In the movie The Story of Us, starring Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer, they play a married couple with two kids who every evening around the dinner table do “High /Low” with their kids. What was the High of their day and what was the low? I really wish not only would my parents have done this at our dinner table but that my husband and I would have asked our kids this question every night around the meatloaf and green beans. We asked, “How was your day?” Well you can imagine the usual answer we got to that! “OK” ! And when we went for specifics usually got an “I don’t know”. Luckily our kids grew up to be healthy responsible adults in spite of us!
So today I ask myself “ What was your high? And what was your low? Most days I don’t even really have a low!!! How lucky am I?
Today I had many highs! It was a beautiful 78 degrees and sunny. I spent time with good friends, went shopping for yummy food to enchant my grandsons when they come to lunch tomorrow, ordered dog safety restraints (again) for my two golden retrievers and listened to the Irish Tenors sing Leonard Cohen’s glorious “Hallelujah” What an amazing day!!!
My only low was that I had to go to the doctor to get a script of steroids for my asthma that has been acting up. But it’s actually a high that I have such an amazing doctor and was able to get in on short notice!
Every morning I make a short gratitude list (with different things from the day before) and every night do High/Low. It puts my life in very clear perspective! What’s your High/Low?
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Love and Acceptance
This has been a week of political differences, some cheering, some angry, some sticking their heads in the sand. I have heard many opinions, on TV, from friends in person and on Facebook.
I usually try to avoid butting heads with my friends over politics.
It’s difficult in these hard times not to be emotional and I have friends of all persuasions. They have reasons for believing as they do and so do I. I don’t like conflict and try to avoid it but when it is something I feel very strongly about, I will take a stand.
My husband and I have political differences. He is strongly conservative and I am more moderate. We have been together over thirty years and have changed in our thinking since we were twenty-five. Which is natural if people learn, grow, and think.
On many things we agree and if we don’t, I prefer to just agree to disagree. As long as our basic beliefs and values are the same, we are fine. I also feel somewhat the same way about my friends. I don’t feel as strongly about sharing all the basic beliefs and values with a friend but do expect mutual respect, loyalty and love.
With Facebook, it is different. Many of my Facebook friends I have never met in person. I have become friends with those individuals on line because we share some mutual interest. So we don’t have a background of the above requirements for friendship.
But I do have some standards for those “friendships”. I still want to be treated with respect. I guess I call it FB tact. It’s OK to disagree respectfully. Your page is YOUR place to tout your opinions so please don’t dirty MY page with your snarky /rude comments. I have the right to state my opinions about politics, personal issues of which I believe strongly and comment about my life as do you on your page. If I do state an opinion on another’s page, I try to be respectful. I have to admit I have failed a couple times when emotions (mostly hurt feelings ) got the better of me.
If “friends” cross this line too many times, I have reached the point where I either hid or even defriended them. Sometimes it just isn’t worth the energy it takes to remain FB friends.
We always have to weigh things in life. Is the friendship worth balancing the disagreements? Is there love and respect in the relationship even if we disagree about many things? And are the things we disagree about very important values of mine where I have to take a stand?
An example might be: if my husband all of a sudden thought extramarital affairs were something he now believed in. That would be a deal breaker for me.
Or if a friend really hated dogs and constantly made comments to me about how could I stand having a dog etc. Being mean to my dogs would be a no brainer. THAT would also be a deal breaker for me.
Every person has to set their boundaries of what is acceptable and what isn’t in a relationship. It can be painful. It is difficult.
And most of the time if you are wise, you have chosen friends who respect you as you respect them. If not, you may need to hit “unfriend”.
I usually try to avoid butting heads with my friends over politics.
It’s difficult in these hard times not to be emotional and I have friends of all persuasions. They have reasons for believing as they do and so do I. I don’t like conflict and try to avoid it but when it is something I feel very strongly about, I will take a stand.
My husband and I have political differences. He is strongly conservative and I am more moderate. We have been together over thirty years and have changed in our thinking since we were twenty-five. Which is natural if people learn, grow, and think.
