Moving Past The Old Familiar Sting

On the sidewalk of a small strip mall I noticed a sandwich board sign in front of a liquor store. “Beer doesn’t ask silly questions. Beer understands”. Google “words of wisdom” and it’s highly unlikely that those words printed on that sign would ever come back in the search results.

Perhaps they should.

As someone who endured a rather intense 18 year “relationship” with beer, those words on the sign struck me deeper than I expected them to. Because I know them to be true. Beer was a loyal friend, very predictable, and always took me where I needed to go, unconditionally. Even if where I was going was detrimental to myself. It didn’t question or evaluate what I needed from the relationship. It had a purpose to serve and that’s exactly what it did.

There is something powerfully reaffirming when you feel understood. When you have nothing to justify nor defend. When you’re simply accepted as is. Familiarity provides an intoxicating comfort, even if what’s familiar is undermining your own emotional well being.

Growing beyond the familiar is quite uncomfortable. Alcohol made it easy for me to not have to deal with my own deeper issues, the things on some level I knew I needed to work through but I never had the courage or willingness to do. I decided to stay stuck in the familiar instead of embracing the uncertainty of growth.

Growth asks way too many questions.

In the hauntingly beautiful song “Hurt”, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails speaks of “the old familiar sting”, widely accepted as a reference to substance abuse, though others have interpreted this line Continue reading “Moving Past The Old Familiar Sting” →

Urgency, Clarity, Intention, & Purpose

Her text brought an unexpected smile to my face.

It’s July 4th and my younger sister reached out with a memory of the day we celebrated America’s bicentennial. Our ever-crafty Mom baked a couple dozen cupcakes and us neighborhood kids got to decorate them with the red, white, and blue frosting she made. We all got together by the old fence separating our yard from Dave Wooler’s yard and expressed our patriotic spirit in a very sweet way.

I had forgotten all about that day but her text brought me right back into that moment. The faces, the voices…hard to believe it was 50 years ago.

Revisiting memories is often a double-edged emotional sword for me. Inevitably I will move past the memory itself and find myself fixated on the time separating the memory and the now. As in what have I done with my life in those years in between. As much as I’ve come to accept the path my life has taken, that nagging and quite persistent inquisitive voice within has the tendency to prompt me to revisit my path. The choices I made. The choices I didn’t make. The choices I never allowed myself to make.

Quite often this line of questioning was met with a tenacious hostile reaction from within, sort of the same reaction I experienced when I felt short of the paternal expectations I wasn’t living up to. I should have done better, and not knowing what better actually was didn’t let me off the hook for not doing Continue reading “Urgency, Clarity, Intention, & Purpose” →

Maybe I Am The Problem

I wasn’t aware of the Soup Rule.

Standing in line at Panera and the person in front of me was tormented with indecision trying to decide what to order for lunch. Her painful deadlock was eventually resolved when she determined that it was too hot for soup and ordered the sandwich instead.

Yes, it certainly was hot that day, and apparently the high heat disqualified soup from lunch contention.

I like soup. I just never knew there were parameters limiting its availability for consumption.

I’m not sure how rules like this get started, but at some point she accepted the elevated reading on the outdoor thermometer as a valid reason to limit her dining options. For me, if I want soup I’ll have soup regardless of the weather conditions. But the more I thought about this, I realized for me this was no longer about the soup. This morphed into me starting to examine the limiting parameters I may have placed upon myself.

As I ate my lunch, I thought about my own rules, the guiding parameters and nuances I’ve willingly accepted in my life. The beliefs and ideals that influence the habits and actions which shape my life. Some were my cultural and tribal inheritance, others I created for myself. Taking inventory of your own beliefs and ideals provides you with the opportunity to evaluate them. Which ones serve you? Which ones no longer do? Which ones never did? Which ones are you willing to let go of?

My beliefs and ideals have given me the life I have, a life I am infinitely grateful to have. Life, though, is a never ending work in progress, ever evolving in front of us. As I continue to grow and evolve, am I allowing my beliefs and ideals to grow and evolve with me?

Or is what I accept that I am holding me back from becoming who I was created to be?

Photo by Juan Miranda Ferris on Unsplash

Every Day Is Graduation Day

One by one, alphabetically aligned, they crossed the stage as their names were read aloud much to the enthusiastic delight of proud families gathered to witness one of life’s important milestones.

To say it’s been a while since my own high school graduation would be an understatement. Many decades have passed since the seventeen year old version of me with long hair and no clearly defined path forward crossed the stage and left with a diploma of my own.

I’m still looking for that clearly defined path forward.

Graduation ceremonies celebrate both the effort it took to get this far as well as infinite possibilities ahead for those who wish to seize them. On this day an introspective and reflective significantly older version of me is asking what I did with all those infinite possibilities that had my name on them. What did I do with the time I’d been given? What have I done? More importantly and often painfully, what haven’t I done?

