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)

Jedi Skiing March 11, 2011

“Use the Force, Luke”

–Obi-Wan Kenobi

Skiers are familiar with the sensation of having the light suddenly go flat  leaving you no longer able to see terrain changes. You lose depth perception and vertigo sets in. If you can’t see the trees, you can completely lose the sensation of whether you are going uphill or downhill – or if you are even moving at all. It is disorienting and can be dangerous, but which depends on how you react to this loss of perception.

As person who not only likes to be in control, but plans ahead several steps for every possible outcome, learning to ski has been fraught with personal challenges. Good skiers pick a line and go with it, absorbing terrain changes and variations in snow with flexibility and grace. I however, plotted my line carefully to maximize safety, scooting my way down the mountain, weaving through challenging areas like a drunk. I didn’t shy away from difficulty — in fact, the more difficult the slope, the better…as long as I could anticipate potential issues and had multiple bailout options. But variations in visibility, snow conditions, my skiing companions and new locations all caused regressions in my form and shook my confidence. In the early years of learning, lacking confidence in my ability to deal with difficulty resulted in an end to my progression towards being an expert skier.

My challenges on the ski slope mirrored my life as well.  Never one to shy away from a challenge, I nevertheless lacked the confidence and commitment to stick to the path I had chosen. I required lots of bailout options, got nervous when I couldn’t predict the outcome, and new situations made me skittish.  I had made so many bad choices over the years, that lacking a clear line of sight, I didn’t want to make ANY decision, preferring the known over the unknown. As I have gained skill, strength and confidence over the years, both in life and skiing, during those times when visibility, speed, slope or technique has resulted in a complete white-wash of my planning, I have learned to Jedi ski and use the Force.

Even though the Star Wars saga began more than 30 years ago everyone understands the basic concept of the Force – a universal energy that can be put to good or evil use. Obi-Wan describes it as “what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It   binds the galaxy together”. When we stop flailing around in our humanness we have the ability to tap into a power that is much greater than ourselves. The Force is about trust, using intuition, listening to your heart, being brave and anticipating a positive outcome. The Force is about harnessing our connection to all that is in order to manifest what we choose for good or evil.

When undergoing cancer treatment I,  like many people, rested deeply in my faith that there is a reason for all that happens and that in the end it would all be okay. I believed firmly in the best possible outcome  (whatever that was) and I took things one step at a time. Unlike in my pre-cancer life or when I was on the ski slope, cancer scared me so badly that I could only cope with what was in front of me and there was no looking at anything other than health.  I let go of all planning, let go of anticipating, and let go of needing to be in control.  The shock of having such a completely random event occur to me derailed all that I had been and put me directly in touch with the Force. In order to get through the trauma, to do what needed to be done and to carry on, I connected deeply with the fact that I am a part of all that is, and could draw power and strength to do amazing things from that connection.

In the “real world” of  post cancer survivorship, this is a challenging concept to apply.  We are taught that our survival and success in the modern, physical world is dependent on our ability to plan, prepare and anticipate potentials. We start believing that WE are the process, not that we are PART of the process. We believe that we are in control, not that we need to open ourselves to being a channel that allows for opportunities we didn’t even know existed to enter. We lack flow and flexibility to maximize our experience, we are looking too far in front of us anticipating difficulty and spend too much time out of the moment.

I admire the ability of my Assistant Manager Steven to look so comfortable on his skis – absorbing impact, flying off jumps and doing tricks with the loose limbs of a rag doll. He told me one day that I just needed to loosen up – relax and don’t hold myself so tightly. REALLY?  A deeply cosmic statement from such a young Jedi Master — as if he knew how tightly I hold onto my perception of control! I’d like to say that the difference in his relaxed nonchalance and my ever-anticipating-danger mental state is one of the large gap in our ages, but that is not totally it. Stevens’ laid back style, both on and off the slope and “let’s just huck it and see what happens” attitude is in complete opposition to my life lesson of “the shit IS going to hit the fan so you better put on the hazmat suit ahead of time and duck”.  But post-cancer I am re-evaluating whether planning for every potential disaster is even possible, much less if it is effective.  Obviously my over planning in life did nothing to prevent me from having had a life threatening disease.  And, it is clear that when I did stop “holding myself so tightly” during cancer, that the world didn’t end and I found strength and resilience I didn’t know I possessed.

