Here we are, at the end of 2011. This year has truly flown by, and I can hardly believe that this time last year I started this blog with a list of resolutions. The primary resolution was basically to take pause more often...to learn to slow down. I can say with much contentment that I made strong progress towards this goal. I really believe that my ability to chill out has increased several times over since this time last year. In reflecting on the past year, I remembered that there was a list of goals and thought maybe it would feel good to check in on them, thinking that maybe all my pausing may have prohibited my progress. In fact, it is the opposite.
Take the EPPP and get licensed as a Psychologist.
Passed! I passed it! All I have left is the relatively simply state exam, which I would have taken already if the board didn't move at molasses pace in getting me signed up. I hope to be fully licensed by the end of January.
Regularly back up my laptop.
After another near loss of my computer's contents, I have actually gotten better at this.Make pictures albums out of my digital photographs so that if they are all stolen again I can have hard copies.
Well.....some progress. I am about 80% done with an album for 2009. LOL.
Pay off my credit card debt.
DONE! And bonus, I paid off my car. Wow! That wasn't even on my goal list!
Hire an accountant.
I consulted with one, did some research, worked with Geoff, and am now managing all the taxes stuff on my own with some level of confidence.
Go visit my friends and family on the East Coast.
Done! More than once! Cook something new every week.
Maybe not every week, but much more often that the year before. Plus, I made a whole new Thanksgiving dinner menu!Sign up for yoga.
Not only did I sign up, but I had several months of consistent practice before my membership ran out. I fell off for a month, but now I am back at it and even took an anti-gravity yoga class!
Party like a rockstar before I start making babies at some vague point in the future.
See photos of Santa Bar Crawl. We are good at this.
All in all, it has been a very fun year. I have learned a lot about myself, but mostly have learned that all that behavioral change stuff that I teach to clients is actually true. If you want to change, you are more likely to succeed if you:
1. Operationalize your goals. What will the change look like? How will you know you are improving?
2. Monitor your progress. Keep tabs on how things are changing, the obstacles that arise, and solutions that work.
3. Make public declaration of change. We'd all like to believe that our own internal motivation will be enough to keep us on track towards changing behavior. For most of us, social support and reinforcement is actually essential in sustained change. If we publicly declare our goal, we are more likely to stick to it. I know for sure that writing in this blog, no matter how infrequent, helped me to remain mindful of my intention. It also gave me a place to celebrate my successes. I am thankful for all your kind words associated with my thoughts over the past year.
In coming to the end of this year of pause, I considered taking on a new word theme for the coming year. Maybe something related? PLAY? REWIND? We'll see....it could just be STOP.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Pause on my head
I am writing to reflect on the fact that August has maintained its pattern of being the busiest month of my year, but that there is one distinct way in which this August has been different.....
I feel generally very calm. And happy.
Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I have been getting better at this whole pause thing. Basically, I have loosened up. I feel like I am settling into my life, into myself. This is probably in part due to my conscious efforts over the last few months to be more mindful and in-the-moment in my life. However, I think my ability to do so is in part because I am savoring every minute of this life that I have created. At times in my life where I was uptight, the circumstances around me were....less than savory. I suppose that one is supposed to get used to savoring even the bitter aspects of life, but pausing to look around is certainly easier when you are surrounded by love and other goodness.
I still battle a lot of guilt whenever I take time to do things for myself or things that are not work in the evenings or on the weekend. I blame a lot of those feelings on the strict, competitive academic life that I led for more than a decade that demanded 100 hours a week of me in order for me to keep my head above water with my responsibilities. Sometimes it feels like I am teaching myself to be lazy. Is that crazy? I have to TEACH MYSELF to be lazy. And then TALK MYSELF OUT OF shaming myself for not working hard enough. This is insane when I type it out....which is probably why it is best that I do so. It makes me reflect on how ridiculous it is and helps me let it go.
Anyhow, I am getting good at the relaxed weekend thang. I have run 3 trainings this month, which holds no meaning to most of you who don't understand what those weeks look like. They are intense. They demand a ton of energy and because I am not able to attend to my other job during the day, I end up working long hours at night once I return home. Typically, I would work all weekend to try to "catch up". This month, I have created weekend space. Last weekend, I had a lot of work that was not absolutely pressing but was sitting on my plate. I could have worked 8 hours both Saturday and Sunday trying to finish it. What did I do instead?
--Lazed around in a variety of hot saunas and tubs for several hours with my friend Kristy
--Spontaneously signed up for a bookbinding class at my local independent bookstore, made an adorable journal out of bingo cards and old maps, drank tea and ate cookies with a bunch of friendly ladies
--Ate a long lunch at Le Pain Quotidian with my Geoff
--Took a long neighborhood bike ride with Geoff, felt like I was back in elementary school
--Went out to see our friend Travis play at the Mint, ended up staying and dancing into the night to Los Pinguous (kind of Argentinian folk groove band)
--Shopped the farmer's market
--Cleaned out our house of all toxic chemical products and toxic cosmetic products
--Played a hiarious Par 3 golf game with Louise & Amber
--Read the paper, Napped
This, my friends, is an achievement in non-work. The neurotic part is that I felt guilty at least 10 times about the fact that I was not working on something for work. My proudest moment of the weekend was when my boss called me at 8am on Sunday and asked me to come into the office and I SAID NO. WHAT!? Yes, that is right. I said no to my boss. I recognized that I needed time to spend with my husband and to relax my mind before going into a second straight week of training, and I stood my ground. And guess what? He respected my decision. My fears of him thinking I am a lazy loser did not come true as far as I can tell.
Anyhow, my pausing has gained momentum. I have gone to yoga three times this week. Tonight, I did my first ever headstand. EVER! And I felt amazing, because I felt totally connected to my body. Geoff even went with me on Sunday and it was lovely. This past weekend I went to the beach with him and watched him play volleyball and did one of my favorite things--I ran along the water for a couple of miles in perfect 75 degree temperatures. I have been going to bed before 10. I have also been taking major moves towards improving my nutrition and have been doing a lot of reading on the topic. As a part of this effort, I have managed the self-care victory of eating breakfast every day this month (total revolution for me) and snacking every 3 hours on healthy foods. My whole body is smiling.
I feel generally very calm. And happy.
Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I have been getting better at this whole pause thing. Basically, I have loosened up. I feel like I am settling into my life, into myself. This is probably in part due to my conscious efforts over the last few months to be more mindful and in-the-moment in my life. However, I think my ability to do so is in part because I am savoring every minute of this life that I have created. At times in my life where I was uptight, the circumstances around me were....less than savory. I suppose that one is supposed to get used to savoring even the bitter aspects of life, but pausing to look around is certainly easier when you are surrounded by love and other goodness.
I still battle a lot of guilt whenever I take time to do things for myself or things that are not work in the evenings or on the weekend. I blame a lot of those feelings on the strict, competitive academic life that I led for more than a decade that demanded 100 hours a week of me in order for me to keep my head above water with my responsibilities. Sometimes it feels like I am teaching myself to be lazy. Is that crazy? I have to TEACH MYSELF to be lazy. And then TALK MYSELF OUT OF shaming myself for not working hard enough. This is insane when I type it out....which is probably why it is best that I do so. It makes me reflect on how ridiculous it is and helps me let it go.
Anyhow, I am getting good at the relaxed weekend thang. I have run 3 trainings this month, which holds no meaning to most of you who don't understand what those weeks look like. They are intense. They demand a ton of energy and because I am not able to attend to my other job during the day, I end up working long hours at night once I return home. Typically, I would work all weekend to try to "catch up". This month, I have created weekend space. Last weekend, I had a lot of work that was not absolutely pressing but was sitting on my plate. I could have worked 8 hours both Saturday and Sunday trying to finish it. What did I do instead?
--Lazed around in a variety of hot saunas and tubs for several hours with my friend Kristy
--Spontaneously signed up for a bookbinding class at my local independent bookstore, made an adorable journal out of bingo cards and old maps, drank tea and ate cookies with a bunch of friendly ladies
--Ate a long lunch at Le Pain Quotidian with my Geoff
--Took a long neighborhood bike ride with Geoff, felt like I was back in elementary school
--Went out to see our friend Travis play at the Mint, ended up staying and dancing into the night to Los Pinguous (kind of Argentinian folk groove band)
--Shopped the farmer's market
--Cleaned out our house of all toxic chemical products and toxic cosmetic products
--Played a hiarious Par 3 golf game with Louise & Amber
--Read the paper, Napped
This, my friends, is an achievement in non-work. The neurotic part is that I felt guilty at least 10 times about the fact that I was not working on something for work. My proudest moment of the weekend was when my boss called me at 8am on Sunday and asked me to come into the office and I SAID NO. WHAT!? Yes, that is right. I said no to my boss. I recognized that I needed time to spend with my husband and to relax my mind before going into a second straight week of training, and I stood my ground. And guess what? He respected my decision. My fears of him thinking I am a lazy loser did not come true as far as I can tell.
