Freedom

I am free

I am free
Free to be me
Free to seek happiness
Free to change how I see
Free to choose a path
Free to live wholeheartedly unfettered by the past
Free to reject fear and shame
Free to fight bravely through struggles and pain
Free to let my soul fly to heights yet unknown
Free no matter how far I've wandered, to steer a path back home

Happy Independence day, live life free

Shine on

I am turning to face the light in times of darkness

I woke up this morning at 4:11a.m. and it was not intentional. Pain was radiating from the center of my back up and down my spine. Pressure along the nerves in my spine created an intense pain that made it difficult for me to stand up, move, lay flat, stretch, no position alleviated the pain. I suffered in darkness until the pain medication I took kicked in and I could fall back to sleep. Fortunately I woke up with some residual soreness but minus the pain that had jolted me from my sleep.  

Pain and darkness is a place I have visited inside myself many times. It is a lonely place where the only company I have is fear, doubt, shame, worry, hopelessness, and despair. Sometimes I choose to visit, and at other times I am uncertain how I arrived. I think everyone experiences times of darkness and pain but choosing how to respond to those moments is critical. 

I have noticed that I have three common responses to finding myself in a dark place that can keep me stuck there:

1. Isolation- When I feel alone in the darkness I falsely believe that nobody can understand what I am going through. I might want to hide to keep other people from seeing me struggle. I fear that I will be perceived as weak or incapable. I feel like I might burden them with my problems so I keep them to myself.

2. Shoulding- When I focus on the shoulds and shouldn'ts of my situation instead of what I am actually experiencing I deny my emotions and shame myself. Those unfair judgements keep me stuck in the darkness because they tell me that I deserve to be there. 

3. Pitching a tent- When I experience pain and darkness it eventually becomes a choice whether or not I want to stay there. Sometimes I let anger, self-pity, or the need to control others feelings take over. I become a martyr to circumstance and set-up a permanent residence in the dark. I think that by pitching a fit and being miserable I will get what I want from others. It is a bit like holding my breathe to get what I want. If I stay too long I in the darkness I run the risk of forgetting what it is like to live in the light. I may become accustomed to the darkness and stop looking for a way out.

As painful and dark as those places may be I believe there is always a choice that brings hope, I can choose to turn away from the darkness towards the light. Darkness is only defined by the absence of light and there is no hole too deep or dark for light to penetrate it. Looking behind me I see my shadow, but it vanishes as soon as I turn towards the source of light. 

Light can come in the form of a hand reaching out in the darkness, compassion, tears of understanding, a Higher Power, truth, love. I believe that goodness and light exists in abundance all around us and within each of us. Today I choose to turn to the light when I find myself stuck in the darkness.

What keeps you stuck in dark places and how do you find your way back to the light?

I am an AND

I recognize the complexity of life and

embrace the choices it brings

There is a car commercial airing right now that talks about how and is much better than having to choose or, such has having to choose sweet or sour chicken. It is pretty amusing but I am not so sure I always feel comfortable with all of life's ands.  

Being sick reminds me of how nice it is to be healthy. My youngest daughter right now is reminding  me how delightful it is when she is quiet and asleep. I do not get to choose or in any of these situations, there is always an and. Life and death, sickness and health, joy and sorrow, good and bad, things are defined and understood through their opposition. My life is overflowing with and but when I treat things as or I run into problems. 

Paradox and contradiction is all around me, but I am sometimes reluctant to let myself experience life  that way. The most fascinating stories are not when the heroine is without fault, and the villain pure evil, but when the characters exhibit the true complexity of real people- beautiful and flawed all at once. That complexity however can be uncomfortable. It is much easier to paint life in broad strokes of black or white than to accurately see it in the and. 

My tendency to do this is most apparent when I am in a situation where I am experiencing something difficult with no clear answers. That internal dissonance can be uncomfortable and difficult to process. When I start to tell that story in my head or to others it takes on a revisionist history where all the uncomfortable ands turn into ors. I ignore the mix of emotions that I feel but that may contradict each other. I use the actions of others as a justification for assuming their intent. I leave no room for doubt, and ignore any information that may contradict the neat and tidy story I have created. In those types of stories there is no room for learning, growth, or change because the roles are already cast and the ending written. Good or bad, no room for and.