As my young friend encourages me take more risks while staying loose, I am learning to accept the idea that my fear may make me more likely to get into trouble instead of less. And along with a youthful lack of fear of negative consequences, Steven possesses the ancient Jedi wisdom of Yoda who says to “do or do not…there is no try”.  Relaxing into the actions required in skiing or life, and believing in the positive outcome we choose, we can create our own reality.

One of my favorite scenes in Star Wars is when Obi-wan and Luke are stopped at a check point and have the following interaction with Stormtroopers who are looking for Luke and the droids:

Stormtrooper: Let me see your identification.
Obi-Wan: [with a small wave of his hand] You don’t need to see his identification.
Stormtrooper: We don’t need to see his identification.
Obi-Wan: These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
Stormtrooper: These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.
Obi-Wan: He can go about his business.
Stormtrooper: You can go about your business.
Obi-Wan: Move along.
Stormtrooper: Move along… move along.

What if we believed in the potential for the outcome we wanted instead of preparing for the one we don’t?  What if, like Obi-wan, we just stated exactly what we expected and knew there was no chance of it not happening?  Unfortunately we all pay far more attention to what we DON’T want instead of to what we DO.  One of the rules in skiing (and in golf for that matter: see post titled “I am Committed to this….I think“) is “don’t look at the trees – look at the space between them”. We automatically move towards what we are focused on – good or bad.  If we chose to focus on what we desire, imagine how amazing it would be when everything around us shifted into place to make it happen.

Like Luke trying to lift the X-Wing fighter out of the swamp with only the power of his mind, we have the capacity to move mountains when we believe in what we have chosen to take on. It is about believing in ourselves, believing in the outcome we choose and preparing for that reality instead of any other.  As Luke argues with Yoda about the impossibility of moving such a large object from the swamp, Yoda says to him:  “Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size do you?  Hmmm? Hmm…And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful Ally it is.  Life creates it, makes it grow.  Its energy surrounds us and binds us.  Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you: here, between you and me, the tree the rock everywhere. Even between the land and the ship.”

We do not have to be alone in the challenges we face. As we try to move our own personal X-Wing fighter out of the swap we have the ability to tap into something far greater than us alone.  We have power beyond measure.  We are, as Yoda says, beings of light, and as such we can accomplish anything.

We all face times when we cannot see the ground under our feet, when the world seems to be spinning in a direction we cannot control and when we don’t know which way is up.  In these times we tend to grasp at straws and hold on tighter to what we think we know instead of staying loose and ready for anything.  We deny ourselves the joy of overcoming challenges and gain the strength in self-confidence when we don’t hold our line as we move towards our goal. We put too much faith in what we fear will happen instead of what we actually want to create for ourselves.  Learning to ski – and to live – blinded by light, or by the lack thereof, teaches us to feel the ground under our feet, to move slowly so that we don’t miss an opportunity, but nevertheless to stay relaxed so that we are free to react to challenges and to enjoy our successes. 

Each day on and off the hill, I am taking the advice of both old and young Jedi masters to use the Force. I am challenging myself to take on new and more difficult goals; to believe in the outcome of my choosing and to trust that I can handle whatever comes my way.  I am reminded that approaching each new challenge or task with less rigidity allows me to be flexible enough to take on anything.  And mostly, I remember that my ability to be successful may not have as much to do with what I can see ahead of me as what I can see inside of me.

 

(All Star Wars quotes courtesy of imdb.com)

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………….