I’ve always been a very disciplined person, and in many respects it’s served me well.  I’m great at meeting deadlines, having things organized, and following through on what I start.  But there’s always been a shadow side to this discipline, a cost to all that “productiveness” that I’ve become increasingly aware of.  My productivity is often driven by fear and a need to feel in control.  My endless to-do lists and that incessant voice inside my head takes a toll on being able to simply be present and enjoy what is happening around me.  So especially of late, I’m working on letting go and experimenting with what can happen.  In fact, yesterday, the sun was beating in on the couch in our great room.  I actually laid down in the warmth, pulled a blanket around my shoulders, and took a nap.  When I awoke, the world still existed and I felt refreshed!  The tasks I had intended to do were still there, but it didn’t really matter.  So today I’m going to share a little of what I’ve been contemplating and the inspiration I’ve been drawing from.

Many of us over-productive people are driven by an illusion that once we achieve our goal, things will be better. “I’ll be happier when…I’ll be more relaxed if only…when I get that job done…” It’s a way I distract myself from my anxiety by harboring the delusion that things will be better in the future.  It gives me an illusion of control and power, that if I work hard enough and keep focus enough, things will work out in the end.  But it also leads to exhaustion, disillusion, and a fear of falling behind.  It concedes joy in the present for a constant pursuit of a reward in the future that undoubtedly never comes because there’s always a new thing to worry about or a new challenge to face.

Life is an endless marathon of things that need fixing and tasks that need finishing.  As a result, I’m working to adopt the philosophy of the author Oliver Burkeman in his book Meditations for Mortals, which he refers to as imperfectionism.  As he defines it, imperfectionism is about “accepting that there will always be too much to do, that you won’t always feel ready, and that the future will always be uncertain.”  By embracing rather than fighting the reality of limitations and imperfections and viewing them less as obstacles, we allow ourselves to live a saner, freer, and more meaningful life.  By letting go of the pressure for perfection, we free up our time, energy, and focus for things that make us happier and more fulfilled.  By embracing our mortality, and accepting the limits of our lives. Burkeman hopes to inspire us to stop chasing after what’s impossible and to choose what’s most important to us and, as Nike says, just do it.

The author Joan Tollifson’s book title really grabbed my attention.  In  Death: The End of Self-Improvement, she writes about how embracing the loss of control that comes with aging can actually open us up to the joys of the messy and the hard things in life.  When we’re chasing after self improvement, we ignore the beauty in what and who we are now, with all our strengths and vulnerabilities.  The quest to always be better leads us to self doubt, social comparison, and envy.  Self-acceptance, on the other hand, leads us to a loving attitude and actual self-care and good health, rather than desperate quick fixes presented by the self improvement industry.  

I also love the phrase by the writer Shasha Chapin called “playing in the ruins.”  He refers to it as a sacred state in which you’re no longer denying the reality of the “scrapyard around you.” Instead of the burden to transform it, you accept the reality of it and enjoy what there is to be had there. By accepting limitations and not chasing after future goals, we can get on with life and take the risks that are available when we are freed up from trying to make life work out the way we think it needs to.  We can “play” rather than “control”.  And as Burkeman suggests, we can never get safety from life, we simply have to live in it.   

So what does this mean for day to day living?  I’m not sure yet.  The trash still needs to be taken out, I still need to get up at the alarm to make it to work on time, and tax day is approaching.  I suppose it means discerning what needs to get done for today from being caught up in the “what if” fears about the future.  It’ll mean letting go of how things “should be.”  It’ll mean being more spontaneous and trusting my capacity to be fine even if I don’t feel completely prepared.  It’ll mean ordering more take out. But the hope is it will also mean more moments of contentment and naps in the sun on the couch.  It will mean being able to linger in what feels good now without worrying about what could be.

Like any new philosophy or effort to embrace a new way of being, even this change, paradoxically, requires effort and attention.  The challenge is not to make it into one more thing I have to do.  I find myself amused that even Burkeman himself falls into the trap with his subtitle “Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.”  Really? I have to think a PR person added that in!  The point of imperfectionism is that there is no particular way we have to be, no pressure to become something different, and no solution we will ever find that will fix it for us.  Four days, four weeks, four years, four decades?  How about just FOR NOW?

Ok, it’s hard to believe, but I’ve been writing this blog for ten years!!  Say what???  Indeed!  Back in February of 2015 I had been laid off from the clinic I was working at when they closed their entire Mental Health Department.  I was feeling pretty lost, trying to figure out my next step and how I could find a new job.  My confidence was a bit shaken, I have to admit.  I suddenly had nowhere to go and while I interviewed and waited, I had some unexpected free time.  I’d been doing some writing for fun and loved the process.  It was my friend, Sherry Weinberg, who encouraged me to start a blog (thank you Sherry, for creating with me and supporting me along the way).  I had the glimmer of an idea, but it was Sherry who had learned how to set it up while helping her son write his own blog about cars.  With her technical and emotional support, I launched For-A-Change.  I had no idea at the time that I would still be writing it ten years later and what a positive experience it would be for me.  I thank you so much for taking the time to read my posts and for changing along with me.

