Today, across the United States, many of us will be treated to a grand sense of awe as we watch the unique experience of a Solar Eclipse.  Masses of people will have traveled hundreds of miles and paid high prices for hotels, all to experience the sense of awe and wonder of such a rare experience.  

When the moon is perfectly aligned in front of the sun, we experience totality, a brief period of darkness created by the moon’s shadow.  It’s not that the sun and moon have changed in orbit in any way, it is simply a phenomena of the relationship of the sun and moon in the sky creating a rare alignment available from a particular perspective on Earth (the band of totality).

This rare alignment inspired me to think about this on a more everyday scale.  If we stop and think about it, we have the opportunity for moments of awe almost every day if we just notice them.  For example, just yesterday I saw a beautiful fox run across our property at sunset.  Last week, I helped an older woman who had fallen on the street and was on the ground as I happened to walk by.  I met my husband in Austin Texas at a wedding we were both attending from opposite sides of the country.  All of these experiences happened because of a unique timing, a special alignment of relationship.

So as we look to the sky today in awe of the Solar Eclipse, let’s also look around us each and every day for the beauty of synchronicity.  These rare moments not only can bring joy to our lives, but also have the potential to change the meaning or direction of our lives in profound ways.  And an added bonus,  we don’t even have to wear those strange glasses to see them.

Ok, let me just start this post by making it clear I LOVE my cell phone.  It keeps me connected to my daughter at college and I can send quick messages to people I care about without bothering them.  It frees me up physically and psychologically because I know that my interns from work or my mother’s caregiver can get a hold of me wherever I am, when needed.  I see how it opens up our social worlds and puts information at our fingertips (I never have to buy a map and I always know when my favorite Pottery Barn item is on sale).  But like most of us, I tend to think I ‘m not one of “those people” when it comes to being addicted to my phone.  But I came across a study this week that made me stop and think about the effect of my cell phone.  What really caught my attention was the fact that we are impacted not just when we use our phone, but just by its mere presence,  that I thought was worth sharing and reflecting on in this week’s post.

Having a smartphone nearby, even when turned off, reduces our ability to think and reason, new research from the University of Texas, Austin, concludes.  A team of investigators conducted two studies in which 800 people engaged in tasks with their smartphones placed either nearby and in sight (face down on the table), nearby but out of sight (in their pocket or a bag), or in a separate room.  The researchers found the mere presence of the phone reduced performance, even though the people involved reported they were not thinking about their phone.  As smart phone salience increased, the performance on tests of cognitive capacity decreased.  The interesting thing was that when asked about the frequency of thinking about the phone, the average self report for all groups was “not at all.”  

The researchers then repeated the experimental situation, adding a group for each condition where the phone was actually turned off – the phone was off but in sight, turned off and out of sight, or turned off and in another room.  The results were the same, supporting the linear trend that as your smart phone becomes more noticeable , your available cognitive capacity decreases.  Interestingly, the participants who reported the highest dependence on their smart phone benefitted the most in terms of performance by leaving their phone in another room.

In reflecting on the study, the lead researcher, Dr. Adrian Ward, suggests, “Your conscious mind isn’t thinking about your smart phone, but that process – the process of requiring yourself not to think about something – uses up some of your limited cognitive resources.  It’s a brain drain.”  Professor Larry Rosen, of California State University, author of The Distracted Mind, has also researched the effects of merely having your smart phone nearby, and concludes, “People feel compelled to check their phones.  Even if the phone does not vibrate or they do not get notifications.”  His research confirms that this checking behavior increases anxiety and creates difficulties in processing information.  If you are interrupting your train of thought, it is going to be much  harder to absorb information or think deeply.

So for me, in thinking about my phone habits, I must confess I often have my phone sitting on my desk, and what the research suggests does ring true.  I do tend to check it, each time thinking it is just a brief, harmless pause.  But what I also wonder about is the many times I’m sitting with people I care about at home or in a coffee shop, and my phone is out on the table or in a bag by my side.  What is this doing to our intimacy and our ability to truly listen and understand each other?  It’s so annoying when you see someone’s eyes glance over to their phone or they pick it up to “multitask” while you are talking.   I realize in thinking about this research, that not only is it rude, but that the phone between us is much more than just a phone between us.  Next time, in order to be the kind of friend I want to be, I might just need to leave it in the car.

