Month: November 2017

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Silence, screaming thoughts, and the process of discovering what works and what doesn’t

I love that learning anything is a process.

By definition, a process is a series of actions, steps, adjustments, movements….all working together towards an end or a direction. A procession is a collection of people moving as a part of a greater whole, towards the same destination.

There’s an awareness of “time” with a process, but also action, movement, motion, flow. Going from there, to here. Or here, to there.

I love that eating peace is a process, just like “thinking” peace.

We’re identifying our stressful thoughts, watching what happens when we believe them (including the way we eat) and wondering what it would be like to not believe those thoughts.

It can be a vast and wonderful experience, this process. It’s life unfolding before us. We’re learning all the way.

And guess what?

I just offered an Eating Peace webinar training this most recent Saturday morning….and learned something.

I had added a segment, and it turned out to be waaaay too big a bite to chew. (I love those eating metaphors).

I learned that I need to remove the extra I wanted to offer–I get so excited about supporting people to enter an eating peace process–and leave it as “plenty” or “enough”. There’s always more we can learn, you know? And we don’t have to learn it all at once.

Just like meals. We don’t have to eat it all at once.

Food will be there again for us to enjoy when the body is once again ready. No need to pack it all in now.

If you missed the too-long Saturday webinar, join me for Tuesday’s webinar at 4 pm PT OR Thursday’s at 8 am PT. I love offering this webinar live and sharing it with you. I’ll answer questions about the Eating Peace Process and share about the content of the in-depth program at the very end.

Let’s question our thinking, watch what gets adjusted naturally….notice what works, what doesn’t. We’re refining our perceptions of reality, we’re dropping our stressful thinking (which doesn’t work) by investigating it closely. We’re opening up to movement in the direction of peace without blame, violence, control, or self-hatred.

What I notice is as we question our thoughts, find our own answers, we become deep experts in our own inner world.

When you have an inner world you’re open to exploring….peace arises in the mind.

Thinking peace leads to eating peace. No other option really.

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Enlightened by taxes and complaints about who should finish them

“He should have finished it by now.”

Have you ever had this thought, that someone else should have completed something….but they haven’t?

ARRRGGGGHHH!!

When I was at the School for The Work recently, I did many of the exercises even though I wasn’t always in the room with all the participants, and had duties behind the scenes.

It was wonderful to sit down and fill out a Judge Your Neighbor worksheet on a situation with someone close where I felt troubled by their action, words, appearance, behavior, communication.

Maybe I reacted with a harsh comment, or surprise, or disappointment.

Anything at all….if it bugged me, it was worth looking at.

Hmmm, what to investigate? I suddenly had the awareness of the thought that someone I know should have finished a certain project by now.

OK fine….it was my husband and it was about our taxes for 2016.

He should have finished them! Six months ago!

You might find anyone in your life where you think they should have finished something by now: children finishing homework or chores by now, friends should have called you back by now, family members should have arrived by now, neighbors should have finished using your lawnmower by now.

And it’s stressful.

I had the incredible opportunity to take a very close look at this particular thought and worksheet with someone facilitating me right there at the school. Nothing better for deeper inquiry than having someone sit with you and ask the four questions–especially if they listen, don’t offer any advice, and avoid lots of discussion.

I loved being able to close my eyes, and answer the questions, in the quiet of someone listening closely without speaking: Is it true he should have finished the taxes by now?

Yes! I’ve never asked for an extension in my life. This is nuts. I’ve never paid a late penalty. So true.

But can I absolutely know it’s true HE should have finished the taxes?

Um. Gulp. No.

Because he hasn’t. And it’s not like he was assigned to them by the master of the universe and he’s the only one who could do the job. In fact, I’ve done my own taxes every year of my life since I started working. I did the taxes through my first marriage, then when I was single for five years, and for the first several years of my newer second marriage.

Who hasn’t finished the 2016 taxes?

Heh heh.

I can’t absolutely know it’s true HE should have finished them.

How do I react when I believe he should have?

Pissy. Complaining. Waaah. I wanted him to take it over. Tantrum. I don’t want to do it anymore. I hate taxes!

I suddenly realize I have still have an unfinished unquestioned oppositional attitude toward taxes. I believe they aren’t fair. The government is taking my money. They don’t support the small business owner! Fist in the air!

I liked taxes better when I was an employee and the taxes just seemed to secretly get whisked off in little payments through paycheck withdrawal, and voila it was done at the end of the year–I never had to write the government a check.

I realize there’s something about that method of not noticing tax payments I really liked and miss. It felt like the money was never mine in the first place, so it was fine to have it subtracted from my paycheck. I was very used to only the take-home pay portion of my salary, as they say.

So here I am arguing with numbers. I’m arguing with how I have to be my own employer and have an attitude of helping me take of bite-sized pieces of dollars, and send these to the government every month.

Gosh, never thought of that.

I was asking my husband to finish taxes and be the one completing them and paying them, but what I really wanted him to do he could never do: make it so I don’t see the taxes due at all. Make it so I don’t get all upset about writing checks to the government.

Sigh.

Who would I be without this very stressful story that he should finish those taxes NOW!?

I’d go home and finish them myself.

I’d write a worksheet on taxes and get my head straightened out about them, because I want them to be smooth, simple, and I want to be an on-time citizen and stay within the law.

