Admitting there is a problem - Finding balance

I haven't had much spare time lately with work taking over my life which makes me happy but then wears me out. I have been pushing myself a little too hard which has resulted in me being a little under the weather.

I decided mid week that I have to take my life back from my new job. I think it is time to sets some limits even if the result is a financial penalty.  The problem with being on full commission besides the obvious is you are afraid to let anything or anyone go. Your mind tells you "what if you run out of of customers?"

This hasn't ever happened even during the recession there was a trickle but the mind loves to live in fear.  I think for me the worse part is that I really want to help ever customer I speak with but the reality is I can't. There isn't enough time and I am over committed and unfortunately the small jobs can sometimes  fall through the cracks. Then I feel really bad.

I am not alone in this my fellow sales people are dealing with the same thing. Some are better at juggling than others and some just work millions of hours. My juggling skills are rusty and I not sure I even want to juggle again and I am already living at work so what do I do?

My body is already alerting me that something is wrong. My weight rising which is resulting in the return of a few health issues from my distant past.

I will take care of myself right after I close the three deals I have on the table. How many times have I said this in my past? The difference is now I can see what I am doing and I can make a choice before too much time goes by. I can choose to be present and take care of myself.

Can I practice what I preach and let go? Can I choose a life of balance not knowing what the result will be and trust that I will be taken care even if I don't know how?

I am starting here first and admitting there is a problem and then I am letting go and we will see what happens.

Storms - forgivness - choosing my thoughts

I watched another baby squirrel fall a few minutes ago. He scrambled away. I guess that is the perils of being a squirrel just like being human. Taking your falls and deciding to get over yourself and move on.

I have fallen a lot in my life and by the time I reached the program I was pretty battered by what life had dished out to me. I was desperate and wanted answers. This was the first time I was willing to shut up and listen.

I was still looking for someone to blame for my situation. At first I felt relief because when I got to the program I identified the alcoholic as the source of my excruciating pain. But that didn't help me feel better. In the program I learned that my thoughts and my own actions were the real source of my pain.

We make decisions and with any decision there is consequences. I remember early in the program when no one was giving me much sympathy for the situation I had put myself in. I thought they don't understand me or my suffering. When I realized I had to be accountable for my own life my own feelings I was shocked. It felt awkward to see my life as choices and to see my thought and feelings as choices.

Until then I thought I was hurdling through life and being showered by meteors. I was helpless and powerless. I had to brace myself for the next unknown storm. I always got exactly what I expected to get, more storms.

I am not saying bad things don't happen or that everything is my fault but I do have the ability to at least look at it from a less personal perspective or change the way I think about things. If I just lay down in the middle of the road it increases the odds that I will get run over. Especially if it has happened before.

Once I realized that was not a victim that I was the key player in my life I was overwhelmed with sadness. I did this. I picked this. This is my fault. This is not helpful and only leads to more feelings powerlessness. I can still get there when I am resisting where I am.

The steps gently clear a path to acceptance and forgiveness. Acceptance being important because if I don't acknowledge and accept my own power I feel helpless. I can spend a lifetime waiting for someone to say they are sorry or rescue me from my pain. If I accept my own power to screw things up I can accept the power to make better choices for myself the next time. I can choose to not let the past control my future.

The forgiveness is tricky. Somebody should pay because what happened was wrong and I should be compensated or at least acknowledged for the pain I have suffered. It takes a pretty evolved person to acknowledge their own mistakes and the odds of that coming from a sick or addicted person is slim.

If I stop focusing on getting that ever elusive apology I can move on to what is wrong with me. Which is nothing really. If I step down from my throne of judgement, I can look at myself and everyone else as human. Back to acceptance. I can see I made mistakes and choices that altered the course of my life. On a good day I can just accept that this was the course I was suppose to take because I took it. There are no mistakes just more learning. I did the best I could with the information I had at the time.

I can admit my emotional limitations and even admit I have hurt others on my own path an evolved moment. If everyone is just trying to make it using the skills and information they have been given, how can I not just let it go.