On many things we agree and if we don’t, I prefer to just agree to disagree. As long as our basic beliefs and values are the same, we are fine. I also feel somewhat the same way about my friends. I don’t feel as strongly about sharing all the basic beliefs and values with a friend but do expect mutual respect, loyalty and love.
With Facebook, it is different. Many of my Facebook friends I have never met in person. I have become friends with those individuals on line because we share some mutual interest. So we don’t have a background of the above requirements for friendship.
But I do have some standards for those “friendships”. I still want to be treated with respect. I guess I call it FB tact. It’s OK to disagree respectfully. Your page is YOUR place to tout your opinions so please don’t dirty MY page with your snarky /rude comments. I have the right to state my opinions about politics, personal issues of which I believe strongly and comment about my life as do you on your page. If I do state an opinion on another’s page, I try to be respectful. I have to admit I have failed a couple times when emotions (mostly hurt feelings ) got the better of me.
If “friends” cross this line too many times, I have reached the point where I either hid or even defriended them. Sometimes it just isn’t worth the energy it takes to remain FB friends.
We always have to weigh things in life. Is the friendship worth balancing the disagreements? Is there love and respect in the relationship even if we disagree about many things? And are the things we disagree about very important values of mine where I have to take a stand?
An example might be: if my husband all of a sudden thought extramarital affairs were something he now believed in. That would be a deal breaker for me.
Or if a friend really hated dogs and constantly made comments to me about how could I stand having a dog etc. Being mean to my dogs would be a no brainer. THAT would also be a deal breaker for me.
Every person has to set their boundaries of what is acceptable and what isn’t in a relationship. It can be painful. It is difficult.
And most of the time if you are wise, you have chosen friends who respect you as you respect them. If not, you may need to hit “unfriend”.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Nobody’s Perfect : Trust Your Gut
I have had black and white thinking (all or nothing) my entire life and I come from a long history of black and white thinkers (alcoholics most). But in the thirty years I have been in recovery from alcoholism /drug addiction I have also worked hard to straighten out my thinking.
Because the drinking is just a symptom of how messed up my thinking can get! I tend to react strongly to what normal people would think are small issues. I tend to think I am unique (hence NO.1). I also tend to find someone /something I love, be it an author, a movie, a dessert and go whole hog crazy over it! I have been known to find a sudden fancy for a food (like quesadillas) and want to have it every night for weeks. (Well, maybe not EVERY night but at least every Friday night!) Then I get tired of it and go on to something else. Thank God my husband is a patient man who loves me dearly.
When I do this with people, I am so thrilled by what they have to say, or write or create that I begin to think in a very deluded way that they are super human, perfect, have it all together. And I don’t even realize I am doing it!
Because I know TRULY that no human being is perfect. But sometimes if someone writes a book I really relate to strongly, I want to think they have all the answers.
I recently had this experience with an author I have liked for years. Geneen Roth has written many books about compulsive eating (all of which I own) and how to heal yourself and be able to eat normally. She currently has a new book out and I was reading her blog. Now I have to say, Geneen has always been incredibly real, open and honest about herself and her humanness. It was ME who put her on some kind of pedestal. When she admitted in an article for Salon and the Huffington Post that she lost her life savings to Bernie Madoff, I felt sorry for her. Then she said she had never paid off her house because in
her own words: “Why didn’t I pay my mortgage off? And if I don’t engage in blame, I see the answer clearly: because I believed in something else more. I believed in accumulating. And when you believe in accumulating, you see what you don’t have, not what you do. You lose touch with what you value more than money.”
I have to admit, I felt disappointed. I felt disappointed in someone I have never met because I had told myself that Geneen knew it all. And she doesn’t. She is human. I am human. We all are. In fact, she was extremely honest and humble, writing about the fact that she hadn’t paid off her mortgage.