People often complain about how awful it is to feel guilty.  Ironically, though, I notice that the people who express feelings of guilt the most often are also the people I would say are the most considerate. So when I saw the study I describe in today’s post, it made sense to me, and showed me the upside of guilt.

According to La Trobe University’s (Australia) Matt Treeby and colleagues (2016), the guilt-prone are more aware and more sensitive to the emotional expressions of others. If you’re worried that you’ve hurt someone else, they reason, you’ll be highly attuned to judging people’s emotional states (and whether they’re mad at you) from their faces. People who have the tendency to feel guilty are likely to expend a fair degree of mental energy on concerns about the negative effect their behavior may have had on other people. Guilt, then, has various adaptive qualities in terms of helping you interact with others in a more prosocial fashion. If you’re worried about hurting people, you’ll try to restrain your anger or aggression. Moreover, according to the Australian team, you’ll also stay away from high-risk impulsive or addictive behaviors. Previous research conducted a number of years ago by George Mason University’s June Tangney, showed that people inclined toward guilt were higher in empathy. Not only do the guilt-prone want to gauge accurately the emotions of others, but they also can resonate more closely to the way they’re feeling when they’ve been wronged.

Too much of anything, as we know, is never good, and the same is true about guilt. Excessive guilt is one of the symptoms of depression. And research shows that people who have low self esteem tend to experience more than a healthy dose of guilt, overburdening themselves with the feeling of being bad, not just doing bad (making bad choices). In fact, shame, when someone feels they themselves are bad, was actually found by the Australian team, to make people more self focused rather than sensitive to others. The response of those who experience shame is to reduce the pain of their poor self image by withdrawing or to hiding that they have done anything wrong, rather than tend to the other person and make amends.

Guilt can also lead to trouble if you are prone to feeling guilty for things that are beyond your control or for things you did by accident, without intention. This guilt can not be rectified and therefore lingers, causing helplessness and hurting your esteem. In these cases, it is best to transform your attitude into one of regret rather than guilt. On the other hand, if you can accept responsibility when you have done wrong to someone else and make amends, research shows this actually works to build self esteem.

So, the next time you feel guilty, look at the bright side. It means you are a thoughtful and caring person. Hopefully, you also have the self esteem and maturity to accept responsibility for your behavior and take action. This may require some humility and saying you’re sorry, but you will feel lighter and feel more love in the long run.

My father passed away on June 6th in 2006.  Every June I especially miss him between the anniversary of his passing and Father’s Day.  My Dad was a unique man, a scrappy survivor who had trouble enjoying the fruits of his labor.  There are many things I now wish I could ask my father and I often think of how he would advise me.  My relationship with him is still very active and as I get older, I actually learn more from him, appreciating things about him as I gain more perspective.

My local Rabbi recently reminded me of the saying in Judaism that follows the mentioning of a deceased person.  In Hebrew it is, “Zikhronah livrakha,” meaning, “May his/her memory be for a blessing.”  (You may see the phrase on tombstones in cemeteries).  I have always really liked this ritual, and now that I have several loved ones who have passed, I especially like it.  For me, “May their memory be for a blessing” is an active invitation that is bi-directional.  When we remember someone, it certainly is a way of honoring them.  Each time we think of them, we are blessing the deceased by bringing their life and their love into our presence.  At the same time, I also think “may their memory be a blessing” means we are blessed with their memory.  When I remember my father, I feel blessed with a closeness to him, even if it is painful.  I also remember things he said or would say, knowing who he was and what was important to him.  It helps me remember that I was blessed to have known him.

Every once in awhile I have an intense dream with my sister or my father, or even one of my grandparents, in it.  When I wake, I really do feel blessed that I was in their presence.  I can see their face, hear their voice, and feel the connection.  It saddens me as the closeness fades as I awaken, trying to hold on to the vividness in vain.  But I always feel lucky that they had come to visit me, and that we had some time together.

