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May I have some change for the bus?

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It happened so quickly.change via leadchangegroup

I did not feel like walking down the subway steps to take the train and the bus stop was right there. I also did not want to waste money on a taxi.

I walked into the yogurt shop and said, “Do you have change for the bus?”
I then saw the smile fade from his face.

At first I was confused…but then I realized what he was thinking.
So I quickly said, “Oh, do you think I am begging for bus fare?”
He nodded his head and I said, “No, I would like to trade you dollars for quarters.”

He was visibly relieved.
I knew I had a blog post.
What a gift to have seen on his face what he was thinking.

Here are some of the possible thoughts:
Oh no, not another pan handler!
Lady, get outta here!
I don’t have time for this!

It really made me realize that we humans open our mouth and speak…but we have NO CLUE what the listener hears.
THIS time, I was able to SEE it plain and simple.
I was able to address his concern and speak different words so he understood what I was saying.
I traded the dollars for quarters and left the shop.

The next time you say something and someone responds in a way that you don’t understand, take a step back and look for signs that something is already awry. It may be that the conversation just began but there is already miscommunication and nothing good can happen there.

It is best to try to get to the heart as soon as possible.

It is best to try to get back on track as soon as possible.

Is it easy?
No!
There is no formula to fix it, but a simple “What did you understand from what I said?” may help.

Know what I can’t shake though?
The fact that there are thousands of folks out there who really need bus fare but they are faced with more rejection than they can handle.
But that’s another post isn’t it?
Love and light,
Indrani

I want a new drug….

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Huey Lewis and the News sang that back in the 80’s.
needles via themiamihurrican.com
I want a new drug.
I have let certain people in my life be my drug of choice. I took people into my life that affected me like a narcotic.

Shoot up with one person and if they were happy, then I felt euphoric.
Shoot me up with another person and if they were sad, I felt sadness.
A fix of an angry person and I became paranoid and riddled with anxiety.

Once I realized that these people had this narcotic-type affect on me and what was happening to me when I was around them, I knew I had to stop.

Quitting cold turkey is hard.

Withdrawal sets in and the cravings begin.

I found myself using again.  Just a little time with this person, a text, an email, a short call….I can handle it.  It won’t hurt. I have it under control. It won’t affect me. Then I’m back on the streets again….hanging out with people who had such a bad effect on me.

When I was clean from these people, I felt lighter and truly happier. I found myself a little sad that I could not spend time with them, but certainly a healthier person for it.

Those people who so wanted me to take them into my life are still out there and I am aware of the negative affects they have on me.
I see text messages and voice mails and those old feelings of “I can just do a little bit, maybe this trip will be different, I can control myself,” creep up my spine.

I quickly delete messages and emails, anything that could entice me. It’s like flushing drugs down the toilet to prevent from taking them.

I am addicted to leading a happy, purposeful life and choose not to be an emotional slave to those around me.
It’s not always easy but it is worth the effort.
My new drug in life is me.

Are you addicted to certain people? What effect do they have on you?

Can you break free?

Habitual habits…..

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“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” J. Drydenold dirt via olddirt.wordpress

I am taking a class in Positive Psychology and my teacher, Tal, just allowed the wonderful quote above to escape!

I say escape because I felt that this quote freed me from something, but what?

As I write this, I do not know the answer to this question….and that’s okay. Actually it is more than ok. It is ok because NOW I KNOW that I will be actively searching my own life and behaviors to unearth what habits are “making me”.

I will use brushes that gently move the dirt and sand from an investigated habit, because using heavy machinery will only expose huge lumps of habits and not allow me to actually SEE what they are.

In plain language, I will not herald pompous proclamations that I will drastically change. I will whisper the change to myself and allow my mind, heart and intuition to guide me to the next place of excavation.
Let me give you a real life example.

In the past few weeks, I experienced a huge disappointment with someone close to me. I was not in a place where I could easily amend the situation. I was in a foreign country and did not have access to all that I needed to address what was happening. The only things I had were my heart, my mind, my intuition and my habits.

I now realize that I chose to investigate how I had habitually dealt with huge disappointments.

In the past, I would scream and yell, allow nasty words to escape from my mouth and make huge proclamations of what I would do in the future if this EVER happened again. I would let off steam that would quickly dissipate, but it left behind bad will and very hurt feelings. This time, I knew at some level that I did not want to act like this screaming heebeegeebee.

But what should I do? How should I act?

I tried for 24 hours to push it away…in other words, use heavy machinery and dredge the hurt out of me.

It did not work.
The next 24 hours, I saw the habit rear its ugly head and it wanted to charge full bore into the perpetrator…it wanted to destroy!

