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End the struggle.

Jan 12th, 2010 by Jen

absbtrflylg-cprsdIf you stay tuned, you’ll hear more about the process of transforming struggle–and stuckness–into grace and transformation. The essence of this process involves three steps:

  1. notice what you notice–and then give yourself a break! (a.k.a. notice with compassion and nonjudgment)
  2. feel what you feel…and feel it physically, in your body
  3. question your thoughts (not the same as “change your thinking”)

Much more to come on these, including real life examples of how this process translates into practical life stuff like losing that weight you’ve been hanging onto for years, finding fulfilling work, or writing that book you’ve been dreaming about. And for now, I came upon this Thich Nhat Hanh quote via a local yoga studio by the name of Ocean Earth Wind Fire. If you live in the area, I’d highly recommend checking it out.

By the way, if the quote sounds out there to you, you’re not alone. A few years ago I would have thought the dude was smoking some good stuff (who knows? kidding). And after many experiences of really stretching my comfort zone and a much richer life later, my current mantra is don’t knock it ’til you try it. Here goes:

If you feel irritation or depression or despair, recognize their presence and practice this mantra:  “Dear one, I am here for you.”  You should talk to your depression or your anger just as you would to a child.  You embrace it tenderly with he energy of mindfulness and say, “Dear one, I know you are there and I am going to take care of you,” just as you would with your crying baby.  There is no discrimination or dualism here, because compassion and love are you, but anger is too.  All three are organic in nature, so you don’t need to be afraid.
You can transform them.

Let me repeat:  In the practice of Buddhist meditation, we do not turn ourselves into a battle field of good versus evil.  The good must take care of the evil as a big brother takes care of his little brother or as a big sister takes care of her little sister–with a great deal of tenderness, in a spirit of nonduality.  Knowing that, there is a lot of peace in you already.  The insight of nonduality will put a stop to the war in you.  You have struggled in the past, and perhaps you are still struggling; but is it necessary?  No.  Struggle is useless.  Stop struggling.

you are here Thich Nhat Hanh

Posted in Finding your passion, Health, Life Change, Weight Loss | No Comments »

The imperfect commitment: update I

Jan 10th, 2010 by Jen

Today I woke up much later than anticipated and for some unknown reason, I was totally pissed off. I had planned to get up at 5:30 am and go to swim practice so that my imperfect commitment would be checked off for the day before I’m usually even out of bed. But a much later night than expected combined with 20 degree weather and a toasty down comforter meant that the chances of winning the Powerball this week were higher than me getting out of bed at that hour.

Bottom line:  the last thing I felt like doing was my 20 minutes of whatever. Most days I’ve looked forward to it. But not today.

I was tempted to force myself to do it right off the bat–just do it. But I didn’t. Instead, I decided to do some journalling and explore the resistance (aka pissed off feeling). This in no way meant that I wouldn’t honor the commitment, but rather that I’d sort of honor the resistance before forcing myself. I won’t bore you with the details, and in exploring the resistance, I received a huge and powerful gift. A gift that I highly doubt would have resulted from using sheer force of will to push through the resistance.

Remember, at no point did I intend to not do the 20 minutes of whatever (that’s a lot of negatives!). The point of my imperfect commitment is to do it daily (six times a week, more specifically) as a sort of ritual to see what happens. Exploring the resistance was not an excuse to avoid the commitment, but rather an invitation to connect with myself.

I’d love to say that after I explored the resistance I was totally psyched to move my body, and this would be a flat out lie. But my resistance was markedly less, and with relative ease I made my way to the yoga mat and practiced pseudo mellow yoga for about 45 minutes. And it felt good. Really good.

At times the voice in my head started going off about the cellulite on my thighs yet again…telling me that mellow yoga was not going to fix that problem…and she had a few comments about how my yoga practice should be more advanced by now…but these thoughts were fairly distant (believe me, it used to be like someone was consistently screaming in my ear), and I gently reminded myself that 20 minutes of whatever is a whole lot better than 20 minutes of nothing.

Posted in Health, Jen's Story, Life Change, Weight Loss | No Comments »

What’s your IMPERFECT commitment?

Jan 6th, 2010 by Jen

For a VERY long time now I’ve been THINKING about exercising. By long time I mean like 17 or so years (crap, it’s been THAT long!). But as an ex-competitive athlete, without realizing it I was always looking for something that would erase the dreaded cellulite from my thighs and get me back into kick ass shape.

Somehow the fact that I am now 40 and not 22 or 20 or 18 did not register in my brain, nor did the fact that I have no desire to commit 20+/- hours a week to grueling and boring physical activity. I’m a bit slow at times.

Periodically during these years I’d pick a challenging goal and force myself to do it for the sake of getting in shape–a century bike ride, the 4+ mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim, a half marathon–but most of the time I THOUGHT about how I should be doing something and wasn’t.

