I Don't Climb Mountains, but......

My radio silence has been intentional, although I’ve severely missed writing here. There’s a lot going on in life right now and that simply requires me to sit and focus on what I need at any given moment. Chaos is the most important time for self-care. Some moments I need a nap, or food, or silence, or laughter. Some moments require tears; others require me to power down my phone and laptop to be fully present to myself for a night. This is how I live moment-to-moment in the present these days. This keeps the crazy at bay and allows for a lot of grace and perspective.

Through it all I am meditating daily on a story a friend told me about a guy who was determined to climb one of the most challenging mountain trails in the world. This feat would take training, intense preparation, and it would take him two weeks to get to the top. Regardless, he was determined. As he finally started out on his journey, alone yet prepared, he passed a hiker coming down the trail. It was the first person he had seen all day.

With pep still in his step and excitement still brimming within him, he stopped the experienced traveler and asked,

“What advice can you give me for making it to the top?”

The traveler replied,

“You have to realize it’s just walking. There will be wind, rain, scorching sun, the forces of nature. You will realize you’re alone, you’ve never felt more alone, and fear will set in. There will be moments you will feel like you cannot possibly take another stride. In those moments, remind yourself that it’s just one step in front of the other. Take one more step, then another step. That’s how you’ll make it to the top. It’s just walking.”

I am struck with the incredible beauty of that story. How often does life feel unmanageable and we want to hit the reset button,

or quit,

or run,

or hide,

or disappear until the emotional nuclear warfare is over?

There is nothing too big, no such thing as taking too much time, and no reason to feel angst. All of life is just walking, just taking the next stride. We do not need to sprint or rush or be better to feel better. We get to feel the exhaustion, catch our breath, hydrate and remind ourselves...

It’s just walking. 

Monday Redux

Ah, Mondays.

Some Mondays start the week off fantastically bright and brilliant; others can leave something to be desired. Some Mondays are like a train moving as fast as a bullet from a gun and heading toward something impenetrable. In those cases, you need a Monday Redux.

I recommend breakfast for dinner.

When conversations don’t seem to happen clearly and nothing goes right, you’re misunderstood, misrepresented, and feeling unsupported, and clients cut out on you at the last minute due to a death in the family, and you have to fill the gap with limited time and resources...

I recommend breakfast for dinner.

When your staff is in tears because they are stressed, people have to leave an important meeting early, intentionally mean emails are flowing into your inbox before the ripe hour of 10am, and daylight savings has robbed you of a sweet hour of sleep leaving you feeling sensitive and fragile...

I recommend breakfast for dinner.

When you don’t receive the support you need and ask for, a mandatory building evacuation happens at the height of your workday due to an unidentified object that leads (unarmed) security to wonder if it’s an explosive, and it causes you to miss eating lunch between a crammed day of meetings, and all of this leaves work undone that was due an hour ago...

I recommend breakfast for dinner.

When you roll your eyes at your boss because they unknowingly made things complicated for you and added two hours of clean up work to your plate, your main office receptionist has to leave work because he’s sick, you have an hour and a half meeting with an investigator over an important personal issue, and you’re coworker that you’re also friends with hugs you and says it’s going to be okay...

I recommend breakfast for dinner.

And when the love of your life is busy with work and you have no idea how you’re going to wake up tomorrow and do the whole thing all over again, it’s important to remember that sometimes we just have shit days. And you make breakfast for dinner.

Pour the mimosas, make a ricotta scramble, sizzle the honey bacon, devour sliced strawberries in Jack'n brown sugar sauce, and butter the (gluten-free) toast.

Have breakfast again.

Hit the internal restart button.

Monday Redux.

Brené Brown Has Ruined Me

Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness. – Brené Brown

..............................

 

I wrote last night. It’s been a long time since I carved out time from my full-time job and 2-hour+ daily commute to sit and do what I love. I expected it to be refreshing and rejuvenating. Some of it was. Then I popped around various blogs and online publications reading other works of communicative art. I wish I could say that I was filled with encouragement and insight... but the only insight I went to bed with was, “Everyone else is so talented. That’s not me.” I was riddled with comparison and envy and fear.

I woke up with an emotional hangover.

I sat outside on the patio with my coffee, feeling like the sun was way too warm for that hour of morning (which is typical in Los Angeles), and my head spun stories. It told me about all the ways I didn’t match up to my dreams.

