Unpacking process: rough cartography

Since I am working my way through the fallout from foreclosure, I’ve been thinking about process. It’s a bit of a buzz word – being in process, staying with your process, etc. What does that mean? What does process look like?

     I figured other people must have written about and/or process so I looked it up on the internet…and found nothing. This is the first time I’ve put anything into Google that didn’t return any relevant data. Curious. Changing my search words didn’t help. I got tons of entries about physical, mechanical and design processes. I found nothing on being in process as a form of personal transition and transformation.

    Process is what I go through after a significant life event that cracks my world in some way: death of someone close to me, serious health issue, relationship falling apart….or getting thrown out of my apartment. Process is the journey from brokenness to a new place of equilibrium that integrates the triggering event.

   An emotional, mental and/or spiritual process is similar to a physical process in that there are steps. It requires work. It takes time. Unlike a physical process, most of the doing is not about action in the world. The doing is internal; focused on paying attention, questioning, moving through emotions and being present.

    With many physical processes, the outcome is a known. If I do W, X and Y, I will get Z. Personal process has no guaranteed outcome. If I keep moving through, I will get to the other side of whatever I’m working with. However, what the other side looks like is a big unknown.

    When I googled “healing process” I found many web sites with lists of steps in healing. Even though I agreed a lot of what I read, the lists bore no relation to what a process feels like. The lists were all very neat and contained. Process is messy, explosive and filled with debris.

   Because I’ve been through this a few times, I go into a transformation process knowing:

            -It’s going to be messy.

            -I will feel like I’m flailing.

            -I will feel like this is never going to be different

            -I have to let go of what I think the process is “supposed” to look like and what I “should”

             look like while I’m in it.

    The other big one…it will take longer than I want it to. If I resist and get in my own way, I can prolong the process. (At some point I will probably do some of that. Often resistance is part of my process.) Even if I am completely present and engaged, I am not in control of the timing.    

    Process is period of time where I turn my attention inward. I make space every day to be present with feelings. Yes, there are days when I’m too busy to carve out that time. So I get some quiet the next day.

    I do want I can to be less busy. I eliminate what’s not absolutely necessary. I hibernate on weekends; let myself move to my internal rhythm rather than external demands. Unscheduled time is vital. So is solitude.

     Life doesn’t stop while this is going on. The daily bits can seem like a waste of time but the mundane often fuels the process.

     How I feel when I wake up is pretty random. I can go to bed feeling okay and wake up sad. Emotional shifts during process are often dictated by what’s going on inside me, not by external events.

    I take a few minutes in the morning to get grounded in my body and be aware of how I feel. Checking in is important. When I’m in process I’m more sensitive to the emotions of people around me and to evocative situations. Things that usually minor annoyances can be really irritating. Spending time with someone who’s angry or grieving can accentuate those feelings in me.

     This is not something I can change or control. I can only accept where I am and do my best not to react. At some point I will react, catch myself, apologize and go on. When someone else’s emotions push what I’m already feeling, my awareness of how I felt previously lets me sort out what’s mine and let the rest go.

    Process moves to its own mysterious rhythm. Some days are tumultuous, filled with emotional and mental storms. There are days, weeks and even months where I feel like I’m slogging through a swamp. Time stretches out into an endless mean. I feel the same day after day. Nothing seems to be changing. I begin to wonder if I’m stuck. I start looking for places where I’m getting in my own way. If I can’t find any the lack of motion itself begins to frustrate me.

    These spans are the hardest to traverse. Sometimes I sense movement but it doesn’t seem to have any direction. It’s intangible; not something I can put my finger on or describe. This internal wasteland makes answering even simple questions like “how are you?” challenging.

    Then, suddenly I have an “ah-hah.” A new awareness triggers a shift in my perspective. Even if it’s a tiny shift, I feel some change. It takes a long time for something to suddenly happen. All the amorphous movement, when everything seemed the same, was laying the foundation for the “ah-hah.”

    I want to hang onto that moment when I feel that I am moving through and moving on. Sometimes it is just a moment, here and gone. At other times it lasts an hour, a day or a few days. Then the new awareness brings up more questions, a new storm and another trek through the wasteland.

    Often after the “ah-hah” I find a resting place. I feel lighter. The world seems more open. This is a gift and the perfect spot to take a break. I go hang out with a friend, watch an entertaining movie, do something that has nothing to do with being serious or paying attention to my inner landscape.

