Archive for fulfilling life
Redeemable Ruts
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In brokenness, I was so busy trying to keep myself together that any mistakes I made were monstrous and threatening. Clinging to the ideal of perfection as my ultimate redeemer, I wallowed in my mistakes. I re-lived them over and over in my mind, feeling this deep shame and guilt in knowing that I had messed up. Ultimately, I was linking my mistakes to my identity. I believed that if I made bad mistakes, then I must be bad too.
In rebuilding the foundation of what I believe about myself and working through where the lies came from that I was coping with, I have a new sense of freedom when it comes to my mistakes. I have a new belief about the goodness of my heart, and I can operate from a platform of valuing myself as I am, for who I am. Because of this, my mistakes lose their power to whack me on the head. I realize 2 things: I can take responsibility for the mental ruts I fall into now (as Darlene has said in a previous post, “The more that I repeated this process, the more I realized that I was the one in my own way and that underneath those other voices, was my own voice telling me that I was not really valuable, or loveable or capable etc.”) and secondly, becoming aware of the ruts I find myself in creates the opportunity for me to compassionately decide on a better way. I am free to choose; I’m not in bondage to the old mistakes and coping habits anymore. Though this might feel overwhelming at first, it is a healing freedom. In wholeness, we have the power to redeem our ruts… even if it takes numerous attempts to create new habits.
In this light, here’s a fun little story about the process of change by Portia Nelson: An Autobiography in Five Short Chapters. I doodled some pictures for your enjoyment, though in the future I may have to hire an artist! ~All power to you as you walk down your new streets~
AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE SHORT CHAPTERS by Portia Nelson
I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost … I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.
II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place
but, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
V
I walk down another street.
7 Differences Between Living Broken and Living Whole
Posted by: | CommentsHere are seven differences from my life between living in brokeness and living whole:
Living Broken
-Always on high alert
-Happiness came and went depending on circumstances
-Close my eyes and just push through…
-Threatened by other people’s success and unique qualities
-Chronic self-doubt
-Giving because I felt guilty or obligated
-Determining my value based on how I compared to others
Living Whole
-Deep feelings of happiness and real joy come naturally the more I believe the truth about who I really am
-Believing I have the ability to…
-Freedom in relationships to appreciate other people’s unique qualities without being threatened by them
-Knowing I am not ultimately responsible for someone else’s happiness
-Pursing the kind of life I ultimately want, because I now believe I am worthy of it
-Having limits and allowing myself to fail without beating myself up; engaging in my own personal process of growing and moving forward with compassion and celebration
-Giving to others because I genuinely want to and with no strings attached
~Carla
Happiness on This Side of the Rainbow
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve played the piano since I was six and still enjoy playing for pleasure. My favorite book for the past couple years has been a collection of Eva Cassidy arrangements, and the most turned-to page of this book is the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (words by E Y Harburg):
Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, in a land that I heard of once in a lullaby… Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dared to dream really do come true….
Eva ends her arrangement with a longing-filled ending… If happy little blue birds fly above the rainbow why, oh why, can’t I?
Today I spent about 5 hours doing a long-anticipated bedroom cleanup. I still had some gifts to find a place for, garbages to empty, recycling to cart up and down the stairs, laundry to do, clothes to sort. I began with grand illusions of deep cleaning absolutely every corner of my room, sorting through EVERYTHING, recycling or bagging stuff up for the Sally Anne, dusting the baseboards, arranging my cd collection, loading up my new ipod, figuring out my new alarm clock, re-organizing my bathroom cabinet, oh, and sorting through ALL my desk stuff, bills, receipts, notes etc. At the end, every little detail would be in spic and span shape, and I would recline and feel excellent.
About halfway through I felt overwhelmed. The clock seemed to be moving faster than normal. I cleaned out 2 drawers of a dresser that I don’t think I had sorted through since I moved in a year and a half ago! I started to hear those old voices, the guilty ones. “Man you collect a lot of stuff… if you would just keep on top of your organization, you wouldn’t have such a mess to deal with… you should be giving some of this stuff to poor people who really need it… you need to let go… and look at all the books on your shelf that you haven’t read yet!”
