Did I Do That ????

One of my favorite TV shows when I was growing up was "Family Matters" with the Winslow family and Steve Urkel. I remember an episode where Carl promises Steve to take him on a hot air balloon ride "tomorrow." The next day Steve keeps bothering Carl about the promised ride but Steve answers by saying "I told you I would take you tomorrow. Today is today, not tomorrow. I'll take you tomorrow." His implication of course, is that it is never tomorrow because it's always today.

I've noticed that I sometimes do the same thing to myself. I'll have specific goals and know what I need to do to accomplish those goals but when I get into a more challenging situation I'll say to myself, oh I'll just do it next time. The problem with this statement when using it as as a way to procrastinate or take the easy route is that "next time" never comes. We are always in this time.

Using the phrase "next time" in this context is different than using an encouraging voice (i.e. ok...I made a mistake but next time I can choose to do something different). When I use "next time" in the context above, I'm using it to justify the behavior inconsistent with my goals. If I'm tempted to restrict or overeat, for instance, a choice I have made in the past is to tell myself, "well, I'll just listen to my hunger-fullness next time" and then proceed to use and abuse food. I use the phrase "next time" in making my decision instead of using it to deal with what has happened. As Urkel found out though, it's always now and never next time. When I hear myself saying oh screw it, I'll just "do better next time," I try to remember that it's never next time, I only have this time and I need to act consistently with my goals in order to accomplish them. I try to remind myself that lots of things are difficult and scary to do but sometimes those are the things that I have to do...this time...because this time is last time's next time.

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." -Eleanor Roosevelt

"Music is what feelings sound like."

I've always had lots of emotional connections or feelings when listening to or playing music. We can express things with words but music somehow adds another dimension of expression that can't be conveyed with words alone. E. Y. Harburg puts it well. "Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought."

One of my favorite bands is Linkin Park. Most of their more popular songs from 5-8 years ago sound awesome but are honestly pretty depressing (i.e. "Nobody's Listening," "Numb," "From the Inside," etc.). I'm used to these older songs so when I recently heard one of their newer songs I couldn't help but think how cool it is to see how the message that the band portrays has changed. Linkin Park's earlier songs are painfully beautiful and express the sorrow, frustration, and pain that many of us feel. But, as I listen to Iridescent (Sept. 2010) I see an awesome transformation and am reminded of the reality that we do not have to be stuck forever in feelings of hopelessness. As we live, we learn and we grow and we begin to see things that we couldn't see before. The continued evolution of Linkin Park's music is like our dramatic experience of life. If you haven't heard any of their older music, I suggest listening to "Somewhere I Belong" or "Nobody's Listening" and then listen to "Iridescent"

Because it's Thursday!

Yesterday I found out that a Center for Change Alumni passed away last week due to complications caused by an eating disorder. I didn't know Abby but we were connected by our very powerful and emotional experiences and I'm deeply saddened by her passing. I've experienced this tragic death several times over the years and it tears me up every time. A few weeks ago I heard of the death of a girl that I crossed paths with at the center and, as every time I hear news like that, I was shocked and filled with a pain of frustrated understanding. I found a facebook page dedicated to her memory and read many wonderful things about her written by friends and family. As I read I began to think "I wonder if things could have been different if we would have told her these things before she died?" Why do we wait until it's to late to tell someone how great they are and how much we think of them and love them? We always say the kind and honest feelings from our hearts for those that have passed but wouldn't it make so much more sense to share these things while they are still with us? If our objective is to truly express to that person our love and gratefulness for them being who they are, then I think we should tell them! None of us are going to make it to our funerals to hear what everyone thought of us. For some reason I feel like it has been labeled inappropriate to just tell someone about something that you think is wonderful about them or how much they mean to you. I know I've been afraid to express things like this because I didn't want the person to think I was a creeper or fishing for complements for myself. I've feared that maybe they don't think that I should feel that way so I shouldn't tell them because then they would think I was weird. This is pretty ridiculous when I think about it from the other perspective. It always makes me feel good when someone gives me a compliment and it always feels great to hear how much I mean to someone.

Sometimes I won't say anything because there's no specific occasion or reason to. Why is a nice thing said so strange without having a specific reason? Our society is very linear...if you don't have an occasion to do something, you don't do it. We're afraid that we won't have an explanation as to why we have said something from our heart...but why do we need a "reason"? In the words of A. A. Milne, "Piglet thought that they ought to have a Reason for going to see everybody, like Looking for Small or Organizing an Expedition, if Pooh could think of something. Pooh could. 'We'll go because it's Thursday,' he said, 'and we'll go to wish everybody a Very Happy Thursday. Come on, Piglet.'"  Let's not wait for a Reason to tell others how wonderful they are!

