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Posts tagged ‘Inner work’

Jan 1

If it’s January, it Must Be Resolution Time (Revisit)

This post was originally published on January 2, 2023.

It is January first, and I’m getting a jump on my Monday. I’m doing it because my January third is going to be slightly cluttered with an eye appointment. Here it goes!

I was logged into Facebook to check on pages I manage and spotted people I know posting their New Year’s resolutions. It got me thinking about change, and why this stuff seldom works the way people envision resolutions working.

The first thing is, why wait for the new year? If it really needs to be done, do it now—don’t put the thing off. 

My next observation—or question—would be, Why do diets begin on Mondays? Shouldn’t they start in the mind, on the next shopping trip, or in an online order?  

My third musing would be that people make resolutions but seldom lay the groundwork to establish successful life change. How do we each lay that groundwork? What does it take to do the work that will establish change in our lives?

It begins in stages: the first stage is to come to an understanding of what the real issue is. I’ll use a diet for the example, though most any example could work. I’ll use my own diet journey.

Often a person wakes up to their personal reality, sees themselves in the mirror, and shudders at the sight that is reflected back to them. The realization of the pounds that are now present isn’t a happy one. You might have a range of clothing sizes, and some of those sizes might never be worn again. You hold on to all of the sizes in hope that “someday” you will fit into those jeans you wore fifteen years ago. I didn’t have that issue because moving to Europe is all about weight, and getting it on the boat. I had to give clothes I was wearing, and not wearing, to someone who could use them right then. I’m glad that the choice was made for me.

In 2006 I realized that I felt awful, and I didn’t like my reflection in the mirror. I felt ugly, frumpy, and unattractive. We purchased a treadmill so that I could walk inside, and I hoped that walking would help me take the weight off. Four years later my “goal” had not been achieved, and I was miserable. In 2011, after years of back pain that began in adolescence, I made the decision to have a breast reduction. That was a good choice on my part. Talking to my husband about the decision I was making was a process. He had the concern of things not turning out right. They did. The reduction enabled me to walk easily, and to feel better while doing chores. The “bench,” as I thought of it, was gone. Wow, was that a game changer! I also began to win at taking the weight off. Having a couple of kilos gone in one day gave me hope! Maybe I could do this thing.

All the tears I cried, the times when Jon had to hear me grapple with the issue that it was taking so long to drop the weight, now seem like an eternity of days gone by. That was one kind of looking and digging to get to the root cause of my food issues.

There is something to be said for feeling good, and feeling like you are winning at something you want. After a decade, I was wearing smaller sizes; I was winning the battle, or so I thought. I was doing the outer work. What about the inner work? 

My health insurance covered a dietitian, and she was helpful. It took a conversation about doctors being vigilant about the Body Mass Index (BMI) to turn the entire weight loss process around for me. Wowzah, had I fallen into a nasty trap!

I thought I’d done all the inner work as I began to understand that in my genetic heritage of deities, a love of sweets from two grandfathers and my mother had caused me to deal with sugar like alcoholics deal with a drink: one is never enough. This sent me spiraling into a new level of self-discovery. It was unbearably painful. I engaged in a dance, and while the weight was coming off, my eating and I were doing a wild rumba. All the years that I’d focused on BMI had held me back from focusing on feeling good. I had to contemplate how I might have bought into the diet myth, and the body image of fitting back into a size 6–8. Intellectually, I understood that there were things I needed to do. In 2021 I crossed into a new zone: the I’m-happy-with-who-I-am-and-what-I-see-in-the-mirror zone. It was a massively delightful discovery. It also lifted a huge burden of non-reality off of me. Now it was about management.

I recall the day clearly. I was sitting on a stool, getting dressed and taking a look at myself. No, my stomach wasn’t model flat. I would never have that EVER again. My arms were OK, not perfect but good enough, and my calves, they were still wonderful. Throughout my life my calves were the one body part that always looked great. I took time to reflect on this wonderful factoid. My thighs really were OK, and my face had thinned out. I realized in that moment I would never see a size 6 or 8 again. 

Then I began to think about how I really felt inside. I felt good, and as I realized this fact, I began to look deeper. Why was I stuck in the weight loss mode? I came to understand that I didn’t need to go there. A size 10–12 was perfectly fine. At my age it also felt like I could maintain that size.

Healthy isn’t about the perfect body. Ultimately it is about feeling good at where we are. It becomes a process of cutting ourselves some slack, offering ourselves the same grace and generosity we tell others to treat themselves with. In all the inner work I spent time doing over the years, I realized that I, too, had cut myself some slack and offered up a huge healthy serving of grace and generosity to myself. In 2022 I sat on the stool, looked at myself, and smiled. Yeah, I’m good with her!  

Resolutions are fulfilled when we lay a foundation of inner work, dig deep, and discover the generous helping of self-love we are serving ourselves. We make peace with the demon within. We grant ourselves the insight that the real work takes time and is about honoring ourselves over what we think we want. The question we must ask at the beginning of any goal or resolution journey is, What do I really need, and why?