And at the same time I was thinking of the other things I still wanted to do today- write, get cleaned up myself, visit my brother at his new place for dinner. I started downsizing my organization. Pile everything on the desk to sort through another day… same with the cds… and the laundry. By the end, even though I had worked hard for 5 hours, this song was going through my head… Somewhere over the rainbow…
A rainbow is a beautiful thing, a sign of hope, of renewal, of new rain. But a somewhere over the rainbow has been one of the biggest hurtles for me. Grand illusions, standards of perfection that are never attainable, a wistful romantic picture of circumstances in which I will finally find unending, supreme happiness…
It’s not life, and it’s not truth. And I’m tired of getting wonked in the forehead by rainbows…
I stop and take the time to look at myself. 5 hours of cleaning is a pretty great accomplishment. And in the bigger picture, what I’m doing with my life right now is great as well. I am flying. I am flying NOW. Wistfully sitting on the ground, envying “happy little bluebirds” or anguishing over not being able to fly over some insurmountable rainbow robs me of my true accomplishments and value, and only serves to keep me on the ground. Accepting and affirming my own wings in action today will fuel a long and fulfilling journey in the best possible way.
I think it’s time for a new favorite song. 
The Flow of Receiving
Posted by: | CommentsDo you ever watch those renovation shows on TLC or a home and garden channel? Do you find it difficult to only watch the first half? I don’t spend a lot of time watching TV, but if I see the beginning of one of these types of shows, I HAVE to watch the entire thing, or at least flip back to behold the dramatic transformation at the end. I’m struck by our human thirst for transformation. There is something so moving and exciting and hopeful about seeing the before and after of a home or room or garden being redone, or a makeover where personal beauty is revealed in a new unexpected way.
Along my own transformative journey, I desire less and less to receive help (though there is a time and place for that) and am now seeking new habits of thinking, new ways of talking to myself, “parenting” myself, and interacting with life and others- essentially, I’m seeking better ways of helping myself. In true freedom, I can see that change does not fundamentally involve changing the outer things. It’s easy to get stuck trying to fix all the outer things in an effort to change the inner things. And this has a place too, but at the deepest root of change there lies a decision to believe differently about a thing, to believe differently about myself, to believe differently about others and my interactions with them. The outward transformation ripples out from a change at the root.
I open myself up to receive new definitions of love and what is “best”. And what I’m discovering is that in order to receive the new, I have to let go of the old. It’s a continuous flowing process. Old comfortable habits of reacting to mistreatment, or trying to feel valuable by defining myself with outward things are cumbersome. They take up too much inner space, and they rob me of having the clarity and the receptivity to receive what is better, more alive, more life giving. Sometimes embracing the new feels like going over a jump on a snowmobile at 120 km/hr. Thrilling and scary at the same time. But the more I make room to receive the new, the more familiar it becomes to me. The more I see my new habits improving my life, the more I inclined I am to seek out even better ones.
For Christmas I wish you whatever amount of courage, vision and desire you need to let go of that which holds you back from thriving in the life you were created to live, to engage in the process of continually receiving and letting go. Merry Christmas.
~Carla~
My Hungry Heart ~ Part 3 of 3
Posted by: | CommentsI grew up striving to find proof outside of myself that I truly was okay. This was my addiction. It was 2 fold: one part of it was constantly trying to figure out what other people thought of me, and the other part involved modifying my “outsides,” morphing myself, to try and fulfill what I believed other people’s expectations of me were. Like all addictions, it was extremely burdensome, but I did it to help myself survive.
My family life created the vacuum, let the big question “am I okay?” go unanswered. The church that I grew up in contributed to my dis-ease, creating bars that held me back from finding the answer. Church introduced me to self-examination. I fully value being self-aware, but the purpose of this examination was to create guilt and shame.“Examine your heart before doing this or that… Make sure your motives are right… Man looks at the outside, but God looks at the inside [so make sure your insides are good]…” Constant, heavy, suspicious examination. This became one of my biggest slave masters and I became a master at doing it. I was striving desperately for the answer to my question, but if an answer felt “too good to be true” I doubted it. I doubted myself all the time, because how could I know whether my “insides” were good or bad, whether I was on the right track? This self-doubt was the root of my depression and angst.
