Moving Into Fear (or Basic Buddhism for Skiers) March 24, 2012

Skiing has taught me one thing with certainty – resistance only increases the chance of receiving the opposite outcome than I intended.

For those of you unenlightened non-skiing people, here is a brief ski lesson: the front end (tip)  is the steering end, the back-end (tail) acts as a gas pedal.  Regardless of my young friends tendencies to straight-line it, skiing is about making turns to get downhill.  In order to make move or make the ski turn we must pressure the front end by shifting our weight forward – and thus, downhill.

This seems easy in writing, but when faced with a steep slope (whatever that means to us personally), the intuitive response is not to lean forward, but sit back in avoidance and concern for our safety.  As we resist the downward velocity of the slope, we increase speed (weight on tails) while losing steering ability (lack of weight on tips).  When we feel it is becoming more difficult to “stay in control”, we resist further, losing the momentum that carries us from turn to turn and so we increase unnecessary movements with our bodies. Resisting  the inevitable (we choose this downhill sport!) we work twice as hard, use more muscle, and have less fun to get down the hill  than if we had simply trusted our ability to make each necessary turn.

In our fear, justified or not, we completely lose connection to flow.  As we humans are uncomfortable with a loss of control, we tend to do one of two things: give up, determining that it is not right for us or, we continue to flail our way downhill, determined to “do this” no matter what, using extra energy in the process, risking injury and losing all sense of enjoyment.  We blame our difficulties on the conditions (too icy/not the right time) , circumstances (there was a snowboarder in the way/I didn’t have enough money) ,  or random half truths (my feet hurt/she was a bitch). Really, we are resisting leaning into that which scares us but is nevertheless required to move through on our way towards our goals.

And what are we afraid of? Failure. Risk. Getting hurt. Looking stupid. Going out of our comfort zone. Losing control.  The list goes on.

As if these were all things we have dominion over in the first place.

Life is scary.  Personally, I seem to attract drama like poop does flies. Poverty, unemployment, illness, stupid people; you name it. But when I was told I had cancer, the complete lack of control over that diagnosis made me stop thinking I could/should try to direct everything my life. Instead I began to learn to accept that life simply is what it is – just like the mountain.  My choice is to engage or not, and how I want to do that is up to me. My reactions to situations are often the only thing I can control. This shift in perception makes it easier stay on tip of my skis and stop resisting the flow of life. I must stop worrying about what might happen, and stay present in what is happening to move toward my goals.

Flow doesn’t mean that is always smooth, but there is a sense of direction, purpose and intention that seems right somehow. In skiing, flow is the glorious sensation of sliding through silky snow even though you occasionally still getting bounced around. Each turn follows the next with relative ease until you stop at the bottom laughing, and say to your buddies, “man, that was SWEEEEEET!”

Skiing teaches me about life on and off the hill. There was nearly a foot of relatively good snow when I went up this week to ski off a bad situation at work. I was faced with a choice that either way was likely to result in unemployment or unhappiness. I had a headache for a week over it. Unemployment is scary and it seemed stupid to draw a line about something that was relatively trivial, but my goal is living a more authentic, heart centered life in which I do not compromise on what is important to me. As I argued with myself over every angle of the situation, I could feel myself flailing, losing control, and working far too hard.  I was using up valuable energy trying to stop forward momentum,  because I was afraid to move into my fears about unemployment and what I thought it said about me.

And so I leaned forward.

It isn’t comfortable at first.

I have my moments as a great skier, but I am often freakishly forcing turn after turn by over-rotating my shoulders and hips; hopping my feet and flinging my arms around to make it happen.  I arrive at the bottom exhausted, but somewhere in each run, there is usually at least one or two linked turns where I was simply “in it” and I get back on the chair.

I often make skiing – and life – more difficult than it needs to be in my lack of trust. And that is what it is….learning to trust that by not struggling with the struggle (as my friend Carole says) you will arrive at your destination with much less effort.  Control is an illusion – what will happen, will happen, and our flailing only increases the chance of it happening badly.

