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To properly set the stage for this post I suggest that you scroll down to the previous post and give it a read. Thanks, JCN
“I became suspended in a strange, numbing nothingness. I didn’t feel anything…I realized my numbness was masking anger. I could explode with little or no provocation…I was angry at everything I was and all that I would ever be…I saw myself as a different version of my mother…I was trapped.”
Many people believe that all anger is a response to a situation that is fermenting in our minds, lingering with no solution that we can implement. And many of us saw anger in our childhoods, not necessarily directed at us, but outwardly visible in some form. One of my most vivid childhood memories is my mother repeatedly smashing the phone receiver into the metal hook of our wall mounted phone because my father was still at a bar and not where he should have been. I remember walking up to the phone when she was done and seeing the metal bent so much that the phone could no longer hang on it.
All too often, when life deals us a bad hand, our subconscious mind takes over and pulls out the lessons of our childhood. Many of those lessons are the ones we are ashamed of, and desperately wish that we could erase from our memory. But selective brainwashing is not an option. The work of reprogramming our subconscious mind is difficult. It requires a lot of focus by the conscious mind, knowing that there is a better state for us to be in. For me the path away from anger involves mentally moving to a place where my mind is not stressed out and can operate out of love and not react out of that subconscious memory. Often easier said than done.
“So, I start writing about my real mistakes. Not my business mistakes, but my LIFE mistakes. I allowed others to define me. I built my image of myself on two main supporting pillars (smart and married). I stopped believing in myself. I stopped taking care of myself. Allowing my head to rule my heart.”
Selfish. An often misunderstood word. But I now understand it very well. Michael Losier teaches its meaning as “self care,” doing the things necessary for me so that I can do everything else I have committed to do. When I read the five mistakes Julie has outlined above, I hear someone who was trying to appease others, who held other people’s opinion of what she needed to do in higher regard than her own opinion, who in trying to be everything to everyone forgot to be who she really was. Unfortunately, Julie Wainwright is not the only person to fall into this trap.
We are hardly out of the womb when we begin to hear the opinions of those we encounter, some welcomed, some not. And as children the opinions of adults mean everything to us because we do not know any better. And many of us wind up with a pretty well installed version of “People Pleasing,” where we do things to make others happy, to make others proud, to make others give us nice presents, etc. We learn to please everyone we encounter. Except us. We never learn where to draw the line. We never learn how to recognize that we are giving up some of the precious stuff that makes us, well, us. We move so far in becoming one with our jobs or one with our significant other that we lose sight of who we are. And it often takes life changing events, like job loss, divorce, becoming widowed, etc. for us to learn the bitter truth: we MUST find ways to love ourselves more; to get in touch with our own hearts and minds and become whole. To be selfish.
“I had failures and successes in the past. If I really looked at things truthfully, I had more successes than failures. I had acted honorably toward the Pets.com employees and the shareholders, but I hadn’t treated myself with the same kindness.”
Julie realized that we need to be kind to ourselves, as well as those we serve. It isn’t simply a matter of doing the right thing. It is sort of like the old oil filter commercial: “You can pay me now or you can pay me later!” If we treat ourselves with proper kindness on a regular basis, then we can keep every ball in our court in play. If we allow no time for “selfishness” then we are listening to all those around us tell us which ball to play next. Chaos reigns, and the subconscious mind kicks in. And our old friend anger is right around the corner, frequently directed at those we love. Or inward…
“I had a choice: go along with someone else’s perception of the world or get on with creating my own world. I really wanted to heal my own wounds and start living again, so I made a conscious decision to separate my wounds from everyone else’s…when I started to pay close attention to that tenet and I did so from a place of love, not fear, all that negativity lost its power. As far as I can tell, negativity needs energy, a reaction, to feed it.”
This is such a powerful concept! “Negativity needs energy to feed it!” Julie eloquently relates fear to negativity, so we can say that fear also needs energy to feed it. And she teaches that love is the one thing that takes power away from both fear and negativity. This is so simple!!! But again, when we are focused outwardly, we never give our own hearts enough time with love’s healing energy.
“I held tightly onto those two adjectives, smart and married, as a measurement of personal worth that left no room for me to just be a person who accepted my own humanness. And when I couldn’t use those adjectives to describe myself I became, in my mind, worthless. I never held anyone else to these standards, since I knew they were external measurements, but I didn’t have the same compassion for myself.”
I cannot add anything more of substance to these statements. If you have read this far, you can either apply this to yourself or someone you hold very dear to your heart. Maybe when we begin to feel like we are letting ourselves down we need to examine our standards for ourselves and check them against our current reality. Most of us will see that we are doing just fine!!!
