Riding out the storm

Sometimes it is difficult to remember that life runs in cycles. During those times when it seems like everything is going wrong and we find ourselves discontented with the way our lives are going, it is so easy to listen to those million voices inside our head that tell us nothing is ever going to be different. Suddenly we are caught up in a vortex of despair and it seems like there is no way out of it. We are hanging by our fingernails on the edge of a cliff and feeling as if there is no one who will catch our fall into the darkness below.

But we have a constant reminder every day that light follows darkness. The sun always rises in the morning, and the seasons of disappointment and discontent in our lives are followed by seasons of abundance and joy. We experience the fullness of that joy because we have also experienced the seasons of pain. By nature we are not patient and we expect to feel happy and content all of the time. When that doesn’t happen, instead of realizing that this too shall come to pass, we wallow in our misery and the belief that discontent is a permanent state. The reality is that change is the one thing you can count on in this life, and with the passage of time, all wounds eventually heal. Although many of these wounds leave scars behind, the pain does diminish, and we learn to become stronger and more actualized in our experience of ourselves for having come through the storm.

Reminding ourselves while in the middle of the trial that at some point the sun will shine again isn’t an easy task, but one well worth putting the effort into. Reaching out to those who lift us up in those times and allowing them to carry us through on the strength of love and support is not a sign of weakness, but rather a sign of great strength. The strength is in knowing that we need each other. We provide our hope, compassion and love to one another when we are in a place to give them, and we receive those gifts when we are in a place of need. It is a beautiful gift both to serve in the role of the one who supports, and in the role of the one who receives. We honor each other when we reach out in our time of pain and complete the cycle of interdependency.

I have had to learn the lesson myself many times. It can be very difficult for me to admit that I am in a place of need and to reach for the outstretched hand of love and strength from someone else. Self sufficiency and reliance are so valued in our world today that it is easy to forget that what is at the core of our humanity is our connection to one another. We share a common experience of living, and we all understand the disappointments and heartaches that define our existence. By sharing our inner wisdom with one another and seeing each other through the eyes of love, kindness and compassion, we create an unbreakable bond with one another; a bond that can see us through the stormy weather and celebrate with us through the days of sunshine.

Stop the Assumptions

I’ve written before about the hazards inherent in the assumptions we all make about people and events in our lives every day. We give ourselves (and others) more misery assuming we know the outcome of something or what someone is thinking about us … and have you ever noticed that assumptions are almost always negative? How often do we make positive assumptions? Congratulations if your assumptions are all positive; you get to pass Go and collect $200. Maybe you might share your secret with the rest of us who constantly allow ourselves to fall into the same trap over and over again. The learning curve must be very steep.

So what did you assume today? Did you assume that because you didn’t get a call on that interview you were sure you aced that they have decided not to offer you the job? Did you assume that because he didn’t call you the next day after your first date that means he isn’t interested in you? Did you assume that you are going to be let go from your job because your company just really doesn’t need your talents and you cost them too much money anyway? Did you assume that your colleagues were talking about you behind your back because they suddenly went silent when you approached the water cooler? We make some pretty ordinary assumptions about the world and people and our relation to both. And these assumptions are consistently negative.

Life hands us all a lot of disappointment. But why does this mean consistently poisoning every new possibility with negativity and assumptions that this time will be just like every other time, and disappointment is the likely result? Does it really hurt less to be disappointed when you expect disappointment than it is to be disappointed when you believed something great was coming your way? Maybe it does. I’m not sure. But I do know I would rather spend the time hoping for the positive outcome, and creating that positive outcome with my belief and my actions than wallowing in the space of negative expectation, feeling helpless to make anything different happen.

Perhaps even more importantly, assumptions can take a much darker turn, serving as the seeds of hatred and prejudice. Assumptions that someone must be a criminal based on their skin color, immoral or promiscuous because of their sexual orientation, lazy and stupid because they are overweight, not worth the same salary because of their gender, incapable of doing a good job because of their age, irresponsible and lazy because of their economic class, and the list goes on. Every single human being born to this world is a creation of love and equality. No one has the right to make assumptions about another creation that are not based in reality or in love and compassion.