I witnessed all this happening in my body and I was shocked at the internal war that was going on. The habit did not want to give up…it was as though it had a mind of its own.

I cried a lot about it and in between the bouts of tears I kept asking, what is my lesson here?
What is my lesson here?
I did not receive any God-like voice telling me the lesson. I so very much wanted a definitive lesson that would allow my pain to dissipate.
My pain did not disappear.
I had to rise above my pain, rise above my tears, and find a solution while in the jaws of the disappointment.
It took me about 6 hours to arrive at a solution that I could live with, that would sustain my humanity and also allow the perpetrator to sustain theirs.

Some of the questions I had to answer while in pain were:

What are you here for?
Who are you here for?
Is this situation a deal breaker for your being here?
Do you respect all the players in this scenario?
Do you believe that people can make mistakes?
Will harping of someone’s faults help you to find a solution here?

As I allowed the answers to these and other questions to float into my consciousness, I felt the tears drying up and I began to focus on how to make the best of a really bad situation. I also reminded myself that no one died and no one had a brain tumor.

So I rose above the monster disappointment and I managed to participate at the event. I was not 100% myself, but I also had not allowed the habit of flying off the handle to derail me entirely.

How will you KNOW when the HABIT monster rears its massive head?
You will know because you will want to strike out, strike at and annihilate the person you are blaming.
That is when you have to RUN in the opposite direction. That is when you have to force yourself to step off of the bulldozer and pick up the littlest paint brush and take your time to uncover the layers of dirt and grime that have accumulated over the years.

This is when you have to be the best human you can be, all the while allowing your human emotions.
It takes patience and practice, but you have the time!
Time will be your friend if you let it!

 

Love & light,

Indrani

I used to feel like Sisyphus….

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You know Sisyphus, the legendary King of Corinth. He was doomed to rolling a heavy rock up a hill. The hell of this task was that as he neared the top of the hill the rockGirls can do anything! rolled down again!

Over and over and OVER!!!

What kinds of Sisyphean tasks do you do over and over? You haven’t even been cursed, like Sisyphus, and you can most likely list many!

Maybe we curse ourselves.

We pick up the same stupid argument and we KNOW where it will end.
Yet, we don’t seem to want to take a different route.

Maybe we feel we don’t know how to take up a different task.
Over the next week, notice what “tasks” you are taking up and ask yourself if you have done them before.

Remember that a Sisyphean task is DOOMED to being repeated. It is the kind of task that has no natural end.

Good luck with the noticing.

Love and light
Indrani

Silence like a cancer grows…..

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This line is borrowed from a very popular Simon and Garfunkel song.woman silenced via ivillage.com
It starts off with, “Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again…”

This is the song of abuse.

Abuse is cyclical. Life is “good” and then there is an event, some supposed affront….then comes the violence, whether physical, verbal or both.

The cycle can be tracked. You can plot it on a calendar, just like a woman’s cycle.
The span of time between events can vary, but the “affront” will always be followed by violence. The abuser will always have VERY good reasons, why they were left without recourse, but to strike out.

It will be words like, “Look what you made me do.” Or “You always do this and I have no choice.”

One of the saddest and most telling stories I recently heard while in India was about a woman who had been set on fire by her husband. While in the rickshaw going to the hospital, the man fell at her feet crying that he was sorry but it was her fault for whatever she had done. He begged her not to tell the police that he had done it.

Guess what?

She lied to the hospital and to the police and she said it was an accident. She took the entire brunt of the incident, the physical torture, the emotional torture and the blame. She thought that he would “love” her more, since she showed how strong she was.

What she did not realize was that he cannot love.

If he was capable of love he would never have burned her.
He was only concerned with NOT being caught and put in jail.
This story is gruesome, and it is sad and you may be tempted to say “ah, my story is nothing like this.”
Be careful of dismissing this too quickly, as it holds many lessons for us.
It tells us to be aware of the cycles.
It tells us to have faith and courage in OUR TRUTH.
It tells us to be strong in our convictions.
Most of all, it tells us to allow the authorities to do their jobs.

What secrets are you holding?
What wrongs are you accepting blame for that were not your fault?
Who are you letting off the hook by making YET another excuse for their poor behavior?
Silence like a cancer grows.
Remove the cancers.
Speak up.
Speak out.
Speak.

Love and light,
Indrani

Seek a Jedi Master…..

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Young Luke Skywalker tells Yoda he seeks a Jedi Master to teach him exceptional devotion, balance of “the Force” and extraordinary combat skills.Yoda himself was a Jedi Master, although he may have not appeared to be a formidable warrior.

