Giving Up
Sometimes, the hardest decision to make is when to give up.
In some cases, it’s crystal clear – like when the entrée you were making for a dinner party burns to a crisp and the guests are arriving in 15 minutes. Time to wave a dishtowel at the smoke alarm and grab your take-out menus.
But most things – especially important things – dwell in a shade of grey. Jobs, different kinds of relationships, activities or projects you’ve thrown your heart into … it’s often hard to know when to walk away or when to forge ahead.
I’ve had times when I’ve decided to leave something behind, only to have it come back to me in some manner. In those cases, I look at it as God telling me I still have things to learn from it … even if it still doesn’t work out in the end.
One bit of wisdom I heard about difficult decisions was to think of it like this: Does this situation leave you feeling drained, or can you still derive energy from it? It’s not always cut-and-dried, but something that constantly pulls you down is probably not a great situation for you.
So, as I face a few of my own hard choices, these are the questions and thoughts I’m keeping in mind:
- Is this situation barring me from meeting my goals and having the life that I want, or being the person I want to be? This is for long-range thinking … where do I want to be 5 or 10 years from now? How will this situation affect that?
- Does this decision affect other people, and in what ways? I’ve learned that you should never live your life with the goal of pleasing other people, or of living up to someone else’s agenda. But especially if you’re in a relationship, or if you have children, it’s important to consider a decision’s impact on them. It isn’t selfish to strive for the life of your dreams, but it becomes that way when it happens at someone else’s expense.
- How will I feel tomorrow? This is the “can you look yourself in the eye” question. What decision leaves you feeling proud of yourself?
- If there are certain aspects of this situation that don’t work for me right now, can they be changed – even if it’s just reframing my own attitude? This isn’t to say “put on a happy face” if things are legitimately bad. But especially if an alternative isn’t readily or easily available, sometimes the best you can do is to detach your emotions to the greatest degree possible, and look for happiness in other aspects of your life.
As I walk through these experiences, I also find frequent prayer and meditation are also helpful. If I do my best to turn problems over to my higher power, and genuinely ask for help with a willingness to receive it, I have found it will come to me … sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. But it will come.
On Letting Go
Note: This is a guest post from my beautiful niece Hannah Stanton-Gockel – Ohio University student, world traveler, hoop artist extraordinaire, all-around cool chick!
I very much like to control my life. That might be because there have been so many moments when I have had no control and now I overcompensate. Or because change makes me really nervous (for example: when I was 3 and my parents put in a new backyard fence I felt like my childhood was being ripped to shreds, much in the same way those old wooden fence posts were being ripped out of the ground. I cried for about week.)
Another characteristic I have is that I always push my comfort zone, at the same time relishing and hating the combination of adrenaline and fear I get when I try new things. It’s a sensation I live for and live in fear of. This has had good results in my life though, generally speaking. I’ve traveled more extensively than many of my peers, having spent a total of 17 months abroad as an undergrad. I’ve pushed myself in college to excel, and, while not perfect, I’m graduating with honors, 2 majors and a certificate this year. I make an effort to say yes to challenging new experiences.
Yet, at the same time, I seek out control and try to predict situations. It’s quite the dichotomy.
I spent half of 2012 traveling through Central America, attempting to plan an elaborate 6 month trip that served to challenge my comfort zone in entirely new ways because I’d never traveled alone before… there was a lot on this trip that challenged me mentally and emotionally. Planning this trip was full of anxiety and excitement. I overly planned out every detail because I wanted everything to go in a perfectly predictable way.
I have two experiences I’d like to reflect on in this post that forced my give up my hard fought control and completely give in to the moment.
In Costa Rica, the day before I turned 23, I went bungee jumping with a group of friends. We were all terrified but I put up a front, hiding the anxiety I had felt nonstop for the past few days by smiling and joking and enjoying watching everyone else break a sweat. But inside, this was a huge challenge for me. The day before I came up with a mantra to repeat to myself to calm myself down, something that would allow me to give myself over to the moment and would settle my nerves for just a slight second before jumping. Fittingly, that mantra was “I relinquish control.” It’s a little cheesy but it was exactly what I needed. In the video of me jumping, you can actually see me mouth the words as I said them out loud before jumping. And as you can see, I didn’t just jump, I soared off the platform.
It was complete exhilaration. As you fall, you forget you’re falling, because all you can feel is the wind on your face (it’s like sticking your head out a car window). But four seconds later, the rope tightens and you snap back, realizing that you did not die, that you’re totally invincible and that yes, you must pay again for a second jump because bungee jumping is instantly addicting.
Very literally, I had to give up my desire to control and predict this situation. Of course I wanted to feel somewhat safe and not at risk of the rope snapping but people don’t go bungee jumping in order to feel safe. It was a cathartic moment too, because, although my time in Costa Rica was ending, I had another five months of travel ahead of me and I was intimidated… downright scared. I didn’t know if I could do it. But as I learned from this jump, I certainly could.
