News Flash – everyone currently in your life, in your orbit, is there for a reason. It’s taken me a long time, and a lot of running away, to understand this vital point. It doesn’t mean that if I’m being abused by someone I need to stick around and take more. It means that the person – and their behavior – for good or for ill, is meant to teach me a lesson. Once I grasp the lesson, the offensive behavior ceases to bother, or the Offender, exists my life.

I have a colleague who irritates me to no end. For some time, I fretted and fumed over this person’s negative attitude, convinced that if only they would change, then I could breath deeply and all would be well. Days of hoping and waiting for a shift toward the positive turned into weeks that turned into months. One day, as the bile of frustration was ebbing its way up through my throat, it dawned on me that maybe I was the one who needed to change! I’m not suggesting that their behavior was in any way acceptable, but instead of focusing on the other person as the solution to my angst, I focused on a concept we use in coaching – I asked myself, “where do I have agency?” In other words, what type of adjustment in my own attitude, or behavior, could make a positive impact on my wellbeing?

As I turned the focus away from my colleague and onto myself, I realized that I possessed the very same negativity bias and trait of defeatism that was causing me such bother when issuing from them! My colleague was acting as a mirror, reflecting back to me a tendency of my own that I’d rather deny or ignore. The place where I had agency was in my own attitude and behavior. Instead of continuing to pursue the track of setting my colleague straight, I instead went about adjusting my own attitude, diligently watching for my own negativity bias to rear its unhelpful head. The long standing irritation that I’d felt toward my colleague soon faded away, and it didn’t take long before my colleague’s negative attitude followed suit.

I was taking a walk in the neighborhood yesterday when I noticed the upstairs window of a home across the street was open. I also noticed there was no screen on the window and saw two objects sitting on the ledge. One of the objects was small and round, a glass of some sort. The other object was white, about 1/2 foot tall, a bit larger toward the base and small and roundish toward the top. I didn’t have my glasses on so I had to keep squinting to make out the shape, something bird-like. I thought to myself “it looks like a Dove ” and proceeded to make up a story in my mind that it must be a Dove and the window was open to let it fly out of the house. Thinking back on this now it seems rather silly – who would have a Dove in an upstairs window, much less a Dove that was trained to go outside and come back? I finally decided to put on my glasses and low and behold it was a bottle!

This experience brought home the point that what I see (or more aptly, what I think I see) isn’t always what’s really there. In fact, what I’m seeing is, all too often, simply a figment of my imagination. I’ve noticed that when it comes to an object in the upstairs window of a neighbor’s home that’s one thing; but when these mistakes hit closer to my home – like in my relationships – that’s another matter entirely. Too often I can see the look on someone’s face and immediately jump to a conclusion – Dove rather than Bottle – and before I know it I’ve created a whole novel based on conjecture from one look or a gesture.

This happened the other day in a meeting. I made an announcement that I expected would bring sequels of delight from my coworkers. I caught a look on the face of one colleague that I saw as disappointment. I proceeded to challenge her reaction and, Things Not Being What They Seem, I was quickly put in my place when she said she was actually just feeling surprised. I took her at her word, trusting that she knew her insides better than I.

The moral of this story is a reminder to not take things, or gestures (unless they are blatantly rude!), or much of anything else at face value. It’s much wiser to ask, or seek clarification, instead of assuming (we all know what that breaks down to) that what I think that I’m seeing is actually there!

True confession: I have a tendency to hoard. Resentments and grievances seem to accumulate like old sweaters, piling up at the bottom of my heart. Not only do I collect huge hurts that can fester for years, but I also indulge in small slights and offenses. I can accumulate these grievances, both large and small until my heart resembles the lost baggage room at the airport. I wait in vain for the people who’ve hurt me to reach out, take responsibility for what they’ve done (or didn’t do), and say they are sorry! I’ve waited for years, sometimes even for decades, yet rarely does anyone call, or write me a note of contrition. More often than not I carry this battered old luggage around just weighing me down.

It dawned on me recently that I have a choice about the baggage I’m carrying around; I’m in control. Yesterday morning I finished my morning practice of journaling and meditation, uncovering yet another layer of old wounds, some fancied some real. Yet instead of hoisting these new gripes into a bag and onto my shoulders, I instead closed my eyes, took a deep breath in, exhaled and Let Go. After too many years of feeling weighed down I’m learning that forgiveness is naught but a choice to relinquish the hurt. I can feel the anger, the betrayal, the disappointment, the sadness, the pain and then make a simple decision to either hoard or Let Go. I’m choosing to lighten my load – and lighten my heart – so what will you choose?

Have you noticed that there’s a Gap between Intention and Impact? Often my intention is to be helpful, yet the impact ends up doing the opposite.

