The Fluent Self » not hating on yourself

74 ways to push the reset button.

Havi Brooks — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 19:00:41 +0000

When things aren’t working, even the tiniest time-out = magic.

Yesterday things were very much not working, so I ended up making a list of the various ways available to me when I need to push the reset button.

Here it is.

Reset! Let’s see. You could…

Take a shower.
Go outside.
Go for a walk.
Walk backwards!
Do something widdershins!
Smell a flower…
Take a nap.
Hide under the blankets.
Turn your closet into a temporary refueling station.
Sing a song. Louder!
Ask: how much of this fear/discomfort/pain belongs to me?
Ask: how much of this fear/discomfort/pain is from now?
Use a magical spray.
Do a mudra.
Use an acupressure technique (like EFT or TAT or any use of pressure points).
Hum.
Chant.
Sing sea shanties and pretend you’re on a voyage.
Roll on the floor hugging your knees.
Yawn and yawn and yawns until you cry.
Do an old Turkish lady stretch.
Listen to one of your Emergency Calming The Hell Down recordings.
Consult the Book of You.
Talk to the monsters who say that you can’t stop.
Let a negotiator talk to the fear that says things are never going to get better.
Scribble with crayons or magic markers.
Color with the monster coloring book (extra sneaky!).
Ask slightly future you how she resolved this one.
Use any of the grounding and centering techniques from Hiro‘s amazing Healing Internet Hangover course.
Count backwards from 25.
Strengthen your force field. Whoosh!
Do simple Shiva Nata spirals.
Run any Shiva Nata pattern or algorithm through your head. 3-2, 4-3, 1-4, 2-1!
Find out why now is different from then.
Use the alignment technique.
Find out what is useful about being stuck right now.
Invoke your superpowers — like Joseph.
Write a Dr. Seuss rhyme about how much everything sucks.
Yell TIME OUT!
Take ten long deep breaths.
Sama vritti pranayama is when the inhale and exhale are equal. Do that.
Do ten silent screams (it helps to stop and take a breath or two between each one).
Do the puppy paws. Pause. Paws!
Be upside down.
Find out what you’d tell the person you loved most if she/he was in your situation.
Ask what brilliant support you’d give to a client who needed a reset button.
Listen to a yoga nidra recording.
Have a good cry for 15 minutes.
Build a safe room in your mind.
Build a safe room in your past.
Run away! Just for now.
Turn up the music and dance dance dance.
Decide on a theme song.
What Would Someone Fabulous Do?
What Would The Wise And Compassionate Version Of You Do?
Touch the floor.
Do some stone skipping.
Declare silent retreat!
Take notes on what got you here so that you can change the pattern next time.
Do something sweet for someone else.
Blow bubbles!
Whisper a secret to a tree.
Make a gwish!
Rub circles on the soles of your feet.
Write magic words on the palms of your hands.
Give yourself permission to be in the hard and in the stuck. Or to not want to be there.
Put on a costume.
Strike a pose.
Talk about how much everything sucks but in a Groucho Marx voice. Or with your best Australian accent. Unless you’re Australian.
Hop on one foot and be a bad-tempered one-legged pirate.
One hand on your heart.
Look for ten things that are blue.
Name everything you see.
Say I am here now.

Notes. And comment zen for today

As always, we invoke the “people vary” principle. This is my list of what might work for me.

Whatever doesn’t work for you can be ignored. Whatever *does* work for you can go straight into the Book of You.
It often helps to have your top three or four in mind (top of the toolbag!)

We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We make room for people to have their own experience and that’s why we don’t tell each other what to do.

If you want to add other things that go on your personal list of ways to press the reset button, go for it.

Love to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

Retroactive Emergency Vacation

Havi Brooks — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:28:16 +0000

It’s story time today.

Ten years ago this May.

I don’t want to write about this. And definitely not in the mood to go into all the details.

So. Ignoring the mechanisms, the how and why of my world falling apart, some relevant pieces:

In May of ten-years-ago my husband and I left our Tel Aviv apartment that I loved so much. Maybe even more than I’d realized, in retrospect. Oh, retrospect, you are always so late.

His parents had given us a flat they owned in the suburbs. Next door to them.

Except it was still being renovated, and I was working in the city.

My shifts at the bar ended late — too late for buses. And a cab out of town would eat up all my earnings.

My husband stayed at his parents in the suburb. And I stayed on various couches of girlfriends in Tel Aviv.

Time is funny.

It was supposed to be just for a month. We’d see each other weekends and in between my shifts at work.

We didn’t. Not really. Renovations took longer. My best friend went to London and I house-sat for a while, then took care of her ex-girlfriend who was going through a rough patch.

Three months.

I went to the States for a visit. Stayed with a girlfriend in Chicago. Went on a road trip. Place, perspective. Breathing room.

Four months.

Timing is timing.

I was scheduled to fly out of Chicago on September 12.

This was 2001, so September 11 meant there was no September 12. At least, not in any way that mattered.

Flights were canceled. Flights to Israel were canceled for even longer.

Another month.

Six months into seven.

Eventually I came back. The marriage, unsurprisingly, came apart. It was agreed that I would move out.

A friend of a friend was moving to Sweden. I could rent her apartment.

She changed her mind about if and when so many times that I lost count.

I stayed on more couches.

By the time I moved in, it was almost December. Seven months of couch-sleeping. Of not knowing when or where — or if at all — there would be home for me.

Why this.

