I Tsked at the Task

I Tsked at the Task

When I am happy and engaged, doing work that seems to have a point to it, I strive to do a great job. I want to support our mutual  goals with my best work. That’s easy, I can do it with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. So to speak.

On the other hand, when I feel isolated, when I don’t know what the point of this tedious task is, when I don’t know what your goals are, doing my best work takes a different skill set. I need both eyes, and both hands.

Used to be that when I had a task giver like that, one who withheld information, who didn’t include me, I felt that I should do a half assed job as a kind of passive aggressive commentary on his, or her, behavior.

It’s the “bring me a rock” scenario, for one. “What kind of a rock?” “I’ll know it when I see it.”

So, in days gone by, I would have behaved poorly and felt both vindicated and ashamed.

Poor me, it was so challenging and unpleasant being a passive aggressive dork.

Curiously, I kept encountering task-givers who favored the :Bring me a Rock style of task-giving. Finally, I had to accept that this was a pattern of mine.

Dang it.

So then I had to ask myself what the heck was I doing to make this happen? What could I do to make it stop?

I will not always be working with people who are grown ups. We each have our own values, and while I highly value personal evolution, many others value other stuff more highly. Work, like money and sex, can be charged with weird behaviors. As a grown up, my job, should I decide to accept it, is to do my best, without engaging in bizarre circumstances.

My job is to stay clean and separate. I do not have to buy into someone else’s crazy behavior. I get to do the best I can at each task, irrespective of the interest it holds for me. That is to satisfy me. I get to find ways to make that happen when the task is potentially annoying or ennervating.

Why do I like what I do?

I do a lot of cut and paste type projects. Audio books have turned into a blessing for me. I can look forward to those tasks, and enjoy doing them now. For example.

Sometimes, I like to play pretend, and imagine I am someone else who likes to do the task at hand. I did that last night when I was doing a deep clean in my kitchen. “Lorelei” LOVES to clean. Oh, the satisfaction “she” felt seeing the shine come up. Oh, the satisfaction “she” felt as she put things away, threw things out, dusted things up. And I ended up with a sparkly kitchen.

The old saw, “A job worth doing is worth doing well.” used to just annoy me. So squaresville, daddy-o. But, for me, a task I bother to put my hand to is worth my best effort.

I maintain my awareness of the difference between striving for excellence and perfectionism. The former uplifts me, the latter grabs me by the throat and throws me to the ground.

How have I changed from hating the work to loving what I do?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09262013

How to Use Your Sword of Power

How to Use Your Sword of Power

One of the many things I found baffling in the sorry days of yesteryear was the whole idea of personal power. It made no sense to me, mainly because I had no sense of it. Funny how that stuff goes.

You probably already get this, but I gotta say, it was a serious revelation to me. So let’s lift our Swords of Power and get going.

At the bottom of it all, we are each responsible for own selves. Whether we own and act on that responsibility is, of course, another matter.

I can’t actually give away my power. And you can’t take it from me.  (Oo, the victim inside me is getting pissed.)

What I do is choose to act as though you have my power. That choice is usually out of my consciousness, based on habits I established a long time ago when I was a little child and my access route to my personal power was just developing. People who had authority over me abused that authority, and royally screwed up my system.

The whos, whys, and wherefores of that don’t fundamentally matter. That’s story. It’s good to tell to get it out, so it’s not a secret, but the telling is not necessary to heal.

What matters is that I correct it.

Once I am an adult, you cannot victimized me. I victimize me in your name. You can be horrible to me, but I have the power to decide whether you will vanquish my spirit. You cannot get inside my mind, I create a version of me that looks like you inside my mind. Then I can blame that avatar, and then blame you, and I get to feel vindicated. Except that I feel like a powerless victim.

Oh, that made me so mad! I fought it for a long time. And when at last I accepted it, I felt such glorious freedom.

You cannot force me to join your rubber room party. If you are inviting me to feel crazy with you, I have to choose whether to go along.

I can choose to be clean and separate from your shenanigans. I can choose to be clean and separate from your anger, or fear, or madness. I can choose to leave, or to allow, or to change. Me, I can. I have the POWER!

How do I know I am powerful? How do I know I am responsible for me? What makes me grow up?

If I want more confidence, all I need to do is take more responsibility for how I feel, and realize that I can choose to think a thought, or not think a thought. This is part of what meditation does for us, and one of the best reasons to practice. I learn to allow my thoughts to flow, and not have to follow them, and if I do follow one, I learn to pull back to stillness, which is the source of our personal power.

When I own my power, I am confident. I don’t need to worry because I trust that I will know what to do as my life unfolds. When I own my power, it is easier for me to love you unconditionally because I know that you can’t make me. So I can let all that go, and open my heart to you.

How have I changed from feeling powerless to lifting my Sword of Power?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09242013