Archives for posts with tag: we become what we practice
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Sun Shining in My Eyes

May 10, 2024 //
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This morning the sun is shining in my eyes, though I’ve lowered the window shades to cut the glare. The season continues to evolve, Spring towards summer, and here I am with the sun in my eyes on a lovely Spring morning. I’m grateful. I don’t even mind the sun in my eyes. 😀

Small wins can make big differences. My appointment yesterday had a pleasant outcome; I don’t need surgery for a thing that seemed quite a big deal (to be something so small)… and as it turns out, it’s not something I need be worried about (at least for now, and maybe not at all). Win. I’ll take it. 😀 I sip my coffee with the sun shining in my eyes, feeling grateful. No surgery looming over me. Nice. I even had a very good experience with the medical care, and the physician, generally – I’m making a point to pause to appreciate that, because it hasn’t always been the case, at all, and I’m still dragging around some baggage over that.

I sigh and smile to myself. Feels like a good morning. It’s Friday, and it’s a short work day. I’ve got a manicure appointment at noon, and then home to start the weekend. Feels good. I sit with the good feelings awhile – there’s definitely value in staying with the good feelings for a little while. I think most of us don’t even notice the way we linger in our shittiest moments, reviving them for further scrutiny over and over again (as if that’s at all helpful), then just glossing over our moments of joy and contentment as though these fleeting moments somehow have less value than the shitty ones. (Maybe don’t do that, eh?) When I finally did learn how much value there is in lingering over my small joys and simple moments of contentment or delight, and learned to savor what is good in my life, the way my life felt overall changed a lot. Instead of a fairly miserable experience of existence pocked with occasional relief that felt both too-brief, and also likely to be “a trap” setting me up for future worse misery, my life became characterized by calm and contentment, with occasional experiences of sorrow, grief, frustration, or anger. Disappointment became… a moment. Anger became… transitory. Life began to feel pretty good, generally. I still have to make a point to practice “taking in the good” and savoring the best moments my experience has to offer. I don’t avoid or dodge life’s challenges, or pretend I can “manifest” them away from being what they are – but I can cope, because I know they are temporary. Incremental change over time – becoming what I practice – has meant that my life is, day-to-day, pretty good these days. It’s nice. (10 out of 10; do recommend. lol)

How does a person even begin to make this transformation? I think it starts simply enough; anger does not easily compete with gratitude. When I find myself beginning to feel angry, I deliberately pause and consider what I’m grateful for in the situation I find myself in or with regards to the person I am angry with. It helps “turn down the heat” in that moment, and gives me a chance to regain perspective. Similarly, with sorrow, with disappointment… gratitude is a great way to balance perspective. It’s not about “faking it”; there are often legitimate details in a challenging circumstance that we may feel grateful for, if we just take a moment to consider it from that perspective. Anxiety and fear work a little differently (for me), instead of gratitude, I reach for my curiosity, and my desire to know more and understand more deeply. The point, really, is to spin the difficulty such that I’m not mired in what is most difficult, so much as viewing it through the lens of other aspects of that experience – or making a point to deliberately consider something else altogether different, that brings other emotions into play, “unsticking me” from my hurt, my anger, or other similarly painful, harder to manage, emotional experiences.

…Our emotions are not the enemy…

…And “being emotional” is not an insult. The hidden win is to develop “emotional intelligence” and reliably good skill at appropriate emotional regulation (which can be developed… it takes practice).

I smile and sip my coffee. I take a moment to enjoy my breakfast salad (how did this so easily become “a thing”? Why haven’t I always done this? I feel so good in the mornings these days…). Another weekend already here… and that means another shot (Ozempic), another weigh-in, another opportunity to reflect on progress and become aware of slow steady change. I’m counting down the days to my camping trip, too… that’d be 9 days to go, now. 😀

What defines a luxury?