This six month period is by no means the hardest or the shittiest thing that has happened to me.

It hurts to say: this doesn’t even make the top ten.

But that doesn’t mean this time wasn’t terrifying and painful, because it was.

And sometimes I talk to me-from-then. I invent vacations for her. I put her up in hotels and buy her books. I take care of her. It’s what I do.

Why now.

I have trouble taking time off. I have trouble stopping.

Until it’s an emergency, and Emergency Vacation is declared.

This is a known thing.

But to every absolute declarative “this is how things are” truth, there is always an exception. And here it is:

While I personally may be terrible at creating refuge for myself now, there is a version of me who knows how to stop.

It’s the me who invents vacations for past versions of myself.

Look at all the things I have trouble giving to me-in-the-present:

Time, space, money, attention, caring, forgiveness, comfort, reassurance, appreciation, protection.

And yet all of these I gladly give to me-who-went-through-all-that-crap.

Bless the loophole.

Yesterday, I took myself away on a holiday.

I took me-from-now and me-from-ten-years-ago, and we went on a little self-rescue mission.

We booked a gorgeous hotel room. We packed an overflowing picnic basket. Books and magazines. Slippers. An appointment for a facial.

Normally I would never do this for myself. But it’s okay, because I’m taking care of her. I’m taking care of her by showing her that now I can take care of myself.

She knows what I’m doing, me-from-then.

She knows this is my way of easing into being the person who can take care of herself in the moment and not just after the fact.

She’s happy for me.

And I am happy for her.

Very specific comment blanket fort zen for today.

This is really, really vulnerable stuff I’m writing about. It’s hard to do.

What is welcome.

Your stories.

The versions of you who are in need of a Retroactive Emergency Vacation, whether you literally might go on one or not.

Spaciousness. Warmth. A glass of wine or a cup of tea.

What I am not okay with:

Not that you would do this, of course, but just to have said it…

I do not wish to be told what to do, psychoanalyzed, judged, given advice or given that thing which is called tough love but is not loving in practice.

I do not want to be told that I shouldn’t be posting here if I’m on vacation, or that I need to learn to take time off.

Thank you.

Happy Retroactive Emergency Vacation to me. And to all of your various verisons-of-you who need one too. Hug.

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

Not getting rid of it. Replacing it.

Havi Brooks — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:47:20 +0000

The message I got from my brain yesterday (my post-flailing newly-descrambled charged-up brain) was as follows:

Replace worry.

To which I said, huh?

And then I got this:

Replace worry with curiosity.

Curiosity.

I like this so much.

And here’s why.

It’s easier to access elegant and unlikely solutions while wondering what might be possible. Instead of agonizing over the stuck and why the stuck is so stuck.
Worry drags me down. Curiosity lifts me up.
Curiosity brings my attention to the gaps and the spaces, instead of to the walls. This is exactly what happens in Shiva Nata.
Worry is clenched. Curiosity is receptive.
Invoking curiosity actively challenges me to think creatively, and to anticipate creative solutions.
It lets me give legitimacy to spending time and energy mulling over a problem or a challenge.
Curiosity is balanced: it’s where you aren’t ignoring the things that need attention, but you aren’t in the pain of them either.
Curiosity allows for unlimited options.

And I especially like this because I still get to be in a relationship with worry.

Normally when people say things like “just stop worrying about it” or “don’t worry so much”, I feel frustrated.

Because it’s not that simple. Definitely not for me. I can’t do it. I don’t know how. And it generally seems kind of violent.

Because the traditional ways of “DON’T WORRY!” tend to involve repressing or delegitimizing all the internal stuff that comes together to create anxiety.

It’s like fighting your monsters. Not recommended.

But when I bring in curiosity, I still get to interact with my small, scared, anxious parts. In fact, I get to interact with them even more.

Only now it’s in a way that’s receptive, non-judgmental, inquisitive, and caring. I’m not pushing the worry away. Just extracting its essence.

How I’m going to make use of this today.

1. With an unresolved conflict in my business.

I am going to try to be curious about this person’s motivation instead of worried about what it could mean.

Curious about perfect, simple solutions and where they might be hiding.

Curious about what I need to feel safe.

2. Preparing for my trip to Asheville.

Instead of going gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah about all the stuff that needs to be sorted for that …. curious.

I am curious about what systems and sequences will bring ease and a sense of order to this project.

That’s the question I will ask. And then I’ll write down everything that comes up.

3. Messing around with scheduling the second half of 2011.

Curious about where my time for me will be. Instead of anxious that it won’t happen.

Curious about the different ways a small Skabbatical could find its way in there. Instead of worrying about all the reasons this couldn’t ever work.

Curious about how I can deconstruct some of my programs and do them differently. Instead of trying to just make things fit.

And the main point.

This is not about not worrying. Some things in life are worrisome. They just are.

We still get to give legitimacy to everything that’s hard. We’re totally allowed to have worry. It’s part of being human.

And we get to be curious about what help us get a little breathing room. Moving from tension into possibility.

We get to be curious about perspective — where we’re standing in relation to the worry. So useful.

(And the advanced practice.)

As with most of my posts, this is being written on parallel tracks. There’s the surface teaching and then there’s the other good stuff, for people who are interested in going deeper.

Curious is one of the things we practice with monsters.

Curiosity is part of playing. It’s also a way of making space and expanding the canopy.

And — and this is important — curiosity is one of the fastest ways to exit the middle.

What else?

Play? Comment zen for today. In the giant blanket fort!