Skiing is not an easy sport, and neither is life, but by committing to my intentions, I get the opportunity to experience relative effortlessness sometimes. That feeling of being in the flow, is the most glorious feeling ever. It  keeps me addicted to this ridiculously expensive sport and to life in general.

As I sit at my computer writing, now newly unemployed, I am curiously observing flow around me.  It is a bit bumpy and there is that “whoa, who….aaaah, WHOAH!” sensation I have on the hill when it feels like things are about to get dicey.  But I also have some of that sensation of floating along and I am committed to not trying to steer this from the backseat. I keep humming to myself a skiing version of Dori’s song  from “Finding Nemo”: “Just keep turning, just keep turning!!”.

I know when I get to the bottom of this run, I will jump around and say: “THAT was so friggen AWESOME!!!!  Did you see when I almost lost it and then I pulled it together and it was like……YEAH! LETS DO IT AGAIN!”

 

(this seems to be a theme with me…if it is for you too check out my posts Resistance is Futile  and I am Committed to This…I think)

Language of Love February 12, 2012

“I love you” I said as we snuggled on the couch watching movies.

The evening suddenly took on the feel of a family gathering where Jr. drops the F-bomb in front of Grandma.

We had known each other for years before we started dating and few months into our “couple-hood”  I had no doubt that what I felt was love. But instead of completing the romantic moment, Neil looked at me and said, “It is going to be a while before I can say that”.

I had no way of knowing that more than 5 years later – and having lived together for most of it – I still would not have heard those words from him.

And, what is even more surprisingly, I am mostly okay with it.

Neil has more than the normal allotment of stereotypical male communication issues. On the other hand, words are really important to me and I am definitely a communicator. I’ve always wondered why in the world he chose me – a writer who finds it easy to voice my feelings and is deeply passionate and outspoken about a million different things when he so clearly is…NOT.

Neil is very reserved and my zest for engaging life to the fullest must push his buttons in addition to our opposing communication styles. But even in that awkward conversation about love, he has never shied away from me. In fact, his whole-hearted commitment to me when I must drive him crazy, is part of how I know he feels the words he finds so difficult to utter.

So, I keep saying “I love you” and he routinely responds: “Why now?”

Even though asking “why now” is probably intimacy avoidance at its finest, it has given me a deeper understanding of my own layers of relationship and connection. I am sure Neil doesn’t intend to come across as an emotional ascetic – maybe he is learning what love is. It seems that I certainly am.

My best guy friend was thrown off when a girl he was dating said she loved him. He called me in a panic: “I don’t know what to do! It is too early! I like her a lot but I don’t know where this is going and it is too much right now”.

“I tell you I love you all the time and I have loved you for years. What is the big deal with this?” I ask.

“It is different.” He answered. But I wondered why? Was he worried that that statement of love was full of expectation? Ownership? Exclusivity? What do we mean when we tell someone “I love you”? What do I mean when I say it to Neil?

“I love you,” I say. We are playing golf, the sun is shining and there is an eagle flying overhead. My score is pretty good for once, the friends we are playing with are laughing and everything is glorious. “Why now?” Neil asks. Because we get to share this moment. We enjoy each other’s company and seek it out instead of finding it tiresome; we have common things to laugh at and do together. In our playtime I get to see us as friends, not just who we are in our relationship.

“I love you”. We are watching the finals on a TV talent show in which the performance has been breathtaking, and I look over to see a tear running down his face. “Why now?” Because he feels for these people, for their hard work, for the heart they put into what they do. He appreciates the beauty, lets himself be moved and doesn’t pretend otherwise. His sensitivity and innocence are why I am with him. I am reminded of what a good man he is.

“I love you.” I am on a hospital gurney getting ready for surgery to remove cancer from my body.  Things will never be the same, life is uncertain and I am terrified. “Why now?” he says ever so softly. Because love is all I have to hold onto. I need to hear something in my voice besides fear, and need to know that I part of something more than cancer. Through my love I remind myself of who I am and how much bigger life is than this illness.