I make time for early morning conversation with my Traveling Partner. We talk about the deck (needs repairs) and the hot tub (older and super noisy), and the discussion quickly becomes the sort of productive strategy and planning conversation that really brings a new project to life… we decide to shut down the hot tub “permanently” (this one, at least), in favor of removing it and replacing it after the deck is repaired (rebuilt) with improved quality of life features in mind. These are things we’d talked about when we bought the house (4 years ago), but other things (reasonably) had to come first (like the roof). Homeownership has so many qualities I love over renting – “a place of my own” being top of my personal list there – and I do love the flexibility to change things as we’d like, but … damn… so much adulting required, and effort, and commitment, and time, and money… and… I’m okay with all of it. It’s exciting and satisfying, as each project begins and finishes. My Traveling Partner has great ideas and the skills needed to bring this to life. I’m eager to help, and see how things turn out. I’m definitely a fan of replacing the hot tub with a more energy efficient, quieter model. (I’ll bet the neighbors will be too; this old thing is super noisy!) Having a hot tub feels almost non-negotiable for me at this point, though… I get so much value out of it (pain relief, improvement mobility), now we’ve just got to sort out the details…

My thoughts wander from the here and now to a future I can see but can’t touch (yet). I feel hopeful – for a lot of reasons – and grateful. It’s a good feeling. I feel wrapped in love, and fortunate to have a really good partnership that enhances my life. I’m ready to begin again. 😀

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, weight loss secrets

No Blue Skies Today

May 6, 2024 //
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This morning is a gray and rainy one. It’s fine. It’s the sort of rain that evokes childhood memories of waiting in the car, rain tapping the windshield and roof, or sitting gazing out a window to a rainy street daydreaming stories about passers-by, dazzled by the reflections of lights on wet pavement. I find rainy days generally pleasant, but the sound of rain does tend to make my mind wander. I sit with my thoughts for a timeless moment, watching the rain fall.

…The only thing I don’t like about a chilly rainy morning is the amount of pain I’m often in; my arthritis definitely seems to respond to the weather…

I nibble at my breakfast salad contentedly, in spite of having “no dressing” (I’d used up the last of what was on hand last week, and had completely forgotten about it). It’s fine. I drizzled a teaspoon of olive oil over the greens, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Seems adequate; it matters more that the greens are a nice blend of good quality baby greens (things like spinach, arugula, chard, small leaf lettuces) – flavorful on their own. I sip my coffee, which is surprisingly terrible this morning – but that’s fine, too. It’s honestly not worth fussing over, barely worth mentioning in passing. I’m satisfied with it; it feels like enough. Could I make fresh? Sure. Could I go get a coffee elsewhere and spend money on it? Yep. Not gonna. Doesn’t matter enough to bother with all that. It’s fine. lol

My mind wanders as I nibble at my breakfast. No rush. No pressure. A moment with my thoughts. My tinnitus is loud in my ears, though I easily hear the ventilation in the background, and a plane passing over heard, too; these definitely external sounds help prevent me from focusing on my tinnitus (which, subjectively, often makes it seem much louder). I feel prepared for the day, and well-organized. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I let myself simply be here, now; a woman having coffee and a bite of breakfast before digging into the day’s work in earnest. It’s enough.

Nozomi – second to bloom this Spring.

The weekend was a rainy one, and I enjoyed taking it easy with my Traveling Partner. We spent time together on 3D printing projects, and conversation. It was a lovely weekend. I didn’t spend much time in the garden (just had a walk around once or twice), due to the fairly steady rain. It was fine, though. My time was well-spent.

I think ahead to my upcoming camping trip, which will take me away from home (if all goes as planned) for most of an entire work week (Monday through midday Friday). I know he’ll miss me. I think about things I can do to provide a sense of care and comfort for him, even while I’m away, and how best to stay connected and emotionally close while we’re apart. However much I need the solitude, myself, I am aware he gets much more of that than he needs. There’s a balance to be struck. He loves me, and recognizes I need the solitary time now and then. I love him, and recognize he needs to feel that continued sense of connection and closeness when I’m away. Love is worth learning the practices that build the skills it takes to make love last in an enduring and healthy way. (I’m still practicing, still learning, still working on becoming the woman – and the partner – that I most want to be. There are verbs involved, and my results vary.)