Anyhow, my pausing has gained momentum. I have gone to yoga three times this week. Tonight, I did my first ever headstand. EVER! And I felt amazing, because I felt totally connected to my body. Geoff even went with me on Sunday and it was lovely. This past weekend I went to the beach with him and watched him play volleyball and did one of my favorite things--I ran along the water for a couple of miles in perfect 75 degree temperatures. I have been going to bed before 10. I have also been taking major moves towards improving my nutrition and have been doing a lot of reading on the topic. As a part of this effort, I have managed the self-care victory of eating breakfast every day this month (total revolution for me) and snacking every 3 hours on healthy foods. My whole body is smiling.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
And the painted ponies go up and down
Well, the last time I wrote I was having a bad week. I am writing today to happily report that I rode the wave through that week and it was followed by a significantly better one. There were several moments in this last week where I experienced some interpersonal tension and I challenged myself to listen to my gut and confront those situations head on. I think that some of my bad mojo last week was due some of these tensions building in both personal and professional domains and my growing awareness that they could not be ignored until they passed.
There is a great freedom in confronting and expressing oneself so long as one does not go into such situations with the expectation that they will resolve in a particular way. I had two instances this week where I had to confront issues with individuals and they did not completely respond according to the script in my mind, but I was able to hear their reactions, reflect them, and and move on without taking it personally. This might sound really simplistic to some of you reading this. For me, this is a freaking momentous moment. I have only started to be aware of how hard I try to make everyone around me feel satisfied, and how guilty and disappointed I feel when they are not....even when their dissatisfaction has little or nothing to do with my actions. I take a lot of crap personally. I feel things with an annoying intensity. I am learning to not take things so seriously.
I also used a strategy that helped me this week. When I had a negative interaction with someone, I made my best attempt to counter it with several intentionally positive ones with others. Someone said something crappy to me...so when I got to my next meeting, I found something to compliment that person on. I smiled and stopped to speak to the person bagging my groceries. I happily waved several people into my lane on the bad interchange on the 101. When I got home, I tried to listen 60% and talk 40% with my husband to show him that I care. I called my brother to tell him that I love him. There is no better medicine for the pain that comes with being treated crappy than keeping that crap to yourself and not letting it contaminate the rest of your environment. I mean, sometimes it is immensely helpful to process these things when they happen. I think that they key for me is being keenly aware of the feeling I am having and then giving myself permission to let go of it...knowing it will hang out and poke me for a while but that I have already acknowledged it and have decided to move forward...even if I go in a circle and come back to it later.
There is a great freedom in confronting and expressing oneself so long as one does not go into such situations with the expectation that they will resolve in a particular way. I had two instances this week where I had to confront issues with individuals and they did not completely respond according to the script in my mind, but I was able to hear their reactions, reflect them, and and move on without taking it personally. This might sound really simplistic to some of you reading this. For me, this is a freaking momentous moment. I have only started to be aware of how hard I try to make everyone around me feel satisfied, and how guilty and disappointed I feel when they are not....even when their dissatisfaction has little or nothing to do with my actions. I take a lot of crap personally. I feel things with an annoying intensity. I am learning to not take things so seriously.
I also used a strategy that helped me this week. When I had a negative interaction with someone, I made my best attempt to counter it with several intentionally positive ones with others. Someone said something crappy to me...so when I got to my next meeting, I found something to compliment that person on. I smiled and stopped to speak to the person bagging my groceries. I happily waved several people into my lane on the bad interchange on the 101. When I got home, I tried to listen 60% and talk 40% with my husband to show him that I care. I called my brother to tell him that I love him. There is no better medicine for the pain that comes with being treated crappy than keeping that crap to yourself and not letting it contaminate the rest of your environment. I mean, sometimes it is immensely helpful to process these things when they happen. I think that they key for me is being keenly aware of the feeling I am having and then giving myself permission to let go of it...knowing it will hang out and poke me for a while but that I have already acknowledged it and have decided to move forward...even if I go in a circle and come back to it later.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Pause: Aloha
For those of you that are more familiar with my story, it is obvious that Hawaii is a cause for pause for me. Not because it is a gorgeous natural wonderland that inspires slowing down the pace of our lives (which it is), but because I have complicated feelings wrapped up in the chapter of my life that took place there. Geoff and I decided to take our summer vacation in Hawaii, and this served several purposes: 1) fulfilling my lifelong dream of seeing Volcanoes National Park, 2) relaxing/adventuring somewhere tropical together and 3) having what we might technically call a "corrective emotional experience" (okay, yes, I am a Psychologist) of being in this place of beauty that holds a lot of weird feelings for me.
Our pause in Hawaii ended up being one of the best things we have ever done together. Big Island is a pretty magical place, and it was a perfect location to have definitive Ward-style fun involving a combination of adventure-athletic activity and generous napping-eating. On the trip, I tried to focus on being in the moment with the love of my life--and had several moments where I found myself taking mental pictures and trying to seal them in my memory. For example:
I can actually recall the first time I ever did this. It was the early eighties, I was about 6 years old. I was sitting in the passenger seat of our old brown Nova, driving through downtown Cresson and Phil Collins "Tonight" was playing on the radio. I remember passing by the John Deere dealer and feeling supremely happy and at peace, and actually saying a prayer to the Virgin Mary that went "Please let me remember this". Apparently, this request was granted as I can remember not only the circumstances but the tenor of the feeling in that moment like it was yesterday. The strange part of this is that it was at not-the-greatest-time-of-my-life in an objective sense, but it helps me to know that even when times were hard for my family that I was a happy child who loved life and felt grateful for moments. Maybe, in fact, that moment was one of my first pauses.
Anyhow, I tried to do this in Hawaii as I took in the stunning views of the cliffs and the deep blue water and the lava fields. There was a moment when Geoff was walking in the distance when we were the only people on a remote black sand beach in Waipio Valley that I offered up the same silent prayer, this time in perhaps a more vague spiritual sense, saying "Let me remember this". And what did I want to remember this time? The feeling of overwhelming love for my husband, for the gratitude of finding myself again after the losses I suffered in Hawaii round 1, and the feeling of separateness from the busyness that defines my daily life. Sometimes it is easy to get confused and feel like that busyness and the the things that occupy our time are "who we are"--and it takes getting far away from those demands to help me remember that I am more than what I do all day at work. Being on a remote beach, feeling the drizzle of rain and the warm wind with no sounds of civilization to distract me--I was reminded of the me quiet part of me that speaks in whispers to tell me what really matters.
Pausing is not easy. And not just because it is functionally hard to find time to do. Pausing can be hard because it is an introspective process and sometimes it is hard to look at myself. I am not always pleased with what I find in the pause. When I stop and look at myself and my thought patterns and my decisions I sometimes feel ashamed. My perfectionism has room to stretch its legs and walk all over me. I guess that getting better at pausing means pushing past those initial critical judgments and seeing the deeper part of me that is worthy of kindness, forgiveness, love and care. I deserve to take care of myself, to allow others to take care of me. Likewise, I am finding myself more conscious of the words I use with others. I am trying very hard to be positive, complimentary, kind. I am trying to create positive energy around me. Unfortunately of late I have been feeling like the more I do this, the more vulnerable I feel and maybe feeling more aware of how crappy some people treat me. I have also gotten a fair dose of difficult work feedback lately and I don't know if it is just that I am feeling it more sharply because of my level of awareness or if somehow the pause is not working at all...in that the feedback implies a dearth of self-awareness. I don't know what to do about this. It is kind of like by being more present, I am able to see when people are being crappy and it stings more than when I am distracted and just pushing through. I feel like there is some wise person that has written a book on this topic, and I need their book. How does one remain open, honest, kind and generous of oneself while accepting that people crap on you? Advice, please.
So this has been quite an introspective and vulnerable post. But so be it. I guess that is where I am at in this pausing business. (Also, Geoff is out of town in Vegas and I am home alone which is giving me time to ponder these things...)
Here I am. Please don't crap on me.