Yes, we can learn from mistakes and figure out what’s really important in life but most of the time it takes our entire life to do it. Sometimes I know more and have more life experience than the person whose book I am reading! I may not know everything. But I do know a lot and I don’t always give myself credit for that. I am not saying this to put Geneen or any other author down. I am saying I don’t appreciate my own knowledge and life experiences enough.
And I am sure that is true of many of us. Because otherwise there wouldn’t be so many GURUS running around! Food, diet, exercise, life coach gurus etc who tell all of us so much stuff we already know!!! If we would just trust our guts and listen to our intuition! But we have been taught in our society not to trust our intuition. Maybe Geneen even had a little voice in her gut telling her to pay off her house!
Because the drinking is just a symptom of how messed up my thinking can get! I tend to react strongly to what normal people would think are small issues. I tend to think I am unique (hence NO.1). I also tend to find someone /something I love, be it an author, a movie, a dessert and go whole hog crazy over it! I have been known to find a sudden fancy for a food (like quesadillas) and want to have it every night for weeks. (Well, maybe not EVERY night but at least every Friday night!) Then I get tired of it and go on to something else. Thank God my husband is a patient man who loves me dearly.
When I do this with people, I am so thrilled by what they have to say, or write or create that I begin to think in a very deluded way that they are super human, perfect, have it all together. And I don’t even realize I am doing it!
Because I know TRULY that no human being is perfect. But sometimes if someone writes a book I really relate to strongly, I want to think they have all the answers.
I recently had this experience with an author I have liked for years. Geneen Roth has written many books about compulsive eating (all of which I own) and how to heal yourself and be able to eat normally. She currently has a new book out and I was reading her blog. Now I have to say, Geneen has always been incredibly real, open and honest about herself and her humanness. It was ME who put her on some kind of pedestal. When she admitted in an article for Salon and the Huffington Post that she lost her life savings to Bernie Madoff, I felt sorry for her. Then she said she had never paid off her house because in
her own words: “Why didn’t I pay my mortgage off? And if I don’t engage in blame, I see the answer clearly: because I believed in something else more. I believed in accumulating. And when you believe in accumulating, you see what you don’t have, not what you do. You lose touch with what you value more than money.”
I have to admit, I felt disappointed. I felt disappointed in someone I have never met because I had told myself that Geneen knew it all. And she doesn’t. She is human. I am human. We all are. In fact, she was extremely honest and humble, writing about the fact that she hadn’t paid off her mortgage.
Yes, we can learn from mistakes and figure out what’s really important in life but most of the time it takes our entire life to do it. Sometimes I know more and have more life experience than the person whose book I am reading! I may not know everything. But I do know a lot and I don’t always give myself credit for that. I am not saying this to put Geneen or any other author down. I am saying I don’t appreciate my own knowledge and life experiences enough.
And I am sure that is true of many of us. Because otherwise there wouldn’t be so many GURUS running around! Food, diet, exercise, life coach gurus etc who tell all of us so much stuff we already know!!! If we would just trust our guts and listen to our intuition! But we have been taught in our society not to trust our intuition. Maybe Geneen even had a little voice in her gut telling her to pay off her house!
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
A Week of Worthiness
Brene’ Brown over at her blog Ordinary Courage has asked her readers and fellow bloggers to write about Worthiness this week.
I already wrote about Living in the Moment this week but the two actually kind of go together. Because I believe if we are truly living in the moment then we must be being authentic and therefore be fully into our worthiness. There isn’t time to put up a front if we are in the moment. There is no time to put on our clever or the phony face we think others want to see, like or accept.
I am most into feeling worthy when I am around the people I know love and accept me for who I am.
I fall into unworthiness when I feel I am being judged, misunderstood, not accepted or not OK just being who I am.
I get the unworthiness feeling when people judge me or other people on their grammar. So what if I mistyped and wrote their instead of there. Or lie instead of lay or viceversa. There are groups of people on Facebook who actually judge people for this! I have a college education. I am fifty six years old with fibrofog and occasionally mistep with my grammar, type too fast without my brain catching up and even just don’t give a damn if it is lie or lay!!!