    Taking breaks is essential. If I look at or sit with anything too long it begins to spin in my head and grow. I have to step out further too really see where I am.

    All of this is hard work and exhausting. I’ll be tired. I’ll have times where the tired sneaks up on me like a big wave. During the process, I do my best to take care of myself. Some days my best amounts to not caring much – too much sugar, not enough sleep, too much coffee and grabbing at distractions. That too is part of the process. Balance when I’m in process is like standing on one leg on a beach ball. Constant adjustments and periodically I fall off. 

Acceptance and foreclosure....renter style

When I started this blog I asked myself was how personal was I willing to get in what I wrote here. This is pretty public form. If I felt pushed to write about something that involved more self-exposure that I was comfortable with would I do it? Like many questions, I couldn’t answer that one till I was right up against it and outside my comfort zone so here goes….

    I missed posting last week due to well…packing up everything I own. Short version of a long story is I was a few days late with rent and the property manager told me she was going to put a three day notice on my door a file for eviction. I lived there over four years. I’d been in the property manager’s office on Monday, talked to her about being late. Everything seemed okay. On Friday it suddenly wasn’t okay and I got the email about eviction.

     I chose to leave before things got to the legal point. Thanks to an enormous amount of help from my best friend, managed to get all my stuff packed, moved what’s really important to me into storage, sold the rest and found a temporary place to land. I had few little meltdowns, got one of many winter viruses that’s floating around Taos and just kept taking care of what was in front of me.

    Saturday night I found myself thinking about all the stories I’ve read of people going through foreclosure. This is pretty much the renter’s version of foreclosure. Didn’t want to join the club but here I am. Considering some of the stories I’ve read, I landed better than many people do. I have a couple more rounds of pack it and move it before I make to a longer term house sit, but for now I have a roof over my head.

    I’m also blessed to have an awesome community of friends. Within days I had offers of couches, extra rooms, a place to stay in Santa Fe and even one in Colorado. I knew no matter what did or didn’t get resolved, I wasn’t going to end up sleeping in my car. Giant thanks to all of you who offered help, support, a bed and sent emails asking about house sits.

    How am I feeling about all this? Angry, sad, confused, displaced, frustrated, grateful, anxious, powerless, battered, exhausted, shocked, down and probably a few more that I can’t name right now. All of which have led me to do some serious thinking about acceptance and what that means to me.

     Short term acceptance is about acknowledging what is without resisting, fighting or trying to change the things I can’t change. Check. I’ve gotten that far, but long term that’s not enough for me.

    Will I survive this? Yes, but I don’t want this to be something I simply survived. That’s not to say there’s no merit in surviving, in making it through the hard stuff. The bigger question for me is about how I move through this experience. What will I take away from this? How will that support me in being more of who I am?

     We all get thrown hard stuff. What happens to us is ultimately less important than what we do with the disasters. I’ve known many people who are content with surviving. I’ve heard them say “I survived X or Y”, often with defiance and sometimes pride. I’ve noticed that staying with “I survived” seems to fix those events as permanent reference points that they continue to circle around for years. This is an old paradigm bit – focus on the goal, the action and where you want to arrive. How you get there isn’t important.

   I’ve met other people who carry their disasters differently. For them surviving seems less significant than what they took away from the experience and how it changed the way they live. I wonder if someone holds on to that defiant “I survived” reference point, have they really moved on or through the experience?

      Long term acceptance to me is about moving through so I can move on. That means dealing with the messy emotional bits. No shortcuts. Long term I want to accept this as an experience I grew from; one that doesn’t bring up inner turmoil when I remember it

Acceptance is a choice

   Yes it is. If I don’t chose acceptance as my trajectory, I risk ending up in resentment, victim or some other place I really don’t want to live. However if I simply chose acceptance and don’t do anything else, the choice is meaningless. If I decide I want a cappuccino and don’t do anything about making one, the cappuccino isn’t going to magically appear. It requires action and effort on my part. 

Choosing acceptance is not the same thing as having acceptance

     We’ve all read things about acceptance being a matter of practicing “positive thinking” or looking for the good in the situation. No.  The first step toward acceptance is acknowledging what is. Not just the things I like or the “positive” things, but all of what is. Retreating into “positive thinking” and disregarding other emotions that are “negative” isn’t acceptance. It’s denial and avoidance.

