Digging myself out of a Rut

I don't know if you have noticed, but I am in the process of change. Deep personal change. A reconstruction of how I see myself in this wacky world. I am digging down deep.

It isn't that sudden heart-stopping explosive change that happens to you when you leap headfirst into the chasm. Its more like a gradual inner realization, the opening of a flower and everything that can happen because of it.

My inner eye has been attracted to positive energy lately, an attraction I have never experienced before on such a level. It is feeding me in a place that is starved and shrivelled. And I am still hungry.

Coming from a crusty, sarcastic queen like me, this is quite something. Its cramping my style.

It might have started when I was up in the CN tower in Toronto on New Year's Eve, in the wee hours before 2010. I was with all four of my boys on the observation deck observing the city from up high, we were glowing alternately with red and green light as the lit tower transformed itself for the city.

As we went around and around the circular deck, the lighted contours of the city down below, I would see my kids ahead of me, completely washed in red and then gradually in green taking in the view. And it struck me how that wash of colour changed things. When they were washed in green it felt fake (this is Christmas tinsel green - probably the worst shade of it) and slow and, life-sucking, but when they were washed in red, there was a feeling of energy, possibility...

And thats when I had the "aha". Strange to have an "aha" in the CN tower... of all cheesy things to happen...but when do "aha's" happen on beautiful mountain tops? Its usually when we're picking out shampoo. Or seeing the world not from a mountain top but from a tall, cheesy space pod shaped building.

The universe has a superb sense of humour.

I had been ruminating (as I am wont to do) about my career future, as I've been in school forever and was at the beginning of the last semester of my ESL teaching program at U of T.  I needed to get a job - and was thinking of the prospects of getting a decent job teaching academic English to foreign students here in Toronto, and from my perspective, my chances were bleak compared to other people in my program, I had no experience teaching, nor do I have a masters degree, nor do I...

I was in the old rut, a very familiar rut of despair, of giving up. From this rut, I then had the "aha". My weather beaten, trusty old rut of despair, as familiar and cozy as it was, was getting a little suffocating.

 

I realized that what had to change was not what was out of my control, but what was in my control. Not a knew concept to me, none of this was, but it all knit together into something new - i think thats how "ahas" happen - an accumulation of events and thoughts, feelings and experiences that come to a head with one trigger -  like seeing red for instance -.

I knew down to the bone that it was all about how I chose to see the world. It was my choice entirely. I had that kind of power. I was not a victim of the world and its goings ons.  That old rut  was doing the poisoning - and only if I let it.

It had, in the past, for as long as I knew, caused me great suffering. The fact that I was an introvert growing up in an extrovert-prizing world didn't help either, but I thought I had rooted it out when I realized that it had helped feed my string of mini depressions. They're long gone, as I had managed to at least control how long I would sit in that rut before the big "D" would set in it's talons.

But that didn't fill in the rut. Despite my more sunny mentality in the last years, I have not broken my habit of stepping in that rut long enough to sell myself short. It did not dawn on me that I was clinging to an old form - and that imbedded sarcasm was one sign of this - a sign of anger over being powerless - a victim of circumstance. I see this now and I am embarassed. temporarily. will   not   step in   that   rut.

I went back to school this January with the residue of that image - the glow of red, and within weeks I felt that, yes, I think I can do this, yes, I think I am more than qualified with other alternative teaching experiences, yes, my skills in flexibility and facilitation, my background in cultural studies and conflict studies - I am going to focus on who I really am - all the positives, and I am going to make them grow. I am going to reign in all the manufactured negativities and instead, cultivate the habit of seeing with red positivity. as strange as it is to do so.

Its like I have entered a new room, and so far, I like how this strange new room feels.

I am going to aim high, and gradually get there - step by step, twig by twig, obstacle by obstacle.

Steering clear of that rut until it slowly fills in, inch by inch.

Then I'm going to plant a garden, right on top. With a little red seat so I can take it all in.
Got any ruts you have to dig yourself out of ? 

(My Aunt Hilda's Garden, 2006)

On the Verge

 

"Every day of our lives 

we are on the verge

of making those slight changes 

that would make all 

the difference".