I feel unworthy when someone puts down my idea or opinion. I know in my head this has nothing to do with my worthiness but my child inside /gut feeling is UNWORTHY!
I lead workshops on nurturing ourselves. Because women tend to be the nurturers of others and forget themselves or put themselves last on the list and never get there. To nurture yourself means to hold yourself in loving arms and say “I am worthy of love and care”
This week let us all feel our worthiness. Take time to tell yourself and do things to nurture that worthiness in yourself and those you love. You are OK no matter what your job, your hairstyle, your opinions or whatever! We are OK as we are. We are enough.
I already wrote about Living in the Moment this week but the two actually kind of go together. Because I believe if we are truly living in the moment then we must be being authentic and therefore be fully into our worthiness. There isn’t time to put up a front if we are in the moment. There is no time to put on our clever or the phony face we think others want to see, like or accept.
I am most into feeling worthy when I am around the people I know love and accept me for who I am.
I fall into unworthiness when I feel I am being judged, misunderstood, not accepted or not OK just being who I am.
I get the unworthiness feeling when people judge me or other people on their grammar. So what if I mistyped and wrote their instead of there. Or lie instead of lay or viceversa. There are groups of people on Facebook who actually judge people for this! I have a college education. I am fifty six years old with fibrofog and occasionally mistep with my grammar, type too fast without my brain catching up and even just don’t give a damn if it is lie or lay!!!
I feel unworthy when someone puts down my idea or opinion. I know in my head this has nothing to do with my worthiness but my child inside /gut feeling is UNWORTHY!
I lead workshops on nurturing ourselves. Because women tend to be the nurturers of others and forget themselves or put themselves last on the list and never get there. To nurture yourself means to hold yourself in loving arms and say “I am worthy of love and care”
This week let us all feel our worthiness. Take time to tell yourself and do things to nurture that worthiness in yourself and those you love. You are OK no matter what your job, your hairstyle, your opinions or whatever! We are OK as we are. We are enough.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Living In The Moment
I was thinking last night about writing this week’s blog on Living in the Moment. I had some specific examples and should have written them down because now I have forgotten what they were! See if I was living in the moment, I’d have grabbed a pen right then and there!
I do know that when I was young, I really didn’t live in the moment. I was always waiting for the next thing. Hoping, dreaming in suspended animation. Waiting for when I’d be old enough to date, old enough to drive, go to college, get married, buy a house, have kids, etc. and my biggest one = when I lose weight. No matter how much I weighed, I was never thin enough. Looking back, I WAS THIN!!!! But due to my total distorted body image I couldn’t see it. I actually rarely agreed to have my photo taken due to thinking I was fat! Today I am somewhat overweight but now I focus on the moment, not “when ”.When I did have kids, I wanted to treasure each moment but I also thought about when they would crawl, when they’d walk, feed themselves, talk, etc.
Now my daughters are grown with their own families. Today I do live in the moment with them and my grandchildren, cherishing each second, each smile, kiss, hug and word.
Maybe age has something to do with us learning to live in the moment and absorb life going on around us. Spiders only live a few weeks. I am sure they don’t worry about “when I get this web done”. Dogs live such short life spans compared to humans. Just watch your dog and you will see how they take each moment as it comes. They find so much enjoyment in their treats and food. Totally adore a kind word or stroking of their head. My boys radiate joy when they retrieve over and over again.
My mother died four years ago of a brain aneurysm. I had lunch with her on Thursday and she fell unconscious Friday evening and died on Monday. I am so grateful that we had left nothing unsaid. She knew I loved her and I knew she loved me. Because we told each other all the time.
I have tried to express my feelings and gratitude in the moment for all those close to me. I want no regrets.
Living in the moment leaves no room for worry or regret. When you take care of things as they happen, be it sharing your gratitude or making amends, you will live life to the fullest.
Most of all, living in the moment enables us to enjoy each and every second of this amazing life of which God has blessed us. Every sunny day, every butterfly, snowflake, hawk, rainbow, child’s giggle or kiss from a loved one. Cherish each second.
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