Our pause in Hawaii ended up being one of the best things we have ever done together. Big Island is a pretty magical place, and it was a perfect location to have definitive Ward-style fun involving a combination of adventure-athletic activity and generous napping-eating. On the trip, I tried to focus on being in the moment with the love of my life--and had several moments where I found myself taking mental pictures and trying to seal them in my memory. For example:
And also:
Anyhow, I tried to do this in Hawaii as I took in the stunning views of the cliffs and the deep blue water and the lava fields. There was a moment when Geoff was walking in the distance when we were the only people on a remote black sand beach in Waipio Valley that I offered up the same silent prayer, this time in perhaps a more vague spiritual sense, saying "Let me remember this". And what did I want to remember this time? The feeling of overwhelming love for my husband, for the gratitude of finding myself again after the losses I suffered in Hawaii round 1, and the feeling of separateness from the busyness that defines my daily life. Sometimes it is easy to get confused and feel like that busyness and the the things that occupy our time are "who we are"--and it takes getting far away from those demands to help me remember that I am more than what I do all day at work. Being on a remote beach, feeling the drizzle of rain and the warm wind with no sounds of civilization to distract me--I was reminded of the me quiet part of me that speaks in whispers to tell me what really matters.
Pausing is not easy. And not just because it is functionally hard to find time to do. Pausing can be hard because it is an introspective process and sometimes it is hard to look at myself. I am not always pleased with what I find in the pause. When I stop and look at myself and my thought patterns and my decisions I sometimes feel ashamed. My perfectionism has room to stretch its legs and walk all over me. I guess that getting better at pausing means pushing past those initial critical judgments and seeing the deeper part of me that is worthy of kindness, forgiveness, love and care. I deserve to take care of myself, to allow others to take care of me. Likewise, I am finding myself more conscious of the words I use with others. I am trying very hard to be positive, complimentary, kind. I am trying to create positive energy around me. Unfortunately of late I have been feeling like the more I do this, the more vulnerable I feel and maybe feeling more aware of how crappy some people treat me. I have also gotten a fair dose of difficult work feedback lately and I don't know if it is just that I am feeling it more sharply because of my level of awareness or if somehow the pause is not working at all...in that the feedback implies a dearth of self-awareness. I don't know what to do about this. It is kind of like by being more present, I am able to see when people are being crappy and it stings more than when I am distracted and just pushing through. I feel like there is some wise person that has written a book on this topic, and I need their book. How does one remain open, honest, kind and generous of oneself while accepting that people crap on you? Advice, please.
So this has been quite an introspective and vulnerable post. But so be it. I guess that is where I am at in this pausing business. (Also, Geoff is out of town in Vegas and I am home alone which is giving me time to ponder these things...)
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Pause from the Pause Blog
So, its been a while. I have been taking a pause from the pause blog. This is not because I have been failing in my attempts to pause, but actually because I have found that in the time I have found to take pause, I haven't felt much like writing for the blog. In some ways, this in and of itself is a little success. Typically, I would feel guilty (GUILT!?) about neglecting the blog and would have forsaken other self-care activities to write something. I have been more forgiving of myself lately, and have not felt obligated to document my pausing.
The past three months have been very full, no surprise. Since I last wrote, I have led 6 trainings for work (5 days each)--4 in LA, 1 in Minnesota and 1 in Oakland. I have finished the first draft of the manuscript for my coding paper project (representing 3 years of work!). I have been working a lot. Too much. This was perhaps best illustrated during the month of March, wherein I got sick repeatedly with variations on the same virus and ended up with total laryngitis for about 5 days. (Nightmare for someone who makes her living off public speaking.) Despite all this work, I have also taken several generous pauses.
We went on an amazing ski trip with our friends to Mammoth Mountain. Most pause-ful moment was my first time skiing in fresh powder. Alone on the mountain, early in the morning, snow up to my knees, breathing in the clean cold air...a truly memorable pause.
I took some time away from my training in Minnesota to visit with my new brother and sister in law and awesome niece and nephew!
I took an actual VACATION from work, and went to the East Coast for a week on what I called "THE BABY TOUR" wherein I rubbed a lot of pregnant bellies, cooed over adorable babies, and played with adorable little children. I also got to see some of my close friends and family who are not currently "with child"....LOL. Here is just a sampling of the fun:
Now, let's check in on my resolutions...
Take the EPPP and get licensed as a Psychologist.
Absolutely no progress. I am going to send my registration in this week.
Regularly back up my laptop.
FAIL.
Make pictures albums out of my digital photographs so that if they are all stolen again I can have hard copies.
I ordered wedding photos. Does that count?
Pay off my credit card debt.
DONE! HOLY COW!
Hire an accountant.
I have talked with one on the phone multiple times!
Go visit my friends and family on the East Coast.
Done!
Cook something new every week.
So, this has been more like twice a month. Most recent hit was homeade BBQ sauce.
Sign up for yoga.
I did this. I took two classes. Both times there was a weird guy next to me that made creepy orgasm noises with every breath. I may go back. Or not.
Party like a rockstar before I start making babies at some vague point in the future.
See photos of viking costume.
Overall, the pausing is going well. I feel like I have made some major headway in my ability to take more moments during the day to pause and gather my thoughts. I feel like I am taking more time before I made decisions, write emails, or react. Maybe related to all this pausing was a significant increase in my productivity--or maybe other factors are responsible there. Nontheless, I have managed to continue to pause in an intensely busy time with work. During March, my body simply shut down with sickness, but I feel like that was not because I was completely overwhelmed, just that I guess I wasn't well defended against the onslaught of viruses this year. And I should have gotten a flu shot. Will pause to do that next year.
I have paused significantly in the last week to think of and pray for my friends and family who have been faced with recent challenges. I have several close friends who have been dealing with either their own health issues or the health issues of their children, and have shed tears wishing that I could take their pain away. Also, someone close to me has been struggling with a difficult break up and I have felt very protective and heartbroken for that person and have been thinking of him on basically a constant basis. However, I have felt immensely grateful for my own health and for Geoff during these moments of pause. My life is full of blessings, and pausing to appreciate them is the best thanks that I can give to the Universe for sending them my way.
Next week I take a luxurious, lengthy pause with my Geoff. We are going to Hawaii for a week to explore volcanoes and roll around on black sand beaches and do the adventurous-relaxation-type stuff that we love.....
The past three months have been very full, no surprise. Since I last wrote, I have led 6 trainings for work (5 days each)--4 in LA, 1 in Minnesota and 1 in Oakland. I have finished the first draft of the manuscript for my coding paper project (representing 3 years of work!). I have been working a lot. Too much. This was perhaps best illustrated during the month of March, wherein I got sick repeatedly with variations on the same virus and ended up with total laryngitis for about 5 days. (Nightmare for someone who makes her living off public speaking.) Despite all this work, I have also taken several generous pauses.
We went on an amazing ski trip with our friends to Mammoth Mountain. Most pause-ful moment was my first time skiing in fresh powder. Alone on the mountain, early in the morning, snow up to my knees, breathing in the clean cold air...a truly memorable pause.
I turned 32, happily.
I had my first visit to the Getty Museum on a lovely Sunday afternoon with my Geoff. (And then immediately fell ill with the flu.)
I got to spend some much needed quality time with visiting friends--Kristy one weekend and Amy the next!
And I dressed up like the sexual-fantasy Viking version of Maude from Big Lebowski to celebrate the 30th birthday of one of my dearest friends here in LA--Tiffany!
Now, let's check in on my resolutions...
Take the EPPP and get licensed as a Psychologist.
Absolutely no progress. I am going to send my registration in this week.
Regularly back up my laptop.
FAIL.
Make pictures albums out of my digital photographs so that if they are all stolen again I can have hard copies.
I ordered wedding photos. Does that count?
Pay off my credit card debt.
DONE! HOLY COW!
Hire an accountant.
I have talked with one on the phone multiple times!
Go visit my friends and family on the East Coast.
Done!
Cook something new every week.
So, this has been more like twice a month. Most recent hit was homeade BBQ sauce.
Sign up for yoga.
I did this. I took two classes. Both times there was a weird guy next to me that made creepy orgasm noises with every breath. I may go back. Or not.
Party like a rockstar before I start making babies at some vague point in the future.
See photos of viking costume.