Trust me, the words in my head telling me that I should be exercising were not supportive. Actually, they sucked. So this year I decided to stop waiting until I found the perfect exercise solution for me. And I’m not waiting until I get the motivation to get up at 5:00am and go to Master’s swim practice or anything else. Instead I am going to do 20 minutes a day of whatever.

Yep, that’s right. My new 2010 superduper exercise routine is 20 minutes of whatever. Anything at all that involves at least 20 minutes of moving my body qualifies. Even slug yoga. It may not erase the cellulite from my thighs or get me into pro-athlete shape, but it’s a whole heckuva lot better than sitting around THINKING about what I’m not doing.

So far I’ve been for a new year’s day hike with my parents, been to yoga, left the office at lunch and walked in the cold two days this week and more. And so far it feels good. Very good. Enlivening even. Occasionally the voice says something like “a walk? Lame! That’s not going to turn you into a supermodel…” and I reply, “You’re probably right, but it’s a lot better than nothing.”

So what are you imperfectly committing to this year? Think about something you’ve been wanting to do but haven’t. Anything goes. And then make a commitment to yourself. A completely doable, laughably reasonable, absolutely imperfect commitment.

Posted in Health, Jen's Story, Life Change | 3 Comments »

What’s holding you back? It may surprise you.

Aug 3rd, 2009 by Jen

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So there’s this woman I know. She’s fabulous…talented, creative, kind, easy with a laugh and always ready to listen to what’s on your mind. And she’s one of the most hard working people I know. But no matter how hard she worked to start a regular exercise program–and she enlisted all the usual tricks and more–nothing worked.

Frustrated, burnt out, and ready to try anything, she asked for some coaching. In our coaching sessions together, we lifted up the hood and went exploring in search of what might be holding her back. And you’ll never guess what we found.

One day in a session a few tears formed in the corners of her eyes and started to leak down her cheeks. She grew embarrassed and apologized. She tried to push the feeling back down into the depths. “Whoa!” I said, “Don’t apologize–please, feel what you feel.” She was highly uncomfortable, to say the least. This is a very professional woman. But she temporarily left her comfort zone and allowed herself to shed a few tears. When the time was right, we got curious about what was under the sadness–and discovered that she was sad because she missed her dad who had passed away some years before.

But what we also discovered was that she believed she should be over his death by now. That she shouldn’t feel sad any more.  We questioned this belief–is it true that when someone dies, there’s a point at which it’s no longer OK to feel sad?

No, we agreed. It’s not true. Missing someone you love after they’ve died is a natural part of life–and the sadness can actually be a way to connect to this person, to feel them in your heart. She gave herself permission to feel what she felt. And the energy she’d been using to keep the sadness at bay was now free to flow into other areas.

You may not believe what happened next–but it’s true. I promise. The next day she visited a gym near her work and made an appointment for a tour. The next week she joined the gym and somehow started waking up an hour earlier to exercise most weekdays. It’s been a year. She’s still exercising. And she looks and feels great.

After much research, life experience, and working with clients, I’ve learned that if you boil things down to their essence (or pretty darn close anyway), there are two things holding you back:

  1. unexpressed emotions
  2. unquestioned thoughts and beliefs (beliefs being those thoughts we think a LOT)

To some of you this may make perfect sense. To others, it may sound like crazy talk. See for yourself:

  • think about an area in your life where you’re stuck or something’s holding you back
  • become an observer and get curious, watching yourself in this area as if you were an impartial witness
  • when you notice yourself thinking about whatever it is you want to do and not doing it, notice…what are you thinking? What are you feeling?  If you don’t notice anything at first, don’t be discouraged. Like everything, it gets easier with practice. And it’s a skill worth learning as it will change your life!

We’ll explore this in more detail in upcoming posts. In the interim, please ask questions below or feel free to contact me.

Posted in Career Change, Finding your passion, Health, Life Change, Weight Loss | 4 Comments »

Why can’t I figure out what to do with my life?

Jul 20th, 2009 by Jen

If you’re reading this post, I’m guessing that you’ve searched high and low trying to figure out what to do with your life.

Maybe you’ve paid for career assessments, been to workshops or retreats, spent a month at a remote ashram in India, have driven your family and friends crazy asking them for the answer—and still haven’t found what you were looking for (if Bono can end a sentence with a preposition, then so can I).

Maybe, like me, you sat on the couch for a few months after college eating frozen Otis Spunkmeyer chocolate chip cookie dough and watching Oprah, hoping the answer would hit you light a bolt of lightening one day. It didn’t work for me. I gained 30 pounds and got depressed, though not necessarily in that order. And I doubt it worked for you.

And so, out of complete desperation, here you are. Welcome. You’ve come to the right place.