    Acknowledging what is involves taking inventory. Making a list of everything that’s in me and outside of me regardless if whether I like it or not. That’s not an easy thing to do. I’ve felt a number of things in the last week that my ego judged as being pretty self-indulgent....why me?, this isn't fair, poor me, etc.  I’ve also felt a certain pressure to “be more evolved” and act as if I was okay when I didn’t feel okay. Being real about where I am means letting myself have all of it. It could have been worse. It sucked. It’s still pretty crappy. I am grateful for having a bed, a shower and good friends. 

Acceptance is process not an event

     When it comes to long term acceptance, the journey dictates the destination. Even though I chose to accept this little disaster short term, if I don’t give myself time to process the experience I risk turning it into a defiant “I survived” or making myself a victim of what happened. I’m grateful for having the tools to move through this. Knowing how doesn’t make it any easier or more fun. It just means avoidance isn’t an option.

    I have no idea what I’m going to take away from this experience or how it will change the way I live. I’m standing too close to see that yet. I won’t get to an expanded perspective until I feel my way through all those emotions that I couldn’t give much space to last week in the midst of packing. How long this process takes is not up to me. I can only chose to be present and do my best not to get in my own way.

     I do have a renewed sense of gratitude for the basics that I’ve often taken for granted: shelter, heat, a bed, a kitchen and a shower. No TV or internet but right now...so what?
     This experience has also reminded me how much illusion most of us hang on to – security, permanence, control and thinking we know what’s going to happen in the next week or even today. 

  

The Happiness Obsession

   

On New Year’s Day I received an email from Daily Good with an article entitled 3 Resolutions For a Happier Year. Over the past several months I’ve seen an increasing number of articles on web sites and Facebook about how to be happier. Our obsession with happiness has been around as long as our country. Our own Declaration of Independence states:

       "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

     From the number of books and internet articles filled with instructions on how to be happy it looks like happiness is elusive for most of us and we’re still pursuing it. I wonder what our country would be like if we'd included the pursuit of meaning or contentment in our Declaration of Independence.

    According to Wikipedia, “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.”

     Dictionary.com defines happiness as:

            1. the quality or state of being happy.

2. good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy. 

    Both of these definitions relate happiness to experiencing pleasure and other positive emotions.

   Popcorn, chocolate and a good cappuccino make me happy. So does buying new shoes. Other people get a happy buzz from a drink, buying a new car or watching a basketball game. All of these things can shift our mood and make us feel happy…temporarily. This type of happiness is known as hedonic well-being…happiness = pleasure. If this is the happiness we’re pursuing, how is that any different than an addict chasing a fix?

     In contrast we have eudaimonia; a Greek word that’s often mistranslated as happiness. Eudaimonia, or eudemonia, comes from the philosophy of Aristotle. It refers to human flourishing and literally means “the state of having a good indwelling spirit, a good genius”.

     Reading a great poem or having an evocative conversation with a friend also create feelings of happiness for me. However, this happiness has a more enduring quality. After the pleasure in the poem or the conversation has faded, something deeper emerges. I find myself thinking about a line from the poem or part of conversation days later. It stays with me; opens me and shifts my perspective.

    This more enduring experience of happiness is about contentment and well-being rather than pleasurable feelings. Not everything that gives me a happy buzz is conducive to my well-being. Some things that don’t feel pleasurable in the moment do add to my sense of contentment.

     There are days when I don’t feel like going to the gym. Sometimes I get a little endorphin happy from working out. Other times I don’t. I go, whether or not I really want to, because it adds to my sense of well-being. Over a period of days, weeks and/or months, I feel better when I work out.

     The happy buzz isn’t sustainable. Contentment and a sense of well-being are. How often do we settle for feeling happy when what we really want is contentment?

     Where does meaning come into our pursuit of happiness? Many of the things that give us an immediate happy buzz are about instant gratification. In the long run, these things may have little or no meaning.

       An article published last year in The Atlantic , There’s More To Life Than Being Happy, referenced a recent study by psychological scientists where they asked 400 Americans whether their lives were happy and/or meaningful. The study found that having a happy life correlates to being a “taker” where a meaningful life is associated with being a “giver.”