I’m working very hard on my own assumptions, not taking things personally, taking life as it comes, and not assuming the worst. I am a glass half full kind of person and so I know when I let assumptions get the better of me, it has been a waste of time and energy. We all have an inner wisdom, a vision, a brilliant light that is our essence….our guide. That is all we need. Letting this be poisoned with doubts based on assumptions will only bring frustration and disappointment. And then when you wake up and discover your assumptions were all wrong, you find you have wasted an awful lot of time in that negative space that could have been spent creating dreams. What a shame. Let’s stop assuming … and start creating our own reality. It is within our power to do so when we honor that inner wisdom, place our trust in it, and stop giving so much power away to assumptions, particularly negative ones.

If you are going to make assumptions, why not spend the time believing you will get the job offer, you will find your life partner, you will reach that goal in your career, your company will see your talents and recognize your efforts …. and more importantly, let us all start immediately assuming that that gay person is a caring and loving soul, that black person is brilliant and creative, that overweight person has an energy for life, that poor person is vibrant and gifted, that elderly person is wise and valuable, that woman is capable and deserving, that all human beings everywhere are creations of love and light.

After all, I keep saying it……

Believing…is Seeing.

Change is inevitable

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” -Mahatma Gandhi

There are few things in life you can count on with absolute certainty. Of course the two favorite ones everyone thinks of immediately are death and taxes. Notice how neither one of those certainties holds much appeal? There are some other things, however, that are pretty sure bets. One thing we know for sure is that change is inevitable.

Even in those times of your life when you have felt stagnant or bored, you can recognize that change has always occurred. From the change of seasons, to the full moon, to the blooming and dying of a rose, life is a cycle. Our lives are no different. Change is a constant. We begin as children and grow into adults (or for some vice versa), we meet people who flow into and out of our lives, we build careers that lead to other careers, we develop new interests in things and if we are wise continue to broaden our learning until the day we die, we watch our bodies change as we grow and age, we form new connections and shed old ones, and even simply realize that with each passing minute on the clock one 60-second interval is never the same as the one that came before it or the one that will follow it.

It is easy to squander away time in the belief that there is an unlimited quantity of it. How many minutes in the day do we waste because of the abundance we mistakenly believe we will always have? In the past year, I have seen several close family friends receive the news that they were going to die within three to six months. Going from perfectly healthy and passing a yearly physical to terminal illness within the span of days (or weeks). I wonder how many minutes prior to that news they had also squandered. I certainly know the value of those minutes following the news. Suddenly things like sitting in traffic, or complaining about something someone was doing, or watching television, or wallowing in self pity, or being irritated because the person had 11 items in the 10-item express lane didn’t seem like a valuable expenditure of minutes. Sharing love, speaking in kindness rather than poison, reminiscing about beautiful memories, playing a card game and sharing heartfelt talk with a friend, sipping lemonade in the shade on a hot day, and even helping out a friend with a plumbing emergency all became a more valuable way to use minutes.

Does it really require the shock of learning life is ending to begin to value what we have now, and make the absolute best of the gift of life we have been given? Does it really require losing it all to really discover the source of our true joy and the value of our minutes?

How am I valuing my minutes? How am I embracing the inevitability of change? I suppose just like everyone else I could do a much better job. Change is exciting but it is also inherently painful, or at least uncomfortable for creatures of habit. But I know I am committed to spending as many minutes as I can spreading love, being compassionate, sharing a kind word with a stranger, being open minded, fair and accepting, and seeing the light that shines brightly in brilliance in every human being I meet every single day of my life.

The White Coat

The past has such a powerful influence over our present that sometimes I wonder if long-term memory is a gift or a curse. I guess it all depends on your perception. Wisdom means learning from and embracing the past as our own personal history textbook, and moving forward with the knowledge and experience that we have gained from every moment. Moments of triumph and joy, and moments of heartache and disappointment. Hope is what keeps us alive; maintaining the forward movement that hope provides requires us to confront our deepest disappointments and the demons that accompany them. It would be so much easier to just delete the bad stuff, and keep the good stuff, wouldn’t it?

As you may (or may not) recall, one disappointment in my history involved the course of events that determined completion of medical school was not to be my destiny. After taking a huge risk and leaving the sure thing of a PhD program in psychology, I embarked on the long road toward medical school, with no guarantee that I would be accepted. The risk was huge, both personally and financially. I worked hard, and was subsequently blessed to be accepted into a school in my local area, and I started my medical education….it was all so good. I was on the path to authentic enlightenment, living out my goal, my inner calling. And then…….it ended. Just like that, a health crisis took me out of the game as a first-year medical student.

