Finding My Center of Balance

I'm certainly in an interesting time. I think part of what is going on is a normal decompression cycle after working too much. But part of it is new. Part of it has to do with the new push and the new direction my business is taking. Because my business is changing, I'm changing. The business and personal changes are hard to separate, but clearly these changes tilt towards the business side.

I am hungry for changes in my personal life as well. I had been doing so well giving myself the first hour of each day. But that slipped after a while into giving myself permission to get an extra hour of sleep because that is what I wanted and needed most. I want that time back. I don't care if I decide to sleep in -- I still want the first hour for myself no matter what time that is. Things are not chaotic in my life, yet, but there are things that need attention. Things I need to take care of before my life begins to get chaotic. The fact that I have unopened mail and unfiled paperwork says it all. I'm also going to return to my Friday rule, that Friday I work for myself. It will be a challenge to implement this, but I'm going to do it this week. Once I get into the habit, it will be easy, and I will see the benefits of this diverted focus of energy building in a big way.

I'm really very happy to make these changes. I'm really looking forward to finding a new center of balance in my life so that my things are looked after as well as everyone else's interests. It lets me life the life I want to live, where my priorities rule my time schedule and not just what is billable gets priority billing. I want top billing in my own life. I want to choose to work on all sorts of things, but I decide and I take care of my wide range of interests, not just who will pay for my time. Isn't time my most precious commodity? Isn't the quality of life, the richness of living a daily life that addresses personal and professional, activity and rest, inner journey and outer journey... aren't these the values my heart sings about and that make sense to my head? It may be a simple credo to follow, but it is not easy to implement and keep in balance. I'm determined to find my center of balance for now between these duality points, and continue to adjust as the demands and interests of my life change.

Talking in Context

I just took a few minutes to read some of the recent entries here. I wanted to get a sense of perspective on this entry. What have I been writing about? And because I haven't been here frequently, what has driven me here?

I am shocked to see that it has been talking and listening. Mostly my talking and someone else's listening.

This is a bigger deal than I had realized. I'm going to chew on this idea today and see what I learn.

Emptying the Gaps

It has been an interesting few months. I've gotten more done, seen more dreams realized, and had more projects going at the same time than any other time in my life. The cost of this uberproductivity? Sleep. The ability to fall asleep, to be more specific. Once I'm asleep, I usually can stay asleep until I'm rested, except for the fact that I've set an alarm to keep myself at least close to my normal working schedule. Which means most days, I get between 3 and 5 hours of sleep, not nearly enough for days and weeks at a time.

I realized this morning that my uberproductivity has shoehorned productive time into all of the normal gaps in my day, from the time I wake up until I'm laying in bed to fall asleep, with a pen in my hand while I envision the future I want to create for myself with the DVD of The Secret playing in the background. What ever happened to just going to bed in the dark without any noise in the background?

Somehow, I've lost the gaps in my timeline. They've been filled in, mostly I think through the 1) excitement of what is going on, and 2) the stress of so much going on has pushed me to find more time to address things. But it isn't good. The gaps are also essential to living my life. The gaps are where I just hang out with myself, where I face the void, and where I anchor myself in the stillness of everything greater than myself.

I used to keep myself frenetically busy because I couldn't endure the gaps and the stillness. Over the years, I've embraced the gaps and found myself in the stillness. They have been vital parts of my life and awareness. They have been the places next to my places for reflection. I sit in stillness and then emerge to reflect on my life, my thoughts, my journey. But now the gaps are filled, flooded with words and thoughts and motion that overflows from my cup. But not the good kind of overflowing, the kind that comes naturally when I tap into a spring of life-giving energy. No, this is more like a clogged sink that fills up and overflows onto the floor. It's not caused by tapping into a source, it's caused by the blockage of a flow. It's a negative direction flow instead of a positive direction flow. It's a symptom of a problem that needs to be fixed.

I need to drain the gaps. But more than that, I realized yesterday that I've been filling the space around me with excess words. In a fews days time, two different people told me that I've been quite talkative. Well, of course I have been talkative. My life is very quiet, no one around to listen to me, and the world has been dropping the most amazing things at my feet. I've gotten ideas for new things I want, and they have started showing up fast and thick. It would seem miraculous, except that I know exactly what caused this to happen. The only miracle is that I've somehow managed to get out of my own way so these things could come straight to me instead of hovering around me for a time until I remember to let them in.