“I realized that all those who truly loved me didn’t care if I was uber successful, and they certainly did not want to see me in an unsatisfying marriage. Their love wasn’t conditional…I began to feel truly secure simply by being myself and really enjoying life.”
Again, there is so much power in these words! Unconditional love is powerful stuff! It can heal any wound. This is the reason that Marianne Williamson tours the world preaching love’s great benefit for the world! Remember to feel some love the next time you look into a mirror!!!
“The most prominent goals were focused on me being successful in every part of my life: physical, emotional and spiritual…I showed myself climbing the proverbial ladder and once again reaching for the stars.”
There is a very important concept here that many self-help programs do not pay respect to. Particularly as we approach middle age, personal fulfillment consists of finding ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually. Any one itself may be good, and any two may benefit the individual, but it is only when we work on all three aspects of life that we maximize our contribution to the world and to future generations. When we “find” ourselves physically, emotionally AND spiritually we set the stage of reaching for the stars and manifesting all of the goodness that God gives to each of us the day that we are born. As an example, Bill Phillips’ Transformation site (www.transformation.com) asks the individual to work all three areas of being so that they can “be the change!” Check it out! My screen name is NCDrJCN.
“Doing things that filled my heart with love and learning to trust myself enough to follow my heart…those were the key…I had to learn to let go of fear. It meant learning to trust myself, my spirit and something greater than me, which connects us all.”
I believe that it can be difficult to allow our hearts to guide us because few of us get that type of guidance as we grow up. We are taught that education and pure knowledge are the keys to success, and our fast paced, entertainment driven society certainly seems to reward knowledge. It is only when life slows down a little that we allow ourselves to listen to our gut, that “feeling” we have that one thing or the other is the right way to go. Previous generations had the benefit of fewer entertainment options and a slower pace to life. There was a lot of wisdom passed down on the front porch, watching people pass by as grandparents told the stories of their youth and discussed current events with their experienced opinions. How does that generational wisdom, or love, get passed down today? We are moving too fast to care!
“ ‘When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.’ “
If there is a single lesson in this book that should be passed on to future generations, it is the one above. Look with you in mind! Look for a way to share joy, and goodness, and love. You may find yourself looking in some new places, or just from a different point of view!
The next time you are faced with a critical decision, consider consulting your heart as well as your mind. It is the merger of the two where the better answer can be found. And usually one that allows you to consider yourself in the solution.
Until Next Time,
Julius
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Book Review, Part I: “ReBoot: My Five Life-Changing Mistakes…and How I Moved On”
AUTHORS of Book Reviewed: Julie Wainwright with Angela Mohan
Julie Wainwright had a spectacular public fall. She was the CEO of the Internet start up Pets.com. You may remember the sock puppet that they used in their advertising. Well, remembering the brand may be good, but Pets.com was in business for about a year, Julie was at the helm, and got publicly trashed for some of the moves she made. Mostly for closing down the company while they still had capital. Why would she do that? So she could live with herself! She knew that the business had NO chance to succeed because so many other internet pet companies went online in the same timeframe, and she saw that Pets.com was actually losing money on every transaction. My guess is that many of us would do the same thing and give our investors some of their investment back. But we all have recently seen the logic of Wall Street and the financial markets. Enough said!!!
At virtually the same time as the company was folding, her marriage ended when her husband not only announced that he wanted a divorce, but promptly left their home with all of his possessions. The double whammy was devastating to Julie, and she took some time to think about how her life had gotten to this point. Which gets us to the blog article that inspired this book.
As a part of the healing process, Julie wrote a blog post with the title of this book on her website . In less than a year’s time, nearly 100,000 people had read “The Five Mistakes” blog in over 156 different countries. Truly not what she expected. Many of the readers asked for the material in book form so that they could share it with friends and family. After seeing that the requests were never going to stop, Julie decided to write the book.
It is a revealing work, with Julie reliving much of what she went through and how she got to the places that allowed all of this to happen around her. The key to me is that she knew that she had to move on, pick up the pieces and reinvent herself in order to live with herself. She found that her priorities had been shaped by the needs of those around her, and that she allowed herself to lose touch with…Julie. Life events like the ones she experienced are often quite eye-opening, and having them occur in parallel caused Julie to open not only her eyes, but her brain and heart as well.
In the post to follow this one I will take quotes from Julie’s book and add my spin on her learning. I find that her experiences have great teaching value to me, and I suspect that many others can learn from her insights. I do this split because I know it would get quite long, and I do not want to post the “mother of all posts.” But as a teaser, here are the first couple:
“I had no idea, no real idea that is, that my marriage is over…Still, I don’t really believe it.”
