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:

1. Choose Your Life Mondays – The Sad Swamp
2. Choose Your Life Mondays New Eyes
3. Choose Your Life Mondays #11 – the Life Organizer Edition

This week I relearned that if I put my attention on what’s missing, what’s wrong, what’s not enough, I get depressed.

When I put my attention on what’s good, what’s loving, what’s right here right now, I am nothing short of blissful.

It really is that simple.

Although, for someone with a brain as Squirrel like as mine, never easy.

The Life Organizer Questions for

Week 42

What is beckoning to me these days? What is capturing the attention of your heart?

My novel. I want to write it although I also want to avoid it. Ah, the push pull that I so often find myself in. Another perennial area of learning for me – to let go of the resistance and be here with the full range of wanting to let the story take me and wanting to what? Be mindlessly busy.

What one step could I take to explore this call? Think simple action. Not a project, not a big ding dang do, simply take one step, then pause and see what you know now.

Keep showing up and writing each day. Don’t beat myself up for both wanting to and not wanting to.  Let go of the story that good writers always want to write.

To paraphrase the poet Mary Oliver, what would help me love the soft animal of my body today?

Keeping my mind where my body is, so I actually can love what my body is experiencing. This is how I actually rest and fill up!

Who could I see as holy today? Who could I greet as a part of the light within us all?

My sweet 15 year old daughter Lillian.  I love this question as a way to deepen my love and actually make it less personal, more connected to all-that-is. She needs me to be strong right now and show her options without collapsing into overwhelm.

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:

1. Choose Your Life Mondays #11 – the Life Organizer Edition
2. Choose Your Life Mondays #32
3. Choose Your Life Mondays #6 – The Holiday Edition

This past week was very intense and focused.

I got lots done and I also fell into my pattern of overworking – not in hours but rather in overworking my thoughts, my ideas, my concepts.

I have a tendency to chase an idea around until it dies of exhaustion.

I didn’t use to do this – at least not as much – but between the changes that perimenopause has wrought to my brain and the natural verbose nature of my mind and the fact that I’m more interested in subtle distinctions than grand sweeping pronouncements – I’ve become an idea overworker.

The answer? I came up with a few while doing The Life Organizer question this week.

But first, a shout out to the amazing, couragous, wide awake women who came to my Seattle retreat.  What a lucky person I am to convene such days of soulful centering.

It was so sweet.

And extra happy dance as I actually got to hug Jen Hoffman and Cairene MacDonald in person (that is the best way to hug someone, in person). They are each as fab in person as they are on the phone or on Twitter.

Plus Vicki White was my assistant – how wonderful to see her beautiful face!

Okay, on to the questions…

Week 40

What would I choose to do this week if I remembered that I am a quirky, fabulous, utterly unique and perfect face of God?

I would choose to keep focusing on what I love, what strengthens me, instead of panicking over all I need to get done before my looming deadlines.

I would work on sensing into the balance between letting an idea take root and bloom, and fretting it to death. Use my body to help me do that.

I would get up from the computer when I feel the over-fretting happening.

I would sense in to my quirky creative essence whenever I feel lost and remind myself that my job is to be fully who I am – besides, everybody else is taken.

I would re-read The Elements of Style.

My mood lately has been . . .

Alternating between laughing and happy or stressed and negative. I notice how focusing on the good – taking it in, savoring it- really really helps. Thanks Rick! (I actually had three dreams this week where I savored the good in the dreams and woke up laughing.)

Is pushing, forcing, striving, or doing excessively for others present in my life these days? If so, how might I embrace that part of me, honor it, and ask it what it needs to feel important, taken care of, or special?

This is THE issue I am working on in my life. Too tender to share publicly but I will say I had a major epiphany about this on the ferry before I lead my Seattle retreat on Saturday and did some very very good inner ferry work – and it was so helpful.

What would nurture my soul this week?

Sitting outside, walking slowly in the woods, looking at the changing leaves (really looking), being done with work most days at 4 so I can be with Lilly when she comes home, just being being being alive!

What about you?

Ways you can play:

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:

1. Choose Your Life Mondays #11 – the Life Organizer Edition
2. Choose Your Life Mondays #30
3. Choose Your Life Mondays Slowing Down

Last week was one of those big inner work weeks.

You know, the kind in which you have one insight after another until you are afraid your head will pop off?

Insights into deep old patterns. Painful but so good.

I’m proud of myself and I’m tired.

This weekend was supposed to be my total alone time retreat weekend and I couldn’t settle down.

