Everyday people......really?

I have a confession to make.....every so often (maybe once a month or so) I just go to sleep at night.  What I'm trying to tell you here (and this is so difficult, she says as she bites the middle joint of her index finger in anguish and shame) is that I don't take my make up off, I don't brush my hair and (horror of horrors!) I don't clean my teeth.

Why do I do this and why am I confessing this to the whole world right now?  The answer to the first part is that I think I am a bit of a frustrated rebel.  When I was a teen it was the Sixties.  Rebellion was in the air.  Collectively we were striking out against what we saw as the stuffiness of our World War Two era parents and against the drab and uninspiring Fifties.  Clothes were brighter, music was louder and behavior was more brash and in-your-face.

Like most of my generation I got swept up in it as much as I was able.  I shortened my skirts to the extent that I couldn't bend over if I dropped something and had to sink vertically to the ground while fumbling around blindly with my hand to locate the object.  I outlined my eyes in black, made my lips almost invisibly pale and adopted the let-it-all-hang-out style of dancing.

The trouble with the Sixties was that it left no room for personal rebellion.  Everyone was doing it so why bother on the home front?

So here I am now, fifty years later, and my inner teenage rebel is knocking on the door wanting to come out.  How can I let her have a little revolution?  Why I can flout decent convention and be a bum once in a while.  After all, my husband is the only one who'll know and, if I don't tell him, he probably won't notice.

There is a larger picture however, to all of this which addresses the second part of my question.  Why confess now?  What is the purpose?

The link lies in a realization I had just the other week.  I have been trying to get back into a routine after a couple of months of rehabbing a broken ankle and getting over the flu.  This also coincided with the New Year and the dreaded resolutions.  I told myself I must do some things regularly.  Things like exercising and journaling and meditating and eating well and writing a gratitude list and...and...and.

So I tried.  I really did.  I began with journaling.  Every day for about nine days I wrote religiously in my journal every morning.  I got some good stuff.  This was going to work.  But it didn't.  Around day ten I woke up and something else got my attention.  I went from Very Important Task to Even More Important Task throughout the day.  Journaling was forgotten.  In fact, I didn't remember journaling until around day seventeen.  Uh oh......failed again.

The whole episode got me thinking.  What is this obsession the human race has with being Everyday People?  What is there really that actually needs to be done every single day that nature doesn't take care of all by herself?  The dishes don't have to be washed every day.  They'll still be in the sink on Day 3 and can be taken care of then if we wish or can't stand the smell anymore.  People in most countries in the world do not take a shower every day not only because of water constraints, or the fact that they don't have a shower but because they just don't believe it's necessary.  Growing up in the UK in the fifties we had to light a coal fire in the living room to get hot water so we had a bath once a week whether we needed it or not.  Most days we had what my mother called "an up and a downer" which entailed standing naked in a cold bathroom swabbing oneself down with a wet washcloth and soap, then finishing off with an extra dousing of cold water.  Not quite the enjoyable sensation of a hot shower.

I am now convinced that I am not an Everyday Person.  What a freedom this has been!  I no longer have to chastise myself for not journaling every day or exercising daily or pummeling myself for not reading something spiritual or being grateful on a daily basis.  I am now free to follow my natural rhythm and do what my mind, body and/or spirit dictate.

You might think that this would lead to procrastination at the highest level.  I certainly thought it would.  But here's the difference......now I have given myself permission not to beat the everyday drum, I do not need to procrastinate.  I am allowed to do things at my own pace and guess what?  I do.  My Inner Rebel is no longer frustrated and doesn't seem to need to exercise her authority over random issues of personal hygiene.  I am free to be me on another level that I didn't even know existed.

But I still might not take my makeup off at night just once in a while......

Cautious or courageous? Which will you choose?

The key word in my life is communication.  I am a Gemini.....the sign of the communicator.  I still have my grade school reports.  They all say the same thing.  "Gillian has potential but she would go further if she didn't talk so much."  As an adult, I went on to get three college degrees in....you've guessed it.....communication.  I like to talk.  I like to interact.  I like to write.  I love to communicate.

So, last year an idea I had been incubating for some time burst through my consciousness.  The next ideal step for me, the ultimate communicator, would be a radio show!