“I love you” I say with a sigh. Frustration edges my voice. We are having a disagreement that stems from his inability to communicate and my tendency to make up for it by over doing it. “Why now?” He doesn’t believe me – I can hear it in his voice. I don’t blame him for his doubts, but the truth is that even when I am mad I wouldn’t chose to be anywhere else (or at least not for long!). Either one of can chose to leave, but instead we slog through the tough times together knowing there is more than just this moment. I appreciate his willingness to keep trying and am grateful that we respect for each other too much to demand that our individual position is the only correct one.

We are a society that throws “I love you” around a lot. We say it lightheartedly to people we barely know, toss it around when we are happy, and end conversations with it habitually. I’ve slipped up and said it as I am hanging up the phone when it was clearly inappropriate and not meant. Too many times in the past I have said it without thinking about what it means. Often what I intended by the words was felt as something different to the person hearing it. That doesn’t mean I should say it less – in fact, post-cancer, I probably say it more than I ever have. I just am conscious of what it means to me when I do.

When I pay attention to saying “I love you” to anyone – especially Neil, I come to a deeper understanding of what is going on inside me moment to moment. It challenges me to use language that is more descriptive to build a fuller picture of my feelings and fill in the gaps so that the person I am addressing understands what “I love you” means for me. By doing so, I give them space to experience the intent instead of getting tangled up in the baggage. And more importantly, I am better able to speak from my heart when I know what really resides there.

“Why Now?” may very well be a stalling or diversionary tactic from a man emotionally tied in knots, but through the untangling of my own I have become a better person. As I discover why I love, I am better able to actually DO the emotion of love.

And love is something we all could get better giving AND receiving.

Cultivating asparagus April 20, 2011

I have been putting in an asparagus bed this Spring – an interesting process for a girl with some serious commitment issues. Growing asparagus takes a lot of preparation and care and needs to be left alone for two years before it is harvested. And not only does it take forever  before you can eat it, it hogs a whole lot of energy and valuable space. In order to make room for it, 2 large sheds got taken down, a ton of gravel was moved and a hundred wheelbarrows full of dirt were hauled across the yard to fill the 4’x11’x14” bed that will house a cluster of weedy looking roots. Counting a full year of planning and preparation, by the time I have a piece of roasted asparagus on my plate, nicely seasoned with olive oil, garlic and a little lemon pepper, I will have labored over it for three years without it even reaching its peak production for  several more. I’m preparing to commit to this vegetable longer than most things in my life.

My kids and I moved nearly 20 times in the nineteen years we lived together. We relocated for good reasons, and for bad….we have moved all of our stuff into storage units while we lived out of boxes, and unpacked full of hope time and time again. Each time I carefully packed the collection of bird nests my daughter said I kept because I was looking for my own place to nest. Each new home was like a new garden…an empty space waiting to be filled, full of promise that if I worked hard enough, it would be bountiful. In each I tended a garden of some sort, full of hope that the seeds I planted would unleash abundance on us.

Gardening is where the dreamer in me shines – where I can jump in head fist and watch the magic happen. It is a small world I get to be god of. I spent many winters reading garden catalogs, making plans and buying far more seeds than I ever really needed. Always hoping that this would be the one I got to keep, I threw my whole heart in with wild abandon. I dug every new garden myself, asking for and receiving no help…moving turf, hauling rocks and constructing beds.The problem was I spent little time distilling what I REALLY wanted, had the time and energy for  and whether the conditions were really right. It was one big all-or-nothing-try-everything-in-hope-that-something-works. Regardless of the suitability of the land to what I wanted, I attempted to build my dreams in an energetic frenzy of dirt moving and shit hauling.

Ironically (or maybe not) no matter how many times I planned, dug and sweated, or even how long I was able to tend that particular garden, I never really harvested what I planted. I confess – shamefully – I was a lifetime gardener who didn’t enjoy the fruits of her labors. Sure, I would nibble out of it and give stuff away to neighbors and friends, but as for harvesting and making the most of every zucchini, bean or lettuce leaf – well, most of it rotted. For all the time, energy, and work I put in, I never really got to be nourished by it. I dove in headfirst with enthusiasm and hope but was blinded by the enormity of possibility. I would lose focus, forget to water, get distracted and soon  it was too late. The window of opportunity was gone.

