Category: life lessons

21 Months Later – A Life Lesson

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The daily hardship of living through the pandemic has taken its toll on everyone. It must be true that everyone has been challenged not just me.

21 months later I’ve learned a life lesson. Courtesy of having had no energy in the last year.

When the day has been too long and it’s only 7:00 a.m. that is when my Anthropologie dress comes on. Paired with the amber sunburst necklace and knobby amber ring.

The word sediment popped into my head to describe the slow thoughts. Feeling down in the dumps when there’s a colorful snowdrift of clothes piled on the bed.

Let’s face it: when you have no energy things fall by the wayside. Storing clothes away at night. Cleaning your apartment. Cooking dinner for yourself.

This week I realized that my energy was returning. Grateful I was to have a modest wellspring of stamina. No longer fatigued by 6:00 every evening.

The life lesson I learned was to conserve my energy for doing the things that I want to focus on doing in my life.

There’s no place for mindless soul-numbing and treadmill-busywork in my life.

How I regained my energy was telling:

I started planning for the day I want to retire from my job.

Presto: I committed to publishing a book I want to bring out in the spring.

Writing reviews of books on Amazon was also exciting. Serving as the web mistress for the website of an organization energized me too.

The difference is to seek professional help when you think your life has gone out of bounds and is going too far in an unhealthy direction.

Cutting out the non-integral activities from my weekly calendar was the ultimate energy liberator.

It comes down to this:

Understanding and accepting that on some days you just won’t have it in you to do anything at all.

On those days I say: Figure out what your one “job” is for that day.

No one can be expected to keep up living in “whirling activity mode.” When your head is spinning and you’re so busy that you forget to breathe.

This is where conserving your energy comes into play. Knowing that you’re not supposed to run around frantic and exhaust yourself in so doing.

Coming up: a blog entry on the Italian ethic of Dolce Far Niente: the Sweetness of Doing Nothing.

Taking a Detour

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My life changed forever in one night in 1987 when I was 22.

I had to take a detour that lasted for 13 years. You got that right–13 years.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic I want to talk about taking a detour.

Let me tell you a detour is not a dead-end. It’s a pit stop along the way to a different path.

Maybe you’re not supposed to get what you want quickly and painlessly.

That is the goal as I see it–to embrace the struggle for what it is– a learning of something you need to know in order to get what you want.

I care a lot that in this pandemic everything seems to have been put on hold. A sunny day can be harder to envision.

I would say my life didn’t get better until I turned 35 and started my library job and moved to Brooklyn.

Sometimes where you start out isn’t where you should remain.

That is the ultimate purpose of a detour: to cement in your mind the one true path you must go down to be happy and fulfilled.

You don’t often figure out until you experience firsthand a setback the truth about who you are and where you should be going in life.

Again–I think of these things during the pandemic we’re living through. Of how it can seem like this is the end of everything–the end of your hopes and dreams for whatever you had hoped to achieve.

I say: use this time to engage in active reflection.  Get out a notebook and sketch out what your goals will be when the pandemic is over.

Shore up your good feelings while you shelter in place.

Remember that after things get better there’s so much life for all of us to live.

Having Hope for Making Changes

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I want to use my own experience as a beacon to guide readers in making positive changes.

My own life could empower you that there’s hope.

Even when it seems like there’s an obstacle: you’re too old, too out of shape, too ill, whatever “too” that you think is holding you back.

Exhibit Chris: I didn’t start lifting weights until I turned 46 in 2011. For about five or six months before my birthday I rarely did any exercise.

From the week before Christmas until this week in January 2020–for about one month I hadn’t done a walk/run on the treadmill. And I lifted weights only sporadically until this week too.

The point of this story is that you need to take the long view.

A temporary setback today has no impact on your success in the end.

Exhibit A Guy I Know: He hadn’t held a job in a number of years. He turned 55 and said: “This is it. No more inactivity. I’m going to get a job.”

Change is possible at any time along the road in your recovery or your life. I went to graduate school with a woman who was 70.

Danica Patrick in her book tells readers to simply do the next healthy thing. After you do this thing, do the next health thing after that. And so on.

This is how sustaining following through on your goal happens: you set sub-goals along the way.

I liken this to compartmentalizing your efforts. When you do this you can be effective for the long-term.

Just to tell readers that you’re not alone. You’re not unusual.

Everyone falls down along the way to getting where we want to be. Getting back up–being resilient–is key.

The Changeology book details strategies to employ when you’ve had a setback.

I’ll end here with my last words of encouragement:

Start where you are. Today is how it is and tomorrow can be different.

I hope that my own life experience can inspire you that change is possible.

Showing Up As Yourself

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In my life when I let the illness define me I thought that doing what “normal” people do would be the cure.

The world tells you what’s acceptable. You think you’re supposed to do these things.

Only you cannot repress your soul and expect to be well. Ill health is the result of being cut off from your true self.

