Comfort Queen » fear anxiety

Choose Your Life Mondays – The UnGrind Edition

Jennifer — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:01:07 +0000

I’ve been doing Choose Your Life Monday posts for year or so now. I’ve blogged about being aware of my various patterns, I’ve shared Life Organizer questions, and now I’m using this space to give you some ideas for the week ahead. I hope you’ll join me!

Ever feel like you are pushing and shoving and basically grinding the gears of your soul to get through the day?

Like you’re trying so hard all the time - to get clients, to be a better parent, to lose weight, to be a kinder person…

And you know something is not quite working because your jaw is clenched and you’re tired all the time and you certainly are not enjoying the process.

I’m not going to tell you to make a vision map or visualize your perfect life or think good thoughts.

Because when you are already in danger of burning out your heart’s clutch, more effort will not help.

Here’s what will:

Go into your sensations.

Do this with me right now:

Exhale and listen to what clutch-popping, hard-trying, soul-grinding “Why-is-it-easier-for-her?” thoughts you’re having. Listen for just a moment.

Now drop below those thoughts and notice what you are feeling in your body right now.

Drop into your body and notice the sensations under the thoughts.

After a moment, you’ll notice one area of your body has more sensation or more energy or tension. Even pain. Focus your attention there.

Lately, for me, it’s been my throat. I’ll notice I’m comparing myself to someone else or feeling like I’m not getting enough done, and then I drop below that thought, and there is this restricted, tight, choking feeling in my throat.

Go into the sensation you found – not to change it or label it or even think about – forget thinking.

Simply be fully curious about the sensation.

Experience it.

Watch it, feel it with your whole being.

When thoughts come like “This is stupid” or “I’m not doing it right” or “I need to check Twitter,” stay with the sensation. Keep watching it and feeling it, like it was the best massage or most fascinating movie ever.

The most amazing thing will happen.

The sensation will move.

It will uncoil, relax, expand… In some way, it will shift.

You’ll probably let out a big sigh and you’ll feel different.

Maybe freer. More spacious. More trusting.

More able to be who you are, to accept this moment as your life.

Afterward, you can ask yourself, “What would I love to do next?“ (A question I learned from Michael Neill).

Or just go about your day and then, the next time nasty, grinding self-meanness assaults you, pause, tell your critic to take a hike, dive below the thought into the sensation, and watch it, be with it, follow it, and see what happens.

This practice has changed my life.

I do it many times a day.

It works because it brings you into life.

Out of your smart but very Squirrel-like mind and into this moment, where life is actually lived.

It somehow unwinds the stories and opens your heart.

It’s not always easy or pleasant but it’s very, very worth it.

Try it and tell me how it goes. And feel free to ask questions in the comments.

This is the sort of stuff I’ll teach at my one day retreats around the country. If you think, “Wow, that stirs something in me, join me. This is profound self-care.

Tuning into Your Essence

Jennifer — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:01:32 +0000

It won’t surprise you when I say that you need time to listen to yourself if you’re to know the authentic you.

The surprising part is that even though you know you need to, you don’t do it. And if you do, you might be missing a key distinction that can make all the difference in your ability to actually hear your “you.”

Oh, do allow me to explain.

The first part of tuning into your essence – that “I” that you can then express and share with the world – is to become intimate with your own desires, opinions, and feelings.

To do that, make a habit of asking yourself what you really want.

As in, when faced with a choice, ask yourself, “What do I want?”

You make think you do this now — but are you really listening to the answer?

You may not be able to have it, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to know what was on your wish list before you told yourself “No?”

Getting familiar with your desires is a huge (and delightful!) way to get to know who you are.*

However, there is another distinction.

The big key to inhabiting and sharing the authentic magic you recognize in others, and so want to experience – and express – for yourself is…

Go Into the Mystery – With No Agenda

This is the crucial part of asking yourself who you are and what you wish to express.

