Tag: self-help

Philosophy

What I am is what I am until I am not

Jen

Most of my greatest ideas come to me either in the shower or while I’m drying my hair.

As do some of the most confounding philosophical dilemmas.

Today in the shower, I found my mind starting to spin towards that place called:

What is my purpose?

I started wondering, “Is this who I am supposed to be? Is this what I am supposed to be doing?”

I started to feel concern that I wasn’t acting fast enough or prudent enough or being selfish or selfless enough.

I started to panic a little. And then I got angry. Resentful.

And then…only a few minutes later, as I was towel drying my hair… I broke free.

It was a miracle.  Usually, once I get started, my mind will spin out of control in that direction for a lot longer than a ten minute shower.

How did I break free?

Well, a few years ago, I bought a book on CD by Byron Katie. I’ve since lent it out and didn’t get it back so I can’t tell you which one it was. But they tend to overlap a bit, and choosing to listen to one of her books or attend one of her lectures is definitely worth the time.

My biggest takeaway from this Byron Katie CD was a smart, no-nonsense philosophical concept about reality that I am able to return to again and again:

If you were meant to be something, you would be.

Right now. In this moment.

This isn’t a bunch of spiritual mumbo jumbo.

It’s fact.

It makes a lot of sense, which is why I so easily latch on to it.

Think about it.

If I was meant to be something, or someone, I would be.

Now.

Already.

Since I am not that someone or something, clearly I am not meant to be that.

At least, not for now.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that I will never be that something or someone.

And it doesn’t mean I can’t or shouldn’t work towards being that something or someone, if it feels right to me.

If think it’s, indeed, “my purpose.”

It just means I am not meant to be that something or someone right now.

And that, for some reason, is very liberating.

I reminded myself of this as I was drying my hair.

I shook my shoulders a little bit. I smiled at myself in the mirror.

I thought of who I am right now. (Who I am, clearly, meant to be.)

And how I never in a million years could have imagined this version of me only 10 or 15 years ago.

Who did I imagine myself then?

Am I her now?

Not even close.

And perhaps, someone, or something, even better than I ever could have imagined I was meant to be.

Health, Letting Go

Stuck in Your Throat

Jen

Your silence is a cover-up.

It’s a conspiracy between you and the way you think people see you.

Your silence is a ruse.

It’s a simple means of getting from here to there.

Avoiding an accident.

Your silence is a hushed conversation between you and yourself.

It’s a promise.

It’s a plan in the making.

It’s a vendetta.

Your silence is silent until it’s loud.

And then BOOM.

Destruction.

Why are you silent in the face of men who care not if you smile or frown, stay or go, live or die?

Why is your silence, then, in front of them, so valuable? Such a commodity?

Why are you loud in the face of children whose only desires lie in pleasing you?

Why is your silence, then, in front of them, so rare? Out of stock?

Stuck deep down in your throat are all the things you want to say

But you are silent

Anger rages like a river, swirling whirlpools in your throat you swallow.

Until a tidal wave of release

Drowns the ones you love.

Mindfulness, Relationships, Survivalism

We’re all gonna die!

Jen

What do you think causes the majority of our existential angst?

A. Knowing we’re going to die (and not wanting to)

B. Not knowing exactly when we will die

C. Not knowing exactly how we will die

D. All of the above?

I struggle with all of the above.

But today I was having a conversation with myself that went like this:

Let’s say we are somehow able to accept we will die.

Not just understand it intellectually, but actually accept it.

And let’s say, by some magical twist, we are able to learn exactly when and how we will die…

Would we really live our life any differently than we do today?

And, what would World Order look like then?

(I don’t really talk to myself in the third person, by the way.)

There is a phrase:

live_each_day_

But the essential problem with that advice is that gleefully dancing as if nobody’s watching is not really an option if the machine is to keep running.

Quite the contrary, living each day as if it’s not our last is what allows us to pack the school lunches and separate the laundry and spend an hour with the accountant without feeling as if our life is completely pathetic.

We count on tomorrow being better.

= = = =

Most of us live –because we must — as if we have an endless supply of days.

And, yet, we’re terrified each and every day because we know that we don’t.

That is quite a quandary.

No one wants to be a machine.

Yet no one feels comfortable abandoning everything and everyone so they may live their last day every day.