In my garden I had a big idea of what I wanted – but it was like comparing a relationship to a grocery store romance novel — little connection with reality or possibility. Even though I dreamed big and worked hard on it, it wasn’t necessarily what I wanted or capable of maintaining and I had to give up mid-stream. And all these years of running to and from many things – and myself  - meant that I had never learned how to cultivate my dreams. My lack of abundance in other areas of life left me seeking, yet unable to harvest, my dream anything much less garden. A lack of clarity about what I wanted had me planting far more seeds that I was interested in or able to take advantage of. I was a spectacularly hard worker but not so good at doing all that would have resulted in a successful harvest. When the garden had finally reached its maximum fertility and was ready to give back, I let the branches break for the weight of the fruit, and the stalks fell over top-heavy.  It was survival of the fittest…the toughest plants survived the attention/neglect then got packed up and moved on with me. The rest was left unapologetically in the compost heap.

This post was about gardening right?

To an outsider gardening looks like you can just plant, sit around watching it grow, pull a few weeds and then feast. It takes a great deal more planning and preparation in order to be successful. Choices about time and place, long term goals and quality of the available resources are critical to being able to continue productivity for the long term. The daily tending is critical to keeping it healthy.  And like so much of life, it is the small things you do that result in abundance. Sometimes in the in-between, when you are just tending to the dream, it is easy forget your intention and get distracted. Gardening and life are a constant re-commitment to the process –even when it looks like nothing is happening. We have to trust in the unseen, to believe that our care matters. Sometimes we have to re-evaluate mid-stream, make different decisions about our resources or take a break to rest the soil. We have to plan ahead to prevent disaster and anticipate our successes so that we are ready to receive.

Cancer changed much in my life, right down to the fact that my “garden” became 2 pots on the back porch and some real evaluation about what I wanted in life. Now that my kids had moved out, I only had my needs to consider and a clean slate. I had a gnawing sense of immediacy and my world had become a daily investigation of what was important to me in the moment. Gone was my endless energy for big, vague dreams and instead I asked myself regularly, “is this making me happy?” and “what do I really want?”.I was often surprised by the answers.

Some of that big dream I thought I wanted didn’t really apply to me. The job I thought was so important was not. And neither was questing after the status of being important. I wanted small, not large. What was actually valuable to me in my relationships was not necessarily what I had thought. I was really satisfied with the “happy hour menu” instead of the whole big sha-bang.  Most importantly, I began to realize I was worth the effort to plan for and have what I wanted then to enjoy whatever it was.

My boyfriend Neil began looking for his first house to buy while I lay in bed recovering from surgery. As he was working through finding what he really wanted I encouraged him to make a “treasure map” of what was most important and to firmly believe that it would lead him to the right home. I taught him the very work I was trying to embody myself and hoped that teaching would help the learning sink in. While he manifested his way to a new home, I mapped my way into a new life, questioning the importance of each step to make sure I was not throwing it all to the wind as I so often had.

And sure enough the house appeared – in not quite what was be anyone’s dream location, but certainly full of possibility and possessing every strength Neil considered important – down to room for the roses he hoped to grow. Though it was Neil’s home, I had made my own treasure map of what I hoped for in this next move: space to build love, the strengthening my health, staying close to my parents, time to self-reflect  wrapped in the sweet smell flowers and of course, a garden. We got the got the keys the night before my last radiation treatment. Come spring, we counted 30 rose bushes (!) and those mysterious tree-like plants all over the yard turned out to be a dozen different lilacs. The previous owner was a gardener and as it warmed up and my energy began to return, I filled her garden beds with vegetables and munched on the raspberries she had tended so carefully.  As I settled my nest collection into its new home, I couldn’t help but wonder if finally I had learned enough to have found my own nest location too.