Of course, most of us skip it, usually without knowing it. Does this sound familiar?

You either don’t make time to listen to these tender signals, or sometimes you listen, but you immediately insist that those signals provide a road map for action, preferably one that will “attract abundance” and love and make us very unique and special and forever loved and safe, Amen.

When you put this kind of pressure on your longings, even though you do it from a place of great sincerity and true need, you squelch the signals of authenticity.

You change them before they can even be heard. What is yours to express gets turned into something else – what you think you need it to be to get you the love and attention crave out there.

Let’s stop this – right now – together.

Make a commitment to tend your yearning, the mysterious desire to express your truth that has been given to you.

What in the hell do I mean by that?

Go someplace safe and distraction free – if that means the back of your closet with earplugs, so be it.

Acknowledge that you have a deep, universal need for appreciation, for love, for self-expression.

Spend a few moments letting yourself have these basic human yearnings – this may bring tears, waves of joy, or simply a head nodding.

If it feels right, ask whatever you name as Larger than You (some might call this the Divine, God, Goddess, nature, Big Mind) and let your heart, your being, ask for these human needs to be filled. Accept what you need.

Now, lean into the part of you that yearns to express something. Instead of looking for this with your head, scan your body.

Where does the yearning to express what is yours live?

Get as curious and attentive to what you sense as you would to a new lover.

You know how it is when you are falling in love – you can’t get enough of the other person. Nothing gets in your way of spending time with him or her. You certainly do not try to turn them into someone different (that comes later, when they forget to feed the dogs or put gas in the car!).

Listen and revel in every bit of sensory input sent your way. Nothing can drag your attention away. There is a lightness too, a feeling of joyful “How amazing!”

See if there is a weight or temperature or color or shape or a sound associated with this spot. If ideas come, record those but keep putting your attention on tending the yearning without trying to turn it into something or forcing it to take shape.

Here’s how I stated my “yearning tending” in my journal:

There is a yearning inside me. It’s brightly colored – purple and pink and it has a psychedelic flower shape. I don’t know what form it wants to express itself as yet. I make a whole-hearted fierce commitment to be with it daily as it is.”

I ask it each night before I go to bed, “What tending do you need tomorrow?”

What tending does your yearning want and need?

I’d love to know and be able to help you tend that yearning by holding the space for you.

Part three in this series: The Signal Raising Power of Permission

Missed part one of this series? Get your Static Free Authenticity here.

*If the idea of asking and listening appeals to you, you might like delving into the subject in more depth. I wrote The Life Organizer and my upcoming Virtual Retreat (Feb. 12th-14th) is going to be a lot about doing just this!

Choose Your Life Mondays #29

Jennifer — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:01:15 +0000

Choose Your Life Monday is an invitation to name what pattern you will lovingly notice this week and to do so in community. Join in when and however suits you.

Here’s a pattern I notice when sitting down to write these blogs posts: the pattern of feeling scrambled.

As in who the hell am I?

This is a good pattern but somewhat crazy making.

It’s a pattern created by learning.

By being willing to constantly test who I think I am.

By being so hungry and curious about life.

I love this about myself!

This week’s scrambling is because I spent the weekend listening to the venerable Ane Pema Chodron. There was so much about this weekend to be grateful for, not the least of which is simply being able to partake of such teachings.

How lucky am I to get to explore how to work with my mind?

How lucky are you and I to be able to learn such wise ways to stop feeling unhappy and icky and to be joyful?

(Note to self: remember you are grateful for this when it’s two in the morning and you’re so painfully aware of your mean thoughts about your ex.)

Another wonder of Pema

is how comforting she is. She keeps saying, “It is possible to be free of your neurosis and endless stories. It really is.”

She then says, “I may not be the best role model but really, it is possible.”

And we all laugh and feel comforted.

Because how often do we believe we can never be free? We will always be screwed up.

Always be depressed or wounded or lost or less than or not fit in.

Nope.