This is the majority of our existential angst:

Finding the absolute perfect balance between living your last day and living as if you have an endless supply.

Health, Living in Community, Love, Making Friends, Mindfulness, Relationships

I’m happy and I know it … clap your hands

Jen

I giggle.

I work hard to make others giggle.

I dream…and enjoy analyzing my dreams.

I engage on social media.

I innovate (at work)

I create (at home)

I write.

I share my writing with others.

I bake cookies.

I surprise the people I love with small treats or notes.

I want to be around people.

I want to know them.

I want to learn more about them.

I want to discover what we have in common and how we can help each other.

I sing.

I kiss my husband.

I take beautiful pictures.

Or silly ones.

Mr. Sunglasses Face

This isn’t a list of the things that make me happy.

It’s a list of ways I know that I am happy.

That life is working for me.

These are ways I know I am doing what is required to care for myself so that my life is one I enjoy … or, at least, feel reasonably satisfied by.

Often times, we think  — if we think at all — about the things that make us happy.

Ice cream.

Sex.

Vacation.

Money.

Baseball.

Air conditioning.

We make mental or actual lists of all the things we need in our life in order to be happy. Or we delineate end goals or possessions we are convinced will make us happier if only we reach them or one day have them.

Better job.

Better wife.

A baby.

Older kids.

A degree.

More sleep.

More quiet.

Less stress.

And while some of us are good at being grateful for what we have– and even acknowledging the good in our life — I don’t often hear from my inner voice listing off the ways I know I am happy now.

Right now.

Or what happy looked like back when it colored my life.

What does happy look like?

Who are you when you’re happy?

If we don’t know what happy looks like, how will we ever get there?

I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that my happy evidence is somewhat missing from the scene.

This was a red alert for me to DO SOMETHING.

So I started thinking about my list.

The list of things that act as evidence that I am happy.

And I started doing those things.

Even though I wasn’t yet happy.

And today, I’m happier.

(I didn’t say HAPPY.)

But

I’m writing.

I’m baking.

I’m spending time with real live human beings.

And engaging a little with the imaginary real live human beings on my screen.

What does happy look like for you?

How will you …

How do you…

recognize it?

Health, Love, Mindfulness, Relationships, Spirituality

Unconventional workout

Jen

I started running.

Yup.

I’m a runner.

A short-distance, short-time runner.

For almost a month, I have been running for 15 minutes every day except for Shabbat.

That’s it. 15 minutes.

And it works. I finally found an exercise regimen that works.

For now.

Maybe it’s not enough for everyone, but it’s enough for me.

For now.

I’ve also committed to writing more.

Tiny tidbits here and there.

A blog or the start of a new short story or a poem for fun spurred by a random writing prompt.

I find, the more I write, the more I write.

And the better I feel.

So between the running and the writing, my physical and emotional health seems to be on the up and up.

I know because my hormones say so.

They say so by being quiet when they are normally loud.

Quiet hormones. Quiet head.

Ahh….

But I think I could add a third element to my personalized workout:

Gratitude.

Gratitude, as we know, is such an energy boost. It’s a life lifter.

When we feel gratitude — the day after a violent stomach bug, or the minute after you avoided a tragedy or danger, or simple moments of love between you and your spouse or your child or your cat — we love life.

In the very moment we feel gratitude, we love life.

And loving life is all any of us ever want. It’s why we exercise. It’s why we write.

It’s why we exist at all — to love life.

So, I’m going to try to add 15 minutes of gratitude to my daily workout regimen.

If it’s that easy to love life, why wouldn’t I?

Want to join me?

Letting Go, Love, Mindfulness, Relationships

Practice hard what you preach; then practice some more

Jen

There is what I preach and there is what I practice and there is sometimes overlap.

All of my preaching is prepared and shared with good intentions.

Yet there is intention and there is action and in between there is emotion.

Emotion gets in the way, sometimes.

A lot of times.

Meaning, no matter how good my intentions, and no matter how loud my preachin’, my emotions trump.

My emotions are

Royal

Straight

Flush.

Which brings me back to practice.

Knowing that my emotions trump my intentions, I may be (and must be) mindful in situations in which emotions run high.

The only way I know how to get better at acting with intention is to notice when I’m not…

and turn it around.

traffic

I love my emotions.

Okay, I value them.

