Flexing

Flexing

Contract. Expand. Closed. Open. Downward. Upward. Dark. Light. Frustrated. Satisfied.

Wait, that last pair doesn’t quite fit, as anyone who has play the Sesame Street game can tell you.

Everything ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes. And, while a pair like frustration and satisfaction can seem like they fit, they are quite the different beast.

I can’t inhale until I’ve exhaled. I can’t hold my mug of delicious, steaming coffee until I close my fingers around the handle. I can’t walk or run or practice kung fu unless my muscles contract and expand. Natural.

Frustration and satisfaction are choices, feelings. And feelings we can change in an instant by changing our thoughts.

In the broadest sense, frustration comes from saying, “N0!” to life and satisfaction comes from saying, “Yes.”

Sometimes, we decide that we won’t feel satisfied until we finish something. The whole time we are working on our project, we push away satisfaction, and in its place we put frustration. Maybe we think it’s taking too long, or it’s too hard, or we aren’t getting enough help, or too much help. Something seems to always get in the way.

When we go to frustrated, we are informing ourselves that our expectations are not aligned with our reality. That’s wacky because we do a lot to create our reality. So what’s going on?

Well, I am back to saying, “no” to my life, resisting it as it unfolds, refusing the gifts, the lessons, the hidden delights from a place of fear, or anger or stubbornness. It never ends well.

When I refuse life, I set myself up to feel kind of crazy, or overwhelmed, or even like I’m under attack.  When I refuse life, I turn my back on support, and love, and kindnesses from unexpected sources. I choose morose, I choose gloomy, I choose negativity, and I spread it around like butter on toast until I’ve coated everything in my emotional greasiness.

When I open to life, when I allow my life to unfold, when I say “yes,” I not only look for the good in whatever is happening, but I find it. It means that I can find satisfaction in the moment, I don’t have to wait for a special occasion.

When I allow my life to unfold, I can enjoy the moment for what it is. Enjoyment isn’t always about having fun. Sometimes, enjoyment is very close to satisfaction. When I have gone through periods of intense grief, when it’s clean emotion, without emotional baggage, I find it very satisfying, even enjoyable. I know, we do have a taboo about that. Grief isn’t supposed to be satisfying, but there you go. Allowing life to flow through.

When I choose to allow life, I choose to be present, living in the moment, not for the moment. When I choose to allow life, I am on the lookout for greatness, including within me. When I choose to allow life, I enjoy more responsibility. Enjoy. More. Responsibility. I take better care of me. I make a loving peaceful space for you.

Satisfaction is a choice I want to make over and over and over.

How have I changed from frustration and rage to peaceful satisfaction?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10062013

Perfection vs Perfectionism

Perfection vs Perfectionism

Perfection. What an enticing and seductive word. Perfection, all crystalline and pure. Who would think that something that seems so lovely could be so very dangerous.

Oh, yeah, I said dangerous.

We are perfect beings at our core, beings of light and love. And this moment is perfect, perfect for where we are in this moment. These things are perfection. And we tend to think of perfection as a positive thing.

But the instant we start to try for perfection, we are doomed. Perfection is a state of being, not an activity.

Doing our best is a wonderful thing. It makes us feel good, we feel satisfied when we’ve done our best. We feel content.

Striving for perfection, on the other hand, can make us crazy. We can end up spending way too much time on a project trying to make it perfect. Most of the time good enough is good enough.

In the olden days, I tried to make things perfectly clean. It took forever, and still they weren’t perfect. I tried to make my skin perfectly smooth, to iron my clothes perfectly, to write the perfect sentence, knit the perfect glove. Sometimes, it would happen right away, sometimes I had to work and work at it.

Kind of like an abusive relationship.

The other part of the equation was that, as I got busier with a second job, and a third (we’ll talk about that another time) I couldn’t spend 5 hours cleaning the kitchen floor. So I stopped. Spending half an hour to iron a shirt; I stopped ironing. I stopped trying to knit fancy things, I stopped writing anything but journal entries.

Stymied. Brought up short. Because I thought that if I couldn’t do it perfectly, what was the point. Oh, I wish I could go back in time and tell me how wrong that was.

Good enough is good enough. Why am I capable?

Hit a lick at a snake. What makes me get it done?

Doing my best is wonderful.  How am I satisfied?

Being a grownup means that I know when to apply good enough, and when to give it my all. This is using positive emotional judgment. It makes my life easier, it leaves me with more energy for other things, including spending time with you.

Being a grownup means that I no longer am striving for perfection when I write you. I get our community in mind, I pull a Creative Questions card, I contemplate it until an idea pops up (don’t you love creativity) and then I write it, read it for typos, and give it to you. I do my best, but I don’t strive for perfection. I’d never get these written if I did.

Loving “good enough” is a giant leap toward our natural life because it lets us relax in our feelings, and then, too, in our bodies.

How have I changed from making myself crazy to exercising my positive emotional judgment?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09032013