Pain in resistance - Fear - I am okay

They have decided we can work at home since walk in traffic has virtually ceased over the past two weeks.  I got an email from a woman I visited two Fridays ago who had just got back from London. She wanted to let me know that she was still interested in the project.  She has been busy these past few weeks visiting her daughter who just had her fourth grandchild.  At the end of the email she said she had not been sick since her trip to London. This was a relief for me.

Even though this is a un-nerving time for everyone it also is a time of reflection.  A time to figure out what is important to us and for many a time to stop running from our fears. For most we have enough and getting by with less for a month will not kill us.  In that way we are more fortunate than many places on this planet.

I keep comparing this to the hurricane warnings we face every season because it seems familiar.  We get ready for something huge headed our way and then if it doesn't happen then we are happy.  The flip side of that is that we spent weeks in fear preparing and even sometimes evacuating for nothing. The stress of this can be overwhelming but at least there is a timeline for when the storm will pass.

For me I just make a reasonable plan and then let the fear go.  The fear is biological triggered by the idea that there is an unknown predator somewhere out there. We can feel the fear of the rest of our herd and so we think we should do more than we are doing. Our mind is searching for a solution that only time will give us.

This also reminds me of when I was fighting my depression and grief. I wanted that time in my life to be over but there is nothing I could do to magically make time pass so I could be on the other side of an feel good again. I wanted to know that I would be alright again at some point but I couldn't get there  without time.  My mind just could't accept that I had no control over where I was at that moment.

When I finally surrendered to the situation and decided okay this is where I am things quickly changed. It was the resistance that hurt me and kept me from just getting with what needed to be done that day. This took getting to rock bottom and really hating myself before I had had enough.

With our situation now we can decide to embrace this and know that we will come out on the other side at some point.  We can feel grateful that we have be given an opportunity to help other people by sitting home instead of running around in a panic. Our mind says "do something" and it seems counter intuitive to just be at home with ourselves.

The next two weeks will be the worst of it as more people are tested the number of infections will go up. It isn't that they are rising it is just we will know about it. We have to limit our viewing of the news and occupy our minds with something productive or even something fun. We can't make time pass or see what the future holds we have to trust that we will make it through to the other side.

Dreams - Reality - Green Beans

I had a dream this morning that I was in a cafeteria buffet line and a older guy had put a serving of chicken on my plate with some green beans.  Suddenly he decided that he wanted me to have fish and took my plate back and gave me a piece of fish but in the process threw away my green beans.  I ask for more green beans but her refused and I had to ask for a manager to get my green beans.

Dreams are so real sometimes and I wonder are we really living in a second world.  I know when I dream like this that I have stayed in bed too long. The details were incredible and I remember when I got my green beans I thought this has taken me 45 minutes to get through this line.

I guess it is Thanksgiving bringing on food dreams and I do prefer fish to chicken but I do like my green beans.  I am on my own this year without plans for the day but feeling okay with it.  I have cooked and served hundreds of people on Thanksgiving mostly spending my time cooking and cleaning alone in the kitchen.

For many years I enjoyed the process of cooking a big meal for the people in my life that I loved. Feeling productive and making sure everyone had a meal to remember. When I was young my husband and I cooked for 20 - 30 people some of them strangers to us but without a place to go.

In my last relationship I cooked for my ex's family and my friends.  It is strange to think about that now.  It has been over a decade and the person that did that no longer exist. I don't feel sad today being alone. I think for the first time I don't feel lost and wanting more from my life than what is right in front of me. I am off work until Tuesday and have a few projects on my list to keep me busy.

I have found that only resisting your current situation will bring you unhappiness.  We are taught to want more dream more and I agree with that but not at the expense of rejecting today.  Enjoy the day and if your with friends and family try to not want them or the day to be different and enjoy those green beans.

Making plans - Spinning Plates

I should have never had the idea of taking it easy in the month of July.  The universe shouted right back at me with more work than I could have imagined along with my renovation this has left me little time for anything but sleep. 

I am not complaining I just think is is comical when you plan one thing and something totally different happens.  This is where we get really messed up believing that we really have any control of our lives.  To have a plan is definitely the way to feel safe setting out on our path with a specific goal or destination and expecting things will go our way.  How we react when obstacles start popping up one by one testing our every movement forward is what really matters.

The pain is in the resistance of course not in the actual problems that arise.  For me my pain is not being able to meet what I think are the expectations of others. Especially in my work you have to decide who is serious and who is just poking around the idea of doing something. 

I feel mostly like I am gambling with my time and in the end my money. Who should I invest in and who has been watching too much HGTV.  Business comes in clumps not a steady even stream where I have the time to address first come first serve. You have to make those choices and I hate that part but I only have 24 hours in each day.

It stresses me out when I have to choose what I can fit into the time I have available in a given day. Sometimes working on what I sense is a dead end instead of bigger more long term projects. Why would I do that?  Because I am getting pressure and in order to move on I have to relieve that pressure.