The other day I was at my parents’ house, and hanging in the closet of my old bedroom was my doctor’s white coat, issued to us on the first day of medical school to make us believe we were physicians from the very first day. Looking at that white coat with a badge attached with my name and degree I would never achieve engraved on it, I felt those old twinges of regret and disappointment. In reality it is just a white lab coat, meaningless really. A piece of fabric to which I have attached my perceptions of failure and disappointment and regret. How odd to give an object that kind of power.

I touched that coat and began to realize I truly could create a new perception of it if I so chose. I could create a perception of joy that I reached the amazing goal of making it into medical school… not the easiest thing to accomplish amidst competition and prerequisites and the MCAT and the unbelievable journey through the maze required merely to apply. I could attach a perception of survival, of living out dreams, of taking risk and seeing that risk rewarded, of fulfillment and authenticity, of hope… to that coat. But it’s so much easier to look back with regret than it is to look back with a sense of achievement, isn’t it? I tell others all the time how we do have power over our own perception, but it is always easier to point out the plank in someone else’s eye than it is to see the splinter in your own, right?

So how much power are we willing to give the disappointments in our past, and are the demons that lie to us behind the steering wheel and directing the journey of our lives, or are we steering our own course and creating our own destiny? At some point it is time to let it all go, let go of the disappointment, let go of the fears, let go of the hopeless feelings that inevitably accompany disappointment. At some point it is time to recognize that our perceived “failures”have nothing to do with who we really are and what is truly important. We are beautiful, perfect creations just as we are….we are not defined by our accomplishments or “failures”, our triumphs or our disappointments. We are defined by what is in our heart, what it is that makes us unique and authentic and living in the truth of our self. Our ego-driven need for “success” will lie to us repeatedly about our worth and how it is defined. It is our choice whether to let that definition become our reality.

Yes, I still feel the pangs of what could have been, but I am also learning to take a great deal of joy in the forward motion, the very idea that I DID make it into medical school after working so hard, and nothing can take away my memories of those days when I was living in the truth of my self, my nature, who I am. A good friend here reminds me that what is important is the journey, not the destination. Most importantly, however, I survived the health crisis that temporarily sidelined me, and that survival reminds me about hope, reminds me to laugh, reminds me of the truth, reminds me not to believe the lies my ego-driven demons try to force on me. Hope, like love, never dies…..it too, is a choice.

Inner Dialogue

You know that inner dialogue that runs inside your head all day, every day? That constant conversation you have with yourself about everything from what you have to get done in the day, to what you want for lunch, to deeper reflections about your life and who you are? When you take the time to actually delve into yourself and think about who you are, who you want to become, and what your dreams and desires are, what does that inner voice say to you? What does that voice sound like? Is it a loving voice or a punitive one? Do you find that voice speaking to you the way you would speak to someone else, particularly someone you love very deeply? Or do you find that voice is harsh, unkind, and at times downright abusive?

My inner voice speaks volumes to me constantly. There are days when that voice is hard and punitive. It is like a parasite, sucking out my confidence, my love for myself, and my dreams. It is the voice that tells me that I am never good enough at anything I ever do, or will ever do. What a lying voice that is! And yet I think back over the years and how parasitic that voice really has been at very key moments in my life, and how I have given power to it in decisions made — and decisions not made — and sadly without even knowing I was giving it that much influence over my life. It is a voice that I would never ever allow to be spoken in words directed at another human being, and yet I have allowed them a voice in my own life. Yes … allowed. I don’t believe I am a helpless victim to that inner dialogue with no control over what form I allow the voice to take, nor the decisions I make based on the words I choose to believe.

It certainly isn’t an easy task to overwrite the tapes of that internal dialogue. Those tapes have been recorded into our psyche with influences that have spanned a lifetime. And unfortunately, we can’t simply reformat the hard drive. The diligence it requires to re-record the tapes is not to be underestimated. It requires surrounding ourselves with people and influences and activities that can help us see the truth and beauty that resides within us, and also distancing from those people and influences and activities that instead contribute poison to that dialogue. It requires making the effort every day to consciously tell ourselves something new even when we don’t believe it. Over time, it will sink in and become part of the landscape that makes up who we are. It even requires patience and kindness with ourselves as we continue to have days where the parasite feels very powerful. Acknowledging those days and committing in kindness to ourselves in moving forward through those days, rather than wallowing in them as something we perceive as yet another failure, is key to showing ourselves that the parasite will not be afforded power over our perception.

As perfect creations of a loving God, we are all exactly as we are meant to be … everything within us resonates that love … we are created in love … we are living in love …