The ultimate goal as I see it in recovery is to become who you are.

Show up as this person wherever you go.

Self-doubt and confidence go hand-in-hand. As I wrote in You Are Not Your Diagnosis:

My employment history shows that one of three things is possible:

  • You’re just starting out and haven’t yet figured out the ideal workplace.
  • You loved your job or career when you started it and today it no longer thrills you.
  • You thought that this particular job or career was the one you wanted. It doesn’t work out and you’re forced to change.

Knowing yourself and what you are suited to do and not do is the key to success.

If you have to act false to yourself on a job you’re rolling a wheel up a hill over and over like Sisyphus in the Greek myth.

I say: get a second job to supplant your primary income rather than continuing to show up as an imposter to a job you’re not happy doing.

If you’re not happy doing your job you won’t be motivated to excel so how can you be effective at it?

This is the definition of “spinning your wheels.”

In a coming blog entry I offer a remedy for dissatisfaction.

Making Changes for the Better

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Leo Babauta on his Zen Habits website invokes readers to see:

“The uncertainty and discomfort are a necessary component for us to do anything meaningful.”

Making changes–even when they’re for the better–isn’t always easy. It can be downright hard to try doing something new that has the potential to transform your life and elevate your confidence.

I say: Just Do It. The more you take action the easier it will get to keep taking action.

“A body in motion stays in motion” is the old cliche.

There’s a great lyric in a Vampire Weekend song that is so generic I dare repeat it here because it’s not the exact lyric.

The idea is that a person doesn’t want to live the way they’re living yet they don’t want to die either.

It can be scary to change in any kind of way. Yet I urge you to consider that there’s a way out of the pain by going through it and figuring out what the pain has to teach you.

You can use your pain as the catalyst to figure out your life’s purpose.

My contention is that I was able to heal in part because I placed Service Above Self.

After you have a setback and you’re in recovery from whatever happened you have the choice: to roll over and passively accept a life of pain. Or to do what it takes to heal and be well.

For some of us it will take longer to get to where we want to be. Recovery is not a race nor is it a competition.

Yet the point is you can change for the better at any point along the road of recovery.

To change the world you first have to change yourself–as Michael Jackson so beautifully sang in his song “Man in the Mirror.”

In a coming blog entry I’m going to talk about something Leo Babauta wrote in one of his books years ago.

His theory of focusing on your 5 Commitments I want to apply to recovery.

As hard as it can be living in recovery there’s always hope that you can change your life for the better.

I maintain that focusing on your 5 Commitments in life can be a way to heal and be well.

Everyone Hurts

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We shouldn’t forget that ordinary nameless individuals–people walking on the street or waiting in line at the supermarket– are facing pain and living in agony just like Kate Spade was.

Unlike NAMI New York State I’m not going to criticize people who are shocked and in mourning because a famous person committed suicide.

Strip away Kate Spade’s status, take her name off pocketbooks, and she’s a person who despaired of finding relief just like a lot of us despair.

The truth is that external success doesn’t always inoculate a person from hardship or from being in pain or thinking they’re suffering alone in what they go through.

Too many people obtain external markers of success–the house, the car, whatever–and yet still feel empty inside.

I wrote about this in one of the blogs when I quoted Joanna Gaines of Fixer Upper TV show fame: if you’re not happy now wherever you are in life today how can you be confident you’ll be happy in the future as long as a certain condition is met?

Happiness shouldn’t be linked to “having all your ducks in a row” or be predicated on achieving some kind of goal.

Waiting for the perfect condition in life to happen before you’ll be happy–or before thinking you’ve been a success–is a mistake.

The takeaway from Kate Spade’s death is that even great success isn’t enough to give a person joy.

For mental health peers it should come as a relief the idea that we can be happy even if our lives are ordinary and unremarkable.

We don’t have to win a Nobel Prize or otherwise become a “household name” like Kate Spade to be happy and feel worthy.

What I want to tell readers:

You are a success regardless of the number on the scale, the figure in your bank account, your status in society or anything else traditionally used to measure a person.

You are a success because you are your Self.

The Shortest Guide to Mindfulness You’ll Ever Need

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Years ago my shrink told me I should practice mindfulness.

No kidding–it’s not a trite concept and it’s not pop-psychology babble.

It works–mindfulness is a valid healing practice. How do I know this?

Having had a severe cold for one week was no joy. As I started to be on the mend I was able to do things. This inspired me to have a weekly mindfulness practice and to make mindfulness a daily habit too.

You don’t have to read a 300-page book on this topic.

Just read this one sentence: Mindfulness at its heart is simply paying attention to what you’re doing and not doing things on autopilot.

That’s all it is.

Thinking about mindfulness can conjure up meditation or another behavior that seems hard to implement successfully.

The truth is–there is no right or wrong way to do or to practice anything–just the way that works for you.