About a month later I was traveling through Nicaragua when I found myself spontaneously visiting the Corn Islands. I decided to stay there for a week and take a little vacation on Little Corn- an island so small that there are no roads and no cars. I stayed at a place called La Iguana right on the beach. One day the sea was so calm that the water looked like glass. I got some snorkel gear and went, by myself, half a mile out into the bay to explore the reef. I was swimming with schools of hundreds of fish of all sizes. I explored a sunken ship wreck. For a while I was the only human in this vast eco-system. My back got the worst sunburn it’s seen in years and I loved every second of it.
Little Corn Island and the bay where I swam with hundreds of fish, a stingray and sharks.
After about an hour I ran into (swam into?) a Frenchman who was also out in the big blue by himself, enjoying the perfect snorkeling weather. We snorkeled in the same general area for a while and then decided to go along the reef’s drop off to see if we couldn’t run into any of the hammerhead sharks we heard lived in the area. Being in water with so many other creatures creates this feeling of safety after a while. I was completely at ease. And I had already gone bungee jumping so why not look for hammerheads?
Perhaps luckily, we didn’t find the hammerheads but I did spot a massive stingray on the ocean floor. It was completely hidden by sand and I would’ve missed him if I hadn’t noticed the sand kicked up around near him. He swam out from under all the sand and as it slid off his back, his full size was recognized. He had a fin-span of about five feet, my own height, from my best estimates. But I was 15 feet above him so he could have been larger. I swam right on top of him, gazing down at his size and grace and beauty. The Frenchmen and I watched him for awhile and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. A four foot long baby nurse shark was swimming by the edge of the reef. Nurse sharks can grow to be more than 20 feet in length but are completely harmless.
What happened next was unforgettable. The nurse shark spotted us and swam straight towards me, as if in slow motion. It wasn’t so much slow motion as the fact that the shark was just ambling along at his own calm pace. I actually was quite scared because well, SHARK. But he was just curious and wanted to know what these strange creatures were. He swam right up to my face, a foot away from me, and looked right into my eyes. My nerves then got the better of me and I twitched my muscles and the little guy turned and darted away. The Frenchmen then popped his head out of the water and said in a heavy accent “Oh I love nature! I just love it!”
In this moment, surrounded by these incredible wild animals, I had to give in to the fact that I was in their environment. The stingray and the shark knew the water much better than I and I was at their mercy. Luckily, both were harmless that day but it served as an important lesson to me in the value of relaxing in the moment, giving up control, and just living.
Now, whenever I am stressed, I bring myself back to the cool Caribbean waters and the friendly nurse shark. I feel the sun on my back and the flippers helping me to float and the perfectly clear water and the little shark swimming up to me, just wondering who I am. It’s a good metaphor for all of life, really. Be calm but enjoy the adrenaline at the same time, be in the moment, and let go of the control you thought you had.
I’ve learned that there are many things we can’t control in life but if we give ourselves over to the moment, we don’t need to worry about control. And by doing so we live much more fully than we ever thought possible.
Down. Not Out.
First, my apologies for being absent for a few days. It’s true, certain things got in the way. Traveling; remote meetings for work and a brief visit home. My job itself has been very busy. There have been plans and chores and obligations. Life. Life has gotten in the way.
But beyond all that, the real reason why I’ve stayed away is because I’m struggling. I have a lot of days of feeling sad. I often feel lonely even though the days have been scarce where I haven’t talked to at least one friend, and many weekends since I haven’t seen them. It’s hard to feel like I’m writing the appropriate content for a blog that’s purportedly about finding serenity and spiritual growth when it seems I’m lacking so much in both right now. But I also realize that struggles are part of the journey. Ultimately, this blog is about my journey.
I had plans for yoga tonight – even got up early for 5:45 am cycling so I could get in some cardio today and keep the evening free – but here I sit, on my couch, comfy clothes and jazz music. Part of it is crummy weather, cold and rainy. But instead of beating myself up for not meeting a self-created obligation (an old, familiar habit), I’m just accepting that this is where I am today. I need rest. I need a cozy night at home.
These “down days” have actually stretched behind me for a ways, and sometimes I shed tears over the fact that it doesn’t feel fair. I’m working so hard to understand my emotions and take responsibility for my peace and happiness. Why are despair and hopelessness part of the deal too? I cry when I pray, asking God why I’m experiencing this. I don’t believe he wants me to hurt. My true belief is that when the light does come in again, it will be so much brighter.
Even though my surface feels wounded, intellectually it doesn’t feel like the truth of who I am. I know greater things are coming my way. I know that I am going to achieve so much more, climb so much higher. I believe that the things I desire for myself really are going to come my way because I’m finally not afraid to ask for them. I’m no longer afraid that merely by admitting I want them, I will somehow curse my fate and therefore ensure they won’t be mine. This is where I know I really have grown – my self-defeating attitude has gone by the wayside.
And so, I am sorry that I haven’t been here as much, because that isn’t my intent. I figured I’d have more social media up and running by now, that there’d be more voices in this little community I’m hoping to build. But right now I don’t have the energy to reach out … I can only reach inside to pull myself up. I’m still here, but first and foremost I have to be here for me.
Relationships: Rubber, meet road
Happy Valentine’s Day, dear readers!