I spent the last almost twenty years searching for an answer to this question. Along the way people told me that what I was looking for didn’t exist, that work wasn’t supposed to be fun, that I was being unrealistic and much worse.  They were wrong.

I discovered that I do have the answers I seek—and so do you. I just couldn’t hear them. The purpose of this site is to help you discover why you can’t hear the answers you’re looking for and to teach you how to hear them again—so that you can stop thinking about what to do with your life and start doing it.

Posted in Career Change, Finding your passion, Jen's Story | 6 Comments »

What it feels like to find your passion

Jul 16th, 2009 by Jen

I’m inserting this post into the “What should I do with my life” series because I’m leaving for Chicago tomorrow morning where I’m going to spend the weekend with a few hundred other Martha Beck trained coaches. And today as I was getting ready to go, it occurred to me that the super fun buzzy sensation I was experiencing was nothing other than what  it feels like to find my passion.

It doesn’t feel like work–it feels like fun.

It feels like wanting to give, just because it feels good.

It feels like play.

It feels energizing and enlivening.

Can life really be this good? If you’d asked me in the past (even up to a few months ago), I’d have said no. That would be too good to be true. Or maybe it’s possible for other people, but not for me.

Now I know differently. And so can you.

Posted in Career Change, Finding your passion, Martha Beck Coaching | 1 Comment »

Jen’s Story: Part Two

Jul 15th, 2009 by Jen

In case you’re short on time, I’ll sum up part one of  Jen’s Story: Part One. The very short version is that I searched high and low in an attempt to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life. I chased the answer like I would an oasis in the Sahara and tried all of the traditional approaches (books, test, career counselor).  These approaches simply did not work (part one offers a more entertaining version of this quest).

At this point a more sane person may have given up. Not me. Nope. I walked into work the Monday morning after my husband shipped out for Bosnia, went to talk to the coworkers (aka friends) who provided my worklife sanity at the time, only to find that not one, not two, but three of them had decided to go on vacation at the same time. Normally I would have simply focused on my work–however, at the time we had a shortage of work in our department and I was bored (very, very bored).

If you’re here, you probably know very well what happens when you’re bored at work–you become even more obsessed with figuring out what to do with your life.

And obsessed I was. I wanted to leave. I wanted a change. I searched high and low for the answer on the web, typing in everything from “tell me what to do with my life” to “help me, please!” (ok, not really, but close).  A few friends and my cousin had told me about a place called Kripalu, in Lenox, Massachusetts. I’d visited their site before and was curious about it, but it seemed a little out there. But now I was desperate. My husband was gone. I had no one to distract me from how miserable I was at my job*. The out there options seemed more appealing. Riding a cow across South Dakota in a December blizzard began to be an attractive option if it meant I could leave my job.

So I checked out the site once more to learn that they were offering a workshop called “Finding Your Life’s Mission” that very week! Do I call? Don’t I call? If you can’t sleep one night and want a secret remedy, let me know and I’ll tell you more about my deliberations over whether or not to call. I called. They told me they had a few spots left and one bed. Seemed like it was meant to be. So with much fear and excitement and what I am getting myself intoness, I headed to Kripalu for the first time on a Thursday in August in search of my life’s mission. Did I find it? Yes. and No. More in part three.

Posted in Career Change, Jen's Story | No Comments »

Jen’s Story: Part One

Feb 12th, 2009 by Jen

For what feels like a long, long time, I searched high and low for the answer to the question “What should I do with my life.” I read book after book (including, not surprisingly, What Should I Do With My Life), attended numerous workshops and retreats, searched for the answer on the web, and drove my friends and family nuts asking them for the answer. It wasn’t there.

Those darn career change books kept asking me to remember what I liked to do as a kid. I couldn’t figure out how to make a career our of reading Nancy Drew mysteries and Judy Blume teen novels (anyone remember Are you there God? It’s Me Margaret?), so this wasn’t very helpful.

I must have brainstormed my skills, interests, values, yada yada yada… seventy two times if I did it once. I most certainly drove my friends and family nuts asking them what I should do with my life. And none of it worked. I alternated between waiting for the lightening bolt to hit me with the answer and despairing that I’d never find it, making the best of my job(s) and then hating it but not knowing what else to do, and generally feeling like there’s got to be more than this.

I vascillated between these sentiments until a few months after my husband Dave and I got married on April 13 (or was it the 14th Dave?), 2002. We were in Margaret River, Australia on our honeymoon when we learned that his Army National Guard unit was being called to active duty when we got back and  he’d be away for a year on a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia (the first year of our marriage for those of you who aren’t paying close attention).

Yes, this really does have something to do with figuring out what do to with with my life (and what might help you to figure out what to do with yours)–I promise. Stay posted and part II will be available soon for your reading pleasure.

Posted in Career Change, Jen's Story | No Comments »