Aspiring To Adventure

After weeks and weeks of just “powering through” and/or “making the best of things”, my brain finally broke on Sunday.

I just got to the point where I just didn’t want to “look on the bright side” or “choose better thoughts”. I just wanted it to not be my problem and I wanted to be done for a minute.

Wifey’s back went out and I somehow still managed to get a lot done on Saturday despite taking care of all kids plus her. I met all my commitments (more or less).

Am I having fun?

That’s a question my coach sent me today, and I was like “No, not at all I hate all of this right now”.

So that’s the goal for the week – how do I relate to commitments in a way that is fun?

If you can’t find a way to have fun, you’re not going to want to do something and so you’re not going to get to the level of mastery that you get to when you are having fun.

How am I relating to success and failure?

What do my failures say about me?

What is a failure or a success anyway? Isn’t “when we decide to stop” completely arbitrary? It’s our decision. Why do I want it to mean something if I decide to change my mind?

There’s a kind of relationship I have to myself right now – I am lazy, therefore I must not let myself get out of something. I can’t let myself off the hook for anything I committed to do.

But that’s not fun. That’s self-enslavement. Relating to yourself as a lazy worthless person who only does what they ought to do when they’re forced, cajoled, and chided.

And then – how do I show up for my family, friends, and kids if I’m that way to myself?

Fun unlocks a lot of possibilities. Play is perhaps the opposite of tyranny.

So how do I stop tyrannizing myself and enjoy life?

What is it I really want? What sounds fun in all these things I say I want?

I’ve been sick and tired.

First, I got the flu about 4 weeks ago. That led to bronchitis, which has lingered and lingered. Then the stomach flu at Christmas. Then the bronchitis flared back up and I injured my rib cartilage coughing. And then yesterday morning my back muscles freaked out and I was stuck in bed for a day. It’s been a whole thing. So that’s where I’ve been. Just trying to survive the saga.

Time to get back on track? Where is the track? I feel a little mixed up and myopic. I tend to retreat into focusing on the day to day, mundane aspects of keeping the house and the family running. And that’s really important stuff. But without the farther view, it turns into something resembling a hamster on a wheel. We need a direction, and we need a vision for what our life can be.

I ordered a shoe rack/bench thingy, so we can work toward our vision of being civilized people who have place for their shoes, and it seems to be having a shipping malfunction. First, it said it was delivered, then it said it shipped, and now it says its delayed/not yet shipped. This happened the last time we ordered a thingy to help us be civilized people who have places for their stuff! More or less.

Is it accurate that every time we try to progress toward the people we aspire to be, we meet up with resistance and are foiled in our attempts? Is that even what’s happening? Or is that what we’re seeing? And if that really is what’s happening, then what are we supposed to do? I think we might be letting ourselves get foiled too easily. Is there no other small cabinet for homeschooling supplies that we can put next to the piano? In the whole world? Is there no other suitable shoe rack/bench thingy in the whole world? Was that the last one?! We don’t live in Italy- there is more than one steak.

Maybe when things don’t work out, we just need to stay calm and try another thing.

There are those times in between moments of great insight and transformation where you still have a lot of work to do.

And that’s where I am. I’m moving forward, and I’m keeping everything going, but there’s no great struggle. It’s just… moving.

And because there’s no big moments of victory, just a lot in between, it ends up feeling a bit flat.

This is where commitments help.

Commitments take your work and turn every action into a small victory. You may not have gotten your Big Goal, but you did the thing you said you were going to do.

You wrote 500 words. You posted something. You made 5 calls. You scheduled some sales appointments.

You turned your big dreams into actual boring everyday actions that you can check off a list, so that even though your dreams are far away, you have something you can count as a win every day.

There’s still a danger that what you commit to doing has nothing to do with getting where you want to go, but the core engine of “Doing something” needs to be running either way, and if you really want something, you will keep thinking of ways to get there faster.

One of the best things about Getting Things Done (David Allen’s book), is that you can manage just about any number of projects without worrying too much about how everything is going to get done.

You just review weekly, figure out what project you want to prioritize, and then schedule your next actions.