What are you going to do about it?

…I chuckle to myself when I recall my thoughts about this morning’s writing on my way to work; this is nothing like that. It’s strikes me humorously, simply because I often have some particular theme or idea in mind as I head to work, but once I’m here, and sitting down with the day, my head may be in a very different place. I “lose the thread” of those early morning thoughts, which sometimes vexes me, particularly if I “had it all sorted out” in my head in some way I thought worth putting into words. Other mornings, my musings – worthy or not – are less than ideally focused, or rather more negative that useful, and a few moments of meditation “puts my head right”, but throws all those earlier thoughts out in favor of … something different. That’s a bit of what happened this morning. I woke feeling, not exactly cross, just not… delighted with the day, somehow. After I sat with myself for a few minutes, listening to the rain fall, I felt fine. Upbeat. Fairly merry. Contented. It definitely changed what I ended up writing, though I’m not sure in any useful way. I’m sort of just… putting words into sentences. lol

…This is the thing, though; incremental change over time, and working through the chaos and damage, means more and more of my days are less and less “terrible”, and much more likely to be quite pleasantly ordinary – and that’s a good thing. The “excitement” of chaos and the highs and lows of living with trauma (and healing from it) aren’t the standard to strive for, at all. The point of seeking emotional wellness is to, over time, become emotionally well, which is often not particularly exciting at all, which is… fine. Quite fine.

I sip my coffee. Finish my salad. Look over my calendar for the day and the week, and check my notes from Friday. I’m ready to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Roses, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, weight loss secrets

A Moment in the Garden

April 29, 2024 //
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I took a moment in the garden in the afternoon, just to enjoy the sunshine after the rain, and to see how things are growing. It’s still early spring, but already the first roses are blooming.

Rose “Baby Love” blooming first in my garden, peeking out from beyond the curry plant.

I stepped gently across the soaking wet lawn, carefully making a point not to come back the way I came, to avoid compressing the moisture saturated ground too much. Everything is lush and green. The earliest planted peas are thriving and blooming.

I’ve already forgotten what specific sort of peas these are. I’ve got several types and varieties. I just enjoy peas.

Interesting greens in the salad bed are beginning to do interesting things. I like to plant a variety of salad greens, including things like dandelions, arugula, “corn salad”, and several other sorts.

Including this… whatever this is. I’ve forgotten.

…And some lettuces. I mean… salad. Obviously. Tender looseleaf red lettuces, and soft delicate butter lettuce… no iceberg lettuce, and rarely any romaine. Boring. I can do without. Flavor, texture, colors… I enjoy the crunch of iceberg lettuce, well enough, I suppose… but it’s rather bland otherwise and not much nutritional value. It’s a small garden; the nutritional density matters.

I took my time as I made my way around the garden. The walk around makes an irregular sort of open-ended oval, not quite a “U” shape, not quite an “O”. There are 13 roses to see along the way, and kitchen herbs tucked in here and there. There’s an assortment of blueberry bushes planted last year, with a hope that they’ll become an edible hedge along one stretch of the walk toward the front door, and a couple others just tucked in here and there for “shrubbery”. Most all the perennials (including most of the roses) are pretty young, having been planted some time in the not-quite-four years we’ve been here. (A couple of the roses are much older, having come along with me for multiple moves, in pots, over the years.) Some of the roses are new this year – they may not even flower until next year. The oldest of the roses, and those that were planted the first year we were here, I expect to bloom heartily. “Baby Love” will bloom more or less continuously, once she begins, through to January next year, unless I do something to force her to acknowledge the changing season (which I rarely do), like prune her back aggressively after the first frost. Our climate is relative mild, and it is not necessary to winter-over the roses.