Keeping that fire going by living in the past takes a lot of energy and for me those people are not even in my life anymore. The steps don't speak of forgiveness just acceptance. I think that it is because it take the focus off the one thing we can control, ourselves. When we stay in acceptance it slips into forgiveness without us even realizing it.

Every day I have a chance to make a better choice for myself.

I have to say a word about my mother. She wasn't perfect even if over the years I made her into perfection and blamed all that was bad about my life on my father. I could do that because I was eleven when she died. She didn't have as much time to make as many mistakes as my dad did.

She was strict and believed in spare the rod and spoil the child (he didn't). Being ADD this was hard on me. She did her best she loved me and taught me how to be independent. She also taught me to not let other people put limitations on me. I could do anything I really wanted to do.

My life changed the day she died. I have coped by living most of my life in my head. I can see that for the first time today, maybe a gift from mom. I had to entertain myself as a kid and I just continued this as an adult. The constant searching for truth or God and trying to understand myself is like chasing a moving target, but it keeps my mind entertained.

I have been the only person putting limits on me and mainly because I spend so much time in my head. I am starting to just live and let go. There is nothing more to figure out and the past can't define me unless I let it. I can see I am gonna have a lot of free time.

What on my plate - It only matters to me

Did you ever here the adage I've got too much on my plate. I was thinking about this after a discussion I had with the owner yesterday. I took it one step further and said no one ever cares how much or even what is on my plate.

We all think that what is important to us should be important to someone else. We get frustrated when the people we love or think should love us do not give our ideas or wants the same priority as we do.

I have felt frustrated at work because I feel I am on my own with trying to make things happen. I have a vision and feel that time is of the essence and no one is really that interested in my vision.

This occurred to me when the owner was talking about how his wife has let the grand kids tear up the new porch he just built. The office he was sitting in is basically falling down around him. I had just finished cleaning the front room that he had totally trashed and spilt coffee every where. Bottom line, it is not on his plate.

This is where I have to make a decision. Can I accept things as they are, the people I work with remaining exactly as they are or I can move on and find a place where the vision I have for building a business is shared by others.

When I lived with the effects of active alcoholism it destroyed me because I kept waiting for the situation to change for the person I loved to wake up a do the right thing. I wanted someone to share my vision and work on the things I thought were important. Nothing was as important as the escape the alcohol gave him. My vision for our life together wasn't as important to him. I translated that into I wasn't that important to him and eventually I thought I wasn't important period.

So the dilemma of relationships alcoholic or not is how to live with the fact no one will every be passionate about all the same things I am. It goes back to pain caused by this expectation. I expect those closest to me to want me to be happy and see life the way I do. The same way dysfunction has made me care more about what you want than what I want and expecting the same in return. How crazy is that.

How do I find a balance with this notion? The fine line between selfishness and martyrdom. It is hard for me to disappoint others but the real issue is my own guilt when I do. Sometimes I don't know if I have even really disappointed anyone or is just my own assumption. Am I really that important? I have found mostly no. Everyone just goes on with their lives.

When I broke off from my commitments last August it was first time I picked me over the wants and needs or expectations of others. It took nearly a breakdown to get to that point. It felt so alien to me but so freeing. For the first time I could see how my pattern of just going along was making me feel I had no choices and breaking free showed me that it was a prison of my own making.

So we each have our own plates. If we are lucky we might find someone that likes some of the same foods but probably not all of them. Sometimes our tastes change and the foods we liked before have lost their appeal. Sometimes it is comforting to eat those childhood favorites but they never quite live up to the memory. We are in charge of our lives and make new choices every day to either keep things the same or try something new.

I can't take it personal when someone else doesn't share my vision, but I can choose to move on if that is what is best for me. It is a choice I can make again every day.

What is the right thing to do?

My dog is very old 17 maybe 18 years old and can't see or hear at this point. She shows her age as old folks do sleeping all day and staying up all night.