~Mignon McLaughlin - The Neurotic Notebook~

Is choosing misery over change

all that?

must be

where is our sense of adventure?

we need a sense of adventure to make change...

really?

too many quick remedies

available

sacharine delights

to obscure the real

perpetuate our misery

cloud over those clear moments

when

we hear that voice of self

beyond our thoughts

on the verge

asking

Why not?

Photos taken in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia 2006 by Marcella Corroeli Jager

YES-HUH ! Part I

 

(copied with Natalie's blessing: http://www.nataliedee.com/archives/2009/Jun/)

I was raised, as probably most of you were, to say NO,  far more than to say  - YES. Was yes far too positive in a world full of "no-no's" maybe? Other than saying No to unwanted solicitations, I don't think that there is much more use for NO. And sometimes we didn't even use NO for that - and ended up only saying NO to ourselves by saying YES to the unwanted.  I think we might have said YES to ourselves far too little, or maybe its just me. 

So how about turning that over-used NO on its head and framing everything in YES ? This is certainly what I needed to do. I did do it in bits, saying YES to myself for starters, but now I think I understand it better, I see how Yes and NO permeate everything and have a framing effect.

So saying YES....kind of like Jim Carey in Yes Man, but with a bit of discrimination - you aren't going to say yes to running away with Jonny Dep, that would be really foolish if you have things on the go like a family and a loving spouse... and I don't mean saying yes to that little voice that wants yet another coffee and its noon and you haven't eaten anything but caffeine. NO. I would advise no here. oh, but wait.

Here is your chance to say it. 

Instead of saying a resounding, negative, firm NO to yourself about some bad habit that keeps you from doing other things - despite the current idea that saying no is so very adult-like, so very "taking charge of my life" like -  how about just saying yes to something better. Saying YES to eating breakfast and all the good things about breakfast...yumm, home made waffles with maple syrup and bluberries...antioxidants, energy - happy me! Be open to all the good things about it - and make it far more desirable than that old habitual lug - because, in reality,  it IS more desireable. 

When you "Just say No" to things, it feels like you are depriving yourself, it ushers in negative energy, you are locked into an endless struggle with it - always having to deal with it and squeeze out a reluctant, pained NO every time. You are "trying to be good" when the "Bad" is still framed in your mind as "good". (They call it "guilty pleasure" -  How does guilty find its way into our pleasure anyway? It doesn't belong there.)  So when you try to do something else - healthier, better-for-you, something that will make you a better person instead,  you are still in NO mode, negative mode -  I HAVE to do this, sigh....its still framed in with the NO.

We give our bad habits so much power. So heres the opposite tack. Don't suppress it, but observe the no-good habitual desire, with detachment: oh There you are. Aren't you cute showing up everyday. Off you go. I'm too busy saying YES to this new, shiny, good-for-me habit to come out and play. Or you could cooly observe it and lend no judgement to it, don't address it, just acknowledge what it is and let it pass - turning towards something better. more desirable. This renders the thing powerless, you don't have to turn away from it and say no, you can look it in the eye and say YES to something else, or yes to it in your own modified version - where you are in control.

 

The key is to replace that old stinky habit with a shiny good-for-you one. Saying NO, then wandering around wanting to say yes, stuffing down the desire every time it comes up doesn't really solve anything - it keeps it close, as if we don't want to let it go. Believe me, I've been there too many times, holding onto things that did me no good at all. I found that when we say yes to something more desirable , and hold onto that  instead  - consciously - we then can make this new habit even more desireable by practicing it, doing it and feeling great from it. The old habitual desire falls away like the dry empty crust that it is.

Its worked for me, this YES practice. Coffee is my friend, my 3 cups a day buddy - I say yes to coffee, it doesn't force yes on me. I don't have a "7 cups" desire left to suppress. Instead, I do have a great desire for a yummy breakfast with coffee, a soothing tea ritual, going for a meander...getting more work done. I want to say YES to all these things...they are not just things I have to do - duties to myself , "being good". They are things I say yes to - the possibilities I open myself up to. The positive energy, the opening that saying YES creates... has made all the difference.

How's your YES reflex?

 

Yes-huh part II to come...stay tuned my friends.

(This post was inspired by an AHA moment I had on Beth's Blog: Hope's Breath, via her post called  "Say Yes"  - go over and read it - she turns saying NO on its head...)