There are two things in life I will never get back. My shoulder-length hair and time. Of the two, time both scares me and motivates me. Life’s infinite possibilities are maniacally juxtaposed with a life that is itself finite. It’s all possible until it isn’t.

I’ve come to understand that many of my infinite possibilities were never seized because I never allowed myself to seize them. Who I told myself I was often conflicted with who it was I was created to be. In that confliction I remained stagnant, fully aware of what was possible yet not willing to believe I was worthy of their attainment.

Perhaps there was some clearly defined path forward and I convinced myself not to take it.

Graduations need not be a formal ceremony clad in caps and gowns and pomp and circumstance. Graduation can be a decision made on any day you choose in the presence of only yourself, when you acknowledge how far you’ve come in your life and decide to embrace your own infinite possibilities. To break free of the self-imposed limitations long accepted as true and graduate to your own next level.

You are your own clearly defined path forward if you choose to decide to move yourself forward.

Decisions have the power to keep us stuck or to set us free.

Every day is graduation day.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Working Against Your Own Inner Peace

“The inner emotional battlefield is dramatically different when you’re no longer fighting against yourself.”

If consistency is good, I guess I’ve gotten good at being more mindful. With intention and practice I’ve grown much more self aware of where I am emotionally and energetically. My morning meditation has played an important role in me getting myself reset and grounded as I start my new day.

It’s become a daily ritual whose benefits are often undermined by others longstanding daily rituals.

Feeling a bit tired and lethargic, a little over a month ago I voluntarily entered into my own beverage detox program. No coffee, no tea, no soda, no energy drinks. All I’ve been drinking is water. And it’s not because I don’t like caffeine and sugary drinks.

I just don’t like what they do to me.

Much of my “inner work” has been about me trying to find an emotional equilibrium. Of trying to get to emotionally firm ground and to be better at managing the inevitable peaks and valleys of Continue reading “Working Against Your Own Inner Peace” →

The Wind Beneath Your Own Wings

Who knew it was a butterfly moment.

An elementary school teacher friend of mine recently sent me a screen shot of a nine year old Facebook post. The unnamed subject in the post was one of my kids involved in some humorous banter about the naming of some beetles in a classroom project. A conversation unexpected from a kid of that age, but a conversation I was happy the kid felt comfortable to be a part of.

Teachers have a way of creating safe spaces for kids to participate, to feel seen, valued, and accepted. In that safe space, a child is free to shine a light only they can shine. And when they start to shine, they’re empowered to shine even brighter, fueled by the momentum of an ever-growing level of confidence.

The Butterfly Effect on full display.

As adults, finding our own safe spaces to shine becomes a bit of a challenge. Many family and organizational structures usually don’t make room for such spaces. Because, hey, we’re adults which implies there’s simply no need for the safe spaces we needed as children.

We never outgrow a need for a safe space to shine.

The outside world is usually too busy to even notice us, let alone create a space where our most authentic self feels free to shine. Short of going back to third grade, the most reliable safe space is the one we create for ourselves.

It can feel quite daunting when you need to be the wind beneath your own wings, to create a safe space for you to shine when you’ve been conditioned to believe you’re the only reason why you’ve yet to fully do so.

The butterfly imprisoned by the the weight of its own wings.

But those are the only wings that will set you free.

We need not wait for others to create a safe space for us to shine. We don’t need their permission to express our authentic energy and light. We need our own permission to do so. To start, to flutter, to allow ourselves to move forward at our own pace and shine in the way only we can shine. The more we are willing to move the more confident we will become in our movement.

The more wind beneath our wings.

It took me the better part of a lifetime to allow myself to become a safe space for me to unfold more fully into me. To allow myself to trust me with me. To allow myself to be me, embraced with patience, kindness, and unconditional love.

Some lessons certainly take their time being learned.

Your safe space to shine is yours if you want it.

You just need to be willing to start.

The Self-Inflicted Pain Of Self-Discovery

My ego was far more ready than my body was when I joined 1,500 other runners participating in a local half marathon a few years back. An avid and seasoned 5k runner, the jump up to the 13.1 mile distance was going to be a huge challenge. And quite a challenge it was.

I wasn’t in it to win it. I was there to push myself harder than I’ve ever pushed myself before, six month past my 59th birthday. I’d never come close to running a race of this distance, but I signed up for it anyway just to see if I could find my way to the finish line. And eventually I did.

It wasn’t pretty. It’s wasn’t enjoyable.

But it told me something about myself.

In a life which often presents us with hard things, I guess I’ve become quite willing to inflict hard things upon myself. Challenging, uncomfortable, even painful things, things that force me to dig deep and endure and rise above the self-inflicted pain of self-discovery.

It’s in the doing of hard things that I am reminded of my ability to deal with hard things. That the resistance builds my resilience, a resilience which expands my capacity and confidence to better handle the times when life does present us with those unwanted yet inevitable hard things.