We have this routine each night. I settle in around 1:00 am and fall asleep pretty quickly I usually sleep for a couple of hours and then I hear her nails tapping on the floor. Just as I leap up it is too late and she has relieved herself on the floor. It doesn't matter at this point because I have tile on the floor. I clean things up and go back to bed. At this point she is awake and starts wandering around the house bumping into things and about daylight will settle back in.

The other night I woke up and couldn't find her anywhere. I thought the doggy rapture had taken place. I searched the whole house and finally found her wedged underneath an ottoman coffee table I have at the end of the bed.

She is in pretty good health and her quality of life is still decent. It is me that is suffering. I know if I took her to the vet they would recommend putting her down. Taking a life, it is hard for me to even kill bugs most less something I love. I did make that choice for my other dog when she no longer could stand, that seemed clearer to me than this does.

I did try something different last night I put her in the kitchen and closed my door so I couldn't hear the tapping. I do feel more rested but it did seem strange not to feel her presence in the room.

I guess I will know when the time is right.

Limits

Tonight I have been thinking a lot about limits. First limits are not necessarily good or bad just like everything else in life it is your point of veiw. This week I reached my limit and had a complete meltdown. This has happened before but for some reason I was surprised by it this time. Once the crisis passed and I picked myself up off the floor literally in this case I had to decide what to do next.

First the crisis was not of epic proportions and the reaction didn't really seem to fit the situation. Yes it is true I have a lot going on I always have a lot going on I like it that way. But every time I decide to pull back and take time to recharge life comes on a little stronger. In my work customers show up out of no where after missing for months and in my personal life previous commitments can't be ignored. It is just life.

For me an introvert I need to recharge and what usually happens is that things start to build up and I don't get the time out I need and then I have a melt down. This time not getting away has to do with my dog whose health is failing and I don't feel I can burden anyone else with her care at this point. I have thought of leaving her at the vet but she would be disoriented and that would be tramatic for her. It not just about her it is that right now my life feels unstable and taking care of her just adds to the overall unstable view I have of of my life. On my best days I know it is just in my head and I am grateful for the life I have but sometimes I feel maxed out and I am scrambling to escape the fear.

So the question is am I really limited or is thought that I am limited what is really hurting me. I tell the people I sponsor we are only limited by our thinking there is always a third option. But when despair arrives you can't see any options that is why it is despair.

So to move past my place of doom initially I took off in the middle of the day abandoned my work and went to the movies. I saw Inception and it definitely helped me get away and tomorrow I am taking a little road trip, just for the day. So I am only limited by my thoughts of being limited.

I have choices and choosing to care for my dog for as long as it is best for her is just that a choice. She is happily sleeping waiting for her next meal just what we will do when we are her age.

Memories and Music

With the holiday season upon us it is hard for me not to think about the people that are not with me this year some by choice and some because their time here on earth is over. My thoughts were there this afternoon while I listen to the one Christmas cd that I own.

The ones that are not with me by choice, how do I reflect on that without seeing it as a negative? I always want to blame myself in some way instead of accepting that nothing stays the same good or bad. People make choices for themselves and sometimes their choices can change the course of your life. Looking back now I can see for the most part I am better off. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel sad sometimes but mostly because I miss the feeling of being part of their lives. I struggle with the loss of the safety I thought I had in those relationships.

The loss of those people in my life that left not by choice. This really is about mostly my parents. Mainly my mother she died when I was 11 and this was a loss that also changed the course of my life forever. It is also why I have spent most of my life trying to create a safe relationship where I thought I belonged. Trying to be a part of someone else’s family doesn’t work and when they leave they take their family with them. I have realized, over the past year that my family consist of the people that have been there for me during a time when I thought I wasn’t going to survive.

Do we ever really know who will be in our lives this time next year we only have this season. I can choose to spend my time in regret or I can enjoy the day and the people that are with me now. For me and my family every day seems like a holiday. We make time for each other and I think this is what every one tries to do at this time of year. It is important but almost impossible to squeeze between Thanksgiving and New Years without a lot of stress