I’ve got it set up in Todoist, and I almost never forget to do something I decided to do.

This does not, however, ensure that the things you decide to do are things that really move you forward.

But without this foundation, you can’t keep track of what you are doing

It is remarkably effective, and I almost never forget to do things.

Doing the reps of keeping commitments is giving me a platform to do more things.

There is still some real hesitation in turning certain action items into commitments, however, because I know I will have to do them.

In this way, I’m like the guy going to the gym who only does the easy exercises, and I am not really putting more weight on the bar.

What’s an area I could put some more weight on the bar? How could I accelerate? How can I create focus?

Where am I holding back? Where am I delaying action?

I am attacking too many simultaneous projects. I’m allowing myself to get overwhelmed because I am interleaving planning and execution a lot. And then I’m not being realistic about the demands on my time that my normal work schedule creates.

But on the other hand, I find that when I get focused, I get through a ridiculous amount of tasks in a day, and things keep moving forward, despite the occasional feeling of chaos.

How do I come from a place of focus and clarity more often?

I need to get laser focused on my actual deliverables, instead of on all the things I made up that are between me and my goals.

Deliverables:

1. Create a consulting client
2. Sell a thing online
3. Get weights out of my workshop

What are the next steps?

1. Invitations or referrals for conversations
2. Send out coupons to people who liked or reposted my post
3. Tear down the fence

Can I commit to those things?

Yes. I will break them down into achievable incremental steps tomorrow and make commitments to do each one.

In Straight Line Leadership, Dusan Djukich says a way to increase your effectiveness is to just stop stopping.

As we go through this difficult time, of stomach flus, bronchitis, etc, and now the wife seems to have a mild case of pneumonia (she’s heading to urgent care this morning to find out, b/c it’s New Year’s Day), the temptation to stop is really strong.

“There’s just too much. We shouldn’t have started. We shouldn’t have added this to our plate. Things got a little different from the time we set out, so it’s really not something we should be doing right now.”

These are all “true” thoughts, in the sense that they could be true if we choose them.

But they’re also just choices we get to make right now. Do we stop or are we just delayed because things are coming up?

And though we are delayed, does that mean we can’t make any progress, or we simply have to adjust the pace so we can sustain it?

You may get slowed down, because life is what it is with a family. But – we don’t need to stop. We can stop stopping.

We arrived at the party, and within 20 minutes, our eldest, who we thought already cleared the stomach virus 2 weeks ago, suddenly became very very nauseous.

What was going to be the end of our exciting Christmas sick time turned into alternating between hanging out with her in the bathroom (amazingly, no puke – even during/after 45 minute drive home) and trying to wrangle the kids so we could leave early (while also grabbing some food ourselves because we had zero plan for dinner other than this party we had brought food to).

As I drove home, I felt happy.

I wasn’t particularly disappointed. I wasn’t sad. I hadn’t gotten what I had wanted, but that was alright. I was ready for the changing situations.

Perhaps the biggest thing I am getting out of this coaching is rediscovering the joy of showing up to whatever happens and doing what you can do with it, without having to have the outcomes go a particular way.

The things that happen are just things that happen. We choose what meaning we give to it.

[ We can’t choose what things intrinsically mean. That’s up to God. We can choose what meaning they will have to us. And we could be missing the meaning God even intended for us, because that meaning may be offered, but we still have to see it and choose it for ourselves. ]

While I have at certain points felt like the commitments I’ve been making were burdensome, I am starting to notice something else.

I am trusting myself more and more to do what I say I will do in the future.

Which means when I make a plan to do something, I can see that I will carry it out.

This is starting to regenerate some energy and enthusiasm. It feels a lot like rebuilding a muscle, of making and keeping promises to myself.

I’m reminded of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits, which was where I first found the idea of making and keeping commitments from long ago.

At some point, I started watering them down, and looking at contingencies, because I was getting burnt out for various reasons, and they felt burdensome.

What I am realizing now is that it wasn’t the commitments, but my lack of vision and creativity in pointing myself definitively into a future, and actually making it happen. It was all the second-guessing that was really burning me out.

My 6-year old son just threw up again, after 2 days clear.