Play!

If you have worrisome things you’d like to be curious about, bring them here and we can have a practice space for wondering out loud about what is possible.

We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. It’s a practice. It takes time.

And we try to meet ourselves and our stuff with as much patience as we can muster.

We let people have their own experience. So we can be curious and ask each other questions, and still avoid unsolicited advice-giving in the blanket fort.

Kisses to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads!

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

The Secret Life of Burnout

Havi Brooks — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:11:28 +0000

Right now it seems like most of my friends and clients are in various stages of that uncomfortable, unpleasant, overwhelming thing that is being completely burnt out.

Burnout. Ugh. Being in it is sucky and terrible.

We know that. From ridiculous amounts of experience.

And so, when it shows up AGAIN, we start guilting the hell out of ourselves about aaaaaagh how we could have let ourselves end up here again.* And that’s too bad.

Because important things happen when we get to a state of burnout.

That’s the thing. Burnout is important. Not even slightly fun. But important. And normal. And sometimes even useful.

* I can’t remember if I’ve written about this before, but “again” is one of the words our monsters like to use.

Things we forget about burnout.

Burnout is part of life.

You cannot learn where your limits are except by exceeding them.

We learn to recognize the edges by visiting them.

And those boundaries change. That’s part of being alive.

So every once in a while, even if you’re cautious and intelligent and have a conscious relationship with yourself and your stuff, you’re going to get burnt out.

Because you’ll be testing those edges and end up on the wrong side for a while, until you carve out recovery time.

That process of venturing out and coming back is part of being alive.

Burnout shows you what needs to happen for you to take care of yourself.

Not necessarily when you’re in it, of course.

Because being burnt out is just a horrible sensation. You can’t really think straight when you’re depleted. Everything gets an extra layer of fuzzy. Yuck.

But as you begin to make rest and recovery a priority, you collect information about how you got into this and how you’re getting out of it.

You file that stuff in the big Book of You. Add some more things to your dammit list. And then some more.

As I said to one of my friends the other day:

This is not the last time you’ll burn out, sweetie. But it’s the last time you’ll burn out like this.

Burnout leads to discovery.

These are my edges.

This is where I fall apart.

This is what I need.

This is how I protect myself.

This is how I treat myself with love.

This is what hurts.

This is what pulls me out of myself.

This is what returns me to myself.

Knowing what my internal space looks and feels like is sovereignty, and it helps me not care so much about what other people think.

Burnout is weirdly necessary.

Remember last year when I worked myself to the bone and then had to go on Emergency Vacation because if I didn’t stop everything right that second I was headed for a serious breakdown?

Remember Selma the Duck and the Big Day Off?

Remember when my arms went on strike because they needed me to work less? With those hilarious signs that said No More Pain!

None of that was fun.

Each of those things taught me incredibly useful things about capacity.

Everything I know about my capacity and what I need to do to respect it has come from those dark days of burnout.

Depression burnout. Crisis hair-on-fire burnout. Falling down tired burnout. I know them all.

And you can’t biggify without learning to respect your capacity. Because part of mindful biggification is being able to say no to things that don’t support you.

You first learn what those are through getting it wrong. Ow. File under: useful experience.

Bottom line. Or: how I approach the burnout thing.

Burnout is inevitable. So my approach to it can’t be just how to avoid it. It has to be about discovery:

As in:

What do I learn when I’m in it? And what personal and systems changes need to happen so that the next time it’s a different experience?

Because my goal is not to be done.

What I’m really working towards is this:

The next time you show up, Pattern of Burnout In My Life, I’m going to know more about you, recognize you sooner and be less impressed by the fact that you exist.

Not being so impressed with being in it is part of what makes it easier to deal with burnout. And it makes the getting out of it considerably more doable.

Comment zen for today …

Man. Burnout sucks. It just does.

So you’re allowed to hate it. I’m definitely not trying to convince you to appreciate it or feel all grateful for it or anything.

We’re always allowed to feel what we’re feeling. That’s a given.

In the meantime, we all have our stuff and we’re all working on our stuff. So we try to be understanding about that. Which means appreciating other people’s hard (and our own) and not giving unsolicited advice. Kiss!

postscript: Update on the Playground! The ceiling is painted. The stage is built. Phase Two of the fun-brewing to commence shortly. Thanks for all the love and well-wishing!

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

You don’t need to take the leap.

Havi Brooks — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:42:30 +0000

I have to say, all the talk about leaps of faith and jumping off cliffs and waiting for nets to appear is … kind of disturbing.

Not that I doubt the legitimacy of the sensation for a moment. I don’t.

In fact, those are pretty accurate descriptions of what it feels like to take the first step in doing the thing.

Like you’re walking off into nothing. Plunging into a black hole. Taking first one step off and then … it all works.

The problem with this metaphor (and its associated variations) is that it’s freaking terrifying.

Which is just … oh, I don’t know, not helpful? It’s really, really not helpful. Or necessary,

Because there is no cliff.

I’m not saying it doesn’t feel like a cliff or look like a cliff or smell like a cliff.

And I’m definitely not saying that you shouldn’t be scared (I would never say that).

Just that the most important thing about these kinds of internal cliffs is remembering that they are not cliffs … and then rebuilding the metaphor. Transforming it into something that isn’t so impossibly scary.

Because honestly, there is no reason that I can think of to have to work through that much fear. It just doesn’t make sense — and it’s totally unfair.