Rituals are an important part of the lifelong journey of grieving for someone who was important to us who has died.  Whether it is making “Nanny’s cole slaw,” listening to the song that my sister liked at Christmas (thanks to my girls for helping me find it in spotify), or lighting a memorial candle on my Dad’s birthday, the actions are a concrete way of remembering, which is truly a blessing.

Below is a piece I wrote about my Father several years ago.  I had just been laid off when the clinic I was working  for lost funding.  I was longing to ask my Father for advice, as he was someone who knew how to rise up when knocked down.  I include it as a blessing to my Dad.

The Secret Lives of Our Father’s

My favorite piece of what is left of the life of my Father is an item I never knew he even had.  I discovered it in a tiny white box hidden in the back of his armoire, tucked behind several classic pieces of art we made him as children.  It would have been easy to miss it when I was sorting through his belongings after his death, as my Father was a large man, not prone to owning things that were literally so small.  

But inside the box, sitting on top of crumbling old foam, was a small medallion, the kind you pin on your chest, with crossed swords prominently embossed in the metal.  There was also a tightly folded yellowed newspaper article, carefully placed underneath.  “Lefty Lenny Leads Team to City Cup Championship,” the title read.  My Father’s name was Leonard, and I’d known he had fenced, but this article describing his championship was indeed news to me.  It told the story of how my Father not only fenced to win in the tournament, as a Sophomore, but also ran the entire team.  His poorly funded public high school in Brooklyn could not afford a coach, and so rather than give up on the sport, Lefty Lenny led the team, as its captain and its coach, to the New York City Cup victory.

I’d always known my Father was from very humble beginnings, living in a tenement apartment in Brooklyn, the son of a garment salesman, as was the trade of many of the Jewish immigrants at the time.  I was quite familiar with his stories of playing stickball on the stoops of the brownstones because they had no fields to play in, and passing the time with chemistry experiments made up of kitchen ingredients because they couldn’t afford a chemistry set.  I’d heard my Grandmother talk about her sweet sons and all the ways they respectfully made due.  But to me, my Dad had always been a financially successful man who was actually rather argumentative and rough.  He seemed to carry a chip on his shoulder, vigilant to getting what he could.  He showed his love by making sure we had everything he felt we were owed from the world, even if we didn’t want it.

I recall even now with a cringe my Dad negotiating the price of my first car.  “I’m going to wear them down,” he told me, and instructed me explicitly not to say one single word, even threatening me if I showed any hint of actually liking the car.  But wear them down he did.  We sat in the used car office for more than five hours, some of the longest of my young life.  There were loud echoes of his fist slamming on the desk, grunts as he tried to raise his large body up out of the chair in a feigned attempt to march out of the negotiation, and many heated exchanges with the string of chain smoking car sales managers who moved in and out of the office throughout the day.  But my Father had the ultimate upper hand, as the man could not be embarrassed, nor would he ever give up.  Indeed I drove away that evening with a car, an extra tire, and a year’s warranty.  They even bought us lunch.  But the thing I learned that day about my Father was how much it meant to him.  While I was writhing in teenage humiliation and exhausted from the effort, my Father was in his element having won a victory not only for me, but for the underdog and the downtrodden consumers of the world, who, on this one day, would not be cheated out of one extra dime.

My Father was always picking a fight with the world.  Each day and every encounter represented an opportunity to battle injustice.  I once remember on vacation, my Father spending an entire afternoon in his room making repeated phone calls to house cleaning and management because we hadn’t been given the proper amount of towels.  The rest of us were frustrated and at his use of our vacation time for something that seemed so insignificant.  But when the stack of towels finally arrived, he glowed with the pride of a man who had saved us from impending doom.  No matter where we were or what we did, my Father could find the one thing that was lacking.  A complete reversal of gratitude, he glossed over all that was good and zeroed in on acquiring the one thing that could be better.

