The winter sky gives me hope…

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Sirius A & B, a double-star system that makes me think of power

I’ve been thinking about this for some time. The giving away of personal power and how it has manifested itself in my life. I read a post today on another blog that really made me think on this, the writer basically said being around certain people was psychologically destructive to her. Believe me, I understand that; it’s a big reason I limit my interaction with many of my family members, a big reason, why I ditched certain friends, and a big reason I choose not to talk to certain people. But I also understand that in a very real way, in doing these things, I am giving other people power over me and this severely limits the possibility of any change or growth in either party.

From experiences I’ve had, I know that sometimes just starting a discussion can open up avenues of thought just for myself that helps me whether I change the mind of anyone else. It goes a long way toward building my own emotional strength, so I am not so easily psychologically destroyed by people with a fundamentally different world view. That is an essential giving away of power that undermines the ability to grow as a person, I feel.

Staying stagnant is probably my biggest fear. I’m light years away from being a tight-fisted ball of misery, filled with pain and angst. In part because I chose to reclaim my personal power, bit by bit. When will I decide to claim it all?

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I read this in an interview writer Augusten Burroughs did with The Independent and it struck me to my core. This used to be one of the long-held secret beliefs I had about myself: that I somehow caused or attracted all of the bad things things that happened to me. I do think that while it’s true that you often get what ‘vibe’ or whatever you put out, this comes into play when you are an adult and of sound mind.

If you are a trauma magnet, first thing is to get some therapy to help you determine if perhaps your actions as an adult might be causing or triggering bad things…and also to help you to overcome things that happened in childhood that were beyond your control or ability to influence. Patterns can be broken.

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someone in my facebook stream posted this earlier, and I have been pondering it all day. I have had a day of surprises and upheavals, big and small. some so tiny just a blip! but that blip represents one teeny step closer to my goals. There is so much I want to see and do and be, there is so much out there to experience. My wonder at life hasn’t changed since I was 4 years old…but I am coming/growing into a large dose of practicality. With this comes the feeling that what I want for the most part I already have, the rest will come to me by and by. This quote really nailed this feeling for me, it nailed it.

another quote I like along the same lines is:

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
~Joseph Campbell

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I learn best through reading. A few books that helped me to shape and transform my life are:

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (her site is temporarily down). like the author I believe that everyone is inherently a creative being. This book will help you develop and nurture your innate creativity, be it writing, painting, film making, photography, crafting, whatever. It will also help you to respect and nurture yourself and your soul.

The 7 Habits of Highly Creative People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. This book will help you learn essential time management skills. for me it helped me to move past living in constant crisis mode because I learned to spend the bulk of my time in proactive and preventative behaviors. I also learned to change the way I thought of any interaction and to improve my communication.

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery. this book…deeply changed my life. It changed me as a person who subconsciously consistently sought conflict and chaos into a self-aware person who consistently seeks peace, positivity, and growth. I learned fundamental ways of looking inside myself to understand who I was, why I did the things I did, and why I reacted to others the way I did. This book helped me to truly understand that everything I did was a choice, and as such I always had control over how I chose to walk and be in this world.

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I recognized that I didn’t allow myself enough time in the mornings. I have a lot to do before I leave out the door for work. I need to write; work on the zine and/or one of my book projects. I need to exercise. I need to shower. I need to get dressed, put in my contacts, put on a little makeup. I need to do some housework. I need to feed my kids and make their lunches for school. I need to pack my lunch for work. I need to feed the cat. I need to post to some of my blogs. I need to check my email. Guess how much time I was allowing myself to do all these things? A little over an hour. I kidded myself into thinking I could do it all by multi-tasking. ha!

I actually need 2-3 hours to do all these things (depends on how much I am writing). That gives me enough time to do one thing at a time and take my time doing it. I have nice, relaxed mornings now. I get up at 5am and by the time my family gets up I have done things important to me without feeling pressured or interrupted. I can do the things I have to do without feeling resentful or rushed. I can take my time with my kids in the morning, and talk with them in a pleasant manner instead of being grouchy and irritable and rushing them along just because I was feeling rushed. Best of all, no more running out the door without eating and running on empty. I have time to eat a nice breakfast and have a nice big cup of soothing tea before I head out into the world. I have time to talk and connect with my husband, have a real conversation with him before we go off to work.

I’m slowly unlearning the habit of rushing and tardiness. If you want to stop being late everywhere you go, and/or stop feeling so pressured and rushed, the key is to allow yourself time to do the things your need, want, and have to do.

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Sometimes it seems to me that I do things with the best of intentions, with the utmost planning to details, but then get easily thrown off track when anything slightly goes not according to plan. I am starting to understand that a certain flexibility is needed to get through life; to manage just living and following through on plans. Sometimes things happen that I have no control over, but that doesn’t mean I have to give up on what I originally was trying to do. It’s ok to take a different route to get there, to make things happen.

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I’ve been struggling with some things lately, mostly health-related, that have left me feeling very sorry for myself and thrown off track. Really getting into feeling pathetic and sorry for myself. I had to remind myself that even the best-laid plans can be turned over in a heartbeat by things you can’t control. My life is a series of ever-changing plans. Sometimes this triggers me to feel powerless, as if I have no control over what happens to me. But this is not true. There is another quote I like, that goes something like ‘you can’t control which way the wind blows but you can direct the sails’ or something like that. This is what is true. I always have choices in what I do and how I respond to life challenges.

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I love this quote because it is so pure and straight-forward, just so stunningly crystal clear that it’s almost shocking. Your recovery, from whatever it may be that is holding you back in life, should be your first priority. For someone like myself who is used to putting their needs last, this is almost like a personal permission slip to take care of myself.

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I love this quote. Over the years I have used it as a reminder to myself when I don’t want to give or share my meager resources, because most of the time I have been pressed for money myself. Truly though, when I have been helped by others in my own grueling times of need, it was often by people who didn’t have much. It is not easy to have a charitable heart when you are living lean yourself. This is true.

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