My relationship track record is … ummm
… errrrrgh …
… uhhh …
(Do I really have to talk about this?)
Let’s just say, it isn’t all good. But, I wouldn’t say it’s all bad either. True, if you measure relationship success by the “long-term marriage/2.5 kids/ranch house/0.68 acre yard” metric, I have failed. But, then again, I’ve also never been one of those women who felt like motherhood was her ultimate destiny in life. I prefer my current dwelling – a small apartment in a walkable/fairly urban area – over a big house in the ‘burbs. It’s just how I’m wired; I like walking to things and having close access to public transportation.
I’ll also add that this is the most difficult post I’ve written so far, because, truthfully, it’s an area where I haven’t quite gotten past the feeling that people are judging me. As much as I know that isn’t true (and doesn’t matter even to any degree that it is), it still haunts me.
I am divorced. I have some other long-term relationships scattered through my past. To be sure, I chose poorly at times for the people with whom I paired. But, let’s examine the first two words of that last clause: I chose. Now, the just first one: I.
It would be so easy to lay the blame at the feet of these other people, to say it belongs entirely to them that things didn’t work. Certainly, the responsibility isn’t solely mine, but it’s not all theirs either.
For a long time, I had a pattern of getting into relationships with people who really weren’t what I wanted. But through some magical way of thinking, I thought they could become what I wanted. Then I resented them when they didn’t. This is sort of like saying you want a turkey sandwich, but seeing you only have peanut butter in the fridge, then eating the peanut butter anyway, but blaming it for not being turkey, pleading with it to become turkey, and actually getting outright angry that it isn’t turkey. As you can see, it isn’t the most rational of thought patterns.
Another issue I’ve had (even in my better relationships) is communication, particularly in terms of feeling like it’s acceptable for me to have needs, and to ask for them to be met. I was afraid that by saying that I wanted something, my partner would think of me as too needy. Or, they’d deny what I wanted, and then it would just be proof that they didn’t love me anyway. So I’d stuff those needs away, square my shoulders and move forward, albeit with a jaw that was clenched a little tighter, and the seeds of resentment rapidly propagating in my gut.
At this juncture in life, I am not dating and not seeking a relationship. I’m focused on other things and prefer to devote all of my energy to myself. But I would like that for myself in the future and have faith that God will bring the right person into my life, when the time is right. The bottom line is that I’ve learned that a relationship isn’t just two people who know each other and hang out a lot or even live together while letting the chips fall where they may. They take a lot of work and emotional energy, and it can’t fall to just one party to give all of that. A relationship is a living organism, and your “gardening skills” can leave you with either a beautifully blossoming orchid, or a bed full of weeds.
What are your relationship challenges?
Healing the Child Inside
Louise Hay posted an interesting article today about healing your “inner child” — in essence, examining your childhood wounds and soothing that child that still exists within you, even as you’re walking around with these wounds as an adult.
This is rather timely for me in a number of ways. Mostly, it’s because I had one of the most emotionally profound experiences last week, when I was able to very deeply and intimately get in touch with my own inner child, feeling the pain I experienced back then but able to process it with adult emotional intelligence. It’s difficult for me to describe to someone who has not done this kind of work, or who might not understand it. But it was very, very real.
As the result of a recent breakup, I’ve spent times swinging between anxiety and sadness/loneliness (with some peaceful moments in between). But after a while I developed a lot of scorn for those emotions, just wishing they would go away and I could heal and move on. I was, in essence, “yelling at myself” for feeling these unpleasant feelings. I couldn’t understand why it would seem like I would get to a place of healing, only to find myself emotionally knocked down days later.
Somehow, some way (I truly believe through God), I was able to understand that these feelings were actually stemming from a very child-like place. The more I got in touch with it, I saw that it was a very scared little girl, who was feeling hurt and sad and lonely. She wondered if anyone would ever love her. She was in a lot of pain.
More evaluation revealed that this was me, around age 4 or 5. Somehow I had gotten the feeling that there was something wrong with me, that nobody loved me. At that time I couldn’t grasp or understand it. But I remembered thinking very clearly … “maybe if I’m just very, very quiet, and really good, they’ll love me.” From this I came to believe that who I was on the inside was not acceptable to show on the outside, and that I couldn’t ask for help or show that I really wanted or needed something. These are problems that have plagued me for years.
I was at yoga that night and I imagined this little girl next to me, doing the poses with a joyous and childlike spirit – the way she wanted to be, but felt like she wasn’t allowed. I spoke to her with the love that I so wanted back then, and told her that she was precious and beautiful exactly how she is. That night, I cried the most anguished tears, but I was crying the tears of that child who wasn’t able to cry them back then, or didn’t even understand why she felt sad in the first place.
Now I’m much more in touch with this piece of myself, and in the future I’ll be able to identify it when those feelings come up for me again.
To live a fulfilled adult life, it’s worthwhile to discover your childhood wounds and work on the process of healing them. Don’t think that just because the years have passed, they aren’t haunting you still. Find that child, and love it well.
Young Spirit, Old Soul 