Overall, the pausing is going well. I feel like I have made some major headway in my ability to take more moments during the day to pause and gather my thoughts. I feel like I am taking more time before I made decisions, write emails, or react. Maybe related to all this pausing was a significant increase in my productivity--or maybe other factors are responsible there. Nontheless, I have managed to continue to pause in an intensely busy time with work. During March, my body simply shut down with sickness, but I feel like that was not because I was completely overwhelmed, just that I guess I wasn't well defended against the onslaught of viruses this year. And I should have gotten a flu shot. Will pause to do that next year.
I have paused significantly in the last week to think of and pray for my friends and family who have been faced with recent challenges. I have several close friends who have been dealing with either their own health issues or the health issues of their children, and have shed tears wishing that I could take their pain away. Also, someone close to me has been struggling with a difficult break up and I have felt very protective and heartbroken for that person and have been thinking of him on basically a constant basis. However, I have felt immensely grateful for my own health and for Geoff during these moments of pause. My life is full of blessings, and pausing to appreciate them is the best thanks that I can give to the Universe for sending them my way.
Next week I take a luxurious, lengthy pause with my Geoff. We are going to Hawaii for a week to explore volcanoes and roll around on black sand beaches and do the adventurous-relaxation-type stuff that we love.....
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Pause...in a wine bath?
As I mentioned in my previous post, its been a busy month. So busy that while I have managed to make several significant pauses, I have not had time to write about them. One recent pause was so fantastic that I cannot possibly leave it without a post.
Last week, I took a very significant and extended pause with one of my dearest friends, Anna. We had been planning this for a while, and I think that the actual weekend snuck up on both of us in the midst of our busy lives. Anna and I lived together in college, and know one another in the way that is only possible through co-habitation in one of life's biggest transition periods. Anna is the perfect person with whom to take pause--first because she is very good at this herself and second because we are very comfortable together and go alternately from talking incessantly to sitting in silence without any awkward transition. Anna and I decided that we needed a weekend away from it all for the type of pampering we only dreamed of back at 19--a spa resort.
I should start by explaining that I do things for myself like a lot of girls--I get manicures every so often, I have splurged on laser hair removal, a massage, a bizarre trip to the Korean hot springs. However, I never in my life thought I would be in the financial position to just up and go to a spa resort and treat myself to numerous indulgences all weekend long. However, I have been very careful with my money all year, and have some extra saved and so we went all out. Anna found a great discounted suite at the Miramonte Resort near Palm Springs, and we booked our Saturday full of self-care.
I picked Anna up from the Ontario airport after loading up on the necessities (that would be Oreos, red wine, and magazines), and we spent the drive into the desert catching up on all the recent goings on in our lives, plans for this spring, family stuff, etc. We went to a Mexican restaurant and gorged ourselves on guacamole, and then retired to our enormous suite.
After lunch, we started our spa appointments. My first was what they called a "wine bath"--I signed up for this really only for the novelty of it. It involved me getting into an enormous jacuzzi tub full of water and one bottle of red wine along with olive oil, rosemary oil?, and some kind of mineral powder. They also served me a pithy 2 ounces of wine to drink while I soaked in this concoction. Interestingly, as I stood there, nude (yes), the spa lady took out a velvet pouch full of stones and told me to draw one and then focus on the word imprinted on it during my bath. My word? Patience. Okay, I can do this. I got into the bubbly business and for the next 15 minutes I pondered the virtue of patience...all the while feeling rather impatient and wishing they'd have poured a more generous serving of wine given the 50 big ones I was shelling out for this exercise in aromatherapeutic meditation.
I followed this treatment with a shower and few moments in the eucalyptus steam room. Then I met Anna back at the pool, where we finished up our sunning and then went back to the spa for more pausing. One pause after another! Anna then went in for a facial and massage and I started off with my detox wrap. I have never had one of these things before, and it was absolutely fantastic. It involved a very nice lady named Grit (how appropriate) rubbing gritty exfoliant all over my body, then covering me in a green mud that started very cool like peppermint. Then she wrapped me in a sheet of soft, thin plastic followed by a warm blanket, followed by what seemed like a tarp. The mud became increasingly warm to nearly hot. I was tightly wrapped like a swaddled baby in all this business though my head and feet remained exposed. She then gave me a foot rub and a scalp massage that nearly put me to sleep. Afterward, I showered off and went back for a "cobblestone massage" that involved the use of many large, warm, round stones. Some were placed strategically on my body and others were used to rub my muscles. Wow. Pretty amazing. All in all, it was 2 hours of this pampering. Plenty of time to think about pausing....and here is a summary of my thoughts.
In my twenties, I felt like my life was paradoxically on fast-forward and slow-motion. If that sounds crazy, its because it felt that way. For most of that time, I was worked multiple jobs and pursuing my Ph.D. I was working all the time, felt very anxious, was in a constant financial crisis from living off about 10 grand a year, and was struggling in my relationship with my partner who became my first husband. Actually, that last sentence pretty much sums up almost the entirety of my twenties. I felt like I had little to no control over things--I felt like I was responsible to so many people, that I was constantly trying to prove myself as a student, a therapist, a partner, a daughter...a grown up? I put a lot of pressure on myself. I judged myself harshly. While I was constantly moving in fast forward to get everything done, I also felt like everything was on hold. Someday, I would be happy. Someday, far in the future, Nathan and I would be happy. When we weren't poor anymore, when we lived somewhere else, when we got married. Someday, I would be a Psychologist, a mother, whatever,....but those things seemed so far away and like I would never reach them.
Around the time that I turned 30, basically my entire life changed. I guess some of the internal change started happening for me around my 29th birthday, when I starting accepting that my life was not going to go according to some type of best-laid plan and that I had to start accepting things as they were and taking my life into my own hands to create and shape my own happiness. I started feeling more accepting of myself, my emotions, the unpredictability of life...even stupid things like what my trainer called my "poor hip:waist ratio", my very fine hair (at least it dries easily), my abiding love of hip hop (despite its tendency toward misogyny, narcissism, whatever). It has gotten progressively easier for me to press pause in my life, to look around and take in the view. Perhaps the biggest contrast between now and my twenties is that then I was striving towards some uncertain future that seemed like it had to be better than the present...and now sometimes my life is so amazingly happy that I am constantly taking pictures in my mind, trying to slow it down because I hate to let the moments slip away. Maybe this is part of why I love to take so many pictures. I love holding the memories of these happy moments. Every day that I wake up next to Geoff in our little house that we have made our home, I want to press pause (okay, or snooze) and just marinate in the feeling of love and contentment and happiness that I have found. No, created. I have had a hand in this. I don't look forward to finding happiness--I live it every day.
Anyhow, this relates to a big part of my pause-intention. Anna and I spent a lot of time talking about babies. I think I get asked at least 3 times a week some question about when/whether Geoff and I will start a family. It is clearly on our minds, and the minds of everyone around us. I know that I want to have a family with Geoff more clearly than I know most anything. However, I know that I am happy right now and that I am in a very sweet period of my life where I am financially stable, have a lot of friends, am able to travel and to do whatever strikes my fancy on the weekend. I am able to work hard and make good contributions to my teams at both jobs. I would like to savor that for a little bit.
Also, one thing that all this pausing has helped me see is that it is only just now, at 32, that I am starting to learn how to take care of myself. I mean that in every sense of the expression. I am just now figuring out how to make exercise part of my lifestyle, how to blow dry my hair like they do at the salon, how to iron the yoke of a shirt properly, how to butterfly a chicken, how to put work away and go to sleep at a reasonable hour. I am just now figuring out how to effectively communicate my emotional needs, how to assert myself in the workplace, how to be both Dr. Ward and Alyssa at the same time (if that makes any sense). I am just now learning how to forgive myself as easily as I forgive others, how to listen to my thoughts, how to tell my thoughts to shut the hell up. I have had friends (Anna is one of them) who have always been fairly good at the art of taking care of themselves. I have not. What I realized recently is that I have always been very good at SURVIVING, but not very good at basic living. My early life taught me important lessons about surviving--in essence, being able to push forward and just keep swimming and believing that things will get better. I can endure really horrible things but kind of fall apart when I get a flat tire because I don't have the basic skills to fix it myself. However, I think my lessons in surviving kept me from developing the quiet skills of knowing when it is best that I take a nap, remembering to eat lunch, saying "no" when overextended etc. Geoff is very good at these basic skills and my life with him helps me to concentrate on them every day.