I am not good or bad, I am an and. If I allow myself to experience life in that way I can see that in all of my ands I have the choice of which I will feed and give energy to. That recognition and choice means I  have the capacity to change, grow, and reach my full potential. It is not easy or comfortable, but there is no other way. 

Unwritten

I am the author of my life

I love a good story.  In particular I am inspired by the underdog that overcomes the seemingly impossible. In my own story it sometimes feels like life has created a set of circumstances that leave me locked in to patterns that keep playing out the same set of results. It appears that my story has already been written.  I am locked in and I either lack the skills to overcome, or that I do not have the choice to do something different. It can feel like my story has already been written and I have no choice to play out my part to its' inevitable conclusion. It may even seem that every act is just one more chapter in a never ending tragedy. 

It is a mistake to think I am only a character in this story. My role is bigger than just the part I think has been written for me...I am the author. If I find that the lines that past circumstance have written for me do not tell the story I want, then it is time to begin rewriting the script.  I own this story, it is mine, and I am meant to be the hero that overcomes the odds and reaches my full potential.

 

#79

I choose to accept that who I am, and where I am, is enough

This post marks the 79th affirmation I have written for this blog.  I started this project in early December of 2012 and sometime today or tomorrow it should reach 5,000 total views.  I am deeply appreciative of the support and encouragement you have given me during that time.

As I mentioned in a previous post this week (Big4) I have a difficult time with emotional expression. Part of my purpose in creating affirmations for myself and sharing them with others is to improve my ability to connect and express my emotions, affirm my needs, be vulnerable, and works towards reaching my full potential.  I am always hopeful that it will also resonate with someone that can relate to my experiences.  Although not even a year ago I would have scoffed at the idea that I would be writing daily, I would have been doubly incredulous that it would be personal affirmations.  Regardless of what others may think I can recognize this as significant progress towards what I want for myself.  Being this vulnerable terrifies me but is completely necessary if I want to reach my goals.  Yet after saying all of that I spent some time today fearful and doubting that what I am doing makes any difference at all.   

My self-defeating tendency is to never feel like where I am at or what I am doing is enough.  I am far too focused on what I have not accomplished or how far I am from my goals, rather than appreciating the progress I have made in my journey.  I do not know why I do that.  I do know that it sucks the joy out of every moment that I allow it to happen.  It is my choice how I will frame the events of my life.  There is no value or honor in being a martyr of circumstance. 

Choice makes all the difference.  I have experiences that can be seen as evidence that the world is a cruel place.  I have emotions that indicate I should despair.  The defining factor is what I choose to believe.  Am I a victim of circumstance or the author of my story?  How will I choose to see myself and others?  Trust has been broken for us all at some point in life, do I choose to forgive and trust again? Optimist, pessimist, realist, they are all arbitrary labels for choosing to look at the world a particular way.  What need is there to argue over who's viewpoint is right? We are all living the reality we have chosen.

I frequently find that my heart and my head tell me different things.  My mind may know something to be true, but my emotions contradict it.  I don't need to spend time trying to decide which one is "right" I need to make a choice about what I want to believe. Once I make that choice it manifests into reality.  I had a student tell me that she didn't do affirmations because they felt fake. She is completely right and I have often felt the same way. The whole idea of affirmations is making a choice to take what is paradoxical inside me and decide what I will choose to believe.  Although I can not choose my circumstances or consequences I can shape the experiences that shape me by choosing how I will make sense of them.  Affirmations are a declaration of what I choose to believe, not what I already feel.  If I already felt it, I would never need to affirm it.  In the moments when I find contradiction and paradox I will consciously choose the better part.

Thank you for being on this journey with me.  Walking together is so much nicer!

HOPEEPOH

I see the world as a kind place

 The past week I have struggled with the idea of how to affirm hope.  I have wanted to write about it as a way to celebrate my daughter's birthday, but have experienced difficulty in how to express it adequately.  It became even more complicated after wrestling with a few of my own problems that stirred up some feelings of anger.  