That first summer I carefully tended a garden that had been there for many years with the tools that the little old lady had left for me to use. Fenced in and protected, there were many plants that were long established and an abundance of surprises. I grew only what I knew we could eat and what I had energy for, I shared the excesses of raspberries and beans but kept enough for me to make jam and put things away in the freezer for deep-winter treats. I planted flowers that I cut every week and tended the dozens of rose bushes making sure that I always brought the beauty indoors to enjoy all of the time.

Cautiously I dug into the dirt, my home and my relationships. I re-established connections with friends I hadn’t seen in years because I had felt so toxic. Neil and I remodeled the whole house  making it ours, sorting out the nuances of what we each wanted. We learned how to work together amidst the piles of rubble and dust left from tearing down the old in so many ways.  We called our friends and loved ones for help with the hard things and to join us in celebrating our successes.  Tentatively I extended little tendrils of roots and closed the exit doors I usually left open for me to escape. Where I used to plan far ahead and close myself off, now our house and garden is full of the laughter of family and friends who often stop by unannounced. Many quite evenings have passed with a glass of wine in hand watching our chickens root around in the dirt. And I have fully harvested two years worth of gardens, with a freezer full to prove it.

When I told my kids I was planning to plant asparagus they said “Whoa Mom, that is BIG!” And it is. This wasn’t something I could dig up and take with me in a pot or pack into a box.  Planting asparagus is a statement that I plan to be around to stick around to see it grow, to do the cautious work of preparing its home, to take care of it and enjoy it thoroughly when it ended up on my plate.

There is something way bigger at work here in this garden. I have stopped envisioning my life in big fairy tale format that had little connection to my sanity and dreams. I spend more time asking if this is my desire or someone else’s and try to act on that. When I focus on what I want, I stop running away from abundance and instead become more able to receive the fruits of my labor.  I allowed for the wisdom, tools and helping hands of the people around me, past and present, to help me tackle challenges instead of hiding, ashamed of my struggles and limited knowledge. As I become more comfortable with what I want and who I am without the extra distractions, I am able to set down roots. All gardeners know that the more nourished the roots the deeper they grow and the healthier the plant. And I feel my roots growing strong and deep and reaching outwards to anchor myself to this place.

The Jersey King asparagus that will arrive any day now has no idea how incredibly important it is. When I finally get to that dinner, I will have worked the same garden for 4 years – longer than I have ever stayed put in one place. It will also mean that I have allowed love in my life, and consistently maintained close friendships that nurture me, for the longest time ever.  Its survival means that I will have successfully cultivated hope and acted on my dreams in many aspects of my life for longer than I have ever. And most importantly, I stuck through the rain and dirt, sunshine and beautiful days to actually enjoy the effort I have put in. A lot rides on something that could die regardless of my attention. This asparagus – not even planted yet – represents far more than a tasty side dish. It represents the most important commitment I have ever made – the one to constantly and lovingly tend my own inner garden.

I am committed to this…I think September 9, 2010

I have commitment issues.  Some are the fairly obvious ones demonstrated by never having stayed in a relationship physically AND emotionally longer than 5 years.  Others kept me,  until now,  from having a job that lasted longer than a couple years or from living in the same location for any length of time.  These days my lack of commitment shows up in the sneaky mirror of my playtime.

Neil taught me to golf in addition to refining my skiing skills.  He rapidly caught on to my tendency to bail out when I get uncomfortable and one of his mantras has been “you have to commit all the way through your swing/your turns”.  Easy for Neil to say when a poorly hit ball for him just means he has a tough lie – I might have killed someone two fairways over.  And imagine what would happen if while skiing, in the apex of my turn when my skis are pointed straight downhill, something funky happens and I head through a crowd of small children at top speed cursing as I double eject headfirst into the snow.  Why would I fully commit to something that is likely to go very, very wrong?  No matter whether it is skiing or golfing or life in general, there are factors I cannot anticipate and an error in skill and judgment could have very painful results for myself or an innocent bystander.