At age 26 I was so weary. A friend recommended a counsellor to me and I was willing to try whatever it took to find relief. This counsellor was able to help me discover the real truth about myself, for myself. He was a light, already fired up, someone I could spend some time with to get my own light burning again. He was a master not at “fixing me”, but at fanning into flame the truth that was still burning deep down inside myself. The truth he helped me to discover was that my heart is good. Fully and completely good. No questions asked, no proof required, in all its ramifications and outward actions, uniquely beautiful and good intentioned. It was the kind of truth-discovering that’s hard to explain. It just feels really good, like Christmas morning… Deep down, unabashed, grinning ear to ear truth. For someone like me, it was easy to doubt at first, to be suspicious of. But after awhile, my hungry heart couldn’t get enough. For a time, I needed this source outside of myself and outside of the church to tell me this truth, over and over again. Now that my own light is burning brighter, I’m getting the hang of it for myself. I’m rebuilding my foundation, setting myself up for a life of living as my true self, fulfilled and excited to be alive.
My Hungry Heart ~ Part 1 of 3
Posted by: | CommentsNature abhors a vacuum. I believe the same is true for our souls, our hearts. We’re created with roots that go deep, roots always seeking for nourishment to grow, to stay alive, with the potential to thrive.
When people learn about my struggle with depression, they are usually surprised. When I started seeing a counselor a 3 years ago, I didn’t understand it myself. I just knew that I was in great angst. I was doing a job that I wasn’t enjoying, but I felt so conflicted about whether or not to continue. I felt guilty about most everything. I was highly anxious in social situations. I was angry, but couldn’t figure out a reason to be (and therefore felt guilty about being angry). I had this tightness inside me all the time. For so long I had sought the counsel of other people, family, teachers, friends, relatives, and mentors. I couldn’t make my own decisions. I bounced back and forth between flying high (because of some outside circumstance that boosted my self esteem momentarily) or scrounging in the pits of despair, or muddling somewhere in between.
I was so afraid of giving up. I had this deep down feeling of wanting to be who I was really made to be, of fulfilling some kind of purpose, and was so sad at the thought of wasting my life. But I couldn’t figure out how to live differently. I would think, “Why is this so hard for me? What’s my problem?” The struggle was so tiresome.
I am fortunate and grateful that I didn’t experience verbal, sexual, or physical abuse in my childhood. That was not my experience. But nature abhors a vacuum, and it was what didn’t happen to me as a child that set me up for years of searching, thirsting and hungering.
~Carla~
It’s A Whole New Feeling
Posted by: | CommentsTasting real life, beyond surviving, is a whole new world. I’m a coffee lover, so it’s comparable to having only tasted stale gas station coffee your whole life and then one day, having a sip of some smooth, rich creamy brew and realizing that there’s more for you than what you thought! The pain of surviving was not just a “normal” thing that I had to get used to. I had always wanted more than that, but had sometimes doubted the possibility of it.
Survival mode had become an uncomfortably comfortable habit… (painful, but familiar and deceptively safe). And so my process of living in a new way happens in spurts and steps and phases. The biggest thing that can hold me back is this naggling, deep down, long cultivated belief that I don’t really deserve to be too happy (plus, sometimes people look at you funny if you’re too happy, so just be careful…). I still battle that lie every day, but it gets easier each time. It’s amazing how simply bringing something to light can make all the difference.
Now, when I engage in really living, paying attention to my feelings and thoughts, embracing my responsibility to make good choices, having honest conversation with a friend, pursuing a new challenge or opportunity that I’m passionate about, I come away with this alive, buzzing feeling. Now I know that it’s that “flying feeling,” and the satisfaction and thrill of it won’t let me go back to the stale gas station coffee. I want a fulfilling life and this whole new feeling will become my new habit.
~Carla~