We have more than enough fear to process in our lives already without turning each transition into the kind of experience that throws our nervous systems into panic and terror.

So if it’s not a cliff, what is it?

I don’t know.

But there’s a lot of power when it stops being a cliff.

I want to throw out a couple concepts and examples, and maybe I’ll figure out where we’re going with this.

Implied safety is not the same thing as feeling safe.

You know that thing at the Grand Canyon where you can walk out over a glass floor and stand over the canyon?

You’re not getting me to step out on that thing.

You can explain a thousand times how it’s completely safe. You can demonstrate in every possible way how physics is on your side and physics (like the house) always wins.

You can deliver social proof all over the place. You can show me people walking out and doing it. You can prove it in every way possible.

It’s still not going to happen. I’m not going to do it.

Not because I think I’m going to fall to my death. But because I’m not going to put my nerves through that kind of fear. The kind of fear that — to me, maybe not to you — is traumatizing, and takes years to heal from.

Not going to do it.

Point 1: There are enough legitimately fearful things in life. Not everyone needs to learn to face every single scary thing that exists.*

* Great example of this “facing fear” thing totally backfiring: my friend’s ex-girlfriend who jumped out of a plane to do just that. Oy.

From the jump to the path.

When I moved back to Israel, it scared me to pieces.

I was telling a friend and he said, “It’s like throwing yourself into a black hole, right?”

Exactly. That was exactly what it was like.

“Here’s the thing nobody tells you,” he said. “There is no black hole. You go from living your life here to living your life there. It’s just you and your life, with slight variations. No holes.”

He was right. I’ve moved countries twice since then and there was no black hole.

What there is instead is this big Continuum of You (ooh, fake band name!), and wherever you are on it is a part of you. You can contain different cultural and emotional identities at the same time.

That’s because you’re not constantly hurling yourself into space or off of cliffs.

You’re just going for a walk, and around this next bend is a new piece of terrain. But it’s not really all that different from what you already know.

Point 2: Not that the thing you can’t see yet isn’t scary by virtue of being unknown … it just doesn’t make it a cliff.

It’s about new structures.

I’m about to do a couple of scary new things right about now.

When I tell myself that I’m not ready to take the leap, it gets scarier.

So that’s not what I tell myself. What I tell myself is this:

“Even though this new house isn’t completely built yet, it does have a good foundation. I’m going to call on everyone who is capable of helping me, and we’re going to figure out what kind of windows I want it to have.”

I’m still on the ground. Not going anywhere near a cliff. Just building a new thing. Not alone. With help.

It’s still unknown because I can’t fully imagine what it will be like when we’re done, but at least it doesn’t require me jumping off into the fog.

Point 3: Your metaphor doesn’t have to be a building. It doesn’t have to be a path. Just try, if you can, to find something less terrifying than the cliff.

Because it pretty much always turns out that there is no cliff.

No cliffs.

Not that I want to negate your experience of the existence of your cliffs, because I don’t.

My point is really only that things get easier when I give myself these three things:

permission to be scared.
permission to not want to do it.
enough distance to be able to remember that the metaphor is mine
and I get to play with it.

Because not jumping off cliffs is so completely on my dammit list. I don’t jump off cliffs, dammit.

Because I don’t have to.

Comment zen for today.

We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We’re practicing.

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

Sovereignty casserole. And more about shoes.

Havi Brooks — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:09:38 +0000

We were talking about the relationship between shoe throwing (people saying hurtful things out of nowhere) and sovereignty (the state of not giving a damn what people think because you are the king or queen of your life).

And there were lots of things I didn’t cover — little bits and pieces for the gravy pan, as Andrea says.

So we’re having leftovers tonight. A bit of this and a bit of that. A sovereignty casserole. Or something.

Making the distinction between internal and external.

Like with anything else, there are two area that need attention when shoes (real or perceived) are being thrown.

There’s the internal:

Thoughts, feelings, reactions, energy. Working on your stuff. All the work that happens “in the soft”.

And there’s the external:

Systems systems systems. The actual steps you take “in the hard” to make changes in real life.

Example: I’m on email sabbatical.

This works very well for me because my inbox is well-known for being a place where shoes get thrown like crazy. It’s apparently part of being internet famous.

So I do the internal work of clearing out stucknesses and meeting myself where I am. I find out what I need to do to feel comfortable and safe being me.

And I also have external systems — my pirate crew. The First Mate answers all my email and the bosun moderates blog comments, keeping me safe from internet shoes.

However …

When you’re not in sovereignty, external systems can fall apart.

Sovereignty, again, is the quality of owning your space.

It’s feeling so safe being you, that you can’t be shaken from yourself.

When the sovereignty thing isn’t happening, we get shaky. And shaken.

It’s obvious how this affects our internal stuff. But our external systems can also suffer.

Back to my inbox example: If I know that going in there means stepping directly into the path of flying shoes, why would I do it?

I wouldn’t. And normally I don’t.

But last week I was all kinds of tired, confused and jetlagged. I needed an important piece of information that had apparently arrived by email. I felt stressed out and impatient. And anxious. So I broke my own system.

I didn’t wait for my gentleman friend to come home so he could get it for me. I didn’t ask someone on the pirate crew to retrieve it for me.

And I walked right into a shoe-storm. What seemed like dozens of them.

I promptly logged out and reminded myself that my systems exist for a reason. To take care of me.

Your most important job? Take care of yourself.

Because when I’m looking out for my physical and emotional well-being, I can do my best work.