When the second person told me I was talkative, I realized I needed to get quiet again. Not because I need to conform to some behavior standard imposed on my from the outside, but because I had failed to observe my behavior myself. I have realized that I've been talking more than usual before this, and I understood what was going on, and I thought it was just a phase so I didn't think any more about it. But now I see that it is a sign of something out of balance in my world. I'm excited. I'm happy. I have so many new things going on in my life. It's not like I need to talk about what is going on to process it for myself, or to see it clearly. I'm wanting so much to share the new and overflowing joys of my life with the people around me.

It's really too bad that I don't have a better support system in place around me yet. I would love to have people who know what is up with me, people who can hear a sentence or two and be up-to-speed on what is going on with me. That is the challenge of living alone and working alone. No one knows what is going on with me, and the stories lately are so big and so plentiful, it takes more words to share them. Too bad no one really wants to hear them. That is my conclusion. These people are busy with their own lives and stories and just don't have room to take mine in, or the time to hear me lay them down.

Yesterday, I came to the conclusion that I need to return to this journal for a time to help myself process the events of my life. I need a place to reflect on what is happening. Perhaps then I will not have the same desire to tell the world about my life, and if I do have some desire, perhaps having reflected on it, I can tell a more succint and elegant story than I can without the reflection. At any rate, the solution seems to be for me to sit with myself and my thoughts and process them alone. The usual. Isn't this the path of the mystic? Isn't this the reality of every person's journey -- we all travel alone even if we don't realize it. Isn't this the way I've lived my life for decades? I'm not sure why I thought this thing had changed. I have the tools I need, I understand what is happening, and I can manage this process.

Expect to hear more from me.

What Do I Want?

It feels like I haven't been clear lately about what I want. I've been so busy surviving the current situations and adjusting to things coming at me that I haven't really set any clear intentions for what I want. So here I go.

• I am committed to living a healthy lifestyle. This means kicking it up a notch or two from where I currently am. It also means doing what I know to do, making sure I have the foundation for this, and following through when my motivation wavers.
• I am living in the full scope of what I know is true. This means that I'm considering all levels of my awareness and keeping my sense of true north in all of the things I do.
• I'm operating my business on a new level. This means that I accept the challenges of the increased activity and accountability, and I am prepared for adjust to any new changes that come with the fulfillment of this intention.

I've got some really specific goals over the next few weeks. I've got to take care of the corporation issues, the accounting issues, and the marketing issues. Some of them are not so pleasant and I know that I tend to put them off, which only makes them worse and worsens my experience of them. Why do I do that? Not thinking it through at the start.

I'm going to see if I can get back to sleep and get up fresh in the morning.

Lessons Learned

I've had a really rough time lately. In the midst of the confusion, I've been going back to relive and revisit some of the great teachers in my life, and a few of the threads of themes I've followed. Until today, they have only added to my confusion, and reminded me of the pain of the unfulfilled dreams. But today, talking to Deb, I started to get a new perspective on this.

If I am correct and I'm in the challenging phase of a lesson cycle, perhaps these ghosts of my heart's journey past serve a real and practical purpose. I don't usually think like this, but I must confess that as soon as I formed this thought today, it felt like my angels were applauding me. I feel it again now as I relive that moment. I think I just cut my suffering time to a sliver of what it could have been. :-)

I realize that I've been revisiting the past a lot, especially old relationships and people no longer in my life. Some of them have more juice to them than others, so I'll stick to the juicy ones.

Philip offered me a vision of myself as a professional practitioner, author, and speaker, and gave me a glance into that life without having to complete that journey. From him I learned many things, even though I realize that he chronically underestimated me. I felt what it was like to be at the top of a field and at the top of my game, how it flows to make a living like that. The freedom and the compromises. It showed me that my strong sense of self and integrity and curiosity to solve riddles and identify patterns would serve me well, they are my true north. From Philip I also learned how to be true to myself. I learned that tools and bodies of knowledge do not come to me without other people's energy, and that I know how to test them to see if they are truly mine, or if I hold on to them due to habit or because of their connection to another person. Some of the tools I set aside I've never picked up, even though I know their power. They are not so well suited to me, or, I'm not ready to commit to them.

Paul helped me to find a part of myself that I had never found alone or in any other relationship. He engaged me in a way that opened me up to wanting to know more about myself and my inner journey, the mobile journey to the center. I saw both sides of myself in that relationship, how great and powerful I am, and how my shortcomings can be seen as horrible traits by people who are not willing to take them in a context.