     Happiness and meaning do overlap, but meaning is more related to contentment than pleasure. Whereas feeling happy has more to do with satisfying personal desires. We all need some instant gratification. Engaging in a bit hedonic well-being is a basic part of taking care of yourself.

    The article in The Atlantic goes on to say:

            “according to the Center for Disease Control, about 4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose. Forty percent either do not think their lives have a clear sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose. Nearly a quarter of Americans feel neutral or do not have a strong sense of what makes their lives meaningful.”

     Yikes! I was initially startled when I read this. However over the years numerous clients have asked Pam and me if we could tell them what their life purpose was. We can’t. Meaning is an inside job.

       It’s hard for me to picture a life that didn’t include meaning, contentment and periodic happy buzzes. I’m always up for a good cup of coffee. Bring on the chocolate!

However those temporary pleasures would feel hollow without a deeper foundation. I can’t imagine a life without meaning. Nor can I imagine ever feeling content without meaning in my life.

    Each of us place different levels of importance on meaning, contentment and happiness. One is not intrinsically better than the other. The big question is do you know what kind of happiness you’re pursuing and is your pursuit congruent with what you really want?

Being a Conscious Introvert

After my last post I got a message on Facebook from my buddy Brier -."Yes! Next party, I'll meet you at the cat." Tee, hee.  Brier is one of my oldest friends and a fellow introvert. This week’s post is for her as some of the introvert bits she's been putting up on her Facebook page helped inspire it.

   The continuum of Introversion and extroversion was first described by Carl Jung. We all fall somewhere along that spectrum. In the U.S. it's estimated that 10-25% of the population are introverts. That's not to say that the other 75-90% are extroverts. There are actually more ambiverts that either extroverts or introverts. The ambiverts fall into the middle range between the two. I am often envious of the flexibility those people have to navigate time alone and social situations with equal grace. Me, not so much so.

   We live in a busy, fast moving, crowded world that’s packed with sensory stimulation and loaded for multi-tasking. Most of the world has taken on extroversion as an ideal. Being out going and social are highly prized characteristics. Life coaches, dating services, career advisers and trainers of all sorts push the need to "put yourself out there". Global networking via social media is pushed as a requirement for any degree of success in business.

    The common definition of "friend" has changed from someone you know face-to-face and to anyone who liked your status update on Facebook. Even when we are physically with each other, we’re often present in body only. Go into a coffee shop and you’ll find at least one table full of people texting, tweeting and checking email rather than talking to each other.

    Our world of constant digital connection is an extrovert playground. Although they may feel uncomfortable at times, the ambiverts can keep up. For introverts this is the circle of hell Dante omitted because no one tried to tweet him. 

     Extroverts and ambiverts see at least some of who they naturally are affirmed and reflected back to them from the larger world. Introverts see a world that keeps saying the way you are doesn't work; you need to be different.

    All of us are strongest and most capable when we work with our nature rather than against it. Introversion is not something that needs to be cured or fixed. It can be an incredible strength when you learn to work with it.

    Here’s what Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking had to say in her Ted Talk: 

    When I, as an introvert, take on the world’s extrovert ideal, I abandon myself. I betray who I am to meet someone or something else's expectations. Being a conscious introvert means disassembling those expectations and misconceptions, rather than taking them on.

    Introverts aren’t anti-social. We’re differently social. Not interacting automatically doesn’t mean we’re shy. We need a reason to interact. We don’t assume everyone wants to know what we think, so we often wait to be invited into a conversation.

   Introverts don’t dislike people. We’re just more selective about how we connect. What feeds us is a deep conversation with a good friend. We’re not rude. We just experience small talk as a form of verbal spam.

   Although introverts dislike being the center of attention and need time alone, we don’t like being ignored. We get lonely too. We appreciate being invited to do things, even if we say no.

    Introverts have different innate strengths than extroverts. We’re good listeners. Many of us hear not only the words but what’s left unsaid. We notice the words someone chooses to express themselves and their body language. Introverts tend to be very observant. Talking less leaves us open to pick up details and subtext that others miss.

   We are capable of deep concentration. When an introvert is really engaged, s/he can single-mindedly focus on one thing for hours. Introverts are rarely bored. We always have our internal landscape to engage with.

    Introverts have a lot to offer our extrovert, short attention span world. The more we’re able to own our introvert strengths and be conscious about who we are, the more we can contribute.