Each week for as long as I’m digging it, I’ll share my responses to some of the Life Organizer questions – my most recent book. We do this together at the Comfort Cafe every week. If you tool over to the Life Organizer site, you can download all the questions for free.
I’m bored.
I had this fantasy that recovering from surgery would be all easy and delightful. Like a cozy vacation.
English period movies and catnaps and books, books, books.
Only I forget that, um, it would be impatient little me who was doing the recovering.
I want to do yoga!
I want to walk in the woods!
I want to be able to sit at my desk for more than fifteen minutes.
I want to be able to pick up something that weighs more than 5 friggin pounds!
I want people to stop clucking at me and telling me to take it easy. (Sorry Mom.)
I want to get the hell out of this house.
Okay, breathing now. Thanks for listening to me whine.
I am feeling pretty darn normal. Just tired.
And then there is the painful CQG (Comfort Queen Gas.) Thanks Michael for that cute little tag. (You have ordered Michael’s new book, right? There are actually two, Find Your Great Work and Get Unstuck and Get Going.)
The Life Organizer Questions for
Week 44
Have to: Rest as much as I am sick of it! Have to look at moving Virtual Retreat forward and general moving 2010 forward. Have to get oil changed in car!
Could do: Art! Time with a friend. Getting out of the house.
Let go of: Exercise – I hate not moving. I can walk but not far. Sigh.
What would I do differently this week if I was willing to hang out in the gap between what I want and where I am?
Learning to tolerate and stay present in this gap is a huge part of learning to create a life you love. Mostly, we want to get out of this place because it feels so uncomfortable but if instead of freaking out, you can soothe yourself (What is your favorite way to calm anxiety?) and then notice where you want to be (say writing your novel) and where you are (say cleaning the cat box or reading the paper). Simply tolerating the anxiety of life and noticing what you want vs. what you are doing will work wonders to move you into simple action.
For me: Soothe myself with simply being, watching my impatience about not knowing which projects to commit to right now. I will sit, stay, heal as Pema says in her new book (Thanks Char for the gfit!) with my impatience, let it be there, keep letting it be there while letting go of my story about what this means for me future.
What self-nurturing activities might increase my courage to be in the gap?
For me: Meditation! Alternate nostril breathing. Writing out my frustrations without the story attached to them.
What do I find myself complaining about lately? What do I say I don’t have time or energy for?
In an excessively Law of Attraction world, you may think complaining is bad ju-ju. I prefer to agree with Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey that our complaints hold clues to what we most care about and also, to what needs our attention. I’m not suggesting you fester over your complaints like Glenn Beck or blame others for your circumstances but rather, that you acknowledge them and hold them as vital clues.
For me: Oh my complaints are so charmingly constant: wanting to do too many things at once, not having enough systems in place so I spend too much time on details, and not have enough real live local community. I am doing things differently, week after week. But, of course, it is too slow for me. Which is a call for more self-mercy.
If I decided to forgive myself for something this week, I would choose:
For me: After 37 days of wheat free, dairy free, sugar free, and very low carb diet (not that I was counting), I ate sugar, dairy and lots o’ carbs.
Want to play along?
Write down the questions and muse upon them in your journal.
Join the Comfort Cafe and do it in community.
Pick one question and respond in the comments.
Or…?
Love to hear how you choose your life this week.
Related posts:
7 responses so far ↓
1 Hiro Boga Nov 9, 2009
Jen, that post-surgical impatience to get on with life-as-it-used-to-be (or as you wish it would be) sounds so familiar! When it rattled through me like a hot desert wind in the weeks and months after my hip surgery, I could no longer feel the slow pulse of my own healing.
For me, the key to moving through it was curiosity. Exploring the feeling of impatience, holding it until it revealed underlying layers of tiredness, loss, frayed edges and the infinite weaving of new possibilities in my body.
I love the truth you’ve described here: That our complaints hold wisdom about our deepest desires and point to that which needs our attention.
“What would I do differently this week if I was willing to hang out in the gap between what I want and where I am?”
I would explore the terrain in that gap. Spend some time feeling the relationship of my body to the space around it; feeling its relationship with the earth and the movements of the earth; feeling into how these larger movements inform and shape the patterns of movement within my life. Resting in the overall pattern, knowing that it has its own trajectory and flow.
Thanks so much for the wisdom of your questions, Jen.
Much love to you,
Hiro
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3 Rebecca Leigh Nov 9, 2009
Hi Jen,
Relating very strongly to your post-surgical journey. I had emergency abdominal surgery 4 weeks ago.
I found the ‘resting’ stage at the beginning remarkably unrestful (noisy hospitals, upsetting follow-up procedures & all manner of weird body stuff to adjust to like ‘CQG’).
Then I had a day or two that was quite lovely, when that hard stuff was fading, and I felt grateful just to be still and peaceful.
But pretty soon from that peaceful, still place flowed ideas and desires to be ‘doing’ and ‘getting on’!
I found (and am still finding as recovery is still going for me) many lessons in the process. I talked about some of those in the post I’ve linked to in my comment header.
Wishing you well in your recovery.
4 char Nov 10, 2009
“I want to get the hell out of this house!!!” Yeah, amen to that one Jen – I so get how that’s true for you right now and why you’d want to get this “show on the road already!”.
You’ve been more than patient with this whole process and found the deep learnings in so many pieces of it.
Don’t you just wanna throw up your hands and just say “enough already!!”?
Maybe that’s just me but I really relate to your impatience – as I too am at an impatient point in my life – so forgive me if I’m just projecting here.
And thank you for the opportunity to vent it with words instead of hauling off and slugging someone here.
xoxo
5 Jennifer Nov 10, 2009
Thanks everyone. And love to you Char as you find your own patience, dear one.
6 Viveca from FatigueBeGone Nov 11, 2009
I too had a surgery this year. I thought it would be like getting a small mole removed which, aside from root canals and wisdom teeth extraction, is the closed I’ve come to “the blade.”
Yikes. I know exactly how you feel.
When I went in for my post opp consult the doc gave me excellent news then wanted to know why I wasn’t happy. I said “Will I ever be able to move my right arm again?”
Long story short I am doing GREAT. Did some physical therapy and I recommend that to anyone for any minor or major surgery.
You will feel GREAT soon too. The body is an amazing healer. It heals even faster is you have a cat or two purring by your side … If you are catless there is a shelter nearby standing by …
Best to you Oh Comfort Queen.
Viveca
7 Hayden Tompkins Nov 11, 2009
Go you, vent! Sometimes being able to vent is soooo helpful in and of itself.
I will say that the uck! always makes me appreciate the awesome. (Like how I get to go back home in less than 2 months!!!)