take part in the Big Peace

I tried this. It was entertaining and I am sure it has helped alot of people.

I read the emails when they came in, but I don’t really feel like the whole thing was for me, it just didn’t click with me I guess.

Still, the emails were interesting even if I didn’t “Do” them.

..because most of the exercises I merely cast an eye over and went “Hm, yeah, interesting, I’ll do that later”, and then totally failed to find time to do. There’s something frightening about the fact that I put my own relaxation last on the list. But nontheless, it was an interesting exercise and gave me some food for thought, not least in my own capacity as life coach.

One thing I’ve learned is that I definitely definitely need to make time to chill out. I’ve taken to going to bed earlier, and switching off the computer earlier, and even taking breaks away from it, but it’s still not enough, really. Perhaps I could actively plan my relaxation like I actively plan everything else in my life.

“If you didn’t have to prove you were good enough today – what would you do differently?”

I’ve skipped quite a few before this email, but having read it last night it suddenly spoke to me: having struggled into work today, and then left on my pre-planned half-day not to study but to sleep, I’m going to stop trying to be superwoman/great employee (hah!!). Truth is, I can’t cope with work AND study AND being under the weather!

I’m going to take advantage (in a nice way!) of my boss being understanding about both lurgee and exams, and let myself recover fully over the next four days, without trying to juggle EVERYTHING!

(sorry, didn’t mean to binge on this goal all at once!)

“Today we are not going to focus on the big picture and start
cleaning up the details in our life. Details generally occur in the present and you can do something about them without being paralysed with fear or analysing the fluff in your navel.

“Take one action right now which you feel will improve your life instantly.

“Now take another one.”

This just follows on so well from the previous email, and fits my current situation: big picture (exams/coursework) terrifying! Details: finish revising Boolean algebra – manageable!

A lot of 43T is about setting small steps to move goals forward, but it’s still so very very easy to get overwhelmed. I love this BP email – just, do something! That’s also why I love the range of things I’ve put in my BYY goals – really, it shouldn’t matter what I’m doing (unless it’s playing spider solitaire – hey, I’m aware of my imperfections!), it’s moving some aspect of my life along.

This one has actually been in practice over the past week or so – I’m trying to stop saying, “Oh, it’s not worth washing two plates and a cup, I’ll catch up tomorrow!” and leaving myself with less piles of dishes ;) It does work! LOL!

Still in catch up mode! I have been reading the emails, and some of it’s crept in to real life.

The 25th Feb email was about concentrating on the here and now – or as Suzy puts it, “Forget about the future making you happy – work out what can make you happy right now.” I’m in two minds: on the one hand, I think we’re all working hard to improve our lives here, and to an extent that does involve preparing for the future – I can’t achieve my degree today, although I believe it will make me happy in the future, and you could easily argue that slogging through revision doesn’t make me happy today!

However, I’m not going to argue with the exercise. It’s true – we do only have today. And yes, while I’m setting aside some current happiness for future joy, I do still have to find happiness now.

Anyway. Suzy’s advice is to stop saying ‘one day’ and just get on with what you want to do. Wanna write a book? Go get a notebook and start scribbling! It is excellent advice – although, I’m still going to set aside a whole load of things for later, and just pick her last comment: “Feeling overwhelmed? Start somewhere”. I can’t achieve anything fretting about April 15/17 – I can just do what I can do today.

I’ve fallen quite behind with these, which is odd considering (a) I think the whole programme is becoming more relevant, and (b) if I ever needed peace, right before exams would be the time!

Anyway. Flicking back a whole fortnight, Suzy’s email was about meditation – something I’ve long had an interest in learning, but never seem to sit and do. However, she describes the process succinctly (for a beginner like me!), and I really have been trying to find a few minutes each day (at most 10 – it feels far too early in the process to go for the 20 she recommends!) to still my mind.