The half marathon certainly broke my body. But in that brokenness I learned it would take more than that to break me.

Growth is hard, be it physical, mental, or spiritual. It requires a willingness to become uncomfortable, to push beyond the limitations we have accepted, and in doing so the process will remind us of a self-resiliency we may have long forgotten or doubted we ever had in the first place.

Growth is inconsistency incremental, never linear, often frustrating. Paradoxically, though, it’s our commitment to grow which creates our capacity to grow and the ability to overcome the challenges of becoming more aligned with the person we know we were created to be.

Photo by Pedro Sanz on Unsplash

The Only Place I Am Is There

“One time, one meeting.”

It was mesmerizing. The color. The lines. The contrast. It was one of those photos I wish I had taken myself. But I didn’t need to own it to be able to fully enjoy it.

I just needed to see it.

Quite often I find myself alone in nature. A short hike though the woods, a long walk on a winter’s beach. The isolation is restorative and at some point I will inevitably attempt to capture the beauty of the natural world surrounding me in a photograph.

Looking through the view finder takes me to a place I’ve spent much of my life trying to find. The present moment. In the view finder a moment is frozen. I scan everything before pressing the button. The lines, the light, the color, the texture, the noise. Every detail in front of me is seen and assessed. I can adjust or decide to capture it exactly as it is. But in that moment, the only place I am is there.

When you discover the present moment you also discover how fleeting it is.

“Ichigo ichie” is a Japanese expression often translated to mean “one time, one meeting”. This and every moment is a singular moment in time. It cannot be relived exactly as it was. Therein lies its Continue reading “The Only Place I Am Is There” →

Redirecting The Momentum Of Thought

The crew aimed their cannon at the top of the mountain. After a few minor adjustments, the trigger was pulled and the artillery shell landed in the deep snow.

Avalanche.

It started slowly, the initial subtle movement gaining velocity and momentum as the snow intensified its descent as it violently crashed down the mountain.

Reminds me of how my thoughts can work at times. Especially when the thoughts turn negative.

Sometimes one initial impact of negativity creates a downward spiral of more negativity cascading through my mind. A mental avalanche of sorts, gaining velocity and momentum as those unwanted thoughts crash down relentlessly through my head.

I’m no expert in physics, but I do understand the power of momentum. How life tends to create more of what you’re experiencing and expecting, even if you don’t want it.

I’ve gotten good at noticing where my emotional momentum is taking me. I can feel when I’m caught up in my own avalanche of negativity, anxiety, and doubt. Left unabated, the momentum of my thoughts intensifies. But noticing when I’m stuck in an avalanche is my first step of getting out of it.

Awareness is a super power. Knowing where I am allows me to create a plan to get me where I want to be. My thoughts will go where they will go, but I get to decide if a will allow them to keep me there. At times I need to give myself some time to process the negativity, anxiety, and doubt. Just give it a safe non-judgmental space to be seen and heard. To slow the momentum.

Then decide where I want to go from there.

We have the freedom to think what we want to think. We have the freedom to be empowered by our thoughts. We have the power to reframe any situation we find ourselves in.

We have the power to redirect our emotional momentum.

Just because I’m stuck doesn’t mean I have to stay stuck.

During an avalanche of negativity, anxiety, and doubt, we are the only one who can pull us to safety.

Photo by Nicolas Cool on Unsplash

Moving Beyond The Easy, The Convenient, And The Good Enough

I didn’t like the process, but I loved the results.

The prep for a routine medical procedure included the elimination of some of my favorite foods for a week ahead of my appointment. It wasn’t quite fasting, but it might as well have been given what was on the list of foods I could eat.

A week later, I was surprised to feel so much better.

Many of those favorite foods were nothing more than habitually consumed foods, favorites by default based upon the frequency of indulgence. Easy, convenient, and good enough, three attributes you’d never use to describe a healthy relationship.

With food or with people.

My mini cleanse was an opportunity to reset what I was consuming, a chance to take a break from and to re-evaluate what I was willing to put into my body. An opportunity to make decisions more intentionally aligned with the healthier vision I have for myself and less out of habit.

I’ve been cleansing other parts of my life as well. My energy. My tribe. What I am willing to tolerate. What I’m no longer willing to accept.

Stepping back we may find we’ve become consumers of a great deal of toxicity in the world we’ve built around us, a world built more out of habit and less out of intention. We can see where we’ve habitually chosen the easy, the convenient, and the good enough relationships, opportunities, and situations which have left us feeling sluggish and diminished, emotionally winded and lethargic.

Life has repeatedly shown me that in every moment we get to decide if we are willing to perpetuate what is or willing to forge a different, more authentic path forward. We can either feed the habits which leave us vibrationally hungry or cleanse ourselves of the toxins which poison the path on our way to becoming who it is we are willing to become.

The moment is awaiting your decision.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

Peter Mis LivingHalfFull.com

Lessons From A Life Unfolding

Tag: mental health