Living with(in) (integrity, intelligence, intensity, inspiration and intuition)

The 5 "I's" ::: December 1, 2016 ::: Hitting the Reset Button

Hitting the Reset Button

Integrity ::: Acknowledging the truth of where I am today and really operating from my center...The emotional/spiritual salad today includes pride, disappointment, anxiety and overwhelm.

What is going on?  Since I wrote last I have completed my supervised hours and obtained my independent license as a professional counselor.  I have worked at two professional jobs on a 3/4-2/3 time basis and have done a lot of good work, made good relationships, and become more skillful at my work.  I have improved my ability to set and keep boundaries around work and some relationships.  I have created a large body of creative work and sold some. My self-understanding with regard to my spiritual journey has increased dramatically.  All these are sources of PRIDE.  I still struggle still with the same fundamental challenges--My weight has gone up during the last two years of work.  My exercise has gone down.  Speaking my truth (using my voice) in my most intimate relationships is hard. I still don't feel the sense of connection and community I think I want.  My house is in disarray.  I have some new challenges--Finger surgery that has resulted in almost a year of rehab that hasn't restored my full function.  I tore my PCL and the rehab revealed the deteriorating state of my strength and flexibility. DISAPPOINTMENT.  Health, parenting, schooling, new work options, marriage, aging parents, estrangement from family, time management, knowing and living my values. ANXIETY. Holiday decorating and Solstice party planning, hand-made gifts in progress, major bathroom renovation in progress, need a new car, upcoming colonoscopy/endoscopy, travel over the holidays, keeping up with the daily, cooking at home more thoughtfully, on and on and on. OVERWHELM.

Intelligence ::: Really believing that my native intelligence (defined as the ability to create a unique and appropriate response to each new situation) is operating all the time and in the best way it can TODAY. This means that I always to the best I can with the information, experience and resources I have available to me in the moment.  When I can do better, I will do better.

Intensity :::  Focused attention on one thing at a time.  Centering myself before deciding my priorities for action for this day and letting everything else go.  Remembering that yoga helps me get to center and everything goes better after even a short practice.

Inspiration ::: Today I read two stories of people in their 50's who have lost significant amounts of weight and reclaimed their health.  Comparatively I have fewer pounds to lose, and if they can do it and more, so can I.  Self-love, self-compassion, self-worth...

Intuition: A colleague said to me one day as I struggled with a boundary, "If it doesn't feel right, don't do it.  You will figure out the "why" later."  Such wisdom for me.  I have never had permission to honor myself in this way.  I wonder how my life would look if I consistently enacted this policy.  The big fear is that EVERYTHING WOULD CHANGE. Marriage, work, space, money, creativity, relationships....I am sure this is not the case, but it screams at me "loss", "abandonment", "isolation", "loneliness", "death!"  Obviously this is connected with my struggle above to speak my truth and use my voice.  

I am safe.  I am precious.  I have a voice.   

The 4 "I's" ::: February 9

Integrity ::: today this looks like doing the things that I say are important to me.  Making things (kid pj pants from an old flannel bathrobe), doing (cleaning, bill paying, project planning), growing (getting our seeds and seedlings going for our baby garden), engaging (practicing yoga, walking, reaching out to people). 

Intelligence ::: Using the tools I have available to steady and center myself while I'm extremely tired.  Yoga, prana-filled food, doing one thing at a time.

Intensity :::  Refusing to let habits and addictions take over.  Feel my feelings and do the right things for me. 

Inspiration ::: I continually find inspiration here.  I love following the journey of this  family which is fully engaged in both a simple and extremely complex life.  Living large and living small.  Taking charge and letting nature take its course, too. 

The 4 "I's" ::: February 8

Integrity ::: checking in with myself to make sure I know what I think and convey that clearly when making important decisions.

Intelligence ::: being flexible and making sure I fully listen to someone's wishes and desires (even if that someone is 5 years old with less experience).  Being willing to disagree and to let him decide so he can trust his own thinking and learn from his own experience.

Intensity ::: today this means having a list and using it.  Moving forward, checking things off.  Resting a bit.

Inspiration ::: my friend in her ninth decade who is facing the later part of her life with grace, dignity, integrity, humor, and guts -- and who still plans to take up piano lessons after her latest transition.  Wow.

A little help from my friends and not snacking

I am so grateful for the encouragement, kindness, wisdom and perspective of my friends--particularly those I've known a long time.  A simple phone conversation did so much to turn me around after a down-ish day.  One of those paralyzing, my life is stuck, victim-y kinds of days.

So, here I am feeling stronger and braver. I moved some energy around with a vigorous yoga practice this morning. I feel prepared to look at my self-care checklist again and also zoom out a bit to set some objectives for this next period of time in my life at large.

Today, I want to comment on the strong magnetic pull to snack.  I don't get the urge to snack whem I'm either really busy or not around the house.  I am beginning to think that the anxiety of open space and the approach-avoidance relationship I have with most everything in my life is the source of this magnetic draw toward the kitchen.  This is why I set the objective of eating three meals a day.  I want to give myself space to feel whatever the snacking veils.  Anxiety, real hunger, fear, longing, emptiness--whatever.  I know I won't do it perfectly, but this is what I want to aim for. 

When I was doing my yoga teacher training we ate only twice a day--brunch around 10 and dinner at 6.  In addition I ate one small square of dark chocolate at night before I went to bed.  That was it.  I felt great.  I was never hungry.  In fact, I ate a pretty small "brunch" which for me was breakfast.  A small amount of granola, some raisins and soy milk.  Clearly I am capable of it.  I also was meditating, chanting, attending classes, doing karma yoga, and participating in two 90-minute yoga asana practices daily.  My energy and my environment were very different.  I also didn't have to make many decisions about how to use my time as we were scheduled pretty much 5 am to 9 pm.  Decisions. Choices. Options. Anxiety.

So:  be it resolved.  Three meals.  I'll report back.

Actions aplenty

I keep a productivity/gratitude journal.  I try to keep notes daily, but sometimes it slips to ever other day.  Usually I make my notes in the morning, reflecting on the day that is just past.  I've been doing this for the better part of a year now and I am amazed by how well it works for me.

As a stay at home mom, I'm sometimes acutely embarrassed by my seemingly liesurely life.  This journal helps me focus on all that I do--the care I put into our home, food, parenting, play, community, etc.  It also helps me see that to judge me by a 40 hour work week is diminishing the steady flow of activity that occurs from before dawn until I finally fall into slumber.  My work day isn't defined by clocks and pay periods.  It is 7 days a week, sometimes 24 hours a day, but always full and only punctuated by liesure.  Where my husband may get home and surf the internet or watch a movie or follow football/baseball (depending on the season) online between dinner and bedtime, I pause in the morning after getting food in the slow cooker, laundry in the washer, a little yoga, etc., to read a few blogs, watch "The Daily Show" and knit a few stitches, or call a friend.  Soon, a project calls me, and I am off doing again--finances, estate planning, mending, sewing those