I think this is a long-term process, but I’m happy that it does help. I have goals around relaxation, but relaxing your mind is a whole lot more difficult than giving your body time to chill. Definitely one I want to stick to.

(incidently, Martha Beck was a fan of meditation time, too – I like when things cross over!)

CALMNESS IN OUR LIVES

I am passing this on to you because it definitely works, and we could all use a little more calmness in our lives. By following simple advice heard on the Dr. Phil show, you too can find inner peace.

Dr Phil proclaimed, “The way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started and have never finished.”

So, I looked around my house to see all the things I started and hadn’t finished, and before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of White Zinfandel, a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream, a package of Oreos, the remainder of my old pain killer prescription, the rest of the cheesecake, some Doritos, and a box of chocolates.

You have no idea how freaking good I feel right now.

Pass this on to those whom you think might be in need of inner peace.

OMMMMMMMMMMMM :)

“Negative thoughts are like snarling lions – they have us hooked. We are attached to them and we do focus on them and wrestle with them because we think if we don’t, they’ll eat us.

“The irony is that the more we wrestle and fight them, the more power we give them. However, to step outside and be able to observe our beliefs dissolves their power.”

A very appropriate email to come home to, given the latest round of shit throwing going on at work. Having just about started to half-accept (maybe!) the ‘didn’t outperform enough of colleagues’, today I met with the new document, marking me down across the board to justify the rating I’ve already been given. I am so furious. The document behind it all is so subjective, that someone with an ‘average’ grading will just get whatever their job expects of them and ‘yeah, you sort of do that’. Me? I’m being downgraded and thus said document is being examined with a magnifying glass. No one manages 100% in those columns – but, if you’re marked for an average anyway, 50% will be good enough. Not for me! It is very painful having a pile of faults picked out – and none of the positives highlighted. And being pulled up for being ‘negative’ – sorry, that’s called being realistic (and usually with a healthy dose of gallows humour, thank you very much), and where the hell does it say on my job description I have to be little miss sunshine!? This is such shit – and a complete turn about in message, thank you!

Oh yeah – and there is NO excuse for picking up a pile of stuff I ‘haven’t been doing’ for the past year – if you haven’t bothered mentioning it to me all year. You wanted me to do x?! Well why the fuck didn’t you ask me to do x?!!

::deep breath::

There’s my lion. It’s a foul beast, with stinky breath. But while I’m sobbing into my tea over how shit it all is, whoosh – there’s another hour’s studying lost. Zoom – there goes a relaxing hour working on the inner me.

I am so much better than that job. I’m going to keep looking at the boxcars with my degree and my ‘me’ stuff instead. I’m going to try to become a dispassionate observer of my job, and my thoughts around it – until I can finally escape!

Okay, so Suzy kind of lost me a bit over the past while, but it does mean I have a backlog of emails to pick and chose from. This one didn’t speak to me much at the time, but today it does.

[aside, the previous one to this (‘Flow’) was about doing stuff you wanted, and – without conscious regard to BP, I rather did: I’ve been planning the week/end around a fun activity (cinema), and being determined not to give it up for chores. It’s working – everything is still getting done and I have fun! But I want to work on this more]

“If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, ‘meow’ ... how can you accept that the cat is going to meow?”

For me right now, I’m raging against the injustice of my recent grading. I underperformed my uber-performing colleagues, did I? Right, so they all made/saved more than 50K – and can prove it?! Argh! Right now I don’t feel I can – or want to! – roll over and accept it all. I want to fight, goddamnit!! In fact, if the damn kitty doesn’t start yipping like a chihauhua, I’ll be booting it across the damn room!!

Which… isn’t calming, it the slightest. Sigh. Enter Suzy:

“Today …identify the ‘aggro’ thought …the thought that makes you feel stressed/annoyed/sad. And then choose a more soothing thought to think. Practice soothing yourself today.”

So, I can’t give up on the barking lessons yet, but while I’m not actively dealing with it I’m going to try not thinking about it, try for some more soothing thoughts instead.