Re-Train Your Brain!

I have a friend who is not as old as I am but old enough to make up her own mind about everything. She can drink or not, smoke or not, work or not, marry or stay single, be sexually active or celibate. These are her choices. But she struggles to make choices because every time she makes a decision her mother gives her grief. Nothing she does is quite right. She's either selfish or not taking good care of herself. She is either too frugal or a spendthrift. The feedback, contrary and inconsistent, would be funny if my friend did not care so much about her mother's approval.

My friend has a boundary problem. I'm thinking about buying her a hoola hoop and suggesting she learn how to wear it as a shield against her mother's intrusion. It's easy to poke at the mom and blame her for my friend's distress, but that violates my core value of taking responsibility for every single part of life.

My friend shares this value but she is struggling to practice it. So is it a value for her? Yes, I believe it is and I have seen her over the years develop good skills with others. But her mom might just be her final test in taking responsibility for her life. All of it. Including learning to reject, let go of, activity resist HER REACTION to her mother's words.

Yes, that's it I think. She cannot control her mother but she can learn how to practice new ways of responding. Her brain, lazy as all brains can be, prefers that my friend respond with despair just like she always did when faced with so much negativity as a child. She will have to try all sorts of new tricks of the trade to re-train her brain to stop caring so darn much about her mother's opinions.

This is hard work. It will be learned clumsily over time, so long as she practices. She's practicing and I'm excited to hear, over time, how it works for her. This I know - if she figures this out, she will be able to be more loving to herself and maybe even her mom. That's a big win from my perspective.

Just Say No

Just say no. Although this slogan was a complete failure in the war against drugs, it could still serve a purpose. When my friend Anne decided to become a goat and chicken mother on a little plot of land that certainly resembles heaven, she didn't get transported there through magic fairy dust. She had to DO a lot of purging.

For months I watched Anne let go of paintings, outfits, jackets, children's tea sets, matchbox cars, extra dishes and furniture. She had to actively reject the doubters and naysayers who thought a woman of a certain age might consider a lovely retirement home but perhaps should refrain from daring to dream that life could be MORE with LESS. Anne ignored it all; she discarded the advice of those who knew her but did not know the inclinations of her heart. Anne finally learned how to just say no so she could say yes to her life - not her friends' life or her children's life or even her beloved husband's life - her life.

I wonder if sometimes she felt the weight of rejection when not every single person jumped up and down with glee over her news to sell the family home and move. I myself remember floating the idea of downsizing one time with my adult kids and our son Michael said, "Who's going to pack up my childhood memories?"

I didn't know how to answer Michael then, but I do now - thanks to Anne. Now I would say to my son, "You. You carry your memories in your heart. You own the ones you save and the ones you pitch. You get to take the memories you treasure with you everywhere you go. Dad and I will text you our new address when we move."

Now, unlike Anne, Pete and I chose a different path of reinvention which required a home renovation. This means that all my children's memories are still packed away in storage bins with regular invitations from us to come retrieve them any time they want. We're still waiting on Michael to retrieve his precious memories - I suspect there is a lesson to be found in that small fact.

The word "NO" looks different for each of us but it does involve rejecting one thing for another. If we are not willing to purge, how will we ever make room for the newer, better problems and joys that await as we get more clarity about who we want to be when we grow up?

Make Life Less Hard

I am totally opposed to this belief that we should celebrate doing hard things as if hard things are awesome gifts. Hard things are stressful and can be traumatic. This is why my blood pressure goes up when somebody posts on Facebook, "Hey, I think kids who got spanked turned out better than those who were put in time out." This is utter bullshit - pardon my language. This kind of misinformation drives me nuts! Do you know how many grown ups slink into my office and recount the trauma and humiliation associated with being parented by an adult who took out their rage on a little kid and called in discipline? Again, I've said this before, do you notice how many high functioning adults we have dependent on alcohol to get through their day? Is anyone else curious as to the high rate of addiction and mental health disorders? Where do we think these problems originate? Trauma. Genetics. Deprivation - a belief that the world is not a place that cares or supports us when we are struggling.

However, I am thrilled with this concept that when faced with hard things, we will be less stressed and perhaps less traumatized if we recognize that life is hard. We are not being picked on, life is not treating us unfairly, we are not more stupid or especially cursed. We are living life. Life is hard.