Yoda via starwars.wikia.comwikiYoda

I have tried, like so many others, to figure it all out on my own but I KNOW that, out there, there are teachers, guides and leaders who can teach us the skills and techniques on how to live a more enriched life.

I don’t know about you but I am a seeker.  I seek answers. I seek what is unknown to me.  I seek out Jedi Masters, and like Luke, some of the masters that I meet may not appear to be masters as I would have imagined.

This may not resonate with you but I have always known deep down that I have a greater purpose than just being here and doing the day-to-day thing.  As I have looked for my Jedi Masters, I have realized that the day-to-day living, depending on the steps I take each day, can lead me on a path to that purpose….resulting in a more fulfilling life and a more abundant life.

I have read many books, listened to many lectures and had many conversations with Jedi Masters and this is what I have learned;

  1. The problems we face in life are not unique.  Sure, we would like to think that we are the only person experiencing a certain life circumstance, but more than likely, there are others out there facing the same challenge.
  2. We are not alone.  Nothing we are going through says “you have to do this alone”. There are people who can walk with us and teach us.
  3. The situation is not forever.  It does not matter if you are going through a bad marriage, a bankruptcy, a child with an addiction….ALL of these situations and others are temporary.   You will get through it and you have the power to choose how you come out on the other side.  We can be the hero in our own story going through insurmountable odds and come out the other side a victor.

 

Consider yourself a Jedi student.

Find a master. You might find a coach, a therapist or a life group. It might be online, taught by webinar or by seminar.

Most importantly….practice. Luke Skywalker had the tools, the teachings and a light saber in hand but without practice he would have never been able to combat his enemies.

May the force be with you.

Quit your CFU job….

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Don’t worry….there are no curse words in CFU, it means CHIEF FIXER UPPER.2superwoman via annesadovsky
How do you know that you have been promoted to this exhaled position?
Well, it’s the subtle signs;

  • only you can find the cold cuts in the fridge
  • only you can pick up socks from the floor
  • only you can load a dishwasher
  • only you can go to the grocery
  • only you can make an effort at a peaceful relationship

Get the idea?
I am sure that you can come up with a few more examples from your own life.

Did you apply for this job?
If you did, what was the job description like?
Was it a one liner that sounded like, “FIX MY LIFE NOW and FOREVER”?

Check out the Mary Oliver poem called THE JOURNEY.

I believe that Mary Oliver found herself in the CFU job and she had to quit.
I think that her poem was her resignation letter.

What would your resignation letter look like?
It can be a Poem.
It can be a short letter.
It can be a long profound thesis with tons of explanations and life examples… but this may make you more upset when you remember all the stuff that you CHOOSE to take on.

Wait?

What?

CHOOSE to take on?

Uh huh, choose. It may sound harsh that I am telling you to choose to take it on, but really did someone hold a gun to your head to make you do it? If the answer is yes, that a GUN was held to your head, make immediate plans to leave that environment.

So now, let’s just see how you got THAT thankless job.

Were you always a fixer? Were you a “born” helper? Did you get lots of pats on the back for always having the solution? Were people always calling you up so you could fix their issues? Do you feel useless if you are not fixing something or someone?

What would happen if you simply STOPPED all the fixing?
Who would you be upsetting?

Make a list of all the significant folks in your life and put a Y or an N next to their names if they would be upset or not? Then add up all the No people and tell them THANKS for all the support they have given you. Thank them for not expecting you to be the constant Fixer.

Now for the YES people, what to do with them?
The truth is that the issue is with YOU, not them. You have not been able to say NO to these folks who expect you to fix everything. You have trained them to expect you to fix it all.

It may sound harsh but we really do train others how to treat us.
We train them by not speaking our truth.
We train them by not being able to say a NO that respects both them and ourselves.
We train them by assuming that if we do just one more thing, they may leave us alone.
We also assume that we are teaching them something, like maybe how to do it themselves the next time.
They learn nothing but “there she goes again” taking this new load of “crap” off my plate.

A dear friend of mine was on a professional coach call yesterday and a significant member of her family (a grown up), interrupted her to say that SHE needs to call the insurance company to get something done.
Why does SHE need to call?
Why did he interrupt her?

Easy answer…..she trained him over the course of many years to expect that she would “fix” all that was broken, not working, or just plain pissing him off.

Yes, she has a great strength, which is to find solutions, but what do we teach others when WE are the only ones to find the solutions?
What happens when people are so dependent on us and we fall ill or die?
We leave them in a lurch and we leave them helpless.
It may be better if we teach them how to fix their own issues so that both people can take full responsibility for the smooth running of the family.