I am not sure that my parents had a very strong handle on self-care at the time that they had me--they were very young. I am aware that they may read this, and I think they would probably agree. This is not to say that I think they did a bad job or set a bad example--my parents taught me a lot about how to survive and they made me the person I am today, for which I am forever grateful. They are wonderful people with incredible strength and resiliency. Also, I am fairly certain that most people have not mastered self-care before becoming a parent. What I do know is that I will be better able to set an example of taking pause and taking good care of oneself if I at least get on my training wheels before I create a little version of me who may tend toward my patterns. I know that I want to be a parent that models coping behavior, self-care, and the most stability that I can muster. I also know that no matter my intentions that it will be crazy when we have children and I will end up crying in a closet and being otherwise neurotic. However, I will be a hell of a lot better off in terms of maintaining my own sanity and my marriage than I would have if I had gotten pregnant at 25.
In sum, this pause thing is not just for me. Me learning to take care of me is also about the health of my marriage. It extends to me preparing for the major life transition to being a mother, when the work-life balance has the potential to get even more complicated. The simple act of pausing before I act to consider the options (note: you don't pause in survival mode--It's fight or flight, people!), pausing to breathe and take in the beauty of my life and relationships, pausing to take inventory of my gratitudes...these are all achieved through daily practice. What I learned this weekend is that taking a big giant luxurious pause also allows you to think them through in a deeper way--and having a thoughtful friend around to discuss helps, too. :)
Last week, I took a very significant and extended pause with one of my dearest friends, Anna. We had been planning this for a while, and I think that the actual weekend snuck up on both of us in the midst of our busy lives. Anna and I lived together in college, and know one another in the way that is only possible through co-habitation in one of life's biggest transition periods. Anna is the perfect person with whom to take pause--first because she is very good at this herself and second because we are very comfortable together and go alternately from talking incessantly to sitting in silence without any awkward transition. Anna and I decided that we needed a weekend away from it all for the type of pampering we only dreamed of back at 19--a spa resort.
I should start by explaining that I do things for myself like a lot of girls--I get manicures every so often, I have splurged on laser hair removal, a massage, a bizarre trip to the Korean hot springs. However, I never in my life thought I would be in the financial position to just up and go to a spa resort and treat myself to numerous indulgences all weekend long. However, I have been very careful with my money all year, and have some extra saved and so we went all out. Anna found a great discounted suite at the Miramonte Resort near Palm Springs, and we booked our Saturday full of self-care.
I picked Anna up from the Ontario airport after loading up on the necessities (that would be Oreos, red wine, and magazines), and we spent the drive into the desert catching up on all the recent goings on in our lives, plans for this spring, family stuff, etc. We went to a Mexican restaurant and gorged ourselves on guacamole, and then retired to our enormous suite.
I would not call this part so much of a pause as it was a long-winded review of everything that has happened to each of us since we last saw one another before Thanksgiving. I am realizing that is not so long ago in usual Anna-Alyssa time, but since I have moved to California I feel lucky to get to see Anna 4 times a year or so. I'd rather see her 4 times a month, but I will take it. However, this long late-night discussion paired with oreos and wine covered topics that I mulled over during the weekend which I will introduce later in this post. Let's just say that they involve marriage, family (seemingly everyone we know is pregnant), and work-home balance.
The next day began a truly awesome pause. For those of you ladies interested, I will lay out the details. (Mo, Tiff, this is for you...) We started the day with breakfast on our patio--pastries, fruit, coffee, juice. The weather was perfect, and we were up by 8am despite all the wine and oreos and talking the night before. We put on our bathing suits and signed up for a "Hydro Yo Chi" class at the spa. We were not sure what this would entail. It ended up being us and many other ladies in a 98 degree pool with a rather peculiar but stunningly beautiful instructor in her 70s who guided us through yoga-like poses while lecturing us on the benefits of Vitamin D ("Let it get in the corners of your eyes, that is how it sinks into you brain") and smiling ("Remember Patch Adams? He healed children with only smiles!") while often touching us in a slightly too-intimate way ("Now just lean your head back here on my shoulder while I wrap my arms all around your body"). While we are pretty sure we did not achieve any level of exercise, we certainly burned calories in silent laughter and basically felt like we had played around in a pool for an hour. Despite the oddity of this experience, I tried to focus on the pause it was giving me--I was here in a pool with one of my closest friends with no work to do my only task was to breathe and smile and listen to the loony lady talk about moving my hips like a dolphin.
After the class, we went to the pool, armed with magazines. We lounged around, sunning ourselves, drinking fruity cool beverages, and ordering healthy spa lunches.
After lunch, we started our spa appointments. My first was what they called a "wine bath"--I signed up for this really only for the novelty of it. It involved me getting into an enormous jacuzzi tub full of water and one bottle of red wine along with olive oil, rosemary oil?, and some kind of mineral powder. They also served me a pithy 2 ounces of wine to drink while I soaked in this concoction. Interestingly, as I stood there, nude (yes), the spa lady took out a velvet pouch full of stones and told me to draw one and then focus on the word imprinted on it during my bath. My word? Patience. Okay, I can do this. I got into the bubbly business and for the next 15 minutes I pondered the virtue of patience...all the while feeling rather impatient and wishing they'd have poured a more generous serving of wine given the 50 big ones I was shelling out for this exercise in aromatherapeutic meditation.
I followed this treatment with a shower and few moments in the eucalyptus steam room. Then I met Anna back at the pool, where we finished up our sunning and then went back to the spa for more pausing. One pause after another! Anna then went in for a facial and massage and I started off with my detox wrap. I have never had one of these things before, and it was absolutely fantastic. It involved a very nice lady named Grit (how appropriate) rubbing gritty exfoliant all over my body, then covering me in a green mud that started very cool like peppermint. Then she wrapped me in a sheet of soft, thin plastic followed by a warm blanket, followed by what seemed like a tarp. The mud became increasingly warm to nearly hot. I was tightly wrapped like a swaddled baby in all this business though my head and feet remained exposed. She then gave me a foot rub and a scalp massage that nearly put me to sleep. Afterward, I showered off and went back for a "cobblestone massage" that involved the use of many large, warm, round stones. Some were placed strategically on my body and others were used to rub my muscles. Wow. Pretty amazing. All in all, it was 2 hours of this pampering. Plenty of time to think about pausing....and here is a summary of my thoughts.
In my twenties, I felt like my life was paradoxically on fast-forward and slow-motion. If that sounds crazy, its because it felt that way. For most of that time, I was worked multiple jobs and pursuing my Ph.D. I was working all the time, felt very anxious, was in a constant financial crisis from living off about 10 grand a year, and was struggling in my relationship with my partner who became my first husband. Actually, that last sentence pretty much sums up almost the entirety of my twenties. I felt like I had little to no control over things--I felt like I was responsible to so many people, that I was constantly trying to prove myself as a student, a therapist, a partner, a daughter...a grown up? I put a lot of pressure on myself. I judged myself harshly. While I was constantly moving in fast forward to get everything done, I also felt like everything was on hold. Someday, I would be happy. Someday, far in the future, Nathan and I would be happy. When we weren't poor anymore, when we lived somewhere else, when we got married. Someday, I would be a Psychologist, a mother, whatever,....but those things seemed so far away and like I would never reach them.
Around the time that I turned 30, basically my entire life changed. I guess some of the internal change started happening for me around my 29th birthday, when I starting accepting that my life was not going to go according to some type of best-laid plan and that I had to start accepting things as they were and taking my life into my own hands to create and shape my own happiness. I started feeling more accepting of myself, my emotions, the unpredictability of life...even stupid things like what my trainer called my "poor hip:waist ratio", my very fine hair (at least it dries easily), my abiding love of hip hop (despite its tendency toward misogyny, narcissism, whatever). It has gotten progressively easier for me to press pause in my life, to look around and take in the view. Perhaps the biggest contrast between now and my twenties is that then I was striving towards some uncertain future that seemed like it had to be better than the present...and now sometimes my life is so amazingly happy that I am constantly taking pictures in my mind, trying to slow it down because I hate to let the moments slip away. Maybe this is part of why I love to take so many pictures. I love holding the memories of these happy moments. Every day that I wake up next to Geoff in our little house that we have made our home, I want to press pause (okay, or snooze) and just marinate in the feeling of love and contentment and happiness that I have found. No, created. I have had a hand in this. I don't look forward to finding happiness--I live it every day.
Anyhow, this relates to a big part of my pause-intention. Anna and I spent a lot of time talking about babies. I think I get asked at least 3 times a week some question about when/whether Geoff and I will start a family. It is clearly on our minds, and the minds of everyone around us. I know that I want to have a family with Geoff more clearly than I know most anything. However, I know that I am happy right now and that I am in a very sweet period of my life where I am financially stable, have a lot of friends, am able to travel and to do whatever strikes my fancy on the weekend. I am able to work hard and make good contributions to my teams at both jobs. I would like to savor that for a little bit.
