It's proving helpful to do some curious observer on myself when it comes to meditation.
Here's all the monkey mind chatter and topics that floated through in the couple of times I tried to start meditating then got distracted:
- I should be stretching while I'm meditating
- Or just stretch/exercise more in general
- My friend I saw last night and how stressed she is
- Family conversation from yesterday
- Trump
- My next career interests and classes to sign up for
- Flowers dying on the dining room table
- The puppers labored breathing
- Is it still smoky out or just looks smoky?
- The news, all of it
- These pants make me feel fat
- The girls
- My entire weekly schedule and then today's schedule
- The clock doesn't match the wall it's on
- The spot on the floor that needs refinishing but we don't have time
- If we refinished the wood floors, the dust
- The hubs
- Work demands
- Texts that are starting to come through
At work, our clients always tell us we've never had a client with the problems they have. Their problems are the worst, the most unique, the most awful.
They always have issues; that's why they've hired us. There are a few outliers in our hundreds of client cases. Like, one or two.
The rest? All clustered on that boring bell curve.
#notspecial
I have issues w/ monkey mind, but I realize, saying they're worse than anyone else is a form of avoidance and denial.
It gives you a way out; it's soothing. "I'd do better if I wasn't such a fuck-up" is how this logic goes.
Brene Brown talks alot about this. Shame wants to isolate and make you feel less ordinary. Success in a weird way is acknowledging you're ordinary and need to do ordinary things to get healthy and stay healthy.
No shortcuts. Not even for us who have some big fuck-up areas (and there is someone worse, promise).
When I accept that my problems are like other people's problems, then I have to also accept I need to listen to the advice and wisdom that is dispensed and works for most people that give it a try and are consistent.
If I'm failing? It's probably because I'm not trying hard enough and not sticking with something, NOT because my problems are the most special and the most unique.
So yeah, that's a long list of distracting shit. It looks pretty normal and pretty manageable if I stay with my brain training. I'm already doing way better than where I was at six months ago BECAUSE I'VE STUCK WITH IT.
That's just how it works.
Everyone's book of success has some element of, "Be disciplined and stick with a plan that makes sense." It really doesn't take a book to say it; just a pamphlet. But no one goes on a book tour with just a pamphlet. Maybe that could be my thing? Come hear me read from my pamphlet for a few minutes, then buy it for $5.
*****
I am looking through the digital photo album I just finished for 2017. I'm noticing there aren't many pics of me, especially at the beginning. I don't look unhappy in the pics, just absent.
You wouldn't know going through the album that anything was terrifically wrong with the year. If you knew our family or me, you might, but even I look at it all and have a general feeling of warmness about the year. That isn't inaccurate; there were warm times and moments, especially with people or outside. It just doesn't tell the full story. These photos and events make up maybe a month or two, timewise? That leaves alot of empty spaces for shit to happen.
Which it was.
*****
We've ordered two sex books that his therapist recommended in lieu of adding another therapist to our list of people helping us. I approve.
The first one came a few days ago. I flopped it onto Jay's desk and he looked through it later. He commented from the den, "It's missing the first 40 pages."
I try no longer to be cynical so declined the obvious negative observations: "Of course it is! We can't even order a sex book without failure! Do we get a refund? Just where did those 40 pages go?!"
The second one came today. I put it in an obvious viewing location. I'm interested in sex; i'm not too interested in learning more about sex. My brain is tired of learning.
I'd rather relax and have things just happen like maybe they were supposed to a long, long time ago. I think that's quite possible.
Maybe that's why I won't ever be able to write many self-help books. So many of them would be pamphlets, really, referencing dead people who wrote wise things, humor columns, the occasional moving photograph and the admonition to "play more and stress less." No, that's not how to build a budding life coach career right there.
So we stumble along in a really human sort of way. We love to learn but resist being told what to do. We seem determined to live a real life on our own terms (like most humans I know?). We're not anti-intellectual; we just studied and invested in things that landed us with wonderful friends, cool kids, a small house and a budding business. We lack stress-management skills, and a fully-orbed way to manage all our childhood trauma.