Given that, I am on a personal mission to try to NOT make life harder than it has to be for myself or others. This requires me to learn and grow and accept responsibility for my life - every little piece of it. It requires us to go out and find the support we need heal and grow SO THAT we learn what support looks like - and we can support others as we have been supported.

The goal is not to make life easy; the work is to figure out how to mitigate the damage caused when life is hard and we do not have the resources we need to survive and eventually thrive as a result of what we are learning.

Today, try not to make life harder for yourself or those you love. Life is hard enough without us making it harder.

Do. Evaluate. Redo. Reevaluate.

I was not created to be a motivational speaker if by that we mean someone who motivates and inspires. I think this is because my core values and inspiring motivational moments are at odds. This has actually been hard for me to accept because I'm the sort who actually prefers success to failure. I like to win. Ask my husband, he will tell you. I care about winning whether we are playing cards or pickleball. When our son tells us that maybe at our advanced age we should transfer our considerable efforts to play tennis over to the pickle ball court, what did we do? We started taking tennis lessons. And, yes, we also play pickleball. Just not the day before a lesson - it totally does a number on your tennis form.

After decades in the recovery world, I have learned from my recovery heroes that success, inspiration, motivation - those things are all fleeting. They are not long haulers. And what I love about knowing this, is that I notice what is left behind. When all that runs out what's left?

Do the next right thing, no matter how small. Forget success, inspiration and motivation. It's fun when it's there - enjoy it while you've got it - but plan for when it leaves because they are all fickle.

To trick my brain that is hardwired for panting after success, I've chosen to embrace action as an indicator of success. My brain is learning to accept what I actually believe is true based on my experience - our whole life is one giant experiment. Progress is only made when we make choices, take action, notice what happens, refine the plan and do the next thing that makes the most sense.

I'm pretty energized with this way of living. My goal is do something and notice, not do something and achieve a particular outcome. The DOING is the winning.

I have a friend who has needed to reset herself this summer and she is doing a bang up job. It started with cleaning her room. She bucked and resisted and planned and procrastinated until one day, we decided: she was going to clean her room starting right....now. And she would not stop until it was done. If she didn't know where to put something, unless it was a live human or beloved pet or a family heirloom - just throw it away. This certainly was incentive enough to find a place for everything she loves! I could gush on and on about how her life is morphing right before my eyes since she cleaned her room but I will wait to post about her when she runs for President in a decade or so.

Do. Evaluate. Redo. Reevaluate. Keep going. What dream do you have that needs to start with a thorough room cleaning? Let's go and get it done!

Practice Being Uncomfortable…

Failure is demotivating. It's frustrating. I do not always respond well when I perceive I have failed. I think this is a fairly predictable response to discomfort, but guess what? I'm learning that being uncomfortable is a precious gift on the path to growth.

Pete and I enjoy our empty nester early morning routine, which includes solving a puzzle or two before we rush off to a day filled with adulting. One of the puzzles I prefer, Kakuro, is a great crossword like puzzle without words. You have to align numbers 1 through 9 in such a way as to come up with the designated total count both vertically and horizontally. Sometimes it is really hard and I get frustrated trying to solve it. The secret is to just keep working the puzzle. Plug away, fill in what you can. Start with the easy ones - a two square line that equals 16 HAS to be 9 and 7, and if you put those two options down on paper, you might discover that there is only one square the 9 or 7 will fit with the corresponding vertical or horizontal line that has its own unique options and restrictions.

Here's the point: even when unmotivated, uninspired, freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional - keep moving. Not in a habitual, robotic, reactionary way - but from a place of humility, curiosity, and surrender. Maybe today I will not solve the problem set in front of me but I might get better skills for my effort. I may learn new tricks that will help me with tomorrow's puzzle.

If we feel like we have to be motivated to make progress, we are wrong. If we think we have to succeed, we are wrong. If we think we need to have warm fuzzy feelings about our adulting, we are wrong. Here's what's right: keep moving and as we move, try to pay attention to aligning ourselves with our core values.

I align myself with my core values when I follow my teacher's instructions for piano fingering practice. My values include the belief that I am a student of life and lessons learned in one arena inevitably translate into other dimensions of life. I value expertise and I appreciate when I have access to it. I believe that there is value in doing things that feel unnatural at first, because it is a sign that I am awake, alert and not asleep in a habitual, unconscious patterned way of thinking, feeling and behaving with certainty.

What do you need to practice today that will be uncomfortable?