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Archive for May, 2009
This is a sort of follow up to a previous post.
I have been pushing past my point of comfort for a long time now. It doesn’t come easy to me but somehow I need to keep doing it.
Two parts live in me:
The Unstoppable Go-Getter and The Rocking Chair Woman.
The Unstoppable Go-Getter is the one who dreams the dreams and carries them out. She has the compelling visions of what and where I could be…who I could become. And she knows how to get things done too, big time. When she is in charge my intuition is strong (you may call it your gut feelingsâ; it’s the same thing). I try to follow the guidance I’m getting from inside myself.
The Rocking Chair Woman just wants peace and quiet. She wants to retreat from the world into a comfortable life of couch potato-ing and nature walks.
Both are, of course, valid parts of me, and of all of us. It’s the old balance idea again. My Go-Getter still predominates, and I imagine she will for a long time. As a friend who is an intuitive said to me about three years ago, ‘You’re too young to sit in the rocking chair yet!â€Â So I guess she’s right.
We’re at different stages at different times of our lives. We may go back and forth through being out in the world and being inward. They’re not just age-related. Although my Go-Getter predominates now, she didn’t during perimenopause, during that time of extraordinary changes within. They were in my body, my mind, and I think even more importantly, they were taking place on a spiritual level.
I know this has been said before, but it’s come to me again recently, strongly: I don’t think we listen to our intuition enough. We do a lot of things that aren’t in our best interests, that aren’t for our higher good, if you will.
Often we work too much and do way too much for too many people. Or sometimes we do things because we feel or think they’re best for our businesses or our health.
I invite you to just step back next time you consider doing something – anything small or large. Take a deep breath and ask yourself if this is right for you in this moment of time.
Then follow your intuition.
I turned 60 last Monday. Initially I didn’t want to celebrate, I wanted to ignore it, pretend it wasn’t happening. But my friend convinced me that if I didn’t want a big party I should at least have a dinner party, at her house. I agreed, with reservations.
As soon as I made that decision, everything began to change. I realized that ignoring the inevitable or moaning over it was counter-productive. Over the past 2 weeks I’ve not only come to terms with turning 60, I’m not beginning to feel that it is the beginning of another wonderful phase in my life that will bring untold & unexpected richness into my life.
Amy Sherman addresses this very topic in her excellent articlecalled Distress Free Aging in the recent NABBW newsletter. She makes many very good points that are right on the mark, the idea of adjustment to aging being the one that had the most impact on me.
Our age is just a number, that’s what another friend said to me. She tells people how old she is, but never has the “I feel old” conversation about her age. That helped me quite a bit. Of course I knew it was negative to talk (to myself or others) about feeling old…BUT I NEEDED A REMINDER, just as we do about so much of our negative thinking and limiting conversations!
There are millions of us ‘baby boomer’ age women around now, and many seem to be really moving forward in our lives, excited and joyful about new ventures. Kudos to all of us!!
Once in a long while I find something I like so much that I reprint it in it’s entirety. The following newsletter sent to me by Martha Beck is one of those. It’s about taking charge of our life…being the leader:
I’m sitting on a horse who is going nowhere. Supposedly I’m learning to ride but actually I’m learing to tolerate frustration. The horse, damn her, has intentions of her own. These include leaning up against things and eating. They do not include loping with me on her back.
Koelle, my fellow coach and riding instructor, shouts a question: ‘What is your plan?” she asks me. “Where do you want her to go?”
“Wherever,” I say.
“That’s not good enough,” Koelle says. “She needs a leader.”
I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and picture a path that winds around some of the obstacles in the riding arena. When I open my eyes and touch the horse with my heel, she sets off, as brisk and willing as she had been recalcitrant.
This is a metaphor for every time I’ve come to a stalemate in my own life. While waiting for external circumstances to make my decision for me, I’ve found myself utterly frustrated, sometimes near despair. The solution for this is so simple; I need to close my eyes, visualize a clear path, and then move forward.
This simple process is nine-tenths of the so-called Law of Attraction. The focused intention of getting somewhere has enormous power to help us get there. Right now close you eyes, breathe, and picture exactly what you would like to happen during the rest of this day.
Now imagine your life in five years. What exactly would you like to be doing? The point of this exercise is not to nail down the future-we cant do that-but to take up the position as the leader of our own lives. Leaders are sometimes wrong. If they’re worth a plug nickel, they change their minds when new information becomes available to them. But by creating plans and acting on them they create an energy zone of clarity and power. That alone can change your life. That alone will get the horse moving.
I still can’t ride worth a darn. But now when I ride I know that failure to move forward is not her fault, it’s mine. And I know that my life, like my obliging mare, cannot take me to wonderful places unless I hold the energy of leadership the whole time I’m on her. Your life is a horse. Lead it.