Positive Pooh

So I work on the North Slope of Alaska (a.k.a. the Slope, Prudhoe Bay, Dead Horse, Up North, ...the moon...) on a shift schedule. I work for three weeks and then I get three weeks off to spend as I please. Yep, it's a pretty sick gig but the slope (and Alaska in general) can be kind of a tough place to live. On the slope I live in a "camp" with about 20 individual bedrooms, a couple of  offices, a conference type room, kitchen (no "hot" food), and a 10' by 8' room with a treadmill. Now I do spend time in larger camps and working in operations cabs in the field but it's not exactly a "soothing" or "homey" environment.

As my time at home winded down a few weeks ago I started feeling a bit apprehensive and bummed. I had finally been realizing the positive influence of soothing activities and a positive attitude. I don't think these ever worked for me in the past because, well, I never really tried them before. Sure I thought positively sometimes and did things that I enjoyed but I saw absolutely no point in seeing something in any other light than "the one it was." I screwed up a lot and I sucked for that. I was a stressed and depressed person, and that sucked too. Being stressed and depressed made me screw up more which, was also, a sucky predicament. I figured that being chronically stressed was something that I just had to live with and somehow work to stop the side effects.

 I had been thinking about the effects of Serotonin and Dopamine on hunger fullness and eating and wrote down the following: "Why do dopamine and serotonin deficiencies lead to craving certain foods and loss of impulse control? What can I do about it!? For now I have to work where there will be very little to no sunlight or outside time. How do I get it otherwise? How do I deal with chronic stress!? Isn't it largely based on environment and reactions?" I learned that things like stress, depression, and stressful work can affect Serotonin and Dopamine levels which can then affect mood, impulse control, and hunger and fullness perception. Unfortunately, I felt almost insulted by this lesson. "I have to work, there's no sunlight where I live for half the year, I am expected to perform exceptionally, I live in a high strung society ..." I felt that I had been handed a sentence of failure and thought and thought about how I could work around the effects of the biology and chemistry of my brain.
 
The problem with trying to abate the negative effects of stress by attacking just the effects is that, well, it doesn't work. You can't change the effect without changing the cause. I realized that instead of asking myself what I couldn't do about a situation, I needed to ask myself what I could do. I looked at things that caused stress, depression, and swings in serotonin and dopamine and looked for ways to change those experiences. The lack of sunlight in Alaska during the winter seems to be especially hard on my mood, energy level, and sleep regulation. Well, I couldn't make the sun rise but I could go get a light therapy lamp (Happy Lamp). I could choose to leave my bedroom on the slope like it was...plain, uncomfortable, and "worky" feeling, or I could bring up my own sheets and quilt and put some pictures on the wall. No open flames in camp...well I'll just have to use a candle warmer to create my own peaceful getaway.

It's been amazing to see how much of a difference just these few things have made not only at work but also at home. There's not much that feels better than being at peace and it's cool how everything just kind of falls into place after that. It is so much easier dealing with our problems when we first choose to deal with what is inflaming them. My key is to pause, look at the situation objectively, and see if there is something that I can try.

In Benjamin Hoff's book The Tao of Pooh, Hoff uses the "Expedition to the North Pole" when Roo fell into the stream to describe some familiar personalities. "Who was going to rescue Roo? Panicky Piglet was jumping up and down and making noises. Ineffective Owl was instructing Roo to keep his head above water. Concerned Kanga was asking if he was all right. Captain Rabbit was calling out commands...But Positive Pooh was looking at the situation, seeing what he could do about it, and trying something."

What I learned in Kindergarten

When I'm not working I volunteer at a local elementary school in the mornings. I have a group of 4th graders that I read with and I help a class of Kindergartners with numbers, letters, blowing noses, etc. A few weeks ago I stayed with the little ones to help out during lunch. The kids that didn't bring a sack lunch walked down the hall, got a tray, picked out the hot lunch items they wanted, and then carried their trays and food back to the classroom to eat. It was funny to see the tiny little tikes coming back down the hall towards the classroom with their big trays loaded up with all manor of random things. It was also interesting watching them eat. There didn't seem to be any emotional or moral associations with their food or their eating experience. If a burrito, fruit, jello, fruit pie, and chocolate milk all sounded delicious to them, then that is what they got. They didn't seem to feel good or bad about certain foods or feel like they were obligated to eat any amount of them. Some kids ate all of their burrito and some just had a little bit of everything. Once their tummies were full, their attention went to a much more important topic: recess!

