A Resilient Knowing: Living Beyond Labels, Boxes and Identities

If people knew they could self-repair their bodies, then someone has to point out that they are equally responsible for the damage. But it’s not new information. A book I refer to periodically is Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life.

At one point I had a friend who also owned and used this book. However, when I realized that her husband’s chronic back problems demanded action from her and she wasn’t appreciating that, I realized that abstract information can remain that way – unhelpful and out of reach.

In my life, I asked my partner who had chronic and mysterious stomach troubles what it was in life that he could not stomach. He pondered that question and when he landed on the insight, the health issues resolved.

Dr. Gabor Mate wrote When Your Body Says No for the people who have trouble spitting the word out when required.

For me, it was my first word, but it was my eyesight that was in trouble with a prognosis of complete blindness within six months. Rest assured, it didn’t come to pass – a story I shared in Solving Problems (Part 3).

As a consultant, not a single person I encountered had a problem. I’d talk about my problem-solving solution, be it a course, a book, whatever, and no one was interested. They told me they didn’t have any problems. Yep, while they told me that their health was failing, or their bank account, or their marriage, or whatever, they failed to define that situation as a problem.

Guess what? Anything that is uncomfortable is a problem. Accept discomfort as the first step toward resolving it. Everyone has a problem. Maybe you’d rather call it something else, something less triggering, something smaller. Whatever you want. It’s your vocabulary.

The Power of Presence

This morning I awoke to the neighbour’s cat rolling around in my catnip garden, exactly as my own cat had done the previous afternoon. When I opened the door to let her out almost two hours later, she hissed and spat and hesitated as if the other cat was still around. With that, she had no further interest in being outdoors and she ran back inside.

My cat is tough when she needs to be, but also is smart enough to minimize the number of times that she needs to be that way. Maybe I taught her, like how my partner thinks I taught her to speak. She’s simply only ever heard my voice, and she’s a good mimic. She mimics hunting, but unlike me, she never quite got the hang of it.

Getting the hang of hunting was tough, and maybe not what you think. There was the bone chilling cold, and for that there are ready solutions. The tough part though was having no distractions readily available.

Forced meditation was what hunting was for me. Snowmobiling too. Time when thoughts cannot be pushed aside, ignored, or tuned out. No. They come in, as uninvited as they were the first time, and they must be dealt with.

No more suppression, repression, denial, or any ability at all to numb, diminish or procrastinate what must be thought, felt and solved.

The more you deal with, the more you are able to deal with. And then one day, no more uninvited memories. Just calm clear attention gently focused on how life is unrolling around you. With that energy, it’s amazing how different life feels, and how much more information becomes obvious to you, as this present witness.

The Persistence of Entanglement

One hot Sunday afternoon, I reached for a beer, when a flash stopped me. In that moment, I’d felt panic that my partner wasn’t home yet, and what if I had to go searching for him?

When he finally arrived home, I said, “Phew, now I can have that beer!” It turned out that at about the time of my flash, he’d just realized he was engaged in a highly dangerous activity, and was without cell signal or help.

It’s called entanglement, and Lynne McTaggart is gifted at simplifying the science to explain it. Practically, for me what matters is that once connected, we are never separated even while great distances may exist in between.

A mother and child are the most connected two human beings can be. Literally, the child is a product of the mother. For me to have known that she died by having felt it is simply more evidence of entanglement and the presence to feel my body completely, not having part of it walled off or shut out.

I wasn’t always this way. I followed the “strectching” time in gym class by trying to make it look right, forcing and tightening my muscles, not loosening them and allowing them to release all tension. These days, I do my own “yoga” by exploring the limits of my flexibility and what I’m trying to protect by “not going there.” It can take me half an hour to get into one pose. But who’s measuring?

As a retired person who resigned from more than her career, I’ve left behind all semblance of competition. I’m not wrapped up in games of trying to “get ahead” anymore. I’ve untangled myself from all that.

Being present isn’t something you force yourself to do. It’s something you achieve.

The Pleasure of Hard Work

Fed up of “the hack?” Not me, I’ll take the quickest, fastest shortcut every time. I’m so lazy that you wouldn’t believe it, but my dopamine kicks my butt into gear to get to work in the name of an anticipated reward.

Every time, I know that the best reward for time spent is knowing you gave it your all. Take the short cut, but put your muscles into it.

It used to be that when my dad needed something done, he called me. If he had a party to go to, he’d take my younger sister. If he had destination travel in mind, it was my older sister. Entertainment, like movies, were my brothers. I don’t know why I was the work horse of the family, but along the way, I learned some skills.

With two houses behind me, I put those skills to use and learned even more. Best, I learned what I’d never want to do myself, because there’s nothing worse than creating your own hazards. Those skills and that hard work allowed me to benefit financially when the time came to move.

Of all the hard work I did to be able to retire at 47, investing in real estate was part of that, but when it’s your home and not a rental, it’s not investing, it’s doing the hard work to get ahead. However, if you can never get that downpayment together, then you better like working.

I got my downpayment together by saving and learning how to grow my money from my first paycheck. From my first part-time job, I learned I wanted better working conditions, and not having to deal with the general public every day. I quit, and spent those high school years intent on a better future.

Math, which I thought was funny, actually teaches art. However, I didn’t know this until I reached the end of my mathematical education. By that time, the answers in the back of the book were pictures. Hearts, flowers, and infinity loops.

They told me I was an artist, and what I learned in that class was how to see reality for what it is and not how you imagine it to be. It was incredibly difficult, but it got easier. I see reality every day, and I’ve seen that other people must not have taken art class.
Steven Pinker explains that there are two ways to view the nature of progress. One is that problems result from people who must be defeated, shamed, punished, and corrected.