I got really excited about the idea.  I even had a title for the show, a theme and a list of possible guests.  I investigated the logistics, the internet host I would use and a suitable time to reach several continents.  It was going to be awesome.  I just knew it.  And then.....I did nothing.

What?  What happened to all that enthusiasm, that planning?  Why did I baulk at the final hurdle.  All I had to do was sign up and sign in but I didn't do it.  What was I afraid of or, was it even fear that stopped me?

The start of a new year always has me wondering what I will do this year that I didn't do before, so when I approached this new year, I was faced with the dilemma of my failed radio show attempt.  Would I try it again?  If so, how would I get past whatever blocked me last year?  Did I even know what it was?

My journal musings led me to realize that there were two more "c" words at play here besides my desire to communicate.....caution and courage.  The latter had urged me to allow myself to play with the idea of a radio show but it was the former, not exactly fear, that had stopped me at the post.  Caution said "Wait a minute, what could go wrong here?  Are you sure you want to commit to doing something once a week at a regular time?  What if you can't get guests?  What if it is boring?  What if no one listens?" and on and on and on.

Now I'm not saying that caution is a bad thing.  Not in the least.  Caution stops us from stepping off the curb in front of a bus or eating three week old food from the back of the refrigerator or going out in subzero weather without a coat.  Sometimes, however, we let it have too much control.  Yes, I needed to address some of the issues it raised around the show but this wasn't a situation where I had to hand it the keys to my life.  Caution may have made me pause but I didn't have to let it stop me.  So why did I allow it to?

I believe that I let this happen because I didn't take the next step.  I forgot to summon courage.  Courage is something that is available to us all but it needs to be called forth.  Summon is a good verb for addressing courage.  Sometimes I think that I not only have no courage but that I actually have no access to it.  I forget that it must be summoned.

Have you tried summoning some courage lately?  Does this sound like a strange question?  Perhaps the notion of summoning something doesn't sit well with you?  I had to get over this too.  Summoning sounds demanding.  Well, it is and.....is that always a bad thing?  Most of us, especially women, have been raised to be polite little things.  We were told if we just asked nicely we might get what we wanted but that demanding anything, from possessions to attention, was always a bad thing.  So we ask nicely and then sit back and wait.  And nothing happens.

Don't get me wrong.  There is a place for politeness and political correctness but when it comes to managing our own lives and moving along our chosen path, demanding assistance has a place.  It is not a mistake that we talk about "summoning courage."  Courage needs to be called forth with determination.  This was what I forgot to do when it came time to launch the radio show.  I became my meek little self again and decided that it wasn't meant to be because after I put forth the idea, nothing happened.

Maybe you can join me in a little experiment.  Is there something in your life that you want to do but  have either talked yourself out of or have stopped at the last hurdle and abandoned the idea?  Let's try together to summon courage into our lives and get beyond those barriers.

If it works, and I suspect it will, I'll be launching my radio show soon (watch this space).  What will you do?

The Rest of My Life Is Now: Happy New Year....It's Resolution Time!

The Rest of My Life Is Now: Happy New Year....It's Resolution Time!: Happy New Year to all! It's that time of year when many of us begin to think about the habits and behaviors we want to ch...

Happy New Year....It's Resolution Time!

Happy New Year to all!

It's that time of year when many of us begin to think about the habits and behaviors we want to change for the future. Mostly they are things that we know are not good for us. Such things as quitting smoking, losing weight, eating unhealthy foods etc. We rationalize that we must stop doing these things because...... (fill in the blank). We know these reasons make sense. We know there is really no argument against them and yet......we often fail to stick to our well intentioned resolutions.

As humans we are such anomalies. On the one hand we know that evolution has programmed us to be continually changing and adapting to our current circumstances but, at the same time we resist change with the determination of a new puppy refusing to budge at the tug of the leash. Like Fido we want to dig in our heels, sit down on the sidewalk and not move!

Major change usually only comes for most of us when it is absolutely necessary and unavoidable, when life or the people around us start tapping us on the shoulder or when circumstances give us no other choice. Then we go kicking and screaming into the vortex of change.

Perhaps the phenomenon of New Year's resolutions gives us the illusion of choice around change. If I get in first and decide to change, it won't be so traumatic or difficult. I will be more in control of it than if I leave it up to forces outside of myself.

Whatever the reason, it seems that the problem is not in making the decision but in the execution of our intentions.