I found out last night that one of my best friends was recently diagnosed with cancer. He arrived at my home for dinner looking wan and turned inside out. That’s when he let me know that his doctor had called early yesterday evening to give him the news. His partner was away for the weekend, so I’m glad I could be there for him as he stood in that horrible space between initial diagnosis and prognosis – no one needs to be alone in that space. We both cried, I characteristically more than he, ate a bit, then cried some more.

He let me know that he’d told his daughter – whom I’ve known forever – and I thought about how distraught she must be. So, I called her after he left to go home. My call went straight to voicemail, but as I was leaving a message I noticed she was trying to call me back. I picked up the phone to hysterical cries asking if her dad was ok: “what’s happened, what’s happened? Is he ok?” Unbeknownst to me, my daughter and her dad’s partner had called twice while she was eating, then my call, so she immediately assumed the worst. I let her know everything was ok, that I was just calling to offer support. Needless-to-say, my intention of being supportive fell far from the mark and I felt like shit for having inadvertently caused someone I love additional distress.

I relearned an important lesson last night – to pause prior to leaping into action – to consider the Gap between Intention and Impact. Everything turned out ok – as ok as this horrible situation can be.

Intend

“When you know where you’re headed,

resistance steps aside.

Reality reshapes itself to reflect your aim.

When watered by purpose, dormant seeds take

root and sprout.

Your focus, your intention, your aim is your ongoing selection of what will next become real for you.  It is the exploration of free will, the manifestation of limitless possibilities.

Discern what you wish to intend.

Keep it fee from any distracting input from

others.

Hold you intention ever before you.

Know that whatever you are presently experiencing,

you have intended.

Begin now to intend only that which brings you

greatest joy.”

~ Will Bowen; “To You, Love God”.

“I like to think of coaching as helping people to live fully into that which is tremendously “right” in our lives and to create structures that support this virtuous essence, rather than the approach often espoused in institutional counseling of diagnosing and “fixing” what is “wrong” in a person’s life…when it comes to personal growth, the more we can address the root issues of disturbances in our lives, the more efficiently we can move through these trials and come into deeper levels of fulfillment and service…

Just for Today I will intend to Relax More, to Love More, to Listen More, and to Trust More!

May You Be Well in all Ways~

What’s the Rush?

I have a“pet peeve”; all the folks who insist on driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone, or worse, 50 mph in a 35 mph zone! This particular behavior can really get my dander up  – especially because I live off a road where the speed limit is 45 mph, and I have folks barreling down the hill behind me at 60 + as i’m trying to slow down and negotiate the turn onto my road.

It’s the barreling part that really gets to me.  I usually take to muttering nasty things under my breath as people speed past, or worse, I pull out into the left hand lane to block their path all the while asking them in my thoughts, “what’s the friggin rush?  Is the 5 minutes gained from going over the speed limit worth it?”.  It feels so good to be ‘self righteous’, taking up an attitude that I’m above this menacing and, possibly, sociopathic type of behavior.

Then I got honest with myself and began to inventory my own hurried behavior; all the different (and often subtle ways) that I rush through my life.  My rushing was a seed planted within me at a very, very early age – I can still hear my mom’s voice in the back of my mind as I struggled to ‘do my business’; “hurry up, were going to be late!”  Was being on time really that important? More important than ‘doing ones business in a relaxed and ease-filled manner’?  In my family the unequivocal answer was “yes”.  Being “late” was the gravest of sins, along with being idle, the “sin” of Not Doing Something!

The seed began to sprout and take hold throughout my childhood, like kudzu, that pervasive weed which swallows other, possibly more native, gentle plants  – I learned to “rush” through the prayer at meal times so I could get to the meal.  Then, I would “rush” through my meal (to my parent’s consternation!) so I could go back outside to play. I would rush through my homework so I could move on to the next activity, I would rush thorough my piano lessons, hence I never got good at the piano – and on, and on, and on…

I carried this behavior into my adulthood – rushing to get through college; then graduate school, then to get married, then to have a child, then to get divorced….forty plus years of my life consists of rushing through practically everything I did, doing, doing, doing…robbing myself of the (to me) mysteriously fulfilling art of Being – “savoring” the moments of everyday living.  I think of my memories as those blurry snap-shots one takes while rushing past the gorgeous scenery on a high speed train.  Sad to say,  but I realized recently that I was afraid that if I took my time to savor I would be late, and worse, I would be “doing” nothing.

Obviously, my sensitivity to other people’s rushing and frenetic doing is a signal that my own house needs to be ‘put in order’;  it’s no wonder the trait  – in others – irks me so…it’s time for my own rushed ‘doing’ to abate.  One gift of aging is that the body begins to step in and slow things down.  My intention now is to follow it’s lead; to do less, and Be more – and Be Well with Ease.