My study of a------- and my decision to set it aside taught me that I don't need mental tools to survive and thrive in my life. My heart makes a better guide if I will just allow this to happen. I want to remember as I'm going through this confusion to remember to keep my heart in front of me, and to allow my life and these challenges to unfold before me. I really don't know the answers before the questions are asked, and if I think I do, I'm mistaken. I'm not holding on to wrong answers for guidance. I'm open and observing.

Through the years, I've loved the image of having god in a box and how that explains so much of the human condition when we ponder the infinite. Tonight, I realize that I could say that I've got myself, my soul, in a box and I'm needing a bigger self, a bigger sense of self. I'm lonely, personally and professionally. There are plenty of people in my life, good people, busy people, but people I can talk with at various levels. I'm grateful for each of them. And at the same time, each has a limit for how I can engage them. Perhaps I don't really know theses limits unless I've run into them recently, perhaps my perceptions are not as clear as I might think. I have painfully felt recently the lack of a common ground with people. There is no one who can really hear all I have to say. Maybe it is just that there is no one who is willing to listen, even if they can't understand it all. And it makes me ask myself if I am truly listening to the people around me, am I being that friend to them, that friend I want in my own life.

But it occurred to me tonight in the shower, just before I came here to write, that there is a great part of me that I keep only to myself. And that is a good thing. It is my anchor, my rudder, the ballast that keeps my boat balanced on the waves that toss me about. It's a good thing.

I want a bigger life. It's scary and yet its the only thing I want. I want to live my life on a larger stage, with a larger heart, with bigger ideas and greater reach. I don't just want it. I'm starved for it. I need it. I'm suffocating in here. I want wide open spaces where I can see to the horizon and take deep breaths.

I've been making some mistakes with people lately, I think out of a sense of loneliness and a desire to feel connected, but I've been going about it wrong. And I've been wrong to think that talking will create the kind of intimacy I want. I can't let people into my inner world, it's just not possible. It's my space. There will be times when people will get glances into what I have here, people who see who I am, people who listen with their eyes and ears. Just like I can get a glimpse into the inner world of my best friends and soul friends when I have an open heart and mind and pay attention.

So my advice to myself is:

Stop being lonely. It's not productive, and it's not real. Much of my life is private and unreachable, and that is a good thing. It only hurts more to talk and share with people and then realize they don't get it.

As things come up from the past, add them to the list of great lessons learned in my life, and realize that there is a reason why I'm being reminded of them right now.

Press on. Feel sad or melancholy if these come up, but after feeling it, don't drown in it. Push on with action while admitting how I feel. Feel it and act anyway.

Good advice.

Breaking Open My Heart

I had a tough day today. Or maybe I had a great day.

I had lunch with a friend to help her write a new resume. In the course of events, I found myself suddenly unable to stop myself from expressing profound sadness. It was right there, below a membrane that had been violated and I couldn't turn it back. In the midst of this, my heart chakra blew open and my heart hurt outside my body.

I realized that I was afraid to let this person really into my life because I was afraid that she would be around a short time and disappear. I said this out loud.

I hadn't realized that I had these feelings, that I felt such a need to protect myself. Before that moment, I thought I was doing a pretty good job at being open and letting people in. I realized I had just moved the door, the locked door, further into my territory. I'm not sure that is a bad thing, and I'm not sure having a locked door is a bad thing, either. But I wasn't aware that my fear of being abandoned was part of the motivation. I didn't realize I had any issues with that.

In the hours since, I've also realized that I don't feel there are people I can really talk to. I also don't feel listened to. I am sure there is some truth to this, but I also wonder many things. Is that because I'm afraid to speak? Is it because I don't listen enough to others I'm projecting it back on myself? Good questions. Questions that before that hour, I would not have thought were pertinent to my life. They are good academic questions, but they didn't connect to me like they do now.

I observed that there was a lot of conversation after that point that didn't feel honest. I spoke some of it because I felt awkward and exposed, and I suppose I was trying to pull myself back together and navigate out of an awkward situation. A bit of verbal dodge and dart. But on her part, it was an attempt to communicate with me on a deeper level, but it didn't work. At least that is my take on it. I might be wrong. But her conversation didn't ring true with me. I don't know if I responded in kind, or if I initiated the smoke and mirrors. My sense is that she doesn't communicate with great honesty in her life and this was new territory and she was unsure of herself. I don't suspect any motive other than a real desire to connect, and just not knowing how. But for me, I don't give mysrlf the same brea. I supose I was doing the best I could figure out in the moment.

