What I Can't Be With

So I know that I said that I would write about this new crazy birth control pill in a couple of days, and trust me I am burning to speak my piece about it. And I know that a couple of days has been and gone, and well, I haven’t written. So, to start with, here is my learning about that. It doesn’t work for me to assume that I will be writing on the weekends that I am leading my CTI workshops (I mean if I do, that’s great, but building it into my life is too hard, and hard is not what I am about, especially when what I really need is down time). So, from here on in, even when I am leading a coaching workshop at home, I am going to cut myself some slack and either just write about what is present for me on a given day, or not write at all. There it is, my newest declaration of self-care! Yay!

Now, on to writing about what is present for me today. In this weekend’s workshop we get the participants (and so I can’t help by take a look myself) to explore/investigate/delve into WHAT THEY CAN’T BE WITH. And here is what I noticed about myself. ONE of the things I can’t be with is DOING NOTHING. And it shows up left, right and center. You see I can’t be with boredom, and inactivity, and well, doing nothing. I am so about being busy and getting things done and being on the move that I over commit, have too much on my plate and get overwhelmed. The ironic thing is that because I am so maxed I stop being able to plan things or get it together to take on new things, and eventually my mania grinds to a halt. Then, you guessed it, I get to be with doing nothing, because all my friends, who have become used to me being unavailable have made other plans or gotten busy with other things. But instead of sitting in this doing nothing place and exploring it and deepening my relationship with it, well, not deepening, actually just developing any kind of relationship with it, I ramp it up again and get… you guessed it… busy.

Actually, this is how I dealt with cancer too, I got busy, really busy, with the doing of it, and the trying to fix things and change my situation. New diet, see doctors, exercise, read books on it. It didn’t help much. Didn’t change what was. Just kept me from feeling with really needed to be felt. Eventually, after all the cancer treatment was done and gone, but I was still stuck in the terror and the panic and the thinking, well, from that place I finally started REALLY being with what was there, and sitting in what first felt like boredom, but turned out to be the most healing 2 or 3 months of my life.

Here is the other thing I noticed, this aversion to DOING NOTHING can serve me (and others). I so can’t sit around and do nothing, not when there are mountains to be moved, and things to be said and perspectives to be changed. Now that doesn’t mean I necessarily work fast on those things, but I drive myself, night and day, can’t rest, am open to criticism and berate myself for not doing more (because while I am doing what I can do it feels to be me like I am not doing enough and therefore am doing nothing, even when, frankly, that is not the case). It is an interesting other angle to look from, even though the piece is the same: my desire to avoid this doing nothing, well, it runs me, and I need to get ok with doing nothing, in order that I can be at conscious choice about it instead of on auto pilot. So we shall see what awareness creates around this. Awareness and acceptance.