call people back when they call me

...my thinking is changing. Now I check messages, emails, and I just think “gotta get back to them NOW”. And I do! =) I am paying attention to how my mind tells me to ‘wait for a better time’ when honestly the best time tends to be Right Now.

Waiting for the better time is actually procrastination and perfectionism rearing it’s ugly head.

My ex, whom I have a good relationship with, kept calling and calling. I didn’t call him back cause I just got married and well didn’t know his reaction: projection. I knew he has been really lonely and I didn’t want to rub salt in the wound. Well he texted me just a phone number and I thought it was this other friend and called back.

So apologies made, we actually had a nice chat, this was the last person I was avoiding so hopefully I can continue my good progress here.

I am making progress here too. It is interesting to observe my mind, and how I will start projecting perfectionism into what the conversation will be, or if I waited too long already to call someone back, or they’ll want to get together for dinner and I don’t have the money and other such trivialities. It really is a vampire of the mind (the four agreements calls it a parasite) that drains me.

And then I get all this weird energy built up in odd thoughts that is simply released by returning the phone call. I deserve that peace.

One BabyStep at a time, peace is mine in 2009!

Okay, It was really hard..I just don’t like chatting on the phone, not with everybody at least. And I like to make phone calls according to my schedule, not other people’s schedules. So what happens is that, I get a phone call from someone, when I’m busy, studying, or working out, or watching my favorite TV show, so I don’t answer it. But I know who called me. And then comes the tricky part. I keep saying, ok, I’ll call her back when I finish, I’ll call her back on my way back home…stuff like that, and this could go on for days, till finally it’s too late to call back :((((
but I’m fighting this, all the time. Now when I find a missed call on my mobile, i call the person who called me. Sometimes I delay the call back for sure, but at least I don’t cancel it altogether as I used to do. It’s really a fight, u have to fight urself over this, coz it’s really easy to not call back, and then u end up losing friends and loved ones, coz simply they got the time to call u, and u didn’t even call Back !!!

i’m not doing a fantastic job with this goal. It took me a whole week to call back one of my friends in SF. But, last night my friend in SD called me. I called him back tonight and we ended up having a nice chat that made me feel a little better about some of the major life decisions i’m making.

my friend in chicago called today. i was super tired from my long run and didn’t feel like chatting. but i called her back and found that she really needed to talk. i’m glad i picked up the phone.

tonight i actually answered the phone – twice! even though i didn’t feel like talking much. i had a good chat with my aunt and one of my other friends. answering the phone is so much easier than procrastinating and trying to call the person back ‘when i feel like it.’ i never feel like it.

I am soooo bad at calling people back. One of my friends has to call me at least 12 times before I return his call. The worst part is that I’m in grad school, so most of my friends and family are not in the same city as me. My goal is to return calls within 24 hours.