Tag: reducing stress

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Being Responsible Doesn’t Have To Be Scary

Yesterday afternoon I noticed little a little flutter in my torso as I thought about hosting a 4 hour retreat, something I’ve done many times before now.

I’ll never forget one of the first retreats I ran. After I had greeted a few of the first guests, ready for an all-day intensive learning and doing The Work, I happened to step in to my bedroom to get a pen.

I looked at myself in the mirror and saw two humongous, and I mean HUGE wet circles of sweat spanning out from my underarms, darkening my shirt.

I gasped, and immediately changed my top.

Getting ready to be the facilitator for something, or start a new class, to take the role of leader or point person or teacher…can, shall we say, heighten personal energy.

OK, we can call it nervousness, anxiousness, anticipation.

For some people, just raising their hand in a group to speak is terrifying!

Sometimes I’ve had the oddest experience of adrenaline zapping through me when overall, I felt as if all was incredibly well.

Like, right when I get the impulse to raise my hand and ask a question in front of 500 people.

Other times, sharing, speaking, or singing in front of a big crowd is like laughing with a small group of friends, so simple.

But one thing I have discovered is that being responsible for the FUTURE is part of the requirement for nervous anxiety:

  • I hope the event will go beautifully
  • I want everyone to learn, receive, gain something, like it
  • They should enjoy themselves, have a powerful experience
  • I should make a difference, I should make an impact
  • But I shouldn’t be too intense, I should be easy to approach
  • Everything needs to go well
  • Nothing bad or uncomfortable or difficult should happen
  • No one should feel disappointed
  • Everyone should feel pleased and happy when its over

As soon as I start to list out the stressful thoughts, even blow them up into proportions that are clearly too big for this situation, they all kind of seem…..

…..silly.

Well, CRAZY!

With this list going, the Comforting Voice might start chattering “no no, there’s nothing to worry about here, just do your best, be yourself, everything will go however it needs to go, all is well and you know it”….

The thing is, when that voice enters that’s trying to soothe the anxiety or tell you to stop worrying, it doesn’t always work.

Have you ever had a close friend, a spouse, or a parent tell you in the middle of feeling huge nervousness “QUIT WORRYING” ?

So the mental activity is there volleying back and forth between feeling nervous and responsible for EVERYTHING, and trying to calm down.

Remember, the mind is exceptionally dramatic.

A little passing example: Knowing I had this workshop to run, when my refrigerator stopped working for about an hour last night, inside my head I was ready to call the fire department.

I have a very good friend who is racing today in a long and grueling bike competition.

She texted me last night that she just wished the race was starting NOW, she couldn’t stand the waiting, she hated all the nervous tension in her stomach 24 hours before.

So…..we see what happens in the body, in the mind, when we’re believing that something really, really, really, really has to go well and that we are partly or entirely responsible for the outcome.

We’re nervous wrecks!

Who would we be without the thought that we’re responsible for things going well?

“It you mistreat an animal, it becomes afraid. This is what has happened to your psyche. You have mistreated it by giving it a responsibility that is incomprehensible. Just stop for a moment and see what you have given your mind to do. You said to your mind, ‘I want everyone to like me. I don’t want anyone to speak badly of me. I don’t want anything to happen that I don’t like. And I want everything to happen that I do like.’ And then you said, “Now, mind, figure out how to make every one of these things a reality, even if you have to think about it day and night.’ And of course your mind said ‘I’m on the job. I will work on it constantly.” ~ Michael Singer

Who would you be without a future that needed to be fabulous?

What if you are not responsible for a good, perfect, blissful outcome?

Even for your entire life?

Without the thought that I have to make it good for other people, and good for me, and good for the universe…..

….I am so free, it’s an amazing spark of the most alive peace, right here in the present moment.

Total relief.

I may picture the future, but it is with unknowing and joy and space, excitement, wonder.

Relaxation. Simpleness.

“I’m talking about not resisting, not grasping, not getting caught in hope and in fear, in good and in bad, but actually living completely.” ~ Pema Chodron

Right now I am noticing colors, tapping fingers on laptop, warm summer air, still body, breathing, happiness.

Love, Grace

P.S. Three classes starting in September: One Year of Inquiry begins September 13th 5:15 pm PT (3 telegroups per month), 8 week teleclass Relationship Hell To Heaven Sept 12th 8 – 9:30 am PT , AND 6 week teleclass Pain, Sickness and Death Sept 13th 10-11:30 am PT.

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I Should Do Something Else

I should do something else. 

What a curious and interesting, and sometimes VERY stressful thought.

Today, for the second day in a row, my husband and I got “stuck” in a huge, thundering, massive downpour of rain and we ducked inside an open-air restaurant to wait it out.

The restaurant is a huge white tent on a round wooden platform amidst rice paddies, near a narrow walking trail which is used by scooters, motorcycles and foot traffic.

No wide roads to this restaurant, no big vehicles. Everything has to be carried or wheeled here.

It turns out there’s wifi, so here I am on the internet in Bali.

Then I had the thought “we should be seeing more….we should do something else.”

Because yesterday, we were here in the same restaurant, also in the middle of a huge afternoon thunder and lightening storm.

There is so much to see and do! We don’t have much time here! This is all nice and everything, but we should be in a different restaurant exploring something else.

Oops, er…wait. Halt!

Fortunately, I can catch myself quickly when doing this line of thinking.

Because I know, I will never, ever see everything, do everything, experience every place….this in fact would be impossible.

Having the thought that in this present moment, I should be somewhere else, be with someone different, or be having another experience than I am having is actually quite a bizarre thought.

With that line of thinking, the present is uncomfortable, less than, not quite perfect….or even terrible.

Not good enough.

Who would I be without the thought that I should be doing anything different? That I am missing something? That this moment should be altered somehow?

So relaxed, it’s amazing. To really deeply feel this moment as absolutely fine…WOW.

No need to do anything, go anywhere, change anyone.

Remarkable really.

I look around at the wooden floor, the plant next to me as I type, the straw woven chair, the ducks flapping their wings outside, the delicate drops of rain now, the gray sky….and I am amazed at the beauty and the strangeness.

Relaxed mind, relaxed body. Noticing that soon, I will get up and walk outside now that the rain has stopped.

When I turn the thought around, my original concept becomes “I shouldn’t do anything else.” 

This is amazingly radical. Can you imagine never having this thought again that you should do something else than whatever you’re doing?

What if this is the exact best thing I could possibly be doing, here now in this moment? Sitting in the same restaurant, two afternoons in a row, talking with the same family who works here….typing, reading, listening, being.

Why not?

“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

Much love, Grace