Also, one thing that all this pausing has helped me see is that it is only just now, at 32, that I am starting to learn how to take care of myself. I mean that in every sense of the expression. I am just now figuring out how to make exercise part of my lifestyle, how to blow dry my hair like they do at the salon, how to iron the yoke of a shirt properly, how to butterfly a chicken, how to put work away and go to sleep at a reasonable hour. I am just now figuring out how to effectively communicate my emotional needs, how to assert myself in the workplace, how to be both Dr. Ward and Alyssa at the same time (if that makes any sense). I am just now learning how to forgive myself as easily as I forgive others, how to listen to my thoughts, how to tell my thoughts to shut the hell up. I have had friends (Anna is one of them) who have always been fairly good at the art of taking care of themselves. I have not. What I realized recently is that I have always been very good at SURVIVING, but not very good at basic living. My early life taught me important lessons about surviving--in essence, being able to push forward and just keep swimming and believing that things will get better. I can endure really horrible things but kind of fall apart when I get a flat tire because I don't have the basic skills to fix it myself. However, I think my lessons in surviving kept me from developing the quiet skills of knowing when it is best that I take a nap, remembering to eat lunch, saying "no" when overextended etc. Geoff is very good at these basic skills and my life with him helps me to concentrate on them every day.
I am not sure that my parents had a very strong handle on self-care at the time that they had me--they were very young. I am aware that they may read this, and I think they would probably agree. This is not to say that I think they did a bad job or set a bad example--my parents taught me a lot about how to survive and they made me the person I am today, for which I am forever grateful. They are wonderful people with incredible strength and resiliency. Also, I am fairly certain that most people have not mastered self-care before becoming a parent. What I do know is that I will be better able to set an example of taking pause and taking good care of oneself if I at least get on my training wheels before I create a little version of me who may tend toward my patterns. I know that I want to be a parent that models coping behavior, self-care, and the most stability that I can muster. I also know that no matter my intentions that it will be crazy when we have children and I will end up crying in a closet and being otherwise neurotic. However, I will be a hell of a lot better off in terms of maintaining my own sanity and my marriage than I would have if I had gotten pregnant at 25.
In sum, this pause thing is not just for me. Me learning to take care of me is also about the health of my marriage. It extends to me preparing for the major life transition to being a mother, when the work-life balance has the potential to get even more complicated. The simple act of pausing before I act to consider the options (note: you don't pause in survival mode--It's fight or flight, people!), pausing to breathe and take in the beauty of my life and relationships, pausing to take inventory of my gratitudes...these are all achieved through daily practice. What I learned this weekend is that taking a big giant luxurious pause also allows you to think them through in a deeper way--and having a thoughtful friend around to discuss helps, too. :)
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
A little pause in a busy week
My life is so full.
In the past three weeks, we have had 7 different friends stay with us at different points in different combinations. We have traveled to the central coast, I did a polar dip in the ocean. We have hosted a birthday party for one of my best friends and we have had a full-on 30th birthday extravaganza for another involving several hours of wine tasting and a double-decker party bus. I have led yet another training and coached a new associate and a prospect trainer through an awesome week of challenges. I counted: I have written/responded to...seriously, 1500 emails. I found out one of my closest friends of the last 10 years is pregnant. I have found an accountant with the help of a trusted friend reference! In the span of this, I have somehow managed to nail down a method of keeping at least the lower floor of our house looking, if I do say so myself, damn presentable almost every day. Also, I have gone to bed happy every night and with the arms of the man I love around me. Life is full but so very good.
All of this has not left a lot of space for pause. I have attempted to take pause throughout, and it has resulted in just 3 blog posts so far. Today I decided that keeping with my intention was slipping, and so I made a very simple effort. My day was completely booked up, nearly every minute I was scheduled to meet with someone or do a conference call or prepare something or other. In the midst of this, I had a cancellation for a clinical assessment I was scheduled to do out in the valley. Instead of immediately filling that space with the loudest demand screaming at me, I took a pause.
This pause was simple. It involved picking up my notepad and iPhone and walking outside into the sunlight. I sat by the inverted fountain on campus and called the love of my life. I sat on a bench soaking in the 75 degree weather and bright sun for 5 minutes. I took out my notepad and made a list of my to-do items in order of their demand with thoughtfulness. I allowed myself the time to think about what was really important to accomplish today versus whose voice or email was yelling at me loudest to get what done. I breathed deeply and went back to work. From that point forward, my afternoon felt like a different day. I kicked my feet up while I worked. I ate a bowl of cherries, a ripe tangerine, and drank a nice glass of ice water. I felt great. Once I got home, I made dinner for myself and noticed that the earlier pause made me appreciate the simple beauty of things like how the little purple tomatoes looked so lovely on my baby lettuce salad. I ate my eggplant parmesan slowly without any distraction of music or tv or reading or work in just my own company. I thought about how I am going to have a long-awaited break for a weekend away with my dear Anna at a spa this weekend, and how incredibly 1) lucky I am to be able to do this and 2) how hard I have worked to earn and save my money to be able to afford things like this now. Then, I had a great Skype call with an professor on sabbatical in Hong Kong about a project that we are collaborating on. I felt relaxed and at peace. It is completely stunning to me the cascade of mindfulness and gratitude that an intentional 5 minute pause can precipitate.
I picked the right resolution.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Pause for Tucson
Arizona Tragedy Gives Congress A Moment to Pause
Tonight, I pause to reflect on those who devote their lives to public service. God Bless everyone involved and affected in the Tucson tragedy.
Tonight, I pause to reflect on those who devote their lives to public service. God Bless everyone involved and affected in the Tucson tragedy.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
OoKneel to Pause
So, yesterday I had a specific motivation to pause. I found out early in the morning that a member of a family that I was once a part of had died.
Divorce is a very strange phenomenon to me. I guess it shouldn't be, given that my parents divorced...but nonetheless the experience of being close to a family for eight years and then being almost entirely severed from that family is very odd to me. One of my defining characteristics is the value that I place on long-lasting relationships, and the experience of divorcing and losing relationships that I invested in with people that I cared about deeply was...well, I guess it felt uncomfortable at best and mournful at worst. The experience was made more difficult when my ex-husband's grandfather and father both died during the course of our divorce. I can't really explain in words how it felt to go through that situation. I guess I felt... lost. Like there was no good way to deal with it. I tried to do what seemed socially appropriate--making calls, sending cards...and I wanted the family to know that I mourned the loss of those two men and that their lives had impacted mine in some very significant ways. I am not sure how much they were able to hear of that message, or whether they cared to hear it, but I tried to put it out there.
Yesterday I found out that my ex-husband's Aunt Bobbi died, and while I had only a few me
mories of times spent with Bobbi, I felt really sad about it. I felt sad for her beautiful and kind daughter, for her two wonderful grandchildren. I felt sad for the family as a whole, as they have suffered so many losses over the last few years. I felt sad that I don't have contact with Nathan and I could not tell him how sorry I am for his loss. I just felt sad.
In this sadness, I felt like it was a good time to take pause. Yesterday I was working out in Pacoima for our study. I finished up a little bit early and I had planned to meet Geoff and our friend Shiri downtown for dinner at a Brazilian restaurant. Rather using my extra time to beat traffic on the 101, I googled the closest Catholic Church. I was looking for a place of refuge in which to take my pause.
The Guardian Angel Church in Pacoima is not in the greatest neighborhood. It is surrounded by low-income housing and it is close enough to Van Nuys Boulevard that if you listen carefully you can hear the traffic. It is a small church with a small K-8 school on the property. The church itself is brick and concrete. The front doors were locked, so I went around the right side, past a statue of the Blessed Mother surrounded by the tall saint-themed Mexican candles you can buy at the 99 cent store. I was able to enter the sanctuary from the side door. Next to the door was the most interest holy water font I've ever seen--it was made of clay and the likeness of the Virgin Mary--she was holding out her hands and you dipped your hands into hers to bless yourself. I sat down on the right side of the church in the third pew and I started my pause.