This issue has come up both for me personally and with clients lately. We are great at the decision making part but the action is sorely wanting. So I have been asking why is this?

I believe that misinformation about the nature of self-change is to blame here. In our culture we have been led to believe that the most important thing we can do is to make decisions. We admire decisive people. We say that they are good leaders, that they are competent, responsible and in charge. Although it might not be articulated out loud, we are led to believe that, once we have made a decision, we have solved the problem.

Wrong!

The truth is that making a decision is only the beginning. An important place to start of course, but not the whole picture. Decision making is a left brained activity. It involves our powers of logic and organization. It involves rational thinking, judgment and evaluation but it says nothing about action. We have a wonderful brain that does amazing things not all of which can scientists understand. It has two sides, a left side that is mostly logical and does for us all of the incredible things I have already described but we also have a right side which houses our amazing imagination. When we make a decision we engage only our logical thinking process on the left side but, in order to complete the change in our behavior, we need to engage our imagination.

You might wonder why this is so. Isn't it enough just to make up your mind to do something different and then use willpower to carry out the actions? Oh, how wonderful if that were so but no, it is not enough.

When we are engaged in a certain behavior that we have done for years, we have created a certain energy around those actions. That energy is familiar and easy to slip into. In order to change the behavior we need to shift that energy. Although it is hard to describe what this feels like, we might see it as like changing key in music. It is similar and yet sounds and feels different. This shift in the energy is the missing piece. The decision to change sets us up for a change; the shift in energy makes it happen.

What then can cause this shift to occur? The answer lies with the right brain and its tremendous capacity to imagine. It has been shown for example, that visualizing different circumstances in our "mind's eye" i.e. the imagination, can help those circumstances to occur. Athletes do this all the time, visualizing improved performance and winning situations. Unhealthy cells respond to mind pictures of healthy ones replacing them. Visualizing a relaxing scene causes the body to relax and de-stress.  Stream of consciousness writing can lead us to a creative solution to a problem.

Although we may be familiar with this evidence, we may not readily bring it to mind when making those darned resolutions but, this is where our answer lies, the answer to our struggles with making the transition from decision to action.

Here then, in practical terms are some things I am going to try in 2013 when making an effort to follow through with a resolution or making any kind of change in our behavior.  Perhaps you'd like to try them too?  I'd love to hear your experiences.....

- Sit quietly, take some deep breaths, relax and conjure up a picture in the mind of yourself doing the new behavior. Hold this image for as long as you can up to a minute at first and longer as you practice.

- Write affirmations around the new behavior on sticky notes and put them on your bathroom mirror or other places around your home where you will see them e.g. if you are quitting smoking, write "I am a nonsmoker," or if you are wanting to exercise more write "My body loves to exercise."

- If you like to draw or paint, make an artistic rendering of what the new behavior looks like to you. It can be realistic or abstract. Or if you are a writer, write about it. Make sure you write positive things about the way it looks rather than focusing on your struggles to get there.

- If you neither draw nor write you can make a vision board around the issue. Get a piece of card....as large or small as you like....and find pictures in magazines that illustrate to you the change you want to make. As long as it is meaningful to you, cut it out and stick it on the card. Add words or phrases that are helpful. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but you.

- If you believe in angels (and most people do!) ask your angels to help and support you. Ask them to love you through this change and to help you love yourself especially if you "slip" or go back to old behavior. As well as your personal guardian angels, you can call upon Archangel Michael who is strong, powerful, protective and supportive and also Archangel Raphael who is a gentle healer.

- Instead of seeing change as a challenge to be conquered, see it as a gentle transition. If it helps you can visualize change as a gently flowing stream rather than a raging torrent. See yourself floating down the stream in a boat, going at the pace of the current and not having to work hard to get where you want to go.

Remember, change only comes about when a shift occurs in the energy around an issue or behavior. That shift can only occur if two basic things happen.....first there must be a decision and then the imagination takes over. Change comes about when we engage our whole brain, left and right sides, in the process.

Here's to positive changes in 2013!

Celebrating a new beginning....

I created this blog quite a while ago.  I loved its title, The Rest of My Life is Now, because I loved the idea of living in the now and looking forward rather than wallowing in the past.  Notice I say that I loved the idea, but I wasn't sure how to manifest it most of the time.  Consequently, my enthusiasm for writing the blog waned considerably.  So it has been quite a while since I've posted here but now, I believe I have gained the fortitude to continue on a regular basis.....we will see!