And when I’m depleted and exhausted, it sucks for everyone.

My external systems — just like my internal practices — keep me grounded so that I can keep working on the sovereignty thing.

It all comes back to taking care of yourself. And safety. And finding ways to access that canopy of peace.

One thing that helps: knowing your triggers.

It’s crappy and horrible when things set you off. And it’s also all information for the big Book of You.

So you take notice and learn what you can about the things that keep you paralyzed.

And you come up with your escape plans beforehand.

For me and my HSP self, it’s loudness that sets me off.

So — even when not staying in a place with jackhammers outside the window — I need earplugs (check!) and music (check!) and …?

And the knowledge that when a situation reaches a certain noise level, there is no negotiation. I have to get out.

It means I need to know enough about my reactions to be able to say “this is too much”.

It means my gentleman friend has had to learn what a no-I-must-leave moment looks like.

And that’s why I’m not allowed to drive a produce truck.

Running away from the jackhammers to our favorite cafe in Berlin brought a brief interlude of piece.

Until some sort of impromptu parade came marching down the center of the street, complete with accordions, saxaphone and trumpet.

It was kind of like being in a film by Emir Kusturica. Only louder and more piercing.

Even with my earplugs in, my fantasies about hurling tomatoes at them grew stronger and stronger, until the only thing stopping me from rushing them and pelting the band members with rotten vegetables was the total lack of available produce.

I wanted to run them over with a produce truck.

I wanted to grab the guy with the tin can by the collar and scream “THIS IS NOT MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

We come unglued. Well, I do. Hi. And that’s exactly when I get tempted to become the shoe-thrower. When external situations — triggers — are setting off the hard.

Sometimes we perceive shoes and then throw them in return.

This is what turns us into accidental shoe-throwers.

Someone asks what is — for them — a perfectly legitimate question. About our rates. About how we work. About what we do.

They’re so into their own stuff and their own hard that it doesn’t even occur to them that their question really feels like a shoe on our end.

Like they’re questioning our worth or our very essence.

We see a shoe and we hurl it back.

But it wasn’t a shoe. At least, not in that person’s mind.

And now we have two inadvertent shoe-throwers.

Or three.

Carina asked in the comments last time:

What do you do if you -– through accident or a hard day or because you’re used to have that shoe thrown at yourself by others -– throw a shoe at yourself?

There’s this Buddhist concept of the two arrows. The first arrow is the hard thing that happens and the second is you beating yourself up about it.

In other words, you feel so crappy about Shoe #1 that your reaction to it is Shoe #2. Thrown in your own direction. It’s the extra shoe.

“How come I can’t just remember that this isn’t about me?” is an extra shoe.

“When am I going to stop reacting to all these damn shoes?” is another one.

So yeah. Not fun. It’s also not a big deal. I mean, hell, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t toss shoes at himself once in a while.

The flowers: they just kind of belong in the sovereignty casserole.

My friend Andreas has this marvelous story about flowers.

We were reminiscing, and found ourselves talking about various times in each of our lives when we’d come to an impasse. A tight spot. An ending. A stuck.

No options. Or the perception of no options.

The last time Andreas was in that spot, he was down to his last 12 euros.

So he spent all of it on flowers.

And he said, “By the time they wilt and lose their petals, things will be better. Or at least different. But I hope better.”

And they were.

Sometimes any reminder is useful. That this too shall pass. That things will get better. That shifting and changing is the nature of things.

Including your relationship with sovereignty. Including your relationship with shoes.

I am going to buy flowers. And by the time they wilt and lose their petals, things will be better. Or at least different.

But I hope better.

Comment zen?
We all have stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We try and keep that in mind when we respond to each other. It helps with the shoes.

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

In which I substitute interrogation for meditation.

Havi Brooks — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:34:45 +0000

I still can’t meditate (because of the jackhammers) and it’s kind of driving me crazy.

But in the meantime I’m replacing my usual morning practices and general Havi-wackiness with … answering questions.

Questions I ask myself. It helps me focus.

And today I’m using Jen Louden’s beautiful Life Organizer questions — the ones she’s been sharing in her Monday posts lately.

So I thought I’d put them here so — if you want — you guys can play too.

Normally I’d do five minutes of Dance of Shiva first to clear out my brain and shake loose some new understandings, but I’m in a crowded Berlin cafe in at the moment and that probably wouldn’t go over too well.

Yallah. Let’s do this.

“What is the relationship between health and self-love for me right now?”

Okay, a little linguistic backtracking before I can answer this one.

I’m not such a big fan of the phrase self-love (though the concept is pretty flipping awesome) just because it tends to set off my shoulds, which really stresses me out.

It’s just too easy for me to go straight into oh god now I have to love myself too in addition to all the other things I can’t do?!

So my personal translation for this concept is “liking myself anyway”.

And then it’s way easier for me to start with something like this:

Okay, is it possible that even though things are really hard right now, there is still some part of me that can like myself anyway? Maybe? A little?

And if not, can letting myself be where I am be a part of this whole kindness thing — as long as I don’t force myself into more kindness than I can stand?

And that usually eventually leads me back to the place where I can start feeling loving towards myself.

But yes, self-love and health: the connection. It’s there. I mean, oh, chicken egg chicken egg chicken egg. Chicken.

Each one gets you closer to the other one.

And when one of them is hurting, the other one is hurting.

For me, when I’m paying attention to one, stuff is going to go better with the other. It almost doesn’t matter which one I choose to spend time with, as long as it’s one of them.