Observing what was happening inside, I knew what I needed to do. I needed to pray, not reach for the TV remote or something to numb me from my self-made pain, and I needed to tell other people about what I was experiencing. A daunting task.

I texted...

Just have to share that I am really challenged with my “enoughness” today. Feels likes ocean waves sweeping over me of not being good enough, smallness, and insignificance. I’m sitting in it, trying to learn from it, trying to remind myself of the truth that I AM enough.

In the past, I believed sharing something that deep, that real, that honest would make me appear weak. Sometimes I still I feel like I would rather die than reveal the Grand Canyon that sits in my chest. Hold it together at all costs. Don’t cry in public. Impression management.

This is how Brené Brown has ruined me.

My head and my heart are often at war with each other, and the most powerful solution to healing that part of me that is screaming inside is to share it. I don’t lose anything; in fact, I gain dignity in sharing my truth. It is my fear that keeps me feeling small. Sharing the ache might not bring relief immediately but a lifestyle of vulnerability is a worthy, self-loving aim. (Right, Brené?)

Audacious, if I do say so myself. 

Staying Curious

There are few things more attractive to me than a genuinely curious question.

I’ve had a fantastic week of getting together with old friends, mentors, new friends, and talking about our lives over a good meal. Instead of allowing the to-do lists of things to get done, errands to run, and emails to respond to taking up my mental real estate, I’ve chosen to be present with these cherished individuals. Fully engaged in the moment. Eye contact, allowing my senses to feel everything the present moment had to offer.

I’m also asking questions that allow me to learn more about the other person no matter how long we've been in relationship together. Questions that inform me simply about who they are and what feeds them. I ask and I learn.

My favorite questions to ask others recently are:

What is your biggest current challenge?

And,

What is inspiring you?

I have been amazed to hear the responses. Some have been unexpected, and that’s a good thing. That helps me recognize again and again that I don’t ever really know what someone is facing unless I’m curious and ask without expectation or assumption of the response. It’s a choose your own adventure novel being written in real time. I’ve grown in my capacity to learn from their experiences. I’ve learned how to be a better friend in support of them. I’ve also been faced with my own challenges and inspirations.

A good question is a gift to everyone involved. Take advantage of it. You just might learn something.

He Said/She Said

Conversation is the connective tissue for all relationships. We need it to move forward, to grow, and to develop. When I teach communication courses, the entire first few class sessions revolve around the power of dialogue and the degree to which it influences us. Because it’s hugely powerful.

Communication is our relational currency. We must treat it well.

Upon realizing this truth (I mean really seeing this) over the past couple of years, I have been struck with my own neglect and carelessness in some of my relational interactions. I will boldly share with you that in the past I have felt the freedom to share about other people’s pain in inappropriate ways and with people who had no business being exposed to what I shared. I’ve made other people’s business my business. I’ve indulged in the details of other people’s pain and masked it as “concern” or “care” when reality was it played the role of the drama de jour that so-and-so just had to know about.

While this behavior was not at the constant center of my life, I was leaking humanity at an alarming rate. Anyone could see this tendency of mine popping up all over. Regretfully, I have not been an altogether safe person.

That tendency stopped working for me in a radical way, however. I believe that sometimes it takes great pain to reveal what we need to change, and one day I found myself the focus of other people’s gossip. I was already in a world of hurt at that time, suffering from nearly debilitating depression and anxiety, the soul ache of a pending divorce, and a world of shattered choices I had made. I probably felt that I deserved what others shared about me to some degree. Regardless, that’s when my awareness of wanting to do my relationships differently showed up. Things were going to change because no one deserved to feel the way I did when word got back to me.

Immediately, I was inspired to believe that none of us will ever have the full story of what’s happening for someone. Period. Let’s call this “humility.” First, coming from a place of humility means that we are keenly aware that we do not know what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes even if we have experienced similar things in our life. We are not them. They are not us.

Also, we don’t have all the answers.

Second, I find that it can be all too easy to share details that are not our place to share about someone. Perhaps some of these things might seem harmless and insignificant, maybe even surface level. However, I believe living mindfully and developing healthy relationships means we give dignity to our fellows’ stories and behave in a way that builds trust. As tantalizing and tempting as it may be to share a piece of juicy information we are privy to about someone, we do them a disservice by sharing it with others. We aren’t honoring anyone in that situation. 

For me, generally, I do not feel comfortable talking about someone who isn’t present.

Huge note here: I do not do any of this perfectly. I am hugely flawed and this happens to be a specific area I consciously work on today.