I am a bit of a control freak born out of both the need to prevent potential disaster and the result of much disaster striking in my life. How funny that my main two sports are comprised of tiny muscle movements (did I mention I am a klutz?)  that act in combination with uncontrollable variations in terrain.  This should have been a huge red flag that these sports were going to stretch my physical and emotional growth!  It certainly makes me wonder about my sanity and tendency towards masochism.  Topping it off is knowing that when I get scared or frustrated, I don’t just quit and go in for a beer….I am likely to do the same bloody thing over and over again until I die trying or someone locks me up because they can’t stand the brutality of it all. Somehow I seem to think if I keep doing it until I cannot stand it anymore it will get better.  It never seems to occur to me to examine exactly WHY I was having so much trouble with a relatively easy set of instructions or actions.  It simply starts with the conviction, before I even grab a club for the first swing or as I pick up speed at the  start of the a turn,   that chances are good that I am going to fail miserably and either get hurt, or worse, look like a fool.  And yet, I keep doing both sports  - and many other things in life,  repeatedly as long as I can,  until I am physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted.

In investigating how to improve my golf game, my skiing and life in general,  I began to look deeper in to why I struggle with sports that I SHOULD be able to grasp easily given my strength and physical abilities. One of the primary things you are taught in golf is that your “swing thoughts” impact every movement your body makes thus affecting the outcome of every swing.  As I am standing over the ball, here are what my swing thoughts are like:  “Okay, Neil is watching me. I have to keep my arms straight. I am never going to do this right. Don’t forget to be slow. Wait my hands are too tight – I am strangling the baby bird!  Oh, geez I never hit well with this club. Take a backswing.  Oh God, that was way too big. This ball is never going to go straight. Don’t forget to release the club head.  Uh oh, that was too late.  AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! It is taking a sharp right hook!  FORE!!!!!!!!!!!! I am NEVER going to fix this.  I can’t believe he stays with me.  I bet he would MARRY someone that could hit the freakin’ ball.  I am such a failure……this is a stupid game. Why do I do this? Oh, look I found another ball.  I wonder if I can…..”.

I don’t think you have to be a golfer to understand that all that negative talk in the middle of a second or two worth of action cannot possibly result in a positive outcome.  Recently an LPGA pro asked me about my last swing thought before I hit a ball.  My response?  “Oh Crap”.  She looked at me in horror before saying dryly, “We need to get you a new one.” And this is what I think nearly every time I pick up a golf club – which, depending on the round, might be 80 times in 4+hours.  Imagine what my inner life is like when I am not playing golf! If I am that hard on myself when I am playing a GAME how hard am I on myself about my role at work, being a parent, what I see in the mirror, what kind of writer I am? Somehow I often see myself or my actions towards a goal as inherently flawed at the beginning, with little hope of a positive outcome. Being so hard on myself and having so little faith in my ability to accomplish my lofty goals (a little golf joke there!) results in me lacking the commitment to myself and my actions I need in order to be the person I want to be — much less to be able to complete a golf swing.

When I was diagnosed with cancer I really didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the “why me” place of the diagnosis, instead I dug into that thoroughly stubborn part of me and plowed onward. Maybe I felt that this too was just another example of how the adage “shit happens” always seems to apply directly to me. But the action of committing to the steps towards health felt different somehow than changing my belief that I would never be a good golfer.  In the face of impending disaster I rarely ever give up, but now I had to come to terms with the fact that just because I am stupidly tenacious in my actions does NOT mean that I am completely committed to the outcome I actually want to see.  So many times  playing golf, I WANT to hit the ball well; I know what I should do and I know where it should go; but I give up at the last second and somehow do not follow through physically because I did not believe  in potential for the positive end result of my actions.  With such an immense health crisis in front of me I had to believe wholeheartedly that while there were many possibilities for health at the end of it all, there was no question that health was what I was going to achieve.  I learned to use my strength of character – that tenacity I had previously used to prove what a dork I was – to get me through long physically and emotionally painful days on my road to a new life as a survivor.