“How could self-kindness could help me love myself more in relationship to money?

Oh. Being patient with myself would feel really kind right now.

Not having to solve all my problems at once feels really good. Permission to take a little more time even when my urgent! urgent! urgent! patterns show up … that would be nice.

Remembering that there are many different forms of support available to me (at least in theory) is pretty great too.

Saying no to things that don’t serve me is also really helpful (even when it’s scary).

Actually, I have been saying no to almost all interview requests, which is totally good for me.

But it means I have to have another conversation each time with that part of me who thinks I’m an idiot.

You know, this one:

“Oh-no-oh-no this is awful! You can’t do this. You can’t say no to these people. You’re going to end up on the street if you don’t use the biggification opportunities that you’ve been given.

So what if these opportunities aren’t in “alignment” with what’s in your heart?! What does that even mean, you stupid hippie? Do you want to be poor again? Do you want it to be like then?

So yeah. Lots of talking to fear and to walls.

But the kindness thing is good for that too.

“What resources do I want to call in this week to embody a dream, take good care of myself, or let go of something I no longer want to do?”

The qualities I want are: sovereignty, lightness, support and … my canopy of peace.

And the mind-bending transformative effects of Shiva Nata. Yes.

And my allies: they know who they are.

“What does it mean for me to be healthy?”

It means I trust myself fully and completely.

I check in with my body. It trusts me not to push it too far and I trust it to give me a clear yes or no on things. We laugh together.

It’s taking time. It’s not needing to remind myself to breathe.

It’s kindness. It’s forgiveness. It’s long walks in the park when I can … and hiding under blankets when I can’t.

It’s being genuinely curious about what I need in a given moment, and then doing what I can to meet those needs in the most patient way possible.

And if that means the answer in that moment is a cheesy 70s caper movie and a glass of bourbon? So be it.

It means letting at least part of me be appreciative of what is working, even as I allow another part of me to mourn the loss in everything that isn’t.

“I’m itching to:”

Oh! To get my schedule up for the coming year.

To make a bunch of website changes.

To announce some big things that are coming up.

To have a proper night’s sleep.

To move forward on the Next Big Thing.

That’s it.

It totally helps.

(Thanks, Jen! You rock.)

Each time I’m baffled (again!) by just how much relief I get from answering questions.

Even if the answers aren’t especially interesting to me while I’m writing them.

It’s as if the process of stopping what I’m doing long enough to interact with what’s being asked is enough.

It’s enough to give me just enough distance from my stuff to get closer to myself again.

Ooh! Do you want to play?

Yay. Play with me!

You absolutely don’t have to answer all of Jen’s questions, of course. But maybe one of them? Two of them?

Or another question altogether? Only if you feel like it.

If you like, you can share what showed up for you in the comments bit.

And, as always, the reminder that yeah, we’re all working on our stuff and we try not to step on anyone else’s.

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

What you do when you feel like dirt.

Havi Brooks — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:16:47 +0000

This is not some theoretical post, full of brilliant bits of how-to-ishness from genius expert me.

I actually do feel like dirt at the moment.

Dirt. Dirt. Dirt. Dirt. Dirt. Ugh.

To the point that I don’t even feel up to walking you through my process or anything. Sorry.

But maybe just a few of the things I do when everything is dirt, and some of the ideas behind the process. Because there’s no way I can write about — or even think about — anything else right now when it’s all dirt. DIRT.

So: some of the things that help me cope with the hard and come through on the other side when I’m ready.

Not asking “how come”. Just don’t ask.

There is always a good reason — usually a series of good reasons — for why you’re feeling what you’re feeling.

As soon as you start demanding to know why everything feels so awful, you start to doubt the legitimacy of the feeling and wonder what’s wrong with you?!

Which leads you straight into more stuck.

Better: assume legitimacy.

Even though I have no idea why I feel like dirt, this is where I am right now and baby, that’s how it is. For now. Not forever. Just right now.

Giving yourself permission to feel as crappy as you want.

Because that’s what you’re feeling.

It sucks, yes. And … that feeling is what’s true for you in this moment.

If you can’t give yourself permission to feel what you’re feeling, give yourself permission to not be able to feel what you’re feeling yet.

This feeling of dirt doesn’t define me. It’s not the whole of who I am. It’s just the thing I’m dealing with right now. Even though I hate feeling like dirt, I’m allowed to hate it as much as I want.

Letting the reasons have their weight.

Once you’ve stopped asking but how come how come how come and you’ve stopped fighting with the feeling, you’ll probably know why you feel like dirt.

Or at least, you’ll have some pretty decent theories.

Instead of trying to convince yourself that these are stupid reasons and here’s why you actually shouldn’t be feeling like dirt, let those reasons seem like okay reasons.

Talk to yourself as if it were your best friend in the entire world who felt like dirt and had every reason to.

Wow. No kidding. Of course you feel like dirt after X happened. That’s a really hard thing to go through. And you’re catching up on sleep. And you’ve been dealing with all these other things. And things are changing in your life like crazy now. Who wouldn’t feel like dirt right now?

Figuring out what you’re actually talking about.

Okay, so I feel like dirt. What does that mean? What does that look like?

It’s not the same as dirty. It’s not necessarily about messiness. It’s about blah. It’s dusty and formless and smudged and hard all at the same time.

It’s not rich soil where something can grow. It’s just there. It’s useless and it’s there.

It’s hurt in my heart. It’s dread in the pit of my stomach. It’s blocked in my throat.

