by Jamesscotthenson | Jan 16, 2017 | Blog
Action is the antidote to despair.
Joan Baez
This is one of the truest true things I know. I remember
having this quote on my wall back when I lived in College Station, but I have a
hunch it was just because I liked pithy quotes, not because I understood it.
Things are overwhelming a lot of the time.
Personally, I get anxiety at the beginning of any new
project or undertaking, sometimes at the beginning of a busy day. Things look
very messy and hard to understand when you are seeing them as a whole,
especially if they are part of something brand new.
Think of building something from IKEA or some other store.
When you first open the box there are all these parts and all this hardware,
and none of it makes sense and there is so much chaos. Everything is a mess and
it doesn’t seem like it will work out.
The same can be said for most home projects, doing your
taxes, taking a new class, planning a trip, starting a new relationship,
anything really.
The beginning is always tough.
For some things, the middle and the end and everything in
between is tough too.
This stops a lot of people. They get overwhelmed and throw
up their hands and just stop, and this is the worst thing they could do.
When you stop moving, this thing that you need to deal with
looms off to the side of your brain, picking at you and harassing you with
vague threats about how it’s all going to turn out. It haunts with thoughts of
impending deadlines and doom and you get to be where you don’t even want to
think about it or see anything that reminds you of it.
Despair.
What do we need to do in these situations?
Something.
Anything that will give us even the tiniest bit of traction
on the problem.
Read the directions and sort out the pieces. Look up a
Youtube video on the project and get a handle on what the whole thing looks
like. Start gathering the information you need for your taxes, look over the
syllabus and buy your books, go talk to the person about what needs to be
talked about.
Just doing something, even something small, will make you
feel better.
You’ll start to build momentum, and before long it’s not an
unfinished task you are ignoring, but a project you are leaning in to and
accomplishing. It’s something new you are cultivating, a new skill you are
developing.
Think of something looming in your life.
Take one step on doing something about it.
Then another one.
Do something.
Just don’t do nothing.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jan 15, 2017 | Blog
We should work to repair every broken relationship in our
lives, no matter what it takes.
Forgiveness means reconciliation, and you can’t say you’ve
forgiven someone unless you get back to the same level of friendship and
intimacy you had before.
Everyone deserves a place in your life, no matter what kind
of toxicity they bring. This is what it means to be enlightened or
compassionate or a good Christian.
Now that we have the bad advice out of the way, let’s talk
about broken relationships, and why it might be best to leave them broken sometimes.
I really don’t understand why we can break up with romantic
partners, but not friends.
Who we surround ourselves with is everything.
Friends have as much or more impact on who we are and how
happy our lives are, yet we are supposed to keep them in our lives no matter
who they are and how they treat us.
The simple fact is that there are people who are not good
for us. There are people who take and do not give, who bring negativity and
drama everywhere they go and who behave selfishly by default.
And, for some reason, when things inevitably go wrong with
them, we work to fix the relationship, maybe even apologizing for things we
have no business apologizing for. We really, if we are honest, don’t
even want this relationship in our life, yet we find ourselves working to
repair it.
Look, I get it.
People make mistakes, people make bad choices. Of course
this doesn’t mean that we cut them out of our lives and walk away
automatically.
I’m big on forgiveness and reconciliation and working things
out, but I’m also big on making sure I have time for the people who matter most
to me and who feed me and help me grow. Sometimes, in order to keep my focus
where it belongs I have to let broken things lie. We all do.
How much time are you taking from the people who truly care
about you and help you evolve by trying to fix things with people who care
about themselves and drag you down?
Sometimes someone does something to us that changes the way
we see them. Them apologizing and trying to make it right won’t necessarily
change this new perception because it is there for a reason. When you
learn something new about someone you have to reevaluate your relationship, the
factors in the equation are different. This is basic math.
I think this applies to mistakes we make as well. You make a
mistake or you treat someone poorly. You apologize and make amends as best you
can, and change what needs to be changed. This doesn’t obligate them to forgive
you or reconcile with you. If they don’t, it’s their business, and at that point
you can walk away too.
Let it Lie.
Life is too short to spend it trying to fix something
that may be better off broken.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jan 14, 2017 | Blog
Have you ever been so uninterested in someone’s problems or
drama that you just can’t bring yourself to care even a little bit about what
they are saying?
This usually happens with people who have a strong
investment in struggle and drama as an identity, or with people who are overly
self-absorbed and cannot see their own role in creating the struggle and drama
in their life. It is hard for us to connect with them because we feel
manipulated, or we can tell they don’t really care about anything other than
their issue.
But, have you ever noticed how closely our thoughts can
resemble a self-absorbed, dramatic person?
How obsessively we can think about ourselves and our
problems and the drama in our own lives?
Consider how much time you spend mulling over problems in
your own life, or thinking about something someone said to you or did to you.
Consider how much time you spend obsessing over how something is going to turn
out or how something already turned out. Consider how this incessant talking
follows you around. Sometimes it wakes you up in the night or hits you seconds
after you wake up in the morning. It’s there when you make coffee, run errands,
watch TV, it’s just there all the time.