Two, problems are independent of people. There are problems, and there always will be problems. There are many ways for things to go wrong.

To make people better, let’s solve problems. We’ll work on the problem instead of the person. It’s so much fun when you know how and actually get to do it. It’s a wild adventure.

Seriously, let us.

Because there’s a whole lot of people who are trying to prevent it. I’ve learned how to make progress with skunk works. I’ve learned how to create robust processes by being the lazy rebel who protests the force of compliance.

I also learned how to make infographics and pass them off as analysis, how to fake data, and to do what I was told or I’d be fired.

If you are like me and love people and all their squishy imperfections, then let’s solve some problems for them. If you know what I mean, join the team.

Your Daily Purpose

I’ve shared my story of avoiding blindness with a few people and not one of them asked me how I did it.

Sometimes, I see them think about it, but very few find the words or the curiosity. I’m dying to spill my guts, but Gabor Mate explained why it never works. “Would your younger self listen to you?” Ha-ha, my younger self listens to no one. She does ask a lot of questions, though.

Right, he says. Live it. Wait to be asked. Get the answer ready. Make it better and easier. Live it louder. Repeat.

Never should on yourself or anyone. T’is the highest social virtue. And so darn hard.
As a child, I read anything I could get my hands on. If I had been born today, the possible nightmare I could have turned into is mind-blowing. They would have had to create many rules and safeguards to keep me off the internet.

I would have silently broken every one of them just like I did when they made me color their way. Can you stay inside the lines and fail coloring as a subject? Just for that, I painted my bunny green. (Don’t worry, it was wooden.) In a college course, I did my book report on the book that disproved every premise we were taught. They didn’t update the course.

It’s a good thing that kids today know more about technology than their parents and can still get library cards. They might be able to save themselves from stuff their parents don’t even know they need saving from.

I hope they are learning to ask better questions and finding ways around the Establishment, like agreeing to lie instead of actually changing their minds.

(Pass the test, get the credentials. One day, you will get to think for yourself out loud.)

The Love of Your Life

Want more energy? Find what you love. Not who, what.

Here’s the universal lie: I like to manage people and be able to make an impact.

Everyone says that. It’s an answer that is rooted in control and status and the love of it.
I know this: you don’t like it when it happens to you. I’m sorry to say, you have one foot in the camp of independence and freedom, but your other foot still stands in command and control.

You have to pick a team. They say you can’t make everyone happy, and that’s what you have been trying to do. Might I suggest picking the team that will give you wings? Eliminate status, rank, getting to boss people around, having impressive titles, or anything related to other people.

This is my view on introversion: People or ideas—I’ll take ideas every day. However, knowing about emotions as a virus and reflecting on my experiences, I know where and how I lost my energy in boring conversations about material things.

However, some people are an idea. They are so clear about something and so full of love for it that they radiate. Funny, they aren’t at networking events because they never look for opportunities – opportunity goes to them.

If you were Opportunity, where would you be? With the ho-hummers or the lovers?

That’s where you start. Get in your body while you do it. Feel how it feels. Move away from what feels bad – including your thoughts. Stop creating your negative emotions and experiences through memories of the past and imagined future disasters. Choose to think of something joyous instead. It’s your choice, and one is clearly healthier than the other. Monitor your thoughts and squeeze the truth out the bad ones.

More Truthful Answers

At the very least, don’t go networking and tell me all about your pain, fear, possessions, people and all that draining stuff. When you are drained after talking with people, reflect on what you talked about. Complaining, bragging and gossip should have no place in your head. Get a good idea, and don’t leave home without one.

The evidence is that talking about negativity spreads it. Bad emotions are contagious and damaging, and sometimes prevent the good ones from getting through.
One woman to whom I told about my eyesight history told me she loved helping people heal.

Someone who loves helping people heal is relentless in adding to their toolkit to do that. But nope, no follow-up question.

Many people don’t know what they love, want, or do well, but they know their labels and comfort zones. Many have no idea they are telling fibs, and it’s not polite to point them out.

We don’t hire a supply chain consultant who can’t even arrive on time. We don’t employ a branding consultant who shows up crumpled and bland. When we do, it’s because someone told us to do it, and in the end, we know we knew better. For me, the hardest thing about networking is not calling bullshit all the time.

When I ask people what they love to do, the answers do not contain enthusiasm. You cannot love something in a ho-hum fashion—that’s not loving. The truthful answer is, “I don’t know.”

Emotions are spread in conversations, and I want to speak with people who crackle with life’s energy, or those who are courageous enough to say “I don’t know.” Either is exciting.

If you don’t know what you love, your job is to figure it out. No one can do this for you. No one can tell you the answers. People can tell you what they observe and how they value what they see, but you are the one who knows how it feels.

Do you know how you feel? That’s step one. Step two turns what you don’t want into the opposite, and step three is collecting that pile of wants into a manageable thing.
Yes, it’s work. Time passes anyway. I know you have been trained for instant gratification, poor-fitting boxes and slapped-on labels, and I’m sorry society did that to you. I also know What Could Be.

You don’t know how you are different and unique until you meet many, many others and learn how you differ. To label is to compare, and without a mirror, an audience or a community, how do you know?

After all, I didn’t know I needed to say I was a problem-solving rebel until I met a problem-solving conformist. The two of us start the same but end up in different places. I’d cry with the limits placed on him, and he’d run from the complete ambiguity of mine. Any hiring manager would need to know which one they need, but I never met one that knew the difference. Or cared.

Every hiring manager simply repeats, “Just do what you are told.”

I can tell you this: everything becomes crystal clear when you know who you are and who you’ve always been. It’s knowledge that might be misplaced, but never lost.