Perhaps it’s the tail end? Or he got too stoked about food before his body was ready?

Other again…

So all this second-guessing and doubt keeps coming up with the coaching and the process.

I finally found a big source of it. It has to do with the self-actualization movement in the 70s and Werner Erhard. He, and his acolytes, seem to believe that there is no meaning in anything outside of us. The universe means nothing, but that means you get to make up your own meaning.

That’s dumb. But what’s interesting is that they do have some insights into how people work that seem true.

We do make up meaning. Sometimes we find it where it actually is. But other times, and more frequently, we give events and things meanings they don’t actually have.

And in that discovery lies great freedom.

If Sally telling you you’re ugly in 2nd grade doesn’t actually mean there’s something wrong with you and you need to try to be good-looking to cover it up for the rest of your life, you might be able to choose a different way to relate to that.

And that is powerful.

So on, into the coaching, I go. I feel compelled (perhaps by the Holy Spirit) to continue disentangling the truth from the lies. This all seems very valuable to me, but infected with dire errors about the nature of reality and man. If I didn’t feel like there was some real treasure here, I would have given it up quite a while ago, but I keep feeling like I need to explore this to the end.

So back to it.

So first, we had to cancel plans to host family for Christmas dinner, because 3 year old was throwing up 3 days before Christmas, and my extended family is not keen on getting sick. Which is understandable.

So I made all of our fancy Christmas meal for Christmas Eve dinner, and we ate it on china in courses (because the meat took longer to cook than anticipated).

As we were putting the kids to bed, we both came down with the stomach flu (which maybe we should have expected, but we actually thought 3 year old just had the flu we had last week, plus random vomiting).

We were almost completely incapacitated, and I actually vomited while holding the 1 year old, because I was trying to put him to bed, and had no time to put him down. That made me feel pretty bad ass, actually. Baby went to bed right away after that- I think he decided he didn’t want anymore to do with this situation-can’t blame him. And 9 year old somehow finished putting 3 and 6 year olds to bed, then put herself to bed.

Then we had a horrific night of stomach flu escapades, but we had it together, which was actually really nice, as even though we couldn’t always physically help each other, we could offer up our suffering for each other, which felt very present, since we were basically experiencing the same suffering.

The next day, Christmas morning, the 9 year old bustled around getting things for the middle kids, and told me she was keeping them upstairs so I could get the presents ready. I could not. But I managed to drag myself to my room to get the bag of stocking stuffers, and 9 year old stuffed all the stockings, and then called down her siblings, and feigned surprise over the contents as they all dug into the treats and toys.

She helped us with everything all day, and then told me that she had learned at Thanksgiving (when we were also sick, and she helped whip up a last minute Thanksgiving feast for just our family) that you can always make the best of things.

A friend offered to bring us dinner, and we enjoyed a beautiful, if weary and queasy Christmas, uplifted by God’s love expressed through those who love him.

Okay, so all this stuff I’ve been reading and working on about thoughts and choosing how you want to be in any given situation.

I still threw up about 2 liters on Christmas Eve.

As it turns out (as I mentioned in a previous post about what it means to choose your identity), reality is still real.

But as we are recovering, I am noticing some things.

About half way through today, I realized that I did not need to keep binging on TV. I haven’t watched TV in a while, and I don’t really enjoy it. Definitely some unnecessary escapism there.

What am I trying to escape anyway? Probably thoughts about how I have to do everything all by myself when the wife is sick (not true anyway, she’s pretty amazing, and if she’s actually resting, she must feel like garbage). Probably I’m just looking at this illness as an excuse to take a break, or to tell myself that I deserve a break (also not exactly true, b/c I feel pretty good overall).

Mostly, I’m still thinking thoughts. There was some reality of pain and throwing up. A lot of that was made worse from the feelings and thoughts I have about throwing up that causes insane levels of resistance so that the agony actually increases until I get to the point where I finally give in. I did a bit better this time and didn’t hold out quite so long.

But now I’m mostly better, but I’m still trying to play the “sick” card as though I personally need to keep resting. I don’t. I’m not that bad off, and I have what I need.