How would you feel if this were a person? Apart from being
furious and filing charges, you would be profoundly bored with everything they
had to say. When someone always has something to complain about, we become
rather immune to having any emotional response to their complaining.
Except when it is us.
We’re just always interesting.
Our stuff is always important, it always matters.
Our problems are the stuff of Emmy winning dramas and Oscar
winning movies.
Except that they’re not.
We are as boring as anyone else, and our stuff is as
irrelevant and mundane as theirs.
What would happen if you became disinterested in your own
drama and complaining? What if you only gave yourself as much attention as you
give the incessant and insufferable complainers in your life?
Becoming disinterested in your own drama and realizing the
silliness of your own complaints is one of the quickest paths to peace, and it
has a curious leveling effect on how we see our lives and difficulties. It
helps us sort out what is really important versus what is noise.
The secret is that it’s mostly noise.
Give yourself permission to laugh at your drama, to dismiss
much of the complaining your mind does. Cultivate disinterest in your own
problems.
See what happens.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jan 13, 2017 | Blog
This is the 4th time I’ve started this blog over this
morning. I’ve written a good 600 words or so now, and thrown them all away
because they feel mechanical and clunky.
This one might wind up feeling the same and get deleted too.
I am exhausted today, and I feel kind of rough. My throat
and head are hurting, and I didn’t sleep well at all. My nose is all stuffy
too. (insert sad music)
My mind wants to create a link between these symptoms and
other things in my life. A link that does not exist. I still have a blog to
write and clients to see and Max needs to get to daycare. These things will not
magically take care of themselves just because I don’t feel well.
I talk to people a lot about not letting unrelated things
influence each other, such as how I feel being related to writing a daily blog
or having a bad day at work influencing how you talk to your family that
evening. I said I would write a blog every day, that is the end of the story.
How I feel has nothing to do with this. I have appointments scheduled for
today. These appointments and what people need from me are unrelated to how I
feel. If I found out I was contagious, they would be related, but apart from
that, they are not.
I really like how a client stated it to me this week, I
think she said she saw it on Reddit:
“Your goals don’t care how you feel.”
Neither do your responsibilities to your self and your
family and everyone else.
Feeling sick or tired or grumpy or homicidal doesn’t mean
that you won’t be losing ground if you waste a day or that people will excuse
unacceptable behavior.
Skipping a workout, a class or a day at work will have a
negative impact on you, no matter what your reason for bailing is.
The reason is entirely irrelevant.
We tend to make these invalid associations with all sorts of
things in our lives, I wonder if it is because of the superior pattern
recognition capabilities we have evolved. We see rabbits in the clouds and
imaginary concessions in situations.
How we feel and the consequences of avoiding responsibility
are unrelated, we don’t get a free pass just because we have the sniffles.
At least that is what I am telling myself right now.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jan 12, 2017 | Blog
There are some things that no amount of positivity or
mindfulness or stoic calm can give us control over.
They are every day and everywhere.
Some of these things are mental, some are physical, and many
have to do with the world around us. We all have limitations and
strengths that are beyond our control, but we rarely complain about the
strengths we are given that have nothing to do with us.
I hear people deny this, and they often impose their ideas
on vulnerable people.
“You wouldn’t have this mental illness if you just had more
faith!”
“Oh man, your leg will grow back if you can just gather
positive vibrations around you and just soak in them.”
If you are lucky, you can pay them for their prayers or
premium good thoughts.
So there are things we can control and things we cannot
control.
These things are different for all of us.
For some people, the things we talked about yesterday
are within their control, for others they are not. Genetics, disabilities,
societal factors and plain dumb luck determine many things for every one of us,
sometimes for our benefit, other times not so much.
So what do we do with the things that are beyond our
control, especially the things that we don’t like?
Going back to Epictetus, who spent much of his life as a
slave, before being banished for being a philosopher:
“Authentic happiness is always independent of external
conditions. Vigilantly practice indifference to external conditions. Your
happiness can only be found within… Stop aspiring to be anyone other than your
own best self: for that does fall within our control.”
When it comes to things we truly have no control over,
nothing apart from indifference or acceptance (or, fully embracing them as they
are if that appeals to you) makes any sense.
It’s raining but I want it to be sunny. What is the purpose
in anger or frustration or thinking about how nice it would be if it were the
way I wanted it? Can my dissatisfaction shift global weather patterns?
I’m watching a documentary about this guy who is trying to
be the World’s Strongest Man and I wish I was 6’4” and 324 pounds, but I have
already topped out at 6’1” and don’t ever see myself getting much above 200
with my frame. How will resisting this serve me? Can my force of will warp
genetic and physiological realities?
Indifference and acceptance and embracing our fate. These are
the keys to peace and contentment in the face of things we wish were different.
Look at the things you are unhappy with today. Ask yourself
if you have control over them.
If you don’t, move on.
P.S.- Other people always fall into the “beyond our control”
category. Always. Accept this now and make this all much easier for yourself.
This even includes our spouses, children, close friends and co-workers.
Everyone.
Always.
Have a great day.
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