Today is the eve of the Solstice 2012; an appropriate day to begin I believe and also I am celebrating.  I am not just celebrating the turning point of winter as people have done since the beginning of time, I am celebrating a very personal anniversary, one that you may think a strange event to be remembered, much less celebrated, so I will explain.

On December 20th, 2002 I fell on my head, in rather spectacular fashion, while skiing in Colorado.  Although very dazed and totally winded, I subsequently stood up and carried on skiing.  A week later I was at the emergency room with dizziness and great difficulty trying to explain how the world had become so weird, how I couldn't sleep and asking why my brain wouldn't switch off.  It was like watching constant movie trailers inside my head 24/7.  Within the next two months I was diagnosed with a closed head brain injury and had surgery to replace two discs in my neck with a resulting fusion of three vertebrae.  I could barely function and other than three to four doctor visits a week, I lay on the bed with the blinds drawn reading the same book over and over again because once at the end I couldn't remember anything about the content, and occasionally watching PBS or Home and Garden TV because they were the most calm channels I could find.

I was lucky.  It took only a couple of years for me to recover full functioning.  Many head trauma victims never recover at all or at least lose decades of their lives.  I also had a wonderful spouse who took over all the practical details of our lives and allowed me to heal.  It was the best part of a year until I could go into a grocery store or any other place designed to stimulate the senses.  Bright colors, patterns, loud noises, strong smells were all overwhelming and I had to get away from them.

So why, you may ask, am I celebrating such a devastating event ten years on?

Because today, I can see (with 20/20 hindsight), that, had this event not occurred, my life would be very different and I would have missed all the wonderful events and people that have come into my life in the last ten years.  I am not celebrating the fact that I had a terrible accident, I am celebrating my life since then, now and for the future.

Up until the accident happened, I had great plans for an expansion of my career.  I had a new PhD in hand and some great work experience.  I was destined to be a consultant in an important career related to public safety and I knew I could make a difference.  The Universe, it seems, had other ideas.  My plans dissolved and I was forced to let life take me where it would and to follow the guidance of the amazing people who stepped up to offer advice and support.

First there was my friend who, on hearing me try to explain how confused and weird I felt, related her own struggle with brain injury and ordered me (yes, she really did and I listened)  to my doctor.  Then there was my GP who as I tried to dismiss my complaints as trivial, revealed that she had been on a committee to study brain injury and I had all the classic signs.  There were also other helpful medical professionals and finally a wonderful doctor who did everything he could for me and then told me to  try anything in the alternative medical field that I thought might help, a suggestion I never thought I would hear from a western trained (Harvard no less) medical individual.

There was the spiritual teacher who I met through a writing group (writing being the one thing I could do throughout all this and what a blessing that was).  She introduced me to energy work and many other alternative methods to soothe not only my brain but also my confused spirit.  She encouraged me to explore how my healing brain might be rearranging itself and opening up areas that I had previously shut down, areas that gave me renewed connections to realms far greater and more powerful than my old life had allowed me to appreciate.

Over the past ten years, I have not only healed, I have thrived.  I have explored a side of myself and of existence itself that I had abandoned in my difficult teenage years when I decided that the only way to live life was to be strong and depend on no one.  I learned to trust that there is something all powerful out there keeping the Universe on track and I don't have to do it!  I learned that I can tap into any amount of guidance and support that I need through different ways of connecting to that power using my whole self - body, mind, emotions and spirit.  Most importantly, I discovered that what I really wanted to do, deep inside, was to help others find the same guidance and inner peace and so I created a new career, my own career, unique to me, matching my particular skills and gifts.

Today then, I celebrate.  I celebrate me!  I celebrate my chosen path.  I celebrate the fact that the uncomfortable event of ten years ago, while at first knocking me off my feet and rearranging my thoughts, ultimately set me back on my feet and allowed me to set off in the true direction of my heart.