This is my personal definition of feeling like dirt. And now that I know what it looks like or sounds like or feels like, I can recognize it when it comes up.

Reminding yourself of the relationships between things.

At this point, the stuck might have less power over you, but to some extent it still kind of seems like it’s running your life.

This is where you remember that pain and stuckification and suckiness and feeling like dirt are all temporary, momentary, normal parts of being alive.

They are not the grand sum of your identity. Even when it feels like it is.

Even though I have no idea how long it will take to stop feeling like dirt, I’m going to give myself as much support as I can stand right now. And I’m reminding myself that I am not my thoughts and feelings.

I am larger than all of my thoughts and feelings. I am the being that brings these thoughts and feelings into existence, and I can learn to interact with them instead of being the innocent bystander who keeps getting knocked over by them.

Finding your resources of strength.

There are internal resources to call upon. I get to mine through breathing, singing, dancing, crying, repeating words, writing or meditating.

There are also external resources to call on. I get to mine by talking to my duck or leaning on friends or consulting an old, favorite book. Reading a blog post counts.

If I can’t draw on my own strength, I can draw on someone else’s. If I can’t count on someone else’s, I go back and look for my own.

If the stuck is so intense that it feels as though neither of these are available in that moment, I plant the request in my heart.

Like this: you close your eyes and say, “Strength, please!” and wait for it to come to you.

Sure, this too shall pass and all that. But in the meantime — while I’m in it — I’m willing to receive whatever support I can. I am willing to get better at accessing hidden sources of support that fit what I need.

Avoiding people who will try to talk you out of what you’re feeling.

The cheerer-uppers mean well.

But just as often they make it seem as though it’s no big deal. As though you don’t deserve to feel the thing you’re feeling.

You want the people who will give you a hug. The ones who will make you laugh but are also strong enough to just let you feel like dirt for as long as you need to.

Not the ones who can’t handle your pain because it sets off theirs.

I’m ready for support and kindness from the people in my life … and in the meantime, I’m going to practice giving it to myself because that’s where it starts.

That’s what I’ve got for now.

That and appreciation for my duck Selma and my patient, loving gentleman friend who both allow me to feel like dirt when I feel like dirt.

They remind me what unconditional love is and what it looks like. Which means that — at some point — I’ll probably have at least some sort of shot at being able to practice it with myself.

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

When you don’t want anyone to look at you.

Havi Brooks — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:26:26 +0000

I spent most of my twenties not wanting to be seen.

Actually, I probably spent most of my life not wanting to be seen, but what really sticks out is the period right after I got divorced.

Not wanting to be seen (take 1)

One of the many lovely things I acquired along with the divorce was ~~my life falling apart~~ a horrible skin condition.

Doctors and dermatologists shrugged their shoulders and said “stress”, and “it happens”, and gave me medications that were both completely ineffective and came with a wide variety of misery-inducing side effects.

I won’t go into the complicated and tragicomic steps I took to hide both myself and the existence of this condition (which, incidentally, no one ever found out about).

Let’s just get to the real story and the point of it, because ohmygod the point.

I couldn’t stand to be seen by anyone.

Wanting to be seen (take 1)

So my mantra (conscious and unconscious, waking and sleeping) for years and years and years was please please please don’t look at me.

Then I started a business.

So … I had classes and workshops for people to take. I had services they could hire me for. Eventually (once I got over my distaste of the word “product“) I had products for them to buy if they wanted to.

Except that no one was looking. No one was looking at me. So they couldn’t use these classes and services and products that were intended to help them have less pain and fear and stuck in their lives.

I was finally ready to be seen, but I wasn’t being seen.

Being seen (take 1)

Years later. I had long forgotten the weird skin thing. I had long forgotten the painful hiding.

But it was clear to me that there was some part of me that really didn’t want to be seen because it was as if — no matter what I did — my business was invisible.

So I worked on this theme and its related patterns, getting tiny pinpricks of clarity here and there.

And then I got a healer friend to do a session with me. At the end she said we had reversed my stuck “I can’t be seen” belief and I said okay, fine.

Whatever.

That week I found out that I was being quoted in Woman’s Day.

Cue hysterical laughter.

Not wanting to be seen (take 2)

So I started being seen.

My workshops were filling up. People were calling. (No connection to the Woman’s Day thing, which as far as I know, had pretty much zero effect).

A little being seen was really nice. You know, that sweet sigh of finally, where has everyone been?!

But then I started getting more attention. A lot of attention. Lots of eyes. Lots of love.

And oh it was crippling and terrifying.

Wanting to be seen (take 2)

This time, though, it wasn’t a mystery anymore.

It was so completely obvious that I was the one sabotaging the show and that I couldn’t keep grumbling about how come nobody pays attention when I want them to.

So I started doing deeper work. Applying my own destuckification techniques. Clearing out some old stucknesses.

Renegotiating.

“Even though there is a part of me that dreads being seen, I am allowed to be terrified of being noticed. I’ve been carrying around this pattern for a lot of years and I don’t have to solve it right this second.

“Even though I have this love-hate relationship with being in the light, I’m reminding myself that this “being seen” thing isn’t about me — it’s about helping my Right People find the help they need.

“Even though I don’t know how to make peace with this yet, I am committing to working on ways to help me feel safe and comfortable as I do this work …”

I realized that if I just stopped hiding from my Right People, the rest would sort itself out.