Not true.

Of course

Listening to Pema made my whole snarl of around significance and safety and wanting to just get things done so transparent.

Before the retreat, I was thinking how deep and original my pattern was.

How very difficult to unwind.

How significant.

Um, no.

These are all moves I make to avoid stepping into the groundlessness of being, otherwise known as being completely and utterly vulnerable, tenderhearted and without a story.

Being here, without your story to shield you from life.

Being naked like this is true freedom.

As free as my dogs in the car, heads out the window, eyeballs vibrating, ears flying.

Even freer that that.

Tasting that freedom, that nakedness, this weekend, after quite a long time of not tasting it, of being lost in busyness and anxiety, was such a precious reminder of why I do inner work.

Of why I do my work in the world.

Which brings me to this week (in a long winded round about way)

I so want to nurture this experience of freedom – at the same time I’d really rather go pour a big glass of wine and numb out – but I want freedom more – so this week

I will lovingly notice

When I get lost in my fear and anxiety,

I will inhale deeply and exhale long and slow and then look gently and steadily at my fear, and keep dropping my story, whatever that story is in the moment.

This is my committment for this week.

I’d love to hear your comments and what patterns you are working with this week or this month or this lifetime.

Choose Your Life Monday #28

Jennifer — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:01:25 +0000

Choose Your Life Monday is an invitation to name what pattern you will lovingly notice this week and to do so in community. Join in when and however suits you.

Last week I declared I would

lovingly pay attention to when I am second guessing, over working or otherwise prevaricating

and

I will lovingly look for the thought – which comes in many shapes and flavors – that what I’m doing isn’t important enough.

I’ve been a significance spotter all week.

I became terrifyingly, achingly aware of how strong this pattern of significance is and how it’s tied to this other pattern of “I’m so utterly freaked out about not being able to make this presentation the greatest ever experienced in the history of presentations, I just want to get it done so I don’t have to feel anxious about it anymore.”

This pattern sometimes means I end up doing not so great a job. I lose my creativity and my own voice in the pursuit of just getting it done.

The result of not doing such a great job fuels my story I’m a stupid loser and that starts another cycle of “If I could just be like X (whomever I’ve deemed smart and talented that day) then I would be finally significant and I would feel safe.”

Ah.

I get it now!

Significance = safety in my mind.

Now that is wild. How the hell did I come up with that one?

Because what the labyrinth of significance actually = is anxiety. Crazy making comparisons. Losing touch with my heart. Moving away from trusting myself into the never ending void of not enough.

Significance = anything but safety.

I’m attending a retreat with Pema Chodron this coming weekend in Seattle and I’m sure being steeped in her teachings, plus spending time with wise friends who are coming from out of town, will give me new ways to lean into this pattern, as Ani Pema often says.

And what will I lovingly pay attention to this week?

My thought pattern that I need to just get it done, that I will feel more peaceful and safe when it’s done.

Instead, I will pause and resource (shorthand for drawing on, being fed, by into something larger than me, myself, and I) and I will repeat my new mantra “I am resourceful and it’s not all up to me.”

Resource and be resourced.

Ah… I know it’s going to be challenging. I can feel the story trying to morph into some new version that can resnare me. I won’t get caught there because I’m not trying to change myself; simply loving watch my story.

What will you notice?

How To Feel Safe During Uncertain Times

Jennifer — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:01:23 +0000

(If you’re looking for Wednesday’s post, How to Slow Down the Uncertainty Rollercoaster and Find Your Center Again, right here.)

I love how my Apple computer dictionary defines uncertainty, as a range from “a mere lack of absolute certainty” to “an almost complete lack of knowledge.”

Where are you on the uncertainty scale these days? For the last year and a half, I’ve been living nearer to the latter, rather terrifying, category, as I faced an almost complete lack of knowledge about my life, my future, my desires and my family.