I can relate, as I am currently living the last stages of my marriage being over, the stage involving court personnel. Somehow, you know its over but you just don’t understand its over. I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted it to end this way. I want to start over. But none of that is going to happen, mostly because the other party has given the marriage many chances before they resort to this ending. We often get out of touch with the “us” because we are so busy doing other things: managing work projects with fierce internal intensity, dodging the bosses latest requests in our minds 24/7, worrying how we are going to have the funds to put the kids through college, worrying how we are going to have the funds to retire, etc. And all of these things can look like selfishness to our significant other, and maybe they are. But for me, they were the response to years of doing for others and going against the grain of what I thought were the right things to do in order to not rock the marital boat. I was cultivating a “joint” approach to problem solving. In my own mind. And it often ran 100% upstream from where my heart told me I should be going. If you EVER feel yourself going against the grain to the point of discomfort, I implore you to resolve the situation, either by sitting down with your significant other and hashing things out, or by getting out of the relationship. Like most other personal issues, letting it fester will only make things worse in the long run.
“I didn’t realize that when you’re older, life is different. You see the patterns in your past actions and they can actually trap you in the past because you assume that this is just how your life will always be. Sometimes, you create patterns when they aren’t there, because you’re miserable; you think you must have done something wrong, because you are in so much pain and time is running out and you can see very clearly that there won’t be that many more do-overs in your future. If any.”
Believe it! Life changes as the years pile up. How? As Julie states, the habits we pick up along the way corrupt our minds into thinking that things will ALWAYS be a certain way. You put your head into solitary confinement. You begin to imagine walls that don’t exist in the real world, but they may as well be three feet of concrete. There is no way out, and you see that you alone are responsible for this sentence. The pain in unbearable, but you are too old to get back to “GO” and get your playing piece and starting salary because that salary cannot support the life you have created and someone else has the sporty car or the guy on the horse.
The reality: the resources you need are out there. In fact, the resources you need are IN there, and have been all along! Your mind and heart are two of the most underutilized resources that many of us have. While we don’t consciously think that we have quit on ourselves, we subconsciously have given up. We resign ourselves to the little corner of the world that we currently reside in and the daily schedule that drives many of us insane. Who, exactly, imposed these limits on our lives? We did! We all have advanced degrees in wall building and confinement, of our hearts and minds. We either get comfortable with what we have or consumed by what we want, often because to aspire for more is “too hard” or because what we see our neighbors have or what is marketed on TV is way cooler than what we have. Or because the vacation we can’t afford is deserved. And so on.
Often changes like the ones that Julie went through act as a wake up call. We learn that we have infinite power to become a person other than the one we have been playing in the drama known as life. The car we have is fine. The TV we have is fine. Who are these people I share my life with? There are people who have it worse than I do? I can help them? And I really can have a different job, a different career?
Cars can be repaired. TV’s are used too often. The people you share your life with are your family and friends! They nourish you! You nourish them! You can help those who have less than you have!!! It’s called giving!! Or sharing the love!! Embrace it!! It will make you feel better!!! The knowledge to job change is out there on the Internet, and with personal coaches and with career consultants. In no way do you need to settle for what you have!
You can live a more fulfilling life!!! And it shouldn’t take your life falling completely apart for you to see that!!! You can learn from the experience of others!!!! We can take their wisdom and find a life that satisfies us to our core! It can be heartwarming to help others, and to really know our family members, and to have friends who really care about us!!!! All of these things exist when our hearts and minds are OPEN and ready to share in the abundance we all have inside of us!!!
Until Next Time and Part Two!
Julius
Julie Wainwright had a spectacular public fall. She was the CEO of the Internet start up Pets.com. You may remember the sock puppet that they used in their advertising. Well, remembering the brand may be good, but Pets.com was in business for about a year, Julie was at the helm, and got publicly trashed for some of the moves she made. Mostly for closing down the company while they still had capital. Why would she do that? So she could live with herself! She knew that the business had NO chance to succeed because so many other internet pet companies went online in the same timeframe, and she saw that Pets.com was actually losing money on every transaction. My guess is that many of us would do the same thing and give our investors some of their investment back. But we all have recently seen the logic of Wall Street and the financial markets. Enough said!!!
At virtually the same time as the company was folding, her marriage ended when her husband not only announced that he wanted a divorce, but promptly left their home with all of his possessions. The double whammy was devastating to Julie, and she took some time to think about how her life had gotten to this point. Which gets us to the blog article that inspired this book.