What has surprised me the most about my blogging journey is how fresh it still feels.  I’m so lucky for how much I’ve enjoyed it!  I’ve never missed a post (first writing every week and then changing to every other week), because I’ve never been at a loss for something I wanted to explore and share.  That has been the best part for me.  I get the opportunity, through the structure of my self imposed deadline, to think about an idea I want to delve into and then allow myself the space to read, research, and then write about it.  I hope I’ve shared some helpful or thought provoking ideas along the way.  But also, I appreciate the opportunities to share some of my own personal growth with you.  A lot has changed in ten years including our county wildfires, my mother’s death, my kids’ graduations/launching, and yes, my own aging process.

And so, for my tenth anniversary edition, I ask for your indulgence in a little rant about writing.  I’ve been so surprised how much I’ve come to love it, because it surely wasn’t always this way!  Like most of you, I was exposed to writing in a format that pretty much sets you up to hate it.  We’re given assignments on topics that are dull, that are fact based, or in which we have to find right answers. Then we are graded and critiqued and asked to rewrite it.  We’re trained to write by being asked to write something for someone.  While I really do understand the importance of learning to be a good communicator and writing effectively and showing our accumulation of knowledge, we’re never invited to explore the very best of what writing can be.  Writing can and should be about expression.  It’s the art of putting our thoughts and feelings into words so that we, and perhaps someone we care to share it with, can get to know us.  Writing can be about exploration, about self discovery, and about being able to spend time with our curiosity aimed at whatever moves us.  Free writing is an amazing way to discover.  It taps into our unconscious and can enlighten us.  When we let go and follow our writing process, we can often be surprised at what connections we make and what we have to say.  It can be about big ideas and important relationships, or it can be about the most small and seemingly mundane events that make up our daily routines we often take for granted.  Writing is a way we draw attention to our lives and notice things as we record them.

In a recent article, author Elise Devlin, interviews Michael Phelps about his journaling habit.  He credits it as a key to getting his emotional world in balance.  He follows two rules.  The first is “no limits.”  He doesn’t start with any particular prompt or intention.  He simply writes about his day at the end of every day.  The second rule he follows is “document everything” – what he ate, how he feels, any interactions that made him feel weird…every little detail.  After doing it for years, it takes him about 15 minutes.  Then he takes time to review it.  He looks for clues or patterns or any bit of information that informs him about himself.  Phelps describes re-reading his entries as “piecing together the puzzle.”  He finds connections between his behavior and what he was feeling.  He finds patterns to his sleep or food intake, for example that might have gone unnoticed that might have affected his mood or attitude.  As a part of the article, the author decides to try the Phelps method of journaling.  I love how she describes it after her initial concern of having nothing to say, “It felt like one of those magic tricks where the magician pulls a never ending scarf out of their sleeve:  More and more unexpected thoughts kept rolling out.”

Regardless of what method you use, I think writing is essentially a process allowing you to be in conversation with yourself.  This level of internal dialogue and documentation allows us to go deeper into what we experience and offers us a chance to reflect without having to justify or defend ourselves.  As long as we can keep our critic out of the mix!  The most significant way to shut ourselves down or to give ourselves a case of writer’s block is to begin editing at the same time that we’re writing.  If our inner voice is evaluating what we’re expressing, it surely curtails the freedom to explore.  That’s why it’s so important to free write, following our muse, only later re-reading it.  That’s where journaling can be so liberating.  You can write and read it later, you can write and never, ever read it again, or you can write and read it moments, days, or years later.  Writing is a way to learn to stop the inner critic from editing our every thought and feeling.  It’s a training in giving ourselves permission to be who we are, with full acceptance of our totality.

For me, the process of writing has helped me uncover what I think and feel.  It also helps me to see that I can hold many different thoughts and feelings at various times, or all at the same time.  Writing gives me the awareness of my full experience and helps me integrate what can seem contradictory. And when I write, I don’t have to be completely accurate – it’s my story, after all.  And maybe that’s what I like as well about writing.  I have total control!  If I want to write a happy ending, I can.  If I want to kill off a thought or feeling, I can slash it and write the opposite.  I am the author!  The omnipotent creator of whatever I am saying.  Where else in life can I have so much control?  Maybe that’s why I love it so much! Aha!!!!  I just made the connection between my desire for control and my joy in writing. See? Self discovery in action! 

So to celebrate my 10th anniversary, I invite you to grab a pen, pencil, crayon, or a keyboard and take control.  Write away!  Whatever you want to say, whatever you want to ponder, whatever story takes up your interest.  Please, have at it!  It’s all available just for you in just the way you want it to be!  

Happy 10 Years and THANK YOU for all the time you have given me in reading my words and the support you have shown me!!!!!