I was not feeling particularly hopeful, and although that is the perfect time to affirm hope I could not find the words.  I started to look for quotes about hope that might help crystallize my thoughts and inspire me, instead it caused me further pause.

Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.  ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Once you choose hope, anything's possible.  ~Christopher Reeve

Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.  ~Robert G. Ingersoll

Hope is that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops... at all.  ~Emily Dickinson

Things which you do not hope happen more frequently than things which you do hope.  ~Titus Maccius Plautus

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.  ~Anne Lamott

In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.  ~Mignon McLaughlin

 What I found was not exactly a clear picture of what hope is supposed to look like.  Is hope what comes before the miraculous, or is it just a way of covering my eyes to the cruel truth? I think the answer is yes.  To which questions this answer applies is a matter of how I choose to see the world.

If the world is a cruel dark place waiting to hurt me, hope is something that will only cause me pain as it sets me up for disappointment again and again.  If the world is a kind place I have no reason to think that what I hope for is not only possible, but that the universe will conspire to see it happen.  How I see the world is going to determine how I interact with it.  It will influence the way I interpret and respond to each experience I have.  The emotions my experiences trigger and the way I view myself and others will all be influenced by how I choose to see the world.  Today I choose to view the world as a kind place where hope can blossom.   

The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.  ~Marian Zimmer Bradley

Choose your own adventure

I make careful and confident choices

http://jonverzosa.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/choose-your-own-adventure.jpg

When I was a boy I loved when the book mobile would come to our school.  It was like a library on wheels and when I had the chance to check out a book I would often pick out a "choose your own adventure" book.  The stories are usually a mystery or adventure where as the story progresses you encounter a situation where a choice has to be made.  I liked how it felt as if I was in the story because of the chance to determine which way the story would go.

Depending on the choice you make you are directed to a specific page and the story continues. Sometimes the choices lead you to a happy and heroic ending, but other choices have disastrous consequences.  When I read the books and did not like the outcomes I would sometimes skip to the back of the book, find the ending I liked, and then work backwards to make the right choices and get the happy ending.




In my life I get to choose my own adventure, but there is no cheating backwards to get the results I want. My task is to learn to make choices I am confident with regardless of what the outcome may be, intended or otherwise. If I approach each choice thoughtfully and make decisions that are true to my authentic self, I can maintain my path of personal truth and learn from whatever consequences those choices bring.   

A heaping plate of me

I am nourishing the me I want to be

I am beautifully imperfect.  I have the capacity for love, anger, fear, hope, compassion, greed, envy, humility, hatred and all the best and worst of what it means to be human. I haven't always wanted to admit to the dark potential I hold but to deny something or ignore it only gives it strength.

If I feed bitterness it will grow, if I look for ways to be forgiving it will expand. My choice in every circumstance and experience is not what parts of my humanness is exposed, but which of those parts of me I will nourish and allow to grow.  I will allow myself to feel it all and then expand the parts of me that are consistent with my authentic self.

What opportunities do I have to nurture who I want to be today?

The road more travelled...

I am blazing new pathways and consciously traveling a new road

Last week I was driving my daughter to tumbling when I got a phone call. I had only been talking for a moment when my daughter started hollering at me from the back seat.  I semi-politely told her that I was talking on the phone and that I couldn't hear.  She became more insistent and when it was clear that she was not going to let me talk I asked her less politely what she needed.

"Dad, you're going the wrong way!"

Indeed I was.  I had turned on the road that I typically use to get to the freeway and is one of the most frequent routes I drive.  I sheepishly turned the car around and started in the right direction to get her to the class.

When I am not focused on where I want to go, I end up in the place I've always been.  The pull to walk all of the old pathways in my life is strong.  Even when I'm paying attention I might find myself being pulled to engage in the same old patterns I'm used to.  I've developed patterns in the way I interact with others, how I handle stress, or deal with conflict. In all aspects of my life I've created well worn trails and without thinking I can travel them over and over again.  The pathway to healing or change is not well worn and requires daily effort. Today I will consciously travel the new road that leads me to the destination I want for myself.