I have gotten use to working like this over the years and once I have all my plates spinning I can really get a lot done. This why time away isn't good for me when I return  I am resistant to people hurtling plates at me and I have resentments.  Eventually I get back up to full speed and it all seems normal again.

What works for me is first not really making plans.  I have specific loose goals for the day and I do my best to meet them.  I tell myself that I have always worked this way and for the most part I can trust my instinct and I will get it all done.  If I don't then it wasn't meant to be and I move on.

I have ask other people in my business how they deal with it and they say there is no way to meet every one's needs all the time.  I am lucky that I enjoy what I do and I don't have a lot of personal commitments so I can put in the hours.

 It is good to put into words that it is okay to feel overwhelmed from time to time and that it all works out if you just don't make plans. 

Resistance - Letting go

I haven't felt I anything much to write about these days.  I have been plugged back into the matrix and just enjoying the normal things life has to offer.  Work has been exceptionally busy but it doesn't seem like a burden to me like it has in the past.

I am happy that I have found my center once again.  It is true that it has taken me a long time to stop resisting this new life that I have been given.  The world seems to offer us two choices either to sit back and relax and let life just flow or to decide what you want and set out to make those dreams come true. The second seems like a lot of work to me.

If you believe in a power greater than yourself then there is nothing to do but enjoy what is right in front of you.  If you feel this life is it you better get busy.

I have come to the conclusion that life is about finding something to do each day that brings you joy or at least entertains you. I have found that thinking that a particular destination will bring you happiness never really works out.  You might have a short time of satisfaction until the mind gets restless again it is never going to be satisfied for very long.

I  have to decide how I want to feel today and what I need to do to make that happen. I am at my best when I stop resisting what I perceive to be unpleasant and just go with the flow.  In the end how much will any of this really matter.

Just for today I will do my best to let go and focus on what is right about my life and not get distracted by what I think isn't working.

Feeling Great = Resistance - Surrender

Feeling great is something that I am always in search of and on the occasion that I find it I try to analyze and re-create the circumstance that led me to feeling this way. When I am sad or depressed I do the same thing I try to figure out what made me take the dip and how to avoid it the next time.

This is a tiresome rotation that seems natural and logical in the real world but for me I find it does more harm than good. I find myself saying to myself  "I don't want to be this person" the person that feels out of control and unlikeable mostly to myself.

As I move further into freedom from these traps of the past I can see it is this pattern of thinking that causes just about all of my pain and suffering. Not to mention the time I have spent thinking about how to feel one thing and not the other.

This week I made a mistake and some cabinets had to be reordered. When I found out about it I was crushed I didn't want to be the person that made this mistake. I didn't want to feel this way and I didn't want this idea that I have about myself, that I am good at what I do, to be tarnished either.

I squirmed around with this feeling for the whole day. I thought what will the customer think of me? Then I realized this was just in my mind and that this kind of resistance was not helping. I realized I didn't want to be where I was and I was scrambling, only in my mind, to get away.

Making a mistake touched some part of me that is convinced that I not good at anything. This is proof positive. Right? How old is this story?

It is hard to recognize the story we have about ourselves it has been there a long time. I feel freer than I ever have these days to live in the moment and not have a story at all. I see that withou my story I can surrender and all those judgements I have about myself fall away. They are just thoughts not reality.

I called my customer and she was totally okay with everything and said "these things happen" I wanted to defend myself and say this doesn't normally happen to me but I didn't. I let it go.

When I can relax into what is and not grasp onto just the good feelings and push back anything that doesn't feel good I can be free from the desperation, that all this wanting something different, makes me feel. I can move on to the next thing and enjoy the silence in my head. OK it is never completely silent.

Being Boxed In

I watched Oprah the other night and the topic was about why women eat too much. It was particularly interesting and had a spiritual aspect that really for me applies to everything out of balance in my life. It reminded me of when I was 30 pounds heavier had asthma and in a relationship that was literally sucking the life out of me. It was no ones fault I felt trapped spiritually and I used my love of cooking and food to sooth my soul and the stomachs of the people I love to get through it.

I go numb with a variety of things when I don't like where I am it can be a busy schedule or food. Lately I find myself eating unconsciously and then obsessing about gaining weight which makes me want to eat. It was this show that made me think about what is really going on. Really sitting with my feelings and be conscious no matter how painful that is helps me to present and not chase after a quick fix.

When I am in pain looking for a distraction is the first thing on my list but it doesn't solve the real problem it just pushes the problem down further. Like the woman said on the show your body is not craving cheesecake it something deeper.

When I feel boxed in and nothing seems to be changing anytime soon I can only do something about right this minute. Taking a moment to just be and realizing the pain is in the resistance can sometimes sooth me. Other times nothing works and I have to just feel the pain. That sucks but inevitably it usually passes and I move on.