It took me from 2006, a lot of treadmill and conversation time working with a professional, and a real hard look in the mirror to come to understand that what I wanted (getting back to a 6–8 size) was not what I needed. What I needed to do was to like—and love—the reflection of the 10–12 sized woman who sat on the stool. It doesn’t matter the size or the kilos/pounds that I carried. I started this journey thinking size and BMI. What matters most is that I got healthy. What matters most is that I’m enjoying where I am and can manage life where I’m at without my body doing the yo-yo cycle.

2023 is starting off with some real peace of mind. I’m good with this.

Feb 14

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Soul Work

During my early years of working through grief and loss, I was in survival mode. That is where we all go in the beginning. We revert to the lower levels of survival. We go to the base where we can best survive. Hopefully the house gets cleaned, food gets eaten, and we manage to stay somewhat healthy, both physically and mentally. That is baseline grief. Baseline grief looks ugly. It isn’t a place that most would willingly go to, and when we’re there we want out. 

As time moved me forward, I began to change, to grow, to search for something deep inside. None of this made sense, but then what I was living no longer worked for me. I’d grown into a new place, and it required a new beginning—a new base level to grow from. 

I’ve discovered my mystical side. I fell into the mystical in a most unexpected manner: a former nun and clinical psychologist who led a spiritual life and showed up just when I needed her to do so. She entered my life at a time when I was exploring new things and new options. She walked with me as I engaged in the Ignatian Prayer Exercises. Through his process, I found something that I needed: the ability to sit in silence and contemplate. It was grounded, and it opened up avenues of new understanding, leading me to do the deeper inner work of the soul. This is where East meets West. 

This is where I found out that I needed to chuck what didn’t work because it would never work. I’d been trying to use someone else’s idea of what a spiritual life was. What did I think my spiritual life should look like? It would be unique to me. 

As I engaged in new forms of being in a spiritual way, I began searching for other places of learning. I’d heard about the enneagram, and hearing my first podcast about it made it seem complex. There was something about this enneagram thing that drew me to it. I began to look for a book that would explain things in simple terms. I found one called The Road Back to You and digested it. It’s a very basic primer, and what it does very well is enable the reader to get a sense for the number where they might fit. Its downside is that it doesn’t go deep enough. Soon I discovered that there were better ways, and there was more to this thing than nine numbers on a weird-shaped, nine-pointed thing. 

With all the therapy I’d done, and now spiritual direction, I was looking for a spiritual growth tool that I could use for myself, and that I could use to work with clients and directees. If someone is interested in this growth tool, I’ll use it. If not, I don’t pursue it. 

When I first began therapy, I did a great deal of talking. I needed to talk. While the talking helped, and worked for me during that time of my life, deep down I knew I needed more. How does one fully engage with the shadows of a life? How could I deepen and find a path into personal growth that would work for my entire life? I needed to find an enneagram teacher. There was something in this spiritual growth tool that I wanted. I began to plan and to engage in course work. Good stuff, this enneagram! I was finding a way to engage the deeper shadows and discovered its power. 

Growth, and the inner work of growth, is never easy. If it is easy, I’ve found that I’m not going deep enough. I’m not being fully honest with myself. Looking into mirrors can be difficult, terrifying, and the greatest gift we can give our souls. It is also tricky. 

I’ve noticed that while people want to change, want answers, and will even tell themselves they can do the changes needed, sometimes the past fouls it up. Sometimes past traumas, letdowns, or the reality of what we must give up to get what we seek traps us. We think it will be easy; we think it won’t hurt; we can’t sit with ourselves for the length of time it will take for the process to affect us and move us into change. We sprint out of the awful, find safety in old ways or a new distraction, and slam the door just when we need to keep it open. Hiding in bubbles doesn’t work. 

It Sounds Scary, but in the End, it Frees You

How do I know if I’m ready? The answer to this question is complex. We don’t find relief in catharsis—that is a temporary fix. Relief is found when you can sit the monster down and engage in a conversation and decide two things: the first thing is that you want to understand the monster, and the second is that you will entertain the monster in conversation so that you can learn from it. 

This is not easy to do, because we delude ourselves by thinking that we can win our monsters over with one simple chat and a table of cookies and tea or coffee. This is not high tea: this is plowing the field and finding the huge clods of earth that need to be broken up and put to use in healthy ways. 

Our monsters want all our tea, coffee, and our cookies. Our monsters lie to us. They tell us that we don’t deserve the good stuff of life. Sometimes our monsters deceive us into believing that there are shortcuts. As much as I love a short route to places, I’ve discovered that I might miss some essential scenery if I don’t stop along the way to engage the process. This brings me back to mirrors and the enneagram. 

I have found that I can use the enneagram to understand my monsters. I can meet them in a place where they feel respected by me, and I can converse with them in ways that are generous and insightful. I am taught and moved to new places. I don’t always like my teachers, and that is OK, as long as I hold space for the learning that comes because of the conversations. 

This trip through grief has taught me that there are better paths to follow and better ways of seeing myself and others. This trip through grief has also taught me to question and to find new ideas, and that taking the leap into the unknown can be scary, challenging, and just the thing we need to do to change in unexpected ways. This soul journey is going to last the rest of my life, and that is good.