I spent a lot of time attempting to climb out of a parched well, scale glass walls, plant seeds in barren ground and then dig those seeds up to see if they’d sprouted yet.

I spent a lot of time trying to get going, creatively and professionally. But nothing “took” but a feeling of being utterly lost, unmoored and deeply uncertain.

I always thought I loved change, that I embraced not knowing, that my biggest fear was being bored. Ha!

After a year of living on the edge of the abyss, an abyss created by the death of my father, my marriage, two dear friends and seemingly all my creativity (which is how I make my living- gulp), I realized that I loved change and uncertainty when I had a stable base to change from and when I (thought) I knew what the future held.

But stable isn’t always easy to come by these days (I wonder if it ever was?)

When that stable base dissolved – through the same sort of changes you may be experiencing – that’s when I had to learn new ways to live with uncertainty, ways that weren’t based on being married or my work going well or whether I was afraid to get out of bed that morning.

Ways that weren’t based on the illusion that I knew what the future would hold.

The recent changes in the economy have shoved many of us to the same realization: uncertainty is the most enduring fact of life. We never know what the future holds. Change is the only thing we can count on and learning how to live with that truth, even thrive, when all we want to do is cower under the covers or try vainly to recreate the past, has become a very, very important skill to cultivate.

Because whether you thought you loved change or you always knew you hated it, the result can be the same: you can get stuck in a miasma of fear, anxiety, overwhelm and worry and that miasma can keep you pinned down for years. Years!

I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle or some other mythical character who has woken up after years of being asleep — I never saw how the fear was limiting me, shaping the way I thought and what I thought was possible. I didn’t know I was afraid.

In search of a “safe” place, I didn’t know I was making a smaller and smaller box to live in until I couldn’t create, couldn’t write – which has always been the “something is seriously wrong” warning in my life.

I discovered I was searching for the wrong thing.

What I was really creating in my life was illusory safety- rather than learning how to return to feeling calm(ish) and centered no matter what was happening. It reminds me of that old story about the drunk who searches for his lost car keys under a lamp post – not because he lost them anywhere near the lamp post but because that’s where the light was.

When we feel lost, when life’s topsy-turvy, it’s so tempting to grab on to anything that feels familiar – from trying to recreate the past to beating ourselves up for choices we made to staying relentlessly busy – even when it’s not getting us anywhere near we want to be.

What I noticed in my uncertainty was a thought process that went something like this, “If we were still a family, I would feel like my old self and then I would be able to write and create again.” Other versions included if I had only moved all the retirement money into Treasury bills like my friend than I would feel safe and want to seize the day” and “I just need to get organized and get more done and network more and then everything will be great.”

Those thought patterns didn’t help me at all.

Here’s what I’ve come to know, in a way that is far deeper than intellectual knowing:

Feeling safe enough to go forward with your life is not dependent on anything outside of yourself nor on knowing what’s going to happen–which is good, since that would mean you could never, ever get off the couch. Instead, it resides in increasing your trust in yourself, your resiliency and your ability to return to your self, no matter how long you’ve spent searching for your keys under the lamp post.

In other words, it has nothing to do with what’s going on “out there.” It’s an inside job and while that is so obvious as to perhaps make you roll your eyes, it took not having much of anything to hold on to discover it for myself. Still, I can find myself forgetting, falling back into the old patterns of hoping for something to change before I can feel good or take action.

If you do too, you might find the sessions Overcoming Fear, Gaining Peace by best-selling author and meditation teacher Susan Piver and Overcoming Money Fears (and Creating Money “Self Esteem”) by master coach and author Steve Chandler in my upcoming Comfort Queen’s 2009 Virtual Retreat particularly helpful. (Of course, you get all 10 experts and all 14 sessions plus all the extra goodies when you join us – see below for details.)

Stay tuned for tomorrow when I’ll talk about how fear, anxiety and overwhelm don’t have to go away for you to move toward your desires and dreams.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post: How To Take Action When Fear Is Paralyzing You