I know that it is easier said than done. I understand that the people you care about may get angry and say some hurtful things.
What I am asking you to do is to care for yourself and your physical, mental and emotional health as much as you care for theirs.

One of my favorite quotes is this one from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter to us.”

What things matter to you?
I invite you to speak them to a trusted friend, not complaining about all that you must do, but rather, what steps you will take to do less and have the able bodied people in your life do more.

Love and light,

Indrani, Former CFU.

At the masquerade….

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For me, a masquerade conjures images of the Victorian elite with masks hovering over their eyes.  Or The Phantom of the Opera, whose true physical self is partiallymask via cathyberggren.com covered by a mask of white….and those at Mardi Gras wearing colorful masks which allow them get away with all sorts of mischief behind a veil of secrecy.

But do we need to wear something on our face to hide our true selves?  Do we need sequins, and face paint to hide our pain, or our looks, or to protect ourselves from the judgment of others as we actually try to be our true self?

I look at the masks I wear to create the illusion of what I want people to see and sometimes I wonder who that illusion is for?  Is it really for them or me?

I am not sure what is scarier….to drop the mask and have people see me for what I am or for me to see myself, perhaps for the first time, as I truly am.

Either takes courage.

Can you pull the mask from your eyes?

Anatomy of Disappointment…..

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What happens to us when we feel disappointed? We know that we feel let down or ignored or invisible, and a host of many other feelings….but WHY?waiting via thinkstock
What causes me to feel so let down?
Something quite disappointing happened to me a few weeks ago and in the midst of a tsunami of feelings, I kept asking myself….
What is my lesson here?
I have to admit that I am sometimes sick of the lessons. Just when I think everything is fine, WHAM…another damn lesson!

Disappointment is usually a surprise. If it is not a surprise and you are expecting to be disappointed, that is a habitual way of living. If we are in relationships where we are usually disappointed, then that is more about the choices we are making, as opposed to what the other people are doing.

Let me break it down like this.
Let’s say that I make frequent lunch dates with Jackie and she is ALWAYS late and I am always disappointed. Why do I continue to make lunch dates with Jackie?
Maybe I need to ask Jackie if lunchtime is bad for her and decide on a better time.
Maybe Jackie really likes me and really wants to meet with me, but is afraid to suggest another time because she thinks I am super busy.
It is incumbent upon me to have a real conversation with Jackie so we can set up better times to meet.
If, however, Jackie laughs and tells me she is always late, then we have another issue.
I have had people tell me that they are always late and they laugh it off. I usually say that I find it rude and selfish for people to think that being late is “just the way it is.”

Disappointment is part of life and it is up to us to handle the everyday disappointments with finesse and humanity. We have to be able to forgive and get on with what’s important. If the disappointments keep piling on and they are from the same people, then you have to have a “powwow” to find out the root cause.

If you do nothing, nothing will change.
We are in charge of our lives and we teach people how to treat us.

Love & light,

Indrani

Brushing teeth with salty water….

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I have been given the gift of some strong lessons this week.cry via sharelleandms.blogspot
The lessons were fast and furious. I was not prepared. I had let my guard down.

I managed to get through one night, then two nights and foolishly felt that the pain was gone.

I woke the next morning and began to brush my teeth to prepare for the day and thought, “How odd….the water is so warm and salty.”

I stopped to fiddle with the tap, only to realize that the water was OFF.
The warm and salty water was coming from my eyes. I was crying and didn’t even know it.

The eye faucets were wide open and I was drowning.

I allowed the tooth brush to fall into the sink and my head fell in after it and I wept.
I allowed the weeping to escape. I did not care that my hair was in the sink.
I only cared to weep.
Then, just as it began, the weeping stopped. I tied up my hair and continued to brush my teeth.

I have learned to accept that emotions come in waves.

When the wave crests I sometimes need to cry or weep. Sometimes the emotions are positive and I laugh out loud. I feel overcome by the emotion, whether I see it as positive or negative. What difference does it make to my brain whether I am crying out loud because of sadness or laughing out loud because of a joke?

My brain just needs me to honor the emotion and not shove them inside.

Society tells me that laughing out loud is more socially acceptable than weeping out loud.
I have even been told to “not laugh so hard” because I am embarrassing myself. Truth be told…I was actually embarrassing the other person.

So maybe you will find yourself with warm, salty water dripping from your saddened face and a tooth brush in your hand. Put down the toothbrush and honor the tears. You will feel a lot better, I promise.

Love and light,
Indrani