inner saboteur

I heard something today in yoga class.  Sweaty and out of breath, laying in savasana, the teacher reminded us to tune into our breath, and said, “ If you find your mind wandering, find your breath and focus on it.  The beautiful thing about your breath is it’s always there.  You can always go back to it.  You can always start again.” The Choice Trap And yet, we often act like we can’t. “I screwed things up with that client, I can never build it back up again.” “I didn’t major in the right thing in college, now I’m trapped.” “That acting thing didn’t work out.  And now I’m too old and don’t have the right experience, no one is ever going to hire me.” “I was doing so great with that new habit, and then I lost traction.  What’s the point, I may as well give up?  I’ll never be able to get back into it now.” That last quote was mine today, in relation to this blog.  I had set myself the task of writing 2 times a week, and this week it got away from me for no good reason.  And then I look at my watch and realize it’s Thursday afternoon and I’ve written nothing this week.  And then I told myself, “See Shelley, you knew you’d never do this.  This is why you never should have started that stupid blog again in the first place!  You don’t have what it takes to sustain this new habit.  You might as well give up.  You suck!”  And then it got even worse, and I found myself in a pit of self-induced shame.  Telling myself that I “should be” better at this by now, and I “should” practice the things I preach to my clients. The Problem with Should Until I realized I was “shoulding” all over myself – also something I warn my clients about. Dang.  I hate it when I’m right. So here I am, MacBook in hand, and I told that voice to shut up today, because I choose to remember what my teacher said.  I also choose to remember what William Glasser said, who wrote Choice Theory, one hell of a book, and coincidentally one of the best books I’ve ever read.  (He’s dead, just in case you’re wondering, but not from making bad choices.)  His premise was that every moment of every day is a choice.  I can choose to believe I’m a failure, or I can choose to believe otherwise.  I can choose to move closer to this person in this moment, or I can choose to move away from them.  Will that choice serve me or not?  In every moment there is some element of agency.  Some element where I can become the master of my own fate, even if it’s just changing what I choose to believe about what happened.  A very helpful thing indeed if I choose my own interpretation, because unfortunately I haven’t become omnipotent yet.  Otherwise the […]

To everything There is a season And a time to every purpose, under heaven   A time to be born, a time to die A time to plant, a time to reap A time to kill, a time to heal A time to laugh, a time to weep   To everything There is a season And a time to every purpose, under heaven   A time to build up, a time to break down A time to dance, a time to mourn A time to cast away stone, a time to gather stones together   To everything There is a season And a time to every purpose, under heaven   A time to gain, a time to lose A time to rend, a time to sew A time for love, a time for hate A time for peace.   Nice, isn’t it? I was reminded of this song, or bible verse, however you prefer to look at it, most recently. I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but it happens to me quite frequently: I start seeing a quote, a phrase, a poem everywhere. It’s kind of annoying. I keep hoping that I’ll see the winning Texas Powerball numbers instead. So far no dice, the powers seem to just be limited to prose. But then my intuition reminds me that this is probably something I need to pay attention to and maybe if I’d didn’t stick my head in the sand like an oversized ostrich, I’d probably learn something useful.   So I tuned into the message and found myself thinking, 2021 has been a hell of a ride in ways I never could have anticipated. I have found myself fluttering between two states – hyperactivity and lethargy. Okay fine, if I’m more honest than not, it’s the later state. This is quite hard for me to say, the recovering perfection junkie that I am. There have been several mornings that I’ve woken up, and frankly, I haven’t felt like doing much. So I didn’t. Don’t take this to mean I sat around in my highly alluring bathrobe all day with my husband and cats watching reruns of Judge Judy and eating Velveeta and rotel (don’t knock the golden cheese food goodness until you’ve tried it). I don’t need an intervention just yet. I did all the usual things, coached clients, paid bills, went to the grocery store, redecorated my office, planted a garden which I even actually managed to get a couple of eggplants from, until it got infested by these weird snails and flies that destroyed it. You know, normal life stuff.   But all the while there was this nagging voice in my head. You haven’t made progress on your childfree group. At one point I had this vision of building it to about a million ladies and using it as a platform to achieve Oprah like stardom. You haven’t written another book, the voice kept nagging. I will admit I’ve started at least two […]