I am now realizing what a heavy entry I have started here. I guess this was a pretty heavy pause.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
That is about as far as it gets right now, and then I have to skip down in the Apostle's Creed to the part about believing in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. I am not sure about all the stuff that comes between. I am certainly no longer a practicing Catholic, though I have a great respect for the Catholic community as a whole, and am deeply grateful for the influence that it has had on my development. I would not be who I am without the faith that I held in my younger years. I don't agree with the Church on some rather significant points, namely homosexuality as a sin and same-sex marriage as wrong, and thus my adult conundrum. However, this isn't a blog to stir religious or political controversy, just a place for me to be honest about what happens when I take pause. In this case, my pause was related to religion. I feel God with me everyday, and I have no doubt in God's presence and blessings in my life. No doubt. I believe in an higher power, something that is beyond what science can explain, beyond what sense we can make of the Universe. Beyond that, I am not sure what I believe anymore. However, what I do know is that when I am looking for God, I sometimes find it easiest to go to one of his houses.
As I sat in this little church, I was not alone. There were people around me who were also looking for something. Maybe a pause, maybe salvation, maybe comfort, maybe just sanctuary from the cold. There was an old man at the front of the church, who stood right in front of the altar, reading from a prayer book with a magnifying glass, holding a cane. He read quickly in Spanish and thumped his cane for emphasis after certain passages. I have no idea what he was saying. I only know the words for dog and green in Spanish. There were two older women saying the rosary to my left. Both had their eyes tightly closed the whole time, and wore handkerchiefs on their heads. Two younger women entered and sat in different areas. They did not kneel, but sat and relaxed, looking like they came here often to hang out.
It was hard for me to settle into pausing. At first, my mind raced through thoughts about Bobbi dying, about Phil and Grandpa Rodhe...memories. I tried to concentrate on the task of pausing by saying the Hail Mary. I say the Hail Mary a lot actually. When running, when anxious, when trying to fall asleep. I have been doing that since I learned it in kindergarten. The Hail Mary wasn't helping. I said it several dozen times and my mind continued to race. I tried the prayer of St. Francis, another favorite. That one reminded me of my friend Chris and the music he wrote to accompany that song for me one time, which made me cry. So much for pausing. Then, I thought of my Buddhist father and decided to just do a mindfulness activity where I concentrated on the sensory experience of being in the church. I examined the concrete walls, and the office-tiling of the roof. Some of the tiles had fallen off, just like in my office. There were three versions of the stations of the cross--first in the stained glass of the windows, second in some fairly cheap but standard looking hanging plaques on the walls, and third on some hand-painted tiles that were cement-glued to the lower walls and maybe created by some member of the church. There was a large corkboard near the alter with pictures of all the young men and women from the parish who are serving in the War. The corkboard was completely covered in pictures, and I was surprised by the number. There were flowers around the base of the board and prayers written and taped around the edges. The nativity scene was still up from Christmas--the plastic kind you can buy at Kmart--it was set up in the front of the church and I kind of wished it was plugged in so that the whole family and animals and onlookers would glow. Most interestingly, there were 6 very large, plasticy-looking chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. They each had several lights burned out, but the lights that remained glimmered in all the plastic crystals. All in all, my conclusion is that this was a very poor church, but it was full of love and a beautiful place to pause. Sitting under those plastic chandeliers, I felt full of love. A calm came over me, and I imagined this same calm and peace flowing to all the members of the Rodhe family. I asked God to watch over them and to send them comfort. It took me 25 minutes, but I finally achieved a pause sufficient to wipe away the stress of my day and my racing thoughts to connect with something more important.
In each pew, there were laminated prayer sheets. The prayers were for a new church. I got up and went into the church office and made a donation to the the building of the new sanctuary. Whatever my beliefs about God, it was clear to me in that moment the invaluable contribution that this church must provide for this small Hispanic community. I also realized how grateful I am that I can Google a random Catholic church, walk in unannounced, and find sanctuary to take pause and ponder my place on this earth.
This was a significant pause for me, and honestly not one that I was likely to make without the practice initiated by this blog project. I don't often take time out of my day to really take inventory of how I am feeling...especially when things happen that are hard. I tend to push, push, push through with all my might. I broke that pattern yesterday, and it felt really good. I went to dinner feeling a sense of peace that I had not expected.
Monday, January 3, 2011
A Pause to Sweat
Today was theoretically the first day back at work after taking some time off for the holidays. I actually worked most of last week from home, but avoided UCLA because we were technically not supposed to be in the academic buildings and there was no heat available.
Since October, my work schedule has been a little strange because I have been adapting to setting boundaries at my post-doc position (trying to keep it to 20 hours...though it often floats near 30) and working "full time" for our private company where I do training and consultation. While this shift was supposed to represent more balance since it was moving from 2 to 1.5 jobs, it actually has been a bit more complicated than before as I have figured out my new roles at both jobs and tried to figure out how to split up my time. I kind of feel like I was working even more than usual. This did not leave a lot of time to take PAUSE. In fact, I felt like I was trying to push myself into fast forward most of the time to satisfy all the demands.
I really like my work. My work is very connected to my personal identity, my self-worth, my sense of being independent and self-sufficient, and my feeling of contribution to the world. I feel so grateful every day to have the jobs that I have because they are rooted in improving the lives of children. Despite my passion for my work, there are times when I really need to be better about putting it aside, not just physically, but also on a cognitive level. I think maybe this is why I like to run--for whatever reason when I am running, I don't think about work.
This morning, I had planned to return to my office. Then, yesterday I heard that Jillian Michaels would be at the Grove this morning to do a free workout. For those of you who don't know, I love Jillian Michaels. I own all her DVDs, I watch the Biggest Loser every week. I dislike when she tries to do psychotherapy, but I enjoy her hard-ass approach to training. I decided to press pause on returning to work and instead brave the 41 degree weather and rain to go meet Jillian Michaels.
I won't relate the whole story--it would be too long and most of you don't care so much to hear about how long I waited, how cold it was, how hot Jillian looked, how nice Jillian was to us, how hard the workout kicked my butt. In sum, it was totally great. I pressed pause on work, despite some anxiety that it caused me, and I got to meet one of my biggest inspirations. Even better, I got personal workout attention from her, and may be on TV tonight!
All in all, this pause delayed my workday until 1pm. Something funny happened, though. I felt so energized and inspired that I worked EXTRA efficiently today. I plowed through a page-long to-do list with some very critical items and never even took a facebook break. Instead, I took 3 small 5 minute breaks where I ran up and down 6 flights of stairs, which got me energized and quickly back on task. Maybe I am finding that my pauses need to be accompanied by physical activity in order to clear my head! I got more done in 4.5 hours today than I typically get done in at least 8.
Since October, my work schedule has been a little strange because I have been adapting to setting boundaries at my post-doc position (trying to keep it to 20 hours...though it often floats near 30) and working "full time" for our private company where I do training and consultation. While this shift was supposed to represent more balance since it was moving from 2 to 1.5 jobs, it actually has been a bit more complicated than before as I have figured out my new roles at both jobs and tried to figure out how to split up my time. I kind of feel like I was working even more than usual. This did not leave a lot of time to take PAUSE. In fact, I felt like I was trying to push myself into fast forward most of the time to satisfy all the demands.
I really like my work. My work is very connected to my personal identity, my self-worth, my sense of being independent and self-sufficient, and my feeling of contribution to the world. I feel so grateful every day to have the jobs that I have because they are rooted in improving the lives of children. Despite my passion for my work, there are times when I really need to be better about putting it aside, not just physically, but also on a cognitive level. I think maybe this is why I like to run--for whatever reason when I am running, I don't think about work.
This morning, I had planned to return to my office. Then, yesterday I heard that Jillian Michaels would be at the Grove this morning to do a free workout. For those of you who don't know, I love Jillian Michaels. I own all her DVDs, I watch the Biggest Loser every week. I dislike when she tries to do psychotherapy, but I enjoy her hard-ass approach to training. I decided to press pause on returning to work and instead brave the 41 degree weather and rain to go meet Jillian Michaels.
I won't relate the whole story--it would be too long and most of you don't care so much to hear about how long I waited, how cold it was, how hot Jillian looked, how nice Jillian was to us, how hard the workout kicked my butt. In sum, it was totally great. I pressed pause on work, despite some anxiety that it caused me, and I got to meet one of my biggest inspirations. Even better, I got personal workout attention from her, and may be on TV tonight!
All in all, this pause delayed my workday until 1pm. Something funny happened, though. I felt so energized and inspired that I worked EXTRA efficiently today. I plowed through a page-long to-do list with some very critical items and never even took a facebook break. Instead, I took 3 small 5 minute breaks where I ran up and down 6 flights of stairs, which got me energized and quickly back on task. Maybe I am finding that my pauses need to be accompanied by physical activity in order to clear my head! I got more done in 4.5 hours today than I typically get done in at least 8.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Pressing Pause
Ah, resolutions. This year, I have plenty of them.