In terms of mindfulness, it can help to focus on the 5 W’s: the who, what, where, when, and why of what’s happening in your life at this particular moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh a famous monk author uses the classic example of washing dishes with awareness of what you’re doing.

Feel the plate and sponge in your hand. See and listen to the water.

Really experience what you’re doing instead of doing it mindlessly.

To this end I’ve started a mindfulness practice.

I was motivated to do this by the simple act of washing my makeup brushes when I had gotten over the severe cold.

Simply washing makeup brushes with care and attention can spark joy.

The truth is, if what you’re doing doesn’t spark joy and you don’t have to do it–I say stop doing it.

Stop doing busywork and start doing the things that are important to you and align with your values.

I’ve come to see the beauty and benefit of practicing mindfulness.

For women, I recommend hand washing bras and washing makeup brushes 1x/per week.

When I decided to practice  mindfulness it was like I was hit on the head with a piano falling from the roof of a building in a TV cartoon.

It occurred to me that mindfulness begets mendfulness. That to mind what we do can be the first step to mend what’s not working.

I for one don’t want to live my life on autopilot anymore.

Inspiration for Risking Change

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Yes: I think that I succeeded because I have a diagnosis of SZ not in spite of it.

You have two options in how you respond to a diagnosis that could change your life plans:

Give up and buy what other people are selling: that there’s not much you can do.

Or like I did you can become more determined to defy everyone’s expectations.

That’s the difference: the diagnosis motivated me to try my best to succeed.

Before the diagnosis I always wanted to live an artist’s life in the city. After the diagnosis I quickly realized that I could do this because it was under my control whether I at least tried to do this.

As long as I gave my goals my best shot, it wouldn’t matter if I failed. The same goes for you. The only real failure is the failure to try.

As a kid, as a younger person, I lived on Staten Island–the borough where the cop killed Eric Garner in a choke-hold. It wasn’t the place I wanted to continue to live.

It was a world of white conformity in every way–devoid of color; devoid of culture.  I wanted to escape ever since I was in college.

After I was diagnosed I realized that if I acquiesced to the life plan I was being sold [collecting SSI forever and forced to live in public housing] I wouldn’t ever get out.

Take this tip from me as to what I did next:

I had the courage to risk change because I believed that tomorrow could be better.

Know this as I did then:

Whatever you want to do in life is under your control because it’s up to you to take action to try to get there. The choices you make today will help you get to where you want to be tomorrow.

Start your engines. The road is wide open.

Confidence: Getting It and Using It

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The InStyle December issue features an interview with Cate Blanchett the Oscar-Award winning actress in its I Am That Girl column:

“How do you define confidence?

I think confidence is the acknowledgment of doubt. Fear is a natural state. You can’t truly achieve a creative life without it.” – Amy Synnott

It’s true that fear is part of being creative like Blanchett says. You can only achieve great things if you risk becoming uncomfortable when you do new things.

Failure is the cost of taking risks. Not everything you try to do will work out. I bombed out big time in the gray flannel insurance field.

Fear should be welcomed–not paranoia–the kind of fear where you’re not certain you’ll succeed but you have to try because the goal is too important to you to not risk trying.

All of us should be terrified to do something that has the potential to give us a better life.

Giving ourselves a challenge is the ultimate confidence-booster.

There’s no safety in playing it safe. There’s no triumph in conformity if you ask me. Sometimes you have to go out on a limb to see how far you can go.

Shakespeare wrote: “Cowards die many a time before their death. The valiant only taste of death but once.”

That’s not how I want to live: as a spectator in my own life.

Cate Blanchett is right: acknowledging doubt is the first step in taking a risk.

The more action you take, the easier it is to keep taking action. Taking action can cure fear.

I’ll end here with this: self-confidence is a natural high.

There’s no shame in acting confident and going after what you want in life.

Making Changes at Mid Life

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The takeaway–the life lesson– is that our lives aren’t over until God says they’re over.

Finding our right work–vocation–livelihood is like trying all the keys on a chain to see which one unlocks the door to true happiness.

Readers: I failed big time at a lot of things. I spent five years in the gray flannel insurance field just starting out–that’s my number-one infamous claim to having failed.

Getting to mid life gives us the chance to reexamine our path. It’s not ever too late to take action in the direction of our dreams–or in the direction of a new passion that arrives later in life.

I went to graduate school with a woman in her sixties–yes, she was going to school at 65!

I say: risk change–believe in tomorrow. I will talk soon about how one daring act when I was 46 totally turned my recover around for the better.

It’s not ever too late to make a positive change and see results.

Fifty and beyond is prime time.

I’ll tell readers now and always: set your sights higher. As best you can, refrain from believing anyone who tells you there’s no hope that your illness can get better.

Our lives can change for the better at any point along the way.

In the next blog entry I’ll tell you how I’m confident beyond a doubt that this is possible. I’ll talk about how other people have made this happen.