On this Solstice 2012, a day when some fear the world may end, I am celebrating a new beginning.  Ten years on from the most life changing event of my existence, I can see that new beginnings can happen at any time, for any reason.  Sometimes we choose them, often we don't.  When they occur, it is sometimes difficult to see where they will lead or to appreciate their future impact.  We are too busy dealing with the immediate consequences.  After a while however....or a decade in my case.....we can look back with a more detached and dispassionate eye and see how they set in motion new ways to approach our life journeys and how they allowed opportunities for growth into our lives.

I wouldn't wish the kind of accident I had and its consequences on anyone but I encourage you, on this important Solstice of 2012, to look back over the last ten years and see how events in your life during that time,which you may have found, at the most, devastating or at the least, upsetting, have affected your choices and the place you find yourself in today.  I hope that, like me, you find many things to celebrate.......

Ordinary topic #2 - Bicycles

In light of my previously stated quest to blog about ordinary things, today's topic is.....bicycles.

It is a beautiful day in Colorado.  The sky is clear, sun shining and the air is sweet as only mountain air can be after a storm.  A perfect day for a bike ride.

I took my bike down from its perch where it has sat since about last October, dusted it off, checked the tires and set out for the bike path.  About twenty minutes into my ride I had a realization.....I was really uncomfortable.  My back ached, my shoulders cramped and my behind - well, you don't want to know the state of my rear end.

I have an old mountain bike.  Manufactured before many modern innovations, it has no shocks, a heavy frame and the most spine jarring saddle ever invented.  It has served me well in the past but now, after a decade, my body needs something more in keeping with its needs.  I no longer need to be crouched down leaning almost all my weight on my arms and shoulders so I can shave a couple of extra minutes off my miles.  I'm into recreational cruising, not head down, round shouldered racing.

My thoughts began to drift off into the past.  What happened to those lovely old bikes my mother and grandmother rode?  You know, the ones with a wide leather saddle supported by bouncy springs, comfortable enough for an hour or so of shopping or cruising and wide enough to support a normal woman's lower curves.  The ones with handlebars that are considerably higher than the seat so that you can sit in a normal sitting position, the best to see the traffic and the view.  The ones that have a cover on the chain so you don't get plastered with dirty oil.  The ones with a wicker basket on the front to carry all essentials.  The ones you can ride wearing a skirt or a pretty summer dress.  Wouldn't that be nice?

I came home with a new determination and a new direction.  Out with the mountain bike and in with a "sit up and beg" variety (as my mother used to call them).  A friend told me they make new "old" bikes so I've been scouring Amazon and Googling like crazy.  Came up with a few possibilities.  If, however, you can point me in the direction of a good website or resource, please let me know.

My back and derriere will thank you!

Profound or ordinary?

It's been a long while since I've blogged here. Why is that? I have lots of good intentions but they never seem to translate into action.

 I just returned from a wonderful 2 day writers conference held by Northern Colorado Writers. I attended many informative and interesting sessions.

Among them was Laurie Macomber's Writing for the Web. Laurie gave us an amazing, almost overwhelming, amount of information about how to write meaningful and useful copy for our websites and also about blogging.

 One thing she said stuck with me. If you are going to blog, it must be almost every day or at a minimum once a week. Whoa!! Wait a minute.....who has time to do that? Then I paused. Why am I balking at doing what I love to do once a day or even a couple of times a week? I love to write so what's up with that?

 I needed to get honest with myself. What exactly is holding me back? Is it plain old procrastination? Not really, I'm usually a "get it done" kind of person. Is it fear? No, I'm not afraid to put my writing or my thoughts out there for all to see. Is it a lack of inspiration or ideas? No, definitely not. I'm overflowing with them. Then what?

 I examined further what happens to me as I go along through the thought process of what to write and I discovered something.....I want to be profound! I want to say something earth shattering, I want to give my readers and Aha! moment, I want what I write to be meaningful and lingering. What a load of b.......t!

Then I had a revelation....Blogs aren't about being profound. Blogs are your ultimate stream of consciousness stuff just arranged better so others aren't left scratching their heads. BLOGS ARE ORDINARY.

That's the thing that was standing in my way. I just couldn't stomach the idea that my writing, and my ideas, might be ordinary. Who wants to be ordinary? We all want to be special don't we?

So now I'm cringing at myself. I need to get real. I need to get down to earth. I need to eat some humble pie. If you are still reading and wondering where this is all going, then you are not alone. So am I. What next for my blog? What next for my writing? And most importantly, what next for my ego?

Watch this space.......