So –

As I was about to complete my last sentence, daughter came in to start putting things on my head, and shortly after son comes down to tell me his stomach hurts. But on the bright side, he is the last one, so we will all be healthy and non-contagious in a few more days.

So – that’s all real. But what do I want to do with the situation? How much of that situation is the part that I’m choosing? How much of my experience am I responsible for?

I finally decided it was time to get my sleep balanced, and try to be more healthy with my bedtime habits.

Toddler created phenomenal amounts of vomit at about 12:30pm, necessitating us both being up, cleaning up puke.

The solids I had to get off the blanket clogged the tub drain (why was I using the tub? I didn’t expect anything that solid.)

Just part of the game…. but hey at least I’m done with blogging for the day, super early.

Missed yesterday. Oops.

I bought The Three Laws of Performance because the synopsis of the book itself was so good.

There is so much more in it than I expected.

What’s especially interesting is how central a role language has in everything humans do (or don’t do), even the things in our subconscious.

As a Catholic, I can of course not help but think of The Word, and the fact that “the Word was made flesh”.

That’s a principle that Metanoia Catholic often brings up.

To summarize the book in a paragraph:

We do what makes sense to us based on how things occur to us. Things occur to us due to the language we use, much of which we are not aware of (unconscious). A new future can change how things occur to us, and thus our performance, after we clear out the clutter of the unsaid and unaware that is shaping how things occur to us.

The amazing thing about that is that most of us will read it, and say “That’s interesting” and then go back to business as usual.

I am committed to being someone who stays aware of how I am creating the life I live and my power to change it.

I thought I had pretty high integrity because I never committed to things I wasn’t 100% sure I could do.

All of my commitments came with little disclaimers, which were basically to say “I can’t predict the future”.

That’s fine, except it also means my commitments don’t count for much. I am not telling anyone (much less myself) that I can be counted on to do things.

And of course, this means that when I make commitments to myself, I don’t necessarily believe it.

So I basically almost never made real commitments.

That meant that people could never make real plans around my output. Always a “wait and see”. “Maybe he’ll deliver? He said he had a good chance of it, but he wouldn’t commit to a time”.

Not amazing.

My commitment is to start making commitments without maybes attached to them. Yes should mean yes, and no should mean no.

You can still honor your word (i.e. put it out there and hold it up) even if you can’t keep it. But you have to do something about not keeping it. You have to fix that.

I need to make stronger commitments to myself. Fierce commitments.

I spent a lot of today grasping for rest. Trying to get the kids distracted all at the same time so I could try to take a nap. And another nap, because one little naplet wasn’t enough. Because I’m beyond tired.

And it made me kind of grumpy and yelly. Because the kids didn’t really cooperate with my designs, and it made me mad. Because I feel like it’s up to me to make sure that I get the rest I need to be able to take care of my family. Because I’m desperate for control over a situation that feels out of control. Because I’m afraid.

It’s always fear that makes my inner control freak come out. This time I’m afraid that I won’t be able to do all the things that I need to do, and care for all the people I need to care for (including myself). That God won’t give me what I need to fulfill my vocation, so I’d better go get it myself.

God will give me sleep if I need sleep. He will give me health if I need health. He will provide everything I need to do the work he has given me, and to care for all he has asked me to steward.

And the corollary: God will give me bronchitis if I need bronchitis. Thank you God for this bronchitis. Thank you for all the gifts I resist. You have a plan, Lord, and your plan is better than my plan.

If I’m honest about how I spend my time, I would actually realize that I could have done maybe 2-4x more in a given day than I actually do.

The problem is not time. It is focus. It is avoidance.

How much time is spend chasing dopamine, avoiding uncomfortable feelings?

Today, a lot.

What am I getting out of “being distracted”?

I’m getting to avoid the situations I find uncomfortable.

What is it costing me?

It is costing me energy, a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of possibility. It is a vote away from the identity I say I want.

It is living out of integrity with my word of who I say I will become.

The solution is simple. Come from a different place. Create focus. Create commitment. Decide to leave this disempowering way of being.

Sometimes that is hard. Your inner self fights hard to protect your ego. There’s definitely some stuff going on down there.