I don’t want to demand someone else do what they aren’t doing.

That’s insane, and very aggravating.

Turning the thought around: he should NOT have finished the taxes by now.

How could this be just as true, or truer?

Well, first of all, he hasn’t. He couldn’t have without my input either–I have records, receipts, invoices, expenses–all kinds of things to double-check. He also shouldn’t have finished because it shows me I’m having a hissy fit internally about taxes, and being grabby about keeping “my” money. I think it’s too much to pay. I’m anxious about not having enough. I seem to dislike the thought of writing checks to the government.

A bit of internal work to do in the finance department in my mind.

Another turnaround: I should have finished the taxes by now.

Well here’s the crazy realization: Almost seven months has passed since the official due-date of taxes in the USA. I have been sitting here slightly fuming, worrying, then completely ignoring them almost the whole time.

What a nut case. I could have easily seen they weren’t going to get done by April 15th by my very busy husband who kindly said he’d do them because he wanted to be supportive. I saw it wasn’t happening, and could have organized my daily work so I could get them done. Instead, I blamed my husband.

At the end of this inquiry, my lovely facilitator said “Isn’t it funny you’ve let all these months go by without ever doing The Work on this–and I see from your badge that you’re on staff!”

Oh.

Exposed.

My facilitator and I had a good laugh.

I love how “staff” is the same as everyone. One mind, questioning the thinking that hurts.

Sometimes, apparently, the urge to ignore something overrides the clarity of inquiry. It appears I have been more interested in complaining about the taxes and arguing with reality than questioning my thoughts about them.

Must be the perfect time, though.

Any sooner would have been too soon.

Because if it should have been sooner that I realized I’m resisting taxes, that too would be an argument with reality. I had to argue with them as long as I did.

“The job of the Buddha is simply to pick up the garbage, to do the dishes, to sweep the floor. In this, he changes the world a little bit for the better…..The world penetrates you, and seeing the garbage becomes a moment of grace. There’s nothing that can’t enlighten you, because everything is perception.” ~ Byron Katie in a Mind At Home With Itself

My job is simply to do the taxes. Seeing the taxes as they are is a moment of grace.

Enlightened by taxes….who would have thought?

Much love,

Grace

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The best recipe when you hate your job

The other day someone wrote to me and asked: I’ve got multiple pages of writing on one very important and stressful topic.

Now what?

Great question.

Time to narrow things down a little. Time to really consider the beliefs rising within that feel so painful.

If you’re not sure, here’s what I like to do to get started:

First, I’ll make a list of interactions or moments with other people, incidents that happened, memories I have in my mind, that are all related to this topic of concern.

For example. Let’s say I’m worried I’m not doing a great job. (I had this thought the second day on staff at the School for The Work because I forgot to do something in my job description).

But let’s say it’s an overall stressful topic for you, when you think about work, employment, job, boss, your career. You’ve journaled on it. You’ve written about what you’d rather be doing. You’ve made a plan for yourself about how to change. You’re definitely troubled about the whole thing.

Now, make a list, as you look over your own journaling, of moments in time that were stressful when it comes to this topic. If you had a camera on these moments, and filmed the whole thing and saved them in your internal mental files, what memories would you say “prove” that this topic (in this case work) is stressful?

  • the moment at a staff meeting when my boss asked for a report and I didn’t have it, and she looked very disapproving
  • the moment one of my co-workers huffed with anger and said she had to do two jobs–hers, and mine!
  • the moment I received the assignment to create a database for new patients and update it weekly
  • the moment I’m in rush hour traffic taking 80 minutes to drive home, when it could take only 20 when not rush hour
  • the moment I had so little money left because of unemployment (before I got my job), I almost lost my house–I was sitting on my couch looking at my bank statement
Now I have some snapshots of moments I really dislike about working, and not working. My collection of what bothers me about the whole thing.

 

I start with one. There’s my scene from the troubling movie of my life. I see it vividly.

 

I then write a Judge Your Neighbor worksheet on that moment in time. Only that one. I start there. It narrows things down, puts it into a container the mind can handle.

 

Write all your troubles on the JYN. And then, of course (narrowing it down further to a small simple thought) we question what we’ve written on the JYN.

 

“She’s disappointed in me”. 
 
This thought is so different from “I hate my job”.

 

It drills into our overall blanket concepts and digs into why, how, where, studying the details of this experience of life we think of as “bad” or “wrong” or something we’d prefer not to encounter.

 

And wow.

 

When these specific concepts are taken to inquiry….

 

….how fascinating to discover they may not be as bad as we think.

 

Or just maybe, they may have had something to offer of deep importance.

 

Who would I be without my story of difficulty with working, employment, money-earning, bosses?

 

When I did this work in the past, I noticed I was freer, just one little bit at a time. I was more relaxed, I opened up to my boss, I had a difficult discussion with the co-worker I thought was always watching me like a hawk, I started enjoying the commute with my CDs to listen to on the way home, I noticed the gorgeous fountain in front of one of the buildings of the organization I worked for.

 

So much that was good about that job.

 

And more important, my attitude adjusted automatically, without me having to try, without me having to plan on how I would be quitting and what I could do to solve the problem.

 

Just a wee bit at a time–one thought at a time–taken to inquiry.

 

“What you’re thinking about them [or it] is the recipe for what you want.” ~ Byron Katie

Much love,

Grace