…It’s definitely Spring…

The lupines are beginning to bloom. The dahlias have broken through the ground. The French tarragon has sent up new sprigs. The curry plant is setting buds and will bloom soon, too.

As I walk in the garden, I find myself strangely feeling that I’m in the company of my Granny, who would walk me through her garden when I was a kid, sampling the herbs and sharing their scents with me, and telling me all the things they were used for. I find myself in the company of my Dad, thinking about which new variety of this or that vegetable might be worth a try this year, picking weeds out from around the tomato plants, and carefully checking those for growth – do they need to be pinched back? I find myself imagining sharing this garden with my dear friend, and her delight over this flower or that one. My background stress recedes and my heart fills with love… and gardening tips. lol

The blue sky and breezes beckoned me to have a sit and rest awhile, listening to the birds. A blue jay stops at the edge of the garden – a familiar one, that comes regularly to see what I’m up to, and rummage around among the weeds and greens for whatever it is blue jays come to the garden for. He watches me fearlessly curious. I watch him back.

It’s cooler now. I’ve finished my time in the garden, and returned indoors to enjoy a quiet cup of tea and hang out with my Traveling Partner, and share my moment in the garden here, with you. It’s enough. I definitely needed it. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Spring, The Art of Being

Awe – Small Wonders

April 12, 2024 //
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I’m sipping my coffee and thinking about delight and awe, and captivating small wonders that press “pause” on some random moment, infusing it with something more than the ordinary.

Mushrooms in the lawn.

I strolled around the garden yesterday evening, taking a moment for myself to adjust to being home at the end of a very busy workday. The moment was carved out of the time between dinner and relaxing with my Traveling Partner. I could have been busy on housekeeping but chose, instead, to delight my senses with the garden in Spring. I turned a corner into the side yard, and laughed out loud with pure joy to see a rather large number of small mushrooms had popped up. This is the first Spring for the lawn that my Traveling Partner put in last summer. I’m still smiling about the mushrooms. They aren’t particularly significant or important (or useful to me in any obvious way), they just … please me. It’s enough.

I sit sipping my coffee thinking about how difficult I find it to carve out these small moments of delight for myself lately, and wonder what I could be doing differently to make that easier, and these moments more common. I read something recently about the experience of “awe” or wonder being very good for us cognitively. I know I enjoy those experiences, very much. The joy is reason enough to pursue the experience of awe, wonder, or delight, isn’t it?

I remind myself to start “taking a minute” to really sit with my thoughts, uninterrupted, after work. It’s a helpful practice that reduces how much small shit I’m likely to forget, and that matters.

The weekend is almost here. I think back to a delightful relaxed moment of solitude and thoughtfulness during my recent coastal getaway. I sat alone in the car, as the rain battered every surface. The noise of it was impressive, but not the sort of thing to interrupt my thoughts, quite the opposite; it was easy to focus on my inner experience with the rain drowning out all else.

A moment with my own thoughts.

It’s sometimes difficult to get those moments of solitary thoughtfulness. Doing so often requires explicit expectation-setting, and actually speaking up about the need. For some reason, I find myself reluctant to make a point of doing so, seeking instead to “find” those experiences of solitary reflection arising naturally from the flow of things – and that has proven time and again to be a poor choice. Unreliable at best. I sip my coffee and think that over for some quiet minutes. There’s a real need here. It’s clear I need to “use my words” to meet that need. Why would that make me so uncomfortable in the moment? I sit sipping coffee and thinking…

…The sun rises beyond the windows of the office. The sky is a pale blue streaked with white clouds high in the atmosphere, and dotted here and there with fluffier grayer clouds nearer to the rooftops. I wonder what the weekend weather will be like, and whether I’ll be able to get a hike in, and work in the garden? There is so much to do, too…

…It’s already time to begin again…

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Anger Management

April 11, 2024 //
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We become what we practice.