But I don’t actually have to sort it all out to start doing things differently.

Shockingly, my son told me, when I asked him why he didn’t hear what his mother told him to do, “I don’t like to listen. I like doing what I’m doing”

If only we were that transparent with our motivations, perhaps we’d get somewhere.

I’m working on creating a social media presence. It’s tedious and I kind of hate it, and maybe it’s because there’s a real yuck factor to the whole thing. Something about it feels gross. And I wonder if maybe the thing that feels gross is the thing that always feels gross when I want to sell something or in some way promote myself.

“If you were really talented, you wouldn’t even need to. You only have to do marketing because you’re not really that good. You shouldn’t be tricking people into buying whatever you’re selling, it’s not right.”

This is a bunch of crazy up there that just came out of my head. And it’s also quite related to the “you already should be good” lie. As in, you’re in a gap between good and just starting out, and you see that you’re not good, and you don’t want to be there.

I loved that section in Beyond High Performance because it was a great reminder of this truth I have heard before, and come to before. You have to stop thinking you’re already supposed to be good if you want to get better. You have to stop thinking you’re supposed to look good if you want to actually practice from where you are right now.

Cutting through your own nonsense is the hardest part of the game, and it’s where most of us get stopped in our tracks.

We complain over here a lot. About how our house is a mess, and our yard is a mess.

To be fair, our kids are harbingers of chaos. They seem to break everything, and they don’t respect the rules.

Who’s raising those kids, anyway?

….

Let’s not point fingers here…

The point is, all the things we complain about, we have something to do with.

We aren’t effectively training the kids. We aren’t committed to setting the boundaries. They eventually will give up and respect the boundaries if we do it, but in some cases, we don’t.

We want our house and yard to be clean. But we don’t create standards for ourselves that make that happen. Or for our kids for what they need to contribute.

We’re not committed. We’re not doing it.

But we are certainly not committed to making those things happen consistently.

And so we have bursts of productivity followed by long periods of things falling apart again.

Then, when we’re irritated enough, we do it again.

It’s quite disheartening.

But at least… we can be honest with ourselves now, and recognize that we are choosing for our life to be this way. It is not being inflicted on us. We are not the victims here. We are agents of change pointing our change-agent powers in other directions.

Or maybe we’re agents of change who are scattering our focus in too many directions to make real progress on anything?

Either way, it’s up to us if we want it to be different. Our life is the way we want it to be.

I still feel super sick. I have lingering bronchitis, and it seems to be getting worse instead of better. Last night 9 year old was sick, so she was sleeping in the living room, which meant that I couldn’t sleep in the living room, so I woke up the baby with my incessant coughing, and baby did not want to go back to sleep.

What did I accomplish today? I got to Mass, and semi-successfully wrangled 3 year old (who really really wanted to go with me, and who, when I assented, I imagined peacefully sitting in my lap like a little heater for poor bronchitis riddled me, buy who actually ran around dancing to “King of Glory” like a little crazy person, etc).

I picked up a Walmart order with some stuff we really needed for today, and then went to Home Depot and procured our Christmas tree while 3 year old ran around like a crazy person again.

I did a few chores, made dinner for my family, read the first few chapters of a book that husband asked me to read.

I also spent much of the day lying in bed or couch, feeling drained of energy.

What is the point of this? The point is, I’m trying to think of something to write because I’m trying to write every day. But beyond that, I guess the point is, even on a day where I am sleep deprived and health deprived, I did manage to get a few important things done. Although I sort of wonder if that’s a good thing.

Do we measure the value of our days by how many tasks we accomplished? How should we measure the value of our days?

I got like 4 hours of sleep last night and it was awesome. Because I’ve been getting 1-2 hours of sleep for the past couple of nights, because I can’t stop coughing, because I have the bronchitisiest bronchitis, that’s a lot of becauses, anyway, my point is, I feel a little better. But I have to focus my energies on making Christmas for my kids, so for the next 9 ish days, I think kicking butt at business and whatnot will have to percolate in the back of my mind. And it will. I’m a percolatey kind of person. Happy Advent! Next year I’m doing my Christmas shopping in the summer.