But there are times when I wish what I know to be true would run through and through

all the way to my heart

As opposed to the doubt, the anger, the hurt, the fear

That runs through instead.

And all I can do in those moments

when the through and through is

doubt, anger, hurt, fear

is practice.

= = =

P.S.: For those seeking the conclusion to my driving test saga, sigh, I didn’t pass.

Letting Go, Love, Mindfulness

Giving it up to Cory Booker

Jen

It’s widely agreed among women that following Cory Booker on Twitter is more groin stimulating than the hottest 1980s era episode of All My Children.

But Cory is also a deep thinker, and a spiritual guy –at least his social media strategy team would have us believe.

It’s working. He’s totally got me wrapped around his finger.

Cory shared this on Facebook yesterday:

Courtesy: http://waywire.com/
Courtesy: http://waywire.com/

It was timely for me. (aka “Wow, that Cory Booker is so in my head!)

I’ve been thinking and writing about what I gave up to become who I am now.

Truth is, I think about it a lot. Almost all the time. Definitely, way too much.

Sometimes I wonder if I breathe in nostalgia instead of air.

What could I have been had I made a left instead of a right?

Stayed in Washington instead of moving to New York?

Continued in children’s book publishing instead of leaving to freelance?

Stayed single longer?

Stayed married without kids longer?

Stopped having kids at just one?

At every given moment, indeed, we give up who we are in order to become who we might be.

Right, Cory Booker?

This is automatic. It’s quantum physics (I think). After all, it’s impossible to be who you were and who you are at the very same time. At least, not without a migraine.

If we could do this, we’d be time travelling already. Or having coffee with multi-dimensional beings.

True: We’re often not ready to give up who we are, but just as often we do so in spite of ourselves. Every single day, every single action, may require this on a small level.

And big choices certainly do.

So why not, give it up willingly,  for ourselves?

Life is, indeed, a marathon. Through which we shed many layers of skin.

And each time, we birth ourselves anew.

It’s a much better way to approach life — to approach our Self — than constantly imagining “what might have been.”

The intentional act of giving up who we are propels us forward — from past, to present, to unimaginably awesome future.

Letting Go, Mindfulness, Spirituality

Think lovely thoughts

Jen

Reading the blog yesterday of a childhood friend who grew up to be a rabbi, I came across a phrase I’ve heard before but had forgotten for a long time.

Thought experiment

I love this phrase.

In two words, it implies all that I believe about thinking.

That thoughts are ever-changeable.

That we can manipulate our own thoughts or the way others think about us.

That we have power over our thinking.

That we can be playful with our thoughts.

Make fun of them.

Laugh at them.

Shoo them away when they’re getting in the way.

Caress and nurture the ones that stir our hearts and bellies.

Abandon the ones that have stopped serving us.

Experiment with our thinking. Approach our thinking like we would scientific research — as an experience or an equation that is observable, malleable.

I believe in this method, and yet I often have a hard time employing it.

Like many scientists, I am a firm believer in what I know to be true.

In the facts of my life.

“He is …”

“She does…”

“I will always be…”

“It’s like this…”

“He’ll never…”

Those facts serve me. They allow me to be right about the world I live in. They allow me to make difficult decisions based on previously established and agreed upon evidence. They allow me to feel safe and secure in an existence that is often tenuous and unsure.

Therefore, it’s not so easy to approach those facts (my thoughts) as an experiment.

It means I have to give up being right: About the world, about people who’ve hurt me, or about situations I’ve long ago thought I forgot.

Not to mention — thought experiments are rarely controlled experiments. You’re not alone in a cozy lab coat in a quiet room with no other people, no additional stimulation. During your average thought experiment, it’s NOT just you, just your thoughts,  just listening carefully and watching and taking notes.

Yup. You are right there in the middle of it. All the time.

Thinking. Thinking. Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.

And there’s noise. And hunger. And resentment. And perceived requests, demands, insults.

All that thinking and feeling leaves little room to experiment.

And, if you’re like me, you’re not just thinking, thinking, thinking. Feeling, feeling, feeling.

You’re thinking about the thinking. And judging the feeling.

Not very playful. Not very fun.

Not very experimental.

This is why — and I’m having a light bulb experience myself RIGHT NOW as I write this — I meditate. And this is why I sing. And why I pray my version of prayer; keep my version of Shabbat. And why, on occasion, I seek 20 minutes alone in the bathroom pretending to poop.