We become what we practice. Think about that for a minute in the context of anger, and how you express your anger, handle feeling angry, and how your anger affects others around you. We become what we practice. Practice “venting” your anger, releasing it into the environment, directing it toward other people… over time? You become more skillful at being angry. To be clear, you don’t become more skillful at managing your anger constructively, or harnessing the potential in your anger to communicate violated boundaries, or to seek change. You just become more skillful at (and more easily provoked into) escalating quickly and becoming a monster built of rage capable of doing great damage to those around you without anything much in the way of a positive outcome. I’m just saying, maybe give some thought to what you practice with regard to how you express and deal with your anger.

…I know I could do better, myself…

I’ve been noticing some more recent research being published about the relative value in “venting” one’s anger. Apparently, it’s not such a good practice. Gratifying for the angry person, perhaps, but not “helpful” for managing conflict, or reducing stress, or resolving whatever circumstance triggered the emotion in the first place – but reliably also incredibly damaging for the relationship with whatever hapless other primate is receiving the emotional blast of an angry outburst. Justified or not, delivering that angry blast of emotion to another human being is unpleasant, damaging, and not especially helpful for anyone involved. It’s unfortunate that we’re not taught sooner by knowledgeable practitioners how best to understand, endure, process, and express our emotions.

…Maybe don’t look to me for guidance on this one; I’m still learning…

I sip my coffee thinking about anger. I’ve gotten a lot better at managing my anger over recent years, but it still “gets me” now and then – most commonly when I’m driving. Thinking about that in the abstract, that seems pretty fucking dangerous. I keep working at it, because 1. we become what we practice, 2. disgorging explosively angry energy isn’t useful for anything in that situation 3. it wrecks my experience in the moment, and 4. it’s seriously unlikely that anything any other driver does or doesn’t do is at all personal or “about me” in the first place. This morning, I commuted calmly into the office, with the exception of one brief moment of frustration with a driver ahead of me going less than the posted speed limit. My angry reaction caught me a bit by surprise, but I recognized the inappropriate escalation of temper in the moment, and managed to take a breathe, and dial that shit back. Way back. I was going to get to my destination regardless, and this rather unimportant – and very brief – impediment to my forward momentum wasn’t going to change my arrival time in any notable way (even if it did, there’s no time pressure on my start time each day). I took a breath. Took my foot off the gas. Took another breath. Exhaled slowly and got a fucking grip on myself. I was being, frankly, ridiculous. So… I let that shit go.

Managing anger isn’t easy. It’s worthwhile, though. It does take practice. My results do vary. Still… incremental change over time is a thing. We really do become what we practice. When we practice calm, we become calmer. When we practice kindness, we become kinder people. When we practice listening attentively, we become better listeners.

…When we practice expressing our anger aggressively, we become angrier…

I’ve got choices to make. Practices to practice. Every time I feel my anger rise up, I’ve got another opportunity to practice managing my anger with wisdom, consideration, compassion, and understanding, and without explosively escalating it. Sure, my results are going to vary… but each time I practice being the person I most want to be, I get a little closer to that goal. Like anything else, when I fall short of my expectations of my best self, I can begin again. There will definitely be another opportunity to do better.

I’m grateful that I’m no longer the seething ball of taking-everything-personally rage that I was in my 20s. That rage didn’t get me anywhere with the underlying traumas that caused it, it just did more damage. I’m grateful that I’m no longer the pensive, frustrated, still-seething-in-the-background resentfully angry mess that I was in my 30s and 40s. There was an impotence and fugue of futility to that which undermined my ability to feel any joy in life at all ruining some otherwise pretty good years. By the time I entered my 50s, I at least recognized I needed to do something quite entirely different… so I began again. It’s been a strange journey of growth, change, and transformation. Worthy. The journey is, after all, the destination.

I sip my coffee, and reflect on the past decade of growth and change. It seems such a short time…

…and already, still, time to begin again. Again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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