I have found that social media offers us extensive fodder for gossip-y kinds of behavior. The worst thing about that kind of gossip is it’s socially acceptable. Do we consciously realize what we are doing when we say, “Oh my gosh. Did you see what _______ posted today?”

Or, take for example how many times we engage in this kind of talk:

Did you hear what happened to ________?....

She broke up with him because....

He hates his boss and he said....

She has a _______ problem and it’s out of control....

He hasn’t talked to his best friend since....

It is none of our business.

Do we want to share in communal support of friends who going through difficulties? Yes, absolutely. But sometimes we can get in the way of really loving people by meddling in the details, “playing God,” and not truly holding space for others to live out their journey with dignity. I urge us to become intentionally safe people where others walk away from us feeling honored.

If communication really is the currency of our relationships, where are we investing?

Riding With Ryan

It’s uncommon for someone to commute 62 miles from their home to their day job, I think. (And perhaps I would like to believe I am special and unique for my commute so I feel the validity to complain about it.)

Regardless, I was thrilled to find out my new apartment is exactly two blocks away from one of my favorite coworkers and his wife. He offered the idea that we carpool to work as often as possible to save on some dough and provide entertainment (we think we are hilarious) for the otherwise quite boring, long drive. We were additionally thrilled to hear that carpooling means HR offers us the bonus of specialized parking spots AND we get entered in raffles for giftcards as an incentive to carpool. Cheesecake Factory, here I come!

The first couple weeks of carpooling were filled with excitement and fun, even at the ungodly hour of 6:50am. We would greet each other with Dumb and Dumber quotes, which is divine confirmation we are meant to be friends, as we clinked our coffee to-go containers to cheers the day ahead.

But mornings started to feel much too early and uninteresting. As any sort of relationship, it got to a point where the performance nature of our morning rituals waned. It is just too damn early for cheeriness some days.

We have grown to a new state of comfortability and mutual respect that can only be rendered by trust built over time. I am learning something about vulnerability and presentness with our carpool relationship. Outside of his spouse and my partner, we experience the rawness of each other directly. First, we see each other pre-caffeinated and I can’t fathom of a more vulnerable state to be in. He sees me without make up. I see him frustrated and worked up over situations at work on our ride home. Sometimes we talk; sometimes we listen to music (driver’s choice). We allow each other to feel whatever we feel in the moment – happiness, anger, and anything between. Often times we laugh and encourage each other, and we kick each other’s ass when we’re clearly just being Mr/Miss Cranky Pants and indulging self-pity.

This is essence of authentic relationships. No performance. No perfection. No pretending. No bullshit.

I only realized this situation has been a profound learning opportunity for me this week. I’m grateful for it. It’s teaching me how to be human and imperfect. I’m trusting others again, learning that I don’t have to try to be my best version of myself to be liked and accepted. Who knew carpooling would end up being my own personal classroom.

The Hammock Club

The University I work at enrolls some exceptionally talented and creative students, and the markedly awesome part about us is we empower them to launch their own ideas. I heard about a student club this week that I fell in love with:

The Hammock Club.

I immediately pictured melancholy hippy hipster kids who don't wear shoes, frowning and listening to their no-one-has-heard-of-that-band music. However, they are far, far from my judgmental idea. It’s a diverse group of students (and staff!) from all walks of life, cultures and ethnicities, ages, etc, that gathering purposefully to participate in community while chilling in a hammock. Read: Coolest.

Not only do they have a great, descriptive name, they have a great purpose statement of “being not doing.” They present hammocking as a way of life, not just a thing they do when they’re camping year round in sunny Sothern California. They host regular “hang times” and currently have 130 members. One member shared with me that they have successfully hung 35 hammocks in one tree. I saw a photo as proof. Whaaaat?

The Hammock Club focuses on connecting with each other and conversation. No one is on their cell phones. No one has their ear buds in. You might find the occasional napper but most of the time they are actively engaged with each other. 

What I additionally find admirable is they aren’t exclusive. In fact, they keep extra hammocks with them just in case a passerby heroically wants to join them. They throw interested strangers a hammock pack, teach them how to set it up between anchors, and engage with them. All are welcome.

They are simply present with each other. In hammocks.

In a culture that tends to be very us-vs.-them, exclusive, and isolated, I find this club –this idea-  to be incredibly refreshing and mindful. I just might add a hammock hang time to my list of fun for 2014.