His motivation had so little to do with materialism and nothing to do with selfishness, however.  In fact, my Father was the most unselfish man I knew.  He drove a beat up old car and wore clothes with holes, while my mother drove a top of the line model and had a closet full of dresses and shoes.  It was part of my Father’s paradoxical nature.  He took such poor care of himself, while forcing the rest of us to settle for nothing less than the best.  Only when I became a mother could I begin to put this characteristic in perspective.  Like so many parents, we treat our children in reaction to the way we were raised.  For my Father, it was providing us with all the things he never had.  It gave him such pride to pay for my Ivy League education.  He himself had gone to a small, then unknown, college, yet smooth talked his way into a place at MIT for his doctorate.  Professors took note of his determination and his fortitude in filling in the gaps of his education.  They provided him with a scholarship if he could prove that he could keep up with the many students of privilege.  He was extremely intelligent and throughout his years used his smarts and determination to catapult himself into places and opportunities that he would never otherwise been offered.  He sold himself, promising things he knew nothing of, but would teach himself how to do.  Even winning the hand of my mother, an upper income girl with a finishing school mentality, was a success that my father prided in.  He literally miraculously survived being shot in a robbery.  After losing his own business while recuperating, he reinvented himself and talked his way into being a well paid expert consultant for an industry he had little knowledge of when he was hired.

The rough and slightly paranoid man I had grown up with was just an extension of the young man who had to be scrappy and make his way in the world by being aggressive and reaching for what was beyond his grasp.  He had to believe he was entitled to what the world had not given him.  And for me, having been provided with the essentials of what I needed growing up, it was hard to understand his constant battle for more.  But now, years after his death, during the economic recession and with a family of my own, I have a newfound appreciation for my Father and a longing to have been more connected with this aspect of him.  My husband and I are going through hard times and I feel a vulnerability I have never known before.  We are in financial crisis and I feel scared that we can lose our home and the world does in fact often feel like a dangerous place:  bills, taxes, loss of income from my non-profit employer losing funding and my husband’s manufacturing business floundering.  I now have a connection to the man who felt the need to fight, but I lack the confidence and the experience in asserting myself the way my Father could.  I feel such empathy for my Dad and a respect for his ability to rise above his situation and make things happen by sheer will and hard work.  I think about his determination, and wish I had taken note of his skills and self reliance, his courage, and his self made success despite the odds.

He died in early June seven years ago, now.  This past Father’s Day I felt a particular emptiness when I passed by the store displays of fishing gear or  the tools I used to buy him as gifts.  I wish I could ask him what he thinks I should do.  I would love to find out how he would address our situation.  I know he would not be lying awake at night worrying, but then doing nothing but hoping things would get better.  I know he would have a plan and a list of people to contact.  He would pound the pavement or pound his fists, whatever it took to make sure he was given a chance, and then he would make it work out.  I try to channel that energy and feel the part of me that is indeed a part of him.  I miss him in a way I have not missed him before.  I can only imagine what Lefty Lenny would do.  What sword might he draw?

I was talking to a colleague who works in the field of addictions.  She works with people who have many ups and downs; one step forward and often  two steps back.  I asked her how she handles watching people she cares about relapse into harmful behaviors that put themselves at risk?  Three words, she said, are the key to how she approaches these relationship dilemnas: “bless and release.”

What an empowering phrase, I thought.  Useful in so many different ways.  It so quickly sums up an entire process and moves you into a positive state and a liberating one.  It creates a barrier to obsessing and feeling responsible for what you can’t control.  You can apply it to someone you love, such as a child, wishing them well with their overdue school assignment, but not taking on the stress yourself.  Or someone you have conflict with, such as a call from an ex-husband or someone who implies something hurtful on Facebook.  Bless and release keeps you within yourself and not pulled into a conflict or chain of events that will drain you.

Bless and release is an intention to feel positively and to choose to wish someone well.  It’s also an acknowledgment and a practice of divesting ourselves from the outcome of a situation.  The intention is to stay in love and regard for someone, but let go of the illusion of control or need for a particular change.  We have to be careful we don’t bless and release too early, however.  We shouldn’t use a bless and release strategy as a way of avoiding our role in a conflict or as a way of detaching from people who we do have responsibilities toward that are part of mutual healthy relating or parenting.  Bless and release is a practice we use when we have been accountable for ourselves and need to let go of being responsible for what is the responsibility of another.