As a part of the healing process, Julie wrote a blog post with the title of this book on her website . In less than a year’s time, nearly 100,000 people had read “The Five Mistakes” blog in over 156 different countries. Truly not what she expected. Many of the readers asked for the material in book form so that they could share it with friends and family. After seeing that the requests were never going to stop, Julie decided to write the book.
It is a revealing work, with Julie reliving much of what she went through and how she got to the places that allowed all of this to happen around her. The key to me is that she knew that she had to move on, pick up the pieces and reinvent herself in order to live with herself. She found that her priorities had been shaped by the needs of those around her, and that she allowed herself to lose touch with…Julie. Life events like the ones she experienced are often quite eye-opening, and having them occur in parallel caused Julie to open not only her eyes, but her brain and heart as well.
In the post to follow this one I will take quotes from Julie’s book and add my spin on her learning. I find that her experiences have great teaching value to me, and I suspect that many others can learn from her insights. I do this split because I know it would get quite long, and I do not want to post the “mother of all posts.” But as a teaser, here are the first couple:
“I had no idea, no real idea that is, that my marriage is over…Still, I don’t really believe it.”
I can relate, as I am currently living the last stages of my marriage being over, the stage involving court personnel. Somehow, you know its over but you just don’t understand its over. I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted it to end this way. I want to start over. But none of that is going to happen, mostly because the other party has given the marriage many chances before they resort to this ending. We often get out of touch with the “us” because we are so busy doing other things: managing work projects with fierce internal intensity, dodging the bosses latest requests in our minds 24/7, worrying how we are going to have the funds to put the kids through college, worrying how we are going to have the funds to retire, etc. And all of these things can look like selfishness to our significant other, and maybe they are. But for me, they were the response to years of doing for others and going against the grain of what I thought were the right things to do in order to not rock the marital boat. I was cultivating a “joint” approach to problem solving. In my own mind. And it often ran 100% upstream from where my heart told me I should be going. If you EVER feel yourself going against the grain to the point of discomfort, I implore you to resolve the situation, either by sitting down with your significant other and hashing things out, or by getting out of the relationship. Like most other personal issues, letting it fester will only make things worse in the long run.
“I didn’t realize that when you’re older, life is different. You see the patterns in your past actions and they can actually trap you in the past because you assume that this is just how your life will always be. Sometimes, you create patterns when they aren’t there, because you’re miserable; you think you must have done something wrong, because you are in so much pain and time is running out and you can see very clearly that there won’t be that many more do-overs in your future. If any.”
Believe it! Life changes as the years pile up. How? As Julie states, the habits we pick up along the way corrupt our minds into thinking that things will ALWAYS be a certain way. You put your head into solitary confinement. You begin to imagine walls that don’t exist in the real world, but they may as well be three feet of concrete. There is no way out, and you see that you alone are responsible for this sentence. The pain in unbearable, but you are too old to get back to “GO” and get your playing piece and starting salary because that salary cannot support the life you have created and someone else has the sporty car or the guy on the horse.
The reality: the resources you need are out there. In fact, the resources you need are IN there, and have been all along! Your mind and heart are two of the most underutilized resources that many of us have. While we don’t consciously think that we have quit on ourselves, we subconsciously have given up. We resign ourselves to the little corner of the world that we currently reside in and the daily schedule that drives many of us insane. Who, exactly, imposed these limits on our lives? We did! We all have advanced degrees in wall building and confinement, of our hearts and minds. We either get comfortable with what we have or consumed by what we want, often because to aspire for more is “too hard” or because what we see our neighbors have or what is marketed on TV is way cooler than what we have. Or because the vacation we can’t afford is deserved. And so on.
Often changes like the ones that Julie went through act as a wake up call. We learn that we have infinite power to become a person other than the one we have been playing in the drama known as life. The car we have is fine. The TV we have is fine. Who are these people I share my life with? There are people who have it worse than I do? I can help them? And I really can have a different job, a different career?
Cars can be repaired. TV’s are used too often. The people you share your life with are your family and friends! They nourish you! You nourish them! You can help those who have less than you have!!! It’s called giving!! Or sharing the love!! Embrace it!! It will make you feel better!!! The knowledge to job change is out there on the Internet, and with personal coaches and with career consultants. In no way do you need to settle for what you have!
You can live a more fulfilling life!!! And it shouldn’t take your life falling completely apart for you to see that!!! You can learn from the experience of others!!!! We can take their wisdom and find a life that satisfies us to our core! It can be heartwarming to help others, and to really know our family members, and to have friends who really care about us!!!! All of these things exist when our hearts and minds are OPEN and ready to share in the abundance we all have inside of us!!!
Until Next Time and Part Two!
Julius
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