Take the EPPP and get licensed as a Psychologist.
I am going to buy the study software TODAY.
Regularly back up my laptop.
I am so horrible about this.
Make pictures albums out of my digital photographs so that if they are all stolen again I can have hard copies.
If only I could figure out which company makes the best picture books?
Pay off my credit card debt.
Ugh.
Hire an accountant.
Double ugh.
Go visit my friends and family on the East Coast.
April?
Cook something new every week.
Geoff will enjoy this one....I hope.
Sign up for yoga.
This just seems like the right thing to do every time I walk past Yoga Source in Larchmont.
Party like a rockstar before I start making babies at some vague point in the future.
Already underway.
So, a friend of mine from high school recently posted something about the relative futility of New Years Resolutions on FB, and the idea of choosing a single word upon which to concentrate in the coming year rather than a specific behavioral goal. This idea appealed to me for several reasons. First, I am historically a kind of resolution-junkie. Living an academic lifestyle for all these years has bred a kind of cyclical nature to my motivation--I am generally exhilarated at the start of a semester as I promise secretly to myself that I will finally enact some magical organization strategy so that piles of paper don't swallow up my home and office and/or I will begin anew with some kind of running schedule that will erase inches off my waistline and minutes off my marathon personal record. In these fantasies, I will generally be a better version of myself...someone who never procrastinates, who always finds the silver lining, who always remembers birthdays...
Anyhow, these are clearly just visions that I generally fail to manifest. Until just a couple of years ago, I would almost constantly beat myself up for what I perceived to be these little daily failures. Then an amazing thing happened--my life kind of fell apart under my feet, I turned thirty, and somewhere in the midst of that I started being happy with who I am, even on my worst of days. I go to bed almost every day feeling like I did the best I could, and that is all that matters. So cliche, but just simply true.
So back to the idea of the one word. The idea of bringing some mindfulness to a single word that could go across different goals appealed to me. I started thinking about it before New Years. I thought about it while driving up through the green rolling hills of the central coast of California. I thought about it as we checked into a hotel that looked like a Grandmother's house. I thought about it while I tasted wine with good friends, and as I curled my hair for our night of revelry. I thought about it as we danced in the cold and my handsome husband pulled me close and kept me warm and kissed me at midnight. It started to come to me as I laid in the canopy bed next to fireplace in the wee hours of 1/1/11. PAUSE.
Being in the grandma hotel reminded me of something that has been missing from my life over the last few years since my Nana died. A couple of times each year, my ever-manic life would be put on pause when I went to visit. At her house, there was no cell service. No internet. My days with her were spent talking, cooking, cleaning, reading, playing cards, waiting for Jeopardy to come on TV...all the while surrounded in the vestiges of my childhood. Days moved slowly. My brain stopped racing when I was there. It was wonderful.
All that being said, I would probably go nuts if I was there all the time. For those of you who know me, you are familiar with my semi-hypomanic existence. I am constantly multi-tasking. I send and receive, on average, about 150 emails per day. For most of 2010, I worked two full times jobs while planning my wedding. I am always moving or thinking about my next move. This seems maddening to most people I know, but it just comes kind of naturally to me and I am perfectly happy being very, very busy. However, I have discovered in the last year that I do not hit pause enough. Some of my greatest moments of regret from the last year were just small moments that resulted in medium mistakes when I rushed to make a decision on something(s) and did not take pause to think through the repercussions.
Given these regrets, my resolution to have a year of mindfulness around the word PAUSE. My mechanism for this resolution is going to be this blog. I am going to challenge myself to press pause more often. Some days that may mean taking time to relax and do nothing, other days it may mean taking pause before making a decision.
I started this process yesterday, by taking pause on starting the blog. At first, I thought it might be a lame idea. I brought up the one-word idea at brunch after jumping into the icy Pacific ocean (not good to pause before that kind of thing, you just need to go forth screaming). Someone at the table who may or may not be my husband suggested the word "nudity" as my theme. I realized that others might think my little mindfulness project is silly, and I paused. Do I really care if people think its silly? Happily, I discovered at the end of my pause that no, I don't care. I think it will be a good experiment. Plus, just the process of writing about it has made me pause multiple times today, which is a good thing already.
Take the EPPP and get licensed as a Psychologist.
I am going to buy the study software TODAY.
Regularly back up my laptop.
I am so horrible about this.
Make pictures albums out of my digital photographs so that if they are all stolen again I can have hard copies.
If only I could figure out which company makes the best picture books?
Pay off my credit card debt.
Ugh.
Hire an accountant.
Double ugh.
Go visit my friends and family on the East Coast.
April?
Cook something new every week.
Geoff will enjoy this one....I hope.
Sign up for yoga.
This just seems like the right thing to do every time I walk past Yoga Source in Larchmont.
Party like a rockstar before I start making babies at some vague point in the future.
Already underway.
So, a friend of mine from high school recently posted something about the relative futility of New Years Resolutions on FB, and the idea of choosing a single word upon which to concentrate in the coming year rather than a specific behavioral goal. This idea appealed to me for several reasons. First, I am historically a kind of resolution-junkie. Living an academic lifestyle for all these years has bred a kind of cyclical nature to my motivation--I am generally exhilarated at the start of a semester as I promise secretly to myself that I will finally enact some magical organization strategy so that piles of paper don't swallow up my home and office and/or I will begin anew with some kind of running schedule that will erase inches off my waistline and minutes off my marathon personal record. In these fantasies, I will generally be a better version of myself...someone who never procrastinates, who always finds the silver lining, who always remembers birthdays...
Anyhow, these are clearly just visions that I generally fail to manifest. Until just a couple of years ago, I would almost constantly beat myself up for what I perceived to be these little daily failures. Then an amazing thing happened--my life kind of fell apart under my feet, I turned thirty, and somewhere in the midst of that I started being happy with who I am, even on my worst of days. I go to bed almost every day feeling like I did the best I could, and that is all that matters. So cliche, but just simply true.
So back to the idea of the one word. The idea of bringing some mindfulness to a single word that could go across different goals appealed to me. I started thinking about it before New Years. I thought about it while driving up through the green rolling hills of the central coast of California. I thought about it as we checked into a hotel that looked like a Grandmother's house. I thought about it while I tasted wine with good friends, and as I curled my hair for our night of revelry. I thought about it as we danced in the cold and my handsome husband pulled me close and kept me warm and kissed me at midnight. It started to come to me as I laid in the canopy bed next to fireplace in the wee hours of 1/1/11. PAUSE.
Being in the grandma hotel reminded me of something that has been missing from my life over the last few years since my Nana died. A couple of times each year, my ever-manic life would be put on pause when I went to visit. At her house, there was no cell service. No internet. My days with her were spent talking, cooking, cleaning, reading, playing cards, waiting for Jeopardy to come on TV...all the while surrounded in the vestiges of my childhood. Days moved slowly. My brain stopped racing when I was there. It was wonderful.
All that being said, I would probably go nuts if I was there all the time. For those of you who know me, you are familiar with my semi-hypomanic existence. I am constantly multi-tasking. I send and receive, on average, about 150 emails per day. For most of 2010, I worked two full times jobs while planning my wedding. I am always moving or thinking about my next move. This seems maddening to most people I know, but it just comes kind of naturally to me and I am perfectly happy being very, very busy. However, I have discovered in the last year that I do not hit pause enough. Some of my greatest moments of regret from the last year were just small moments that resulted in medium mistakes when I rushed to make a decision on something(s) and did not take pause to think through the repercussions.
Given these regrets, my resolution to have a year of mindfulness around the word PAUSE. My mechanism for this resolution is going to be this blog. I am going to challenge myself to press pause more often. Some days that may mean taking time to relax and do nothing, other days it may mean taking pause before making a decision.
I started this process yesterday, by taking pause on starting the blog. At first, I thought it might be a lame idea. I brought up the one-word idea at brunch after jumping into the icy Pacific ocean (not good to pause before that kind of thing, you just need to go forth screaming). Someone at the table who may or may not be my husband suggested the word "nudity" as my theme. I realized that others might think my little mindfulness project is silly, and I paused. Do I really care if people think its silly? Happily, I discovered at the end of my pause that no, I don't care. I think it will be a good experiment. Plus, just the process of writing about it has made me pause multiple times today, which is a good thing already.
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