what he thought, how he felt, how to hold it down for him and how to hold it down for the family. Well after having the discussion about signing the papers, tears came to my eyes at a most inappropriate time at a most inappropriate place.  This was so unexpected and caught me completely off guard. The next thing you know I’m cursing myself for letting it happen, you see I’m a control freak.

I’ve read a lot about surrender, letting go and letting God and all of that. I’ve heard this type of talk from people for a long time, you have to surrender to the situation, surrender to your feelings, get it out, you’ll feel better and all that.  Surrender in my mind has always been equated to defeat, surrender in my mind has always equated to giving up power to something or someone outside of self.  That’s just not me, my dukes are always up, I’m always fighting to protect me and mine, that’s part of the reason why I stayed married as long as I did, I just didn’t want to go down without fighting for it.  Leaving was my first surrender and it was a rough one, but it had to be done because what I saw was that I really had lost my power, I had ceded control of my emotions to something other than me, they weren’t controlled by him but were controlled but what I thought he would do, or say or think in any situation. I had to surrender to get free.

Now here we are at the end of the road, the end of an era as he likes to say, I’m ready then here come the tears, so unexpected because I was through with all that carrying on.  My friend-soror-coworker saw me do it and was basically relieved. She said to me, “I was worried about you, because you were so matter of fact about what you were getting ready to do.” I cursed. She said “I know you don’t like this, but you’ve been strong this entire time, it’s okay to do this, you don’t want to go down later.” (once the divorce is granted) I said you’re right.  I surrendered to that moment. I surrendered to what I was feeling; I acknowledged that it was alright for me to feel that way. I don’t have to be tough and emotionless with a stiff upper lip in this situation because it HAS been hard. I acknowledged the hard time and how big of a step this was.  I sat down the control freak.

Is the desire to be in control of all things at all times pressing in your life? Taking a control of things that you can control is a good thing.  There are times, when ceding control and surrendering is the best thing to do.  How will you know? By listening.  Is there something you need to surrender control to right now? Do it, the result – freedom and who doesn’t want to be free?

Saturday morning I heard a strange sound. I wasn’t fully awake so what I thought I heard was a little off. Was it the heater squeaking; was one of my neighbors doing something outside? This sound was unfamiliar to me. I listened again and recognized that what I was hearing were birds.

Every day with the exception of Sunday is a get up, get out and get something day, yesterday was no exception, but because I was half awake so early and no one else was moving around me, I heard the birds. I hear the birds now and plan to listen for the birds every day. The birds are a reminder that movement doesn’t have to start as soon as the eyes open. The birds are a reminder that there is more going on that what is on the task list. The birds are a reminder that there is beauty right outside your door, if you slow it down for just a minute, you can see, hear and feel that beauty and that it costs you nothing.

Have you heard the birds today? Wait a minute and listen.

Love, peace and soul.

Everything is ready roll, but you. There’s a sense of hesitancy and uneasiness about what you’re about to do, or thinking of doing.  Losing sleep at night and tossing stuff around in your mind over and over again during your waking hours is an indication that what you’re about to embark on or even the decision to embark is a)something you really don’t want to do but feel you should due to some outside pressure; b)something you need to do and is the right thing to do but you’re hesitant to do so because of what’s going on in your own head or c)something you need to do but you hesitate because of what others may think (again back to what’s happening in your own head). Guess what, this reticence has nothing to do with what’s at hand, but everything to do with fear.

I know you’ve heard it said that fear can sometimes be a good motivator. I would agree, when fear of reprisal or reprimand by the law is involved. There are other examples I’m sure but that’s what immediately comes to mind. In that case you’re darn skippy, not doing something out of fear of retribution will keep you out of the pokey. Yet when it’s time to make decisions about our lives and our livelihoods, the fear bomb can be crippling. When we allow it to be the decider, instead of our good sense, our intellect and our heart, then we miss out.  Living your life well is not conducive to living it and letting it be ruled by fear.

Do you have a decision to make? Have you made the decision but haven’t made the move? If so, look that fear right in the face and tell it this decision/action belongs to me, I’m making it without you, thank you.