Since learning the phrase, I also am finding you can use it not just with others, but within yourself.  As I hear that internal voice repeat some obsessive worry, I say to myself, “bless and release.”  It actually makes me feel a bit of love toward myself and gives me permission and a push away from what may be creeping in to take over my thoughts and feelings.  I can bless and send warm regard toward the part of myself that is scared or feels inadequate, and then create distance from the painful experience of it.  Now that is a blessing!

It has been a little more than a week since my older daughter has been home from college, and I am immensely impressed with how she handled her first year.  It certainly was challenging, not only in terms of her classes and learning to handle the pressures and changes of college life, but in talking with her, I have been really struck by the perspective she has gained from choosing to leave California and attend a school in the South, where she was very different.  Her insights have really stayed with me, especially as I am preparing for a trip outside of the United States, and finding myself a bit nervous.  It really got me thinking about how we take our sameness for granted, and while it’s comfortable, easily fitting in is not always the best for our personal development or for our understanding of and compassion for others.

At first it was fun to be different, she told me.  As soon as she told people where she was from, she instantly had a topic of conversation and was easily remembered.  She was exposed to different foods, customs, and ways of speaking, often finding humor in the contrasts.  But over time, the realization of deeper levels of differences emerged, from the lack of common experiences to differences in political views, and even interpretations of relationships, communications, and cultural norms.  It was often tiring to explain herself, she told me, and be on guard for ways in which she might misinterpret others or say something that others would find challenging, or be judged by a preconceived notion of what someone thought she would be like.  Being different became isolating she found, and even painful, at times.  She longed for people who intuitively understood her meanings, preferences, and accepted them.

“What a great lesson, though.” she told me, as she tried to imagine what it would be like to be a constant minority in the world.  She also recognized the privilege of being able to choose when and how she revealed her status as different.  Being blonde and blue eyed, she could easily blend in until she chose to tell people where she was born and what her religious upbringing had been.   Even the relatively small chasm between her and her school community had a big effect on her.  While she absolutely chose her school in large part to experience a different culture, what she didn’t expect was to experience the effects of being different on such a deep level, longing for opportunities of similarity and the comfort of sameness.  “I am so much more aware and sensitive,” she explains, “of everything I took for granted.”

So why am I nervous to travel abroad, I ask myself, and experience being different?  I love to expose myself to new people and places and have looked forward to this trip for a really long time.  Being different involves being vulnerable, it occurred to me.  I might need to ask for directions in a different language, trust a vendor to give me an accurate price, or, God forbid, need medical help.  I will be at the mercy of others to understand my needs, respect them, and take them seriously.  Being different involves continually fighting the preference for and the ease of sameness along with the prejudice and misperceptions of perceived “other”ness.

Decades of research support the notion of our preference for sameness.  We choose employees and partners who are most like us, we sit with those we look like, and we tend to hold in higher esteem people whose beliefs are most like our own.   Even in schools and communities of great diversity, we tend to congregate and separate ourselves into similar groups within them.  Research also shows we assume more in common with people we perceive as similar and project greater differences with those we assume to be different, regardless of actual measures of sameness or difference.  Perceived similarity has the effect of bonding and attracting people to one another, while perceived differences have the effect of alienating and engendering distrust.

It takes a lot of courage to be different, and that is one of the many reasons I am inspired by so many of the people I work with, who have endured great prejudice or stigma in their journey to grow and heal and connect with others.  And it is also one of the many reasons I am proud of my daughter, for her courage to be vulnerable and her strength in being who she is, even if it means having to explain it, defend it, or just feel alone with it.  I am grateful for the enlightened reminder she has given me to be more open to others, especially someone who might be new, unique, or different.  I am definitely more aware of how important it is to put myself in the place of being the different one every now and again, but also how important it is to have my people to come home to.

Welcome back, Sierra, you have been missed!

We all lead busy lives, cramming more in each day in order to be successful.  We make lists, take short cuts, and look for every trick to be more efficient.  But in these past few weeks, I’ve really noticed something important about my multitasking, frantic “to do list” way of life.  It frequently puts me in a position of living life in a hurry.  And according to Carl Jung, “Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil.”  Seems like pretty strong words, doesn’t it?  But as I thought about my hurry, I have to say, there is a lot to what he says.  The cost of being in a hurry is a far greater than I had realized.