Put to the Test

What an awful day I've just finished. I don't want to write any more about it than that, that is enough about it. I find myself awake in the middle of the night because of the issues that are rattling around in my heart and my heart is heavy, so apparently I'm not letting go. But I want to.

How many times in the last year have I said that I need to move away from my client Joe? Today should have been no surprise, but it caught me completely off guard. Now, he's eliminated required portions of the training requirements to use the money for something else, and the client is insisting on having these items. It's not my problem, technically, but he has pulled me into the issue and told me to find a solution. I have a solution in mind, to walk away and let him find someone else to do the work for the price he is willing to pay.

Rather than keep thinking about this while laying in bed, I've decided to get up and work it through at the keyboard. But this writing isn't helping me. I'm going to switch to the real issue and see what I can accomplish on it.

Keeping My Footing

It's only 8 am, and I've already had the most amazing day.

I got up early this morning, but instead of working, I took Dave for his colonoscopy in Beavercreek. The deal was that I would call him at 7 am and pick him up by 7:15, and I should use his cell number and not the house number. I called at 7 and no one answered. I kept callling back, not sure what was going on inside. After about 4-5 calls, Stacey answered and said he was in the shower. I arrived at his house 5 minutes early and waiting until 7:15. When there was no movement and no lights, I called again. No answer. I waited a minute and called again. This time, he answered and started screaming at me. I was so taken aback that I just listened and then he screamed at me again to start speaking. I said something like "okay" and he hung up. He got in the car and resume his screaming at me. I was crying by that point, but I didn't say anything back. A few minutes later, he made a comment about something else, and I responded to that. We exchanged a few words on the drive, mostly he was telling me I was in the wrong lane sort of thing. He also thought I should turn in the opposite direction at the exit, but I knew I was right and turned the way I planned. I was right.

We got there plenty early, and I dropped him off at the overhang because it was pouring. When I arrived inside, he told me that there was some confusion about his appointment and that he was 90 minutes early. He said I should go home and come back, and had me give my cell number to their receiptionist so she could call me. I left.

I understand that he is quite stressed about his health, and I tried to get past the things he said to me. I believe that there isn't any way I could have done anything different, I only did what I was asked. I was dumbfounded and taken off guard by his violent verbal attack. I'm not used to people talking to me like that. I wasn't prepared for it (if that is even possible) and I didn't find a way to not react to it, or side step it, or any other strategy that would have left me unharmed. I got a full shot of it, and on the way back, I felt my guard drop and I sobbed it out.

Within one minute of ending my sobbing, a deer crossed the road in front of me in a place I didn't expect to see wildlife. In the pouring rain, it was hard to see. It was a young deer, just born this year, and seeing it and realizing the potential disaster of hitting it, stopped me a bit in my tracks, even though I was well out of range. What happened next is the amazing part of my story.

A second deer followed it across the road in front of me, but this deer slipped on the wet pavement and tumbled. It tried to get up several times, but instead, its weight and the momentum of its running kept it tumbling over and over from the lane before me into the ditch along the side of the road. Because of the conditions, I wasn't able to turn my head or follow its path to see if it was alright and if it got up from the ditch. I can only assume that it was fine.

When I got past this, I realized that was for me. Two young deer, both heart medicine, both able footed, both running along the same slippery conditions. Yet one navigated the course and stayed upright, and the other lost its footing and tumbled. Both moved forward, both (I assume) were okay, and both crossed the road. Yet one was shaked up and perhaps even bruised by the experience.

I want to be the sure footed deer. I want to know how to navigate the slippery path and carry myself in a way that I remain upright and can choose my next steps. Today I was the fallen deer. I have no idea how to shift from one to the other, but I want to figure this out.

I spoke with Michelle last night about the cycles of abuse that we see going on in the family. The victim of one generation becomes the perpetrator in the next generation. She didn't understand this, but I do. I realize that by defining yourself as a victim, you don't give yourself the opportunity to grow and to become the kind of person that forgives and doesn't continue the cycle. It's hard work to grow and become a better person, and chosing to be a victim, you give yourself permission to stop growing.

I don't know where the balance lays between feeling the hurt of this morning's attack and being a victim of it. I don't know how to handle this kind of situation, or my feelings around this situation, any better than I already have, but I'm asking for help and guidance to figure this out. I want to be that sure footed deer, I want to keep my balance even when everyone around me is losing theirs and the conditions are tough for everyone. I want to figure this out. I want to become that person.