Being seen (take 2)

It’s not like I’m done working on it. I’m not planning on erasing a lifelong pattern overnight. I like working on it.

But things have moved. A lot.

There was the day I got 7000 page views and I went yay instead of oh crap it’s not ready and what if they don’t like it and that’s too many people and aaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

That was good.

And I was on German television and in The New York Freaking Times … and instead of being petrified I was excited. And happy.

I don’t have to make my life be about how not to be seen. I’m just trying to connect with my Right People in a way that feels safe and comfortable for me … and (she types hopefully) also for them.

Yet again: the “it’s not about me” lesson. Which is (hahahaha) invariably followed by the “but it is about working on my stuff so I can stop making it about me” lesson …

(But wait, we have to know…)

Fine.

How I lived with a horrible skin condition for three years without anyone knowing about it:

I worked nights. At a very dark, smoky bar. I slept during the day.

Spent everything I earned (after rent) on medication, special skin creams from my useless dermatologist and special make-up. And very nice scarves.

No one I knew (including my best friend and my boyfriend) ever saw me either a. outside of a bar or b. not at night for nearly three years.

I kept waiting for someone to ask if I was a vampire. Or a drunk. Or a drunk vampire. But nothing.

And still I hummed my don’t-look-at-me song under my breath. Not knowing that keeping myself hidden would launch a destructive chain of events that I’d end up healing later. Or at least work on.

And now for something completely different.

Because how can we talk about not being seen without this?

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

I’ll laugh about this later.

Havi Brooks — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:30:23 +0000

The other day I was on the phone with an old, old friend. And I mean “old” like we’ve been friends for too many years to not be able to laugh about really horrible things.

Which is exactly what we were doing.

Actually, we were laughing (and really only somewhat bitterly) about how completely miserable experiences so often turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.

“Remember…?” she said, choking back another giggle. “Your nasty, nasty ear infection that lasted six months? The one where you were just gushing goo and blood, and we all thought you’re going to die?”

“How could I forget? That was hysterical. Ohmygod. The pain was so bad that I’d wake myself from my own screams,” I said, now laughing so hard that I was flailing around for tissues to wipe the tears.

Oh, hindsight. You are so funny.

Obviously, not all pain = gain. And not all gain comes from pain. But sometimes there’s a connection.

The truth is that I never want to know pain like that again. It was awful and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

And at the same time, I’m aware that there is a direct connection between that experience of oozing goo from my ear and the one we’re having right now, the one in which you’re reading something I wrote … on my blog.

Because it was that illness that ultimately caused me to realize that I’m a writer.

It was that illness that resulted in me essentially downloading the entire Fluent Self system, which is what led to me launching my business.

It was that illness that introduced me to half the techniques in my repertoire, just because nothing else would work. And so many other things.

My desperation was a matchmaker. Things worked out. Almost suspiciously well.

But back to right now.

It is completely clear to me that I’m going to be ridiculously grateful (at least, at some point in the future) for the past few months of agonizing arm pain.

So if I’m going to end up feeling all appreciative of the thing that totally sucks right now anyway, I might as well take a moment or two to acknowledge all the good stuff that I will be loving later.

Not as a way of negating what is true for me right now. Not as a way of bulldozing through my discomfort and pain.

And definitely not making myself commit to some cheesy gratitude practice for its own sake, because forced compassion? Not very compassionate.

I totally don’t believe in making yourself say thank you. You don’t have to find every silver lining. Or count every blessing. Unless, of course, you feel like it.

For me it’s more about just actively noticing all the things that this pain — and this painful experience — have given me.

And then finding out: If I’m already thinking about the results of this awful experience that I will be so happy about in a month or two … is it possible that I could just be happy about them now? Hmmm. Maybe not.

Okay, so — if I really can’t be happy about them yet (ahhh, that’s more like it) — why not get used to the idea of eventually being happy about them? Yes.

That I can do.

So I’ve been working on my “Things to be insanely grateful for much, much later” list. And I want to share it with you. Not today though.

Tomorrow.

My teacher has an expression for this (insert heavy Ukrainian accent and serious expression here):

“There is good experience … and then there is useful experience.”

This is one of those sticky philosophical points that is much easier said than internalized. Easier believed than implemented.

And when it doesn’t work for you … and there are certain situations where — in that moment — it just can’t, you have my permission to toss it.

As a general principle, though, I like it.

A lot. It’s kind of like my use of “the good” and “the hard” in the Friday Chicken posts.

Just looking at my own situation here … this ordeal with my arms and not being able to use them? I’m not ready to call it good. But definitely useful.

When I talk about it with my girlfriends in a couple years? Oh, by then it will probably have found its way to the “good”.

Either way, this pain is giving me some seriously great stuff. It’s not the way I’d have liked to receive either the information or the results. It’s the way that it’s happened though.

And I’m ready to (okay, fine, however long it takes) get to the point where I can look back on this as one of the big symbolic turning points. Because really, that’s exactly what it is.

My big, fat “Things to be insanely grateful for much, much later on” list. Coming tomorrow.

COMMENT ZEN for today’s post:
You are more than welcome, as always, to chime in with thoughts, ideas, insights, reactions, similar experiences, and so on. Support is always welcome too.

What I’m NOT looking for: It’s really important to me that gratitude always be a choice and never turn into a “should” for me. So I’m not interested in anything along the lines of “oh good, you’re finally being grateful like you should be and that’s what will make you heal and it’s about time you started attracting sunbeams and rainbows” thing. Thanks!