I did a little experiment in thinking about this topic.  I made a point to really be aware of how my life goes when I’m in a hurry and when I’m not. When I’m in a hurry, life becomes about me.  For example, running to the grocery store to pick up something before I needed to be somewhere else, I became annoyed at the lack of parking spaces, I was frustrated that I could not find the right aisle for what I needed, and then I was extremely impatient with the checker who seemed to be too friendly with her customers, wasting my time.  Everything and everyone was judged in terms of how it was effecting me.  On another occasion, going to the very same store with time to spare, I had a very different experience.  I was happy to park a little farther away, taking a walk to enjoy the beauty of the day and the warmth of the sunshine.  I noticed a man looking confused and stopped to help him.  I chatted with a woman standing in line at the check out stand and even joked with the clerk.  My eyes were open to other’s needs and I actually felt happy connecting to strangers.

I noticed the same thing running late to a meeting.  Suddenly, the traffic lights were my enemy and the other drivers were competitors on the roadway.  I realized how I not only became a victim to everything around me, but how I felt entitled to control the world for my benefit alone! Others were obstacles rather than fellow travelers.  I was tense, annoyed, and judgmental.  Stressful?  Heck, yes!  But even more so, what I discovered was the effect being in a hurry had on my attitude, my relationships with other people, and with life in general.  It was a downright spiritual awakening!  You cannot live in the present when you are in a hurry.  You won’t notice beauty, connect with other people or other beings, and there is no way you can be in touch with yourself.  When you’re in a hurry, you’re focused on the outcome, mostly your own, and not the process.

So, can I say I won’t be in a hurry from now on and suddenly live a slower life?  Not likely.  But I am going to make it a goal to change some of my frantic ways.  If I leave a few minutes earlier, or choose to put off doing an errand to a day when I have more time, I reap so many more benefits than I realized.  And when I am in a hurry, I will take more responsibility for my attitude and its effects on other people.  What is that little sign people have on their desks?  

When faced with a big decision, it’s natural to choose based on what you think will help you best achieve your goals.  For example, you take a promotion knowing it will provide more money for your family.  Since your family is so important to you, you think this will make you happy.  But after months at the job, you aren’t very happy at all. What happened, why don’t you feel good since family is your top priority?  The job requires longer hours and more travel.  While meeting your intended goal, the actions actually took you farther away from what truly mattered, actually being with your family.  

I see this type of situation play out frequently with people who come in to see me wondering why they are so exhausted and depressed.  They’re working so hard to achieve their goal, maybe even reaching it, and yet they feel empty.   In these situations, it often helps to take a step back and think clearly about the bigger picture – your values.  By clarifying and prioritizing your true values, only then can you make decisions that will support a life that brings satisfaction.

Values are desired qualities of your life; who you want to be and how you want your life to feel.  They are guiding principles that when lived by bring you joy.  Values are not rules.  They are freely chosen qualities, like the “pursuit of knowledge”, “kindness”, or “non-conformity”.  As soon as we feel like we have to follow a value, it becomes a rule or something we feel we should do, which drains our sense of vitality.

People tend to  report more life satisfaction when living their values and feel frustrated and depleted when their values are suppressed.  Values are ongoing, like a guiding light or the north star.  They tell you which direction to head, but you never really get there.  Goals, on the other hand, are finite.  They are the steps that we achieve along the way as we aim toward our values.  So setting our goals to be in line with our values will be important in making sure our efforts lead in the right direction.  In order to help evaluate this, a good visual to use is a Bull’s Eye .  First think about your values in the four areas of work/education, relationships, personal growth/health, and leisure.  Picture these values at the center of your bulls eye, the center you want to aim toward.  Next place an “X” on the target for each of the four areas to represent where you stand today, how close to your desired values you feel you are living in each area.  The farther away you place your “X” from the center, the more you feel you have lost touch with your values.  Now you can think about goals and action plans (think of these as arrows).  By engaging in these goals or action plans, will this help you move closer to the Bull’s Eye of your values?  Like in our example, making more money, which meant travel and long hours) did not support the real value of feeling close and connected to family.