I have learned there are many possible actions that can still result in successful outcome. Sometimes I play what is called military golf – I hit the ball  to one side of the fairway and then to the other side (right,left, right, left) .  Maybe it will never be fairway center like a “good shot” but I may still hole it in par.  I don’t always hold the same fall line in my skiing either, but enjoy the variety of turn shapes and speed that I do reach before I hit the chairlift a turn behind Neil.  I am learning to not hold onto one idea of the right way to golf, one idea of beauty or wholeness, or one definition of what is a good relationship.  In accepting the many possible options for a “good” outcome, it has become easier for me to let go of trying to control the impossible and let my committed actions bring me closer to what I want.

Not only did I change my follow through, but I changed my thinking in order to achieve the results I hoped for. Any golfer will tell you that if you are worried about hitting the tree (or a person in the fairway) you are GOING to hit it.  The fairway could be 200 yards across with a 12“ wide tree in the middle (and you NEVER hit a straight shot) and you will hit it if you are thinking about it.  Funny that even though golfers tend towards the fairly conservative male variety, what they are really talking about is belief in yourself (positive or negative) and the power of manifestation.  No matter how unlikely it is that we will hit the perfect shot to hit that freakin’ tree – much less twice when the first one hits it and ricochets back at us – we tell ourselves “I am going to…” and it happens. How magical is that?  And if it happens every day to ordinary guys on the golf course imagine what we are doing to ourselves when we say “I don’t have enough…..”, “ I am not ….” , “They will…..”.  We can choose to believe that we are powerful, beautiful, creative beings, or we can choose to remember the nasty things that our last lover, employer, former friend or evil inner twin said to us and believe that we are not worth the air we breathe, that everything we do is screwed up and we are never going to amount to anything. That thought determines our actions and our actions determine the outcome.  If tiny little muscle movements are governed so easily by our thoughts imagine how big the repercussions of those thoughts  are in our lives. How is it that we can so completely believe that things are going to get screwed up and yet are unable to hold with equal conviction the belief that we can create the positive outcome we want?

A huge part of commitment is learning to find in myself the person who was worth all this effort. I have had to look deep within and decide what I really wanted and to believe without question that what I wanted was within reach. I have learned to not be afraid of the possibility of a negative outcome…. and when something went haywire to not let it stick to me in the same way I had adhered myself to other potential failures.  I for one have let the negative power of belief rule far more of my life than would be apparent to anyone on the outside.  I have been told horrible things about myself by people I once trusted  and even though FAR more people have said amazing, beautiful things about me I choose to believe the worst.  I have lacked commitment to myself and in my actions in life because I believed  – wrongly – that the chances of disaster were greater than the chances of success.  I didn’t allow myself to believe in the many potential good outcomes for my actions. I failed to remember the tree in the fairway theory – you stand a far greater chance of hitting the mark you choose if you choose to believe you will hit the mark.

I have a cut out piece of a Starbucks coffee cup that sits on the windowsill over my kitchen sink where I have to read it several times every day.  Starbucks had a campaign going at one time where patrons could send in a quote or statement and it could end up on a coffee cup –it was like a fortune cookie, and sucker that I am I drank more coffee at Starbucks during this time so that I could see what the cosmos had to say to me that day.

The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating — in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.

– Anne Morriss

Reading this quote every day has been instrumental in the previously unknown  endurance of my relationship and my job;  has increased my contentment in  my home and enjoyment of my playtime and ultimately has helped save my life. I am freed by the choice to believe in the possibility that  what I want to have happen just might happen .  I needed  to be reminded  that all those fears that seem so justified were not the “protector” I thought they were.  That type of protection kept me from writing, from maintaining the healthy relationships with people who love me, and from seeing the world as opportunistic instead of a place where I must continually push hard with tenacity to get even a fraction of what I need.  Now days, when Neil harps on my “lack of commitment” while we are out playing, I think “buddy, you have NO IDEA” –  he does not see the work that I have done to tackle so much of this issue internally.  But he is finding less occasion to see that lack of commitment externally as I change my perspective. The fact that I don’t always complete a golf swing is an indicator of a much larger problem that I am trying to tackle with each ball in a large bucket at the driving range, each high speed arching ski turn, and each day I spend deeply committed to my life and those that I love.

And I really am working on developing a new swing thought for life………….