So I can have my very own thought experiment.

So I can allow myself the opportunity to observe, explore, and possibly, change my thinking.

Do you do this too?

Do you give yourself an opportunity to thought experiment?

And does it work?

Culture, Family, Learning Hebrew, Letting Go, Love, Middle East Conflict, Spirituality

Daily practice

Jen

The other day I discovered the blog of writer, investor and entrepreneur James Altucher. Someone at work forwarded me a tech-related post Altucher had written; and after exploring his blog a bit I realized that 1) he has a foul tongue (and I like it!) and 2) has much more to offer than subjective evaluations of the market and tips for entrepreneurs: He’s insightful and introspective.

In particular, his August 20 post, “How to be a human,” was chock full of topics of interest to me — the end of the world, the fate of humanity, and the fear and anger that leads a person to spew hatred at a stranger on a public forum.  Certainly, as I am not addressing on this blog a virtual audience the size of Altucher Confidential, I don’t come up against as much public defamation as he might. But in the 15 years that I’ve written for public audiences — in newspapers, magazines, and extremely opinionated blogs — I’ve certainly set myself up to be taken down. And it’s a lot less fun than when someone shares your blog post on their Facebook wall; or when a more celebrated blogger mentions you in their weekly newsletter.

Altucher claims not to care; not to be impacted by what others write to or about him. He instead acknowledges their anger as representative of and outlets for dealing with past trauma (ie. “Their fathers or mothers didn’t love them;” Other kids beat on them; “Girls or guys didn’t like them or called them names.”)

Altucher credits his humanity for providing him with the ability to rise above his own past traumas; to stop him, he writes, from lying, cheating, stealing, and even killing. In particular,  Altucher credits what he calls “The Daily Practice” as the force by which he remains sane and suitable for society.

His “daily practice,” Altucher claims, is “the only way I’ve ever been able to rise above animal and be human.”

I like this. I like this a lot.

I absolutely agree with Altucher that the world is full of angry, scared, depressed people that often act like animals, but moreso I like how he offers useful tips in a frank, yet accessible voice. Tips that might, just might, lead an Average Joe to be more contemplative, seek help, or better yet, take action.

(In fact, he reminds me of someone I know and love who strives to do the same.)

In questioning the nature and formality of my own daily practice, I realized there is one thing I have committed to each and every day since I moved Israel — Something that is often difficult, very frequently humiliating, and yet so nourishing for my soul.

Every day, I choose to have one uncomfortable conversation.

Typically, my uncomfortable conversation is in Hebrew, but sometimes not. Sometimes the uncomfortable conversation might be with my English speaking neighbor or boss, on a topic that makes me squirm, like money.  And sometimes it’s on a topic I’m emotionally invested in, and the uncomfortable conversation is with my in-laws and or my kid’s teacher.

The more uncomfortable the conversation, I’ve found, the more I learn about myself. The more uncomfortable the conversation, the more I grow.

Particularly for me, the uncomfortable Hebrew conversations have been humbling…which I think my soul really needs. Like Altucher, my daily practice has taught me how to be more human. In particular, to listen, to feel, and to do both with compassion.

But uncomfortable conversations, I think, could be a useful daily practice for almost anyone.

For my shy husband, for instance, the daily practice of having an uncomfortable conversation might be empowering. Or, for my son, offer the thrill of independence.

The uncomfortable conversation can break down walls and stereotypes. It can open doors…and close them. The uncomfortable conversation is often less scary than you think. Instead, it’s often surprising and enlightening. It’s a daily opportunity to practice self-restraint, love, and compassion.

Based on the progress I’ve made since I started taking on the uncomfortable conversation as a daily practice, I daresay, it might be the key to Middle East peace. It might be the answer for world hunger and all that ails the world.

The key for progress and improvement lies somewhere within the uncomfortable conversation, I am sure of it. More specifically in the courage and compassion required to conduct the uncomfortable conversation (as opposed to the uncomfortable screaming match or the uncomfortable revolution or the uncomfortable war).

The uncomfortable conversation, by the way, doesn’t require two consenting participants. It only requires you: Committed, compassionate, humbled and empowered you.

You, as part of your daily practice, trying to be more human.