There are no rights or wrongs in choosing values.  In fact, the more honest we can be with ourselves, the better.  For example, people often feel they should have “kindness” or “giving” as a top priority.  But when you volunteer for fundraising, you find it draining.  In fact, curiosity may be a higher value for you, and your time might be better spent reading or doing research.  Values are not exclusive, either.  They are flexible.  We can combine them, such as doing research to help a charity, or choose to prioritize one over the other in given situations.  We may need to prioritize our value of justice in dealing with employees at work, and humor with our friends.

Below is a list of potential values.  I invite you to look through them and rank them as very important, not so important or low importance.  Don’t overthink it or judge your choices.  The more honest you can be about your values, the more you can shoot your arrows in the direction of your satisfaction.  It’s a great feeling when you reach a goal that lands close to your values.  Like every sport, however, it takes time to learn, and we miss the mark a lot in the beginning.  But show up to practice, analyze your goals and efforts, and you will see and feel like a winner!!

When I started this blog, I remember worrying about running out of topics.  I worked from a list that I kept adding to each week.  But after just a few months of posting, I quickly found it more enjoyable to come up with my topics spontaneously, from listening to what people around me or my own mind was wrestling with that week.  After two years of weekly posts, I am so pleased that I have never missed one or felt that is was a burden.  I am really enjoying this platform and am so thankful for your time in reading it.  But I am going to make  change.  I love to write and have some ideas for some other pieces that I haven’t had time for, so I’m going to shift to writing in this blog every other week.  So in honor of this change, I’m going to invite you to do some of your own writing and see what you might discover.

It makes me angry at how school teaches most people to hate writing and dismiss it.  Watching my daughters write their “compare and contrast” essays, struggle with MLA notation, and be hammered with the search for topic sentences, it sometimes breaks my heart to see them become alienated from their own voice.  I know it is vital to learn to write formal essays, but I wish an English teacher would sometimes have them write an assignment that can teach them how to use writing as I have come to love it, to discover what they think and feel, to expand on a creative idea, or to just simply play.  I use writing personally to help me figure out what is going on with me, and if I can get a client to trust that I’m not going to grade their work, I use it effectively with them as well.  By putting feelings into words, you can achieve clarity and find a release. In the end, this helps us make better choices about what we really want to do or say to someone.

At a writing workshop I went to almost ten years ago, the instructor had us create two characters for ourselves.  The first was our inner critic.  We gave a name and a look to our inner critic, and thanked it for its help in editing and improving our work.  But then we asked our inner critic to step aside so that we could identify our muse.  We also gave him or her a name and identity, the part of ourselves that is creative and reckless and has a lot to say once the critic is put on hold.  This was a huge turning point for me.  Once I could begin to let myself write freely, I discovered the complete joy of letting my muse take over.  I also discovered the great paradox in writing:  On the one hand I am often completely surprised what comes out on paper if I allow it to flow, as if someone else had taken over, but at the same time, I am in complete control.  I can kill off a character, change an ending, be overbearing or be nakedly vulnerable,  I get to decide what I say, who gets to say it (I love writing as a male character), and who gets to read it.

If you’re like most people, getting started is the hardest part.  So here are a few ideas that help.  Let your muse pick out a beautiful journal.  Let him or her do some free writing in your journal each day, just ten minutes of uninterrupted writing to let it flow.  Or start with a “jump line,” such as “My father’s hands” or “When the sun goes down…”   If you google jump lines you will find a long list of great ones.  A set of jump lines I love to use with people I work with is, on one side of the page write “Want I want to tell you is…” and then after writing for ten minutes, turn over the page and write ten minutes more to “What I don’t want to tell you is…:”  It’s amazing what comes up!  Some other ideas are writing letters (you never have to send) to yourself, to a part of you, a younger you, or to someone from the past or future.  You can also let yourself write about a fantasy or rewrite the ending to a scary dream.

There is a freedom in writing if you can surrender to it.  But it does take some courage to find your muse; a part of you that wants to get out, be heard, dig deeper, wonder, shout, or try something on.  They say the pen is mightier than the sword.  So take a chance and meet your muse.  Together you can discover how powerful you can be!

See you in two weeks!