I was thinking of these kiddos and the way that they ate after a bit of a discouraging experience I had with food. I sat down and pulled out my paper sack for lunch. I had a sizable amount of food in that bag but I only got some of it out and prepared it to eat...half of a sandwich, sugar free hot chocolate instead of chocolate milk, etc. I ate what I had prepared, then ate more, and ended up more full than I would have liked to be. When I was thinking back on that experience, trying to see what may have lead to me eating more than I would have liked, the image of those tiny Kindergartners walking down the hall with their trays all loaded up with everything they wanted popped into my head. I realized that my initial restriction lead to my over eating. Why did I restrict the amounts and types of food that I prepared for myself? Because I didn't want to overeat!! I had some sort of distorted feeling of guilt  when considering getting all of my food out and got scared considering eating several different items at once. I "knew" I didn't "need" that many calories and I felt I would get some feeling of satisfaction by finishing all of my food. In general, I didn't have the attitude of a Kindergartner.

Instead of getting everything that I wanted out and eating it as I desired, I limited myself. When I finished my half sandwich I wanted just a little bit more...another bite or two of that sandwich would have made me feel satisfied.But, since I didn't have anymore sandwich prepared, I ate more and more of other things unsuccessfully trying to achieve that satisfaction. So, by restricting to ovoid over eating, judgment, and wasting,  I ended up over eating. I've realized that I need to get back to the mind set of a child with food. Food doesn't have morals, nobody knows what my body wants right now better than me, and I do not have to eat any specific amount of the food that I want. They may not be able to read, but Kindergartners have got one thing down...they are expert intuitive eaters!

The Light Bulb

"It took Thomas Edison over 1,000 experiments to successfully invent the light bulb. Were the 999 initial experiments failures? Of course not! Each experiment showed Edison what didn't work, and that information was crucial in order to narrow down the possibilities of what did work." -V. Hansen, S. Goodman

I've read lots of quotes like this one before. "Mistakes are learning experiences, we all make mistakes, learn from your mistakes, bla bla bla....but I just don't want to make any mistakes!  I don't have time to start all over! I shouldn't make excuses to be lazy!" I've often felt I had to attain some sort of perfection and then I would be able to live my life...to relax, to be loved, to love myself, to soothe myself, to find passions, to enjoy things. Something is different about this Edison quote though. One specific word jumps out at me. From each failure to make a light bulb Edison discovered crucial information toward its development. Would it have been awesome if Edison got it right the first time? Yes. Would that have been possible? Nope...he didn't have all the crucial information! Ya, he could have gotten lucky, but if so, he wouldn't have had a clue how the contraption worked!

Life is a big 'ol contraption of all sorts of experiences, choices, and attitudes. Some of them work and some of them don't. Some of them make us feel good and some of them make us feel like scum. Some of them carry us into positive new passions and some of them keep us stuck in the same old thing we constantly wish to be free from. After making a mistake I would beat myself up and become extremely discouraged. "Failed AGAIN! Back to square one!" My thought was that if I was hard enough on myself I would do things right but if I was "soft" on myself I would never make any progress because then I would just be making a bunch of pathetic excuses along with all of my mistakes.

Now picture Edison...he has just made another mistake and the light bulb didn't work AGAIN! Does he rip up all his notes, crush the prototype, and call himself an idiot before starting over? No, of course not. If he did that he would never develop the light bulb. He would eventually begin making the same mistakes, over and over because he didn't spend the time to look at what didn't work and why.

In life we can trash everything we've just done, try to start all over, and hope "it" doesn't happen again or we can stop...look at what happened, look at what choices we made, look at the circumstances and environment that led up to those choices, and think about something that may work better. If we go through the situation in our mind we can slow it all down, look at the details, and think of things that we might want to change or different choices we could make. I am learning that visualizing discouraging situations and then altering them in my mind's eye not only helps me in similar situations, but also teaches me to slow down in the moment, to realize that it's ok to stop and take a breath and to think about what I want this to look like. I'm also learning that each time I make a mistake I can grasp some piece of "crucial" information about life and myself and then apply it in future experiences. I do not like making mistakes, but, thinking from this perspective, each time I do make a mistake there is part of me that is actually excited because I realize that I have just learned something new about myself or a new way to handle a situation. Trying out that new way of handling the situation in the previously failed circumstance through visualization gives me encouragement because I "see" that I am not doomed to failure. I can see what obviously did not work and what may work better. Then, like Edison, I can use what I've discovered to move along in my experiment of the life contraption.


"'Success' and 'Failure' imply that there will be an end to your learning. There is no end, only the discovery of the choices that work. You will simply become increasingly self-aware and increasingly respectful of your unique body." -V. Hansen, S. Goodman