I hate when this happens (stamps foot) and I understand that sometimes, the changes in my psyche make me so restless, my only choice is to be restless, to witness that feeling and be gentle with me.

Ah….  acceptance…

I love The Life Organizer questions for this week!

They helped me get a workable, realistic handle on all these insights and epiphanies popping around my heart brain.

Which is exactly what this process is supposed to do – give us a way to use what we learn, what we know.

Yeah for The Life Organizer!

Week 39 Questions

What would help me go with the flow of life this week?

Noticing when I feel overwhelmed.

Then saying to myself,

There is no right or wrong here, there is only the truth that I feel overwhelmed. What would help me right now?

I tend to override my overwhelm and make myself wrong for feeling it. If I was only more focused or disciplined, then I wouldn’t feel this way. Instead, how wonderful would it be to recognize MY truth as in

I feel overloaded, scattered, anxious, overwhelmed. THIS IS HOW I FEEL.

and then make choices from that self-trusting place?

Let me tell you in advance: it will feel wonderful!

How can I nurture my body so that I am taking care of myself in sync with the season?

Summer to Fall and Spring to Summer are both big junctures that, if we can meet them with a tad of awareness, can bring greater  health. If we don’t, we tend to get colds or run down.

I’ve started new yoga classes this week because we have a new yoga place by my house, a small miracle!

I’ve also started a sugar-free more alkaline diet.  Yeah for greens and squash and quinoa!

What is hanging on the edge of my consciousness that I’m ready to be aware of?

As I check in, I’m aware of the word “Self-mercy” floating around in there.

More self-mercy!

Always a good idea!

What am I willing to celebrate about myself this week? To notice and applaud?

That I have been facing into my inner work and grappling with hard stuff. I am so proud of me!

That I am working on better systems in my business.  Thank you Marissa and Deb.

That I am taking care of my body and health.

That I am learning to step out of desperation and overwhelm.

When will I be in nature this week?

My beloved walks in the woods with the doodle dogs!

Being outdoors is the cure for so much that ails us and so easy to put off or overlook.

So this week I will choose to

• Step out of overwhelm
• Practice self-mercy
• Nurture my health with yummy seasonal foods.

What about you?

Ways you can play:

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 claim your life this week.

Related posts:

1. Choose Your Life Mondays Slowing Down
2. Choose Your Life Mondays – #15
3. Choose Your Life Mondays #29

This is a modified 3 month review, a process that spirals throughout the Life Organizer. The questions here are a bit different because we are using the LO differently at the http://www.comfortqueen.com/comfortcafe/about-the-cafe, and if you are following along in the book, feel free to combine the book version with this one!

What is the quality of my life’s journey over the last three months (might help to glance at your calendar or journal if your memory is anything like mine)?

The quality of my life is one of increasing reverence for the power of choice. I choose how I react!!! I choose how I can be powerful and creative. I see this in deeper and more subtle ways every day.

Using three words, how would I sum up how my life is feeling?

Expansive

Grateful

Love-Blessed

What have I been creating in the last three months?

Positive eyes that can see a hopeful, creative world (it’s there, and I can see it)

A new focus for my work

Fantastic material for the Comfort Cafe (and wonderful community)

Notes for a fun novel

A strong new family

An incredible love with Bob

More community on my little island

New retreats

As I look back over this time frame, when have my shadow comforts been most active? What about my time monsters?

Shadow comforts are pretty non-existent right now; time monsters are under siege because I am planning each workday THE NIGHT BEFORE and learning ever more skillfully how to modulate and shepherd my intense creative energy. I am choosing to do so using a variety of tools.

What are some ways I have been kind and accepting of myself?

Working fewer hours, treating my work like a day job

Getting acupuncture and pt for my leg

Rebounding

Yoga, meditation, Shiva Nata, and chanting every morning

Took a totally off line vacation! Going to take another one in September!

Limiting email

Do I notice any relationship between self-kindness and self-acceptance and shifts in the direction of my life?

Um, like TOTALLY. Deep love for myself allows me to trust in my innate, goodness. That, in turn, allows me to make playful, spacious choices in every area of my life. Because my self-worth is not on the line, so it’s all good.

So my plan for this week is choosing life.

What about you? Will you use some or all of these questions to notice what you want more or less of this week? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Related posts:

1. Choose Your Life Mondays #30
2. Choose Your Life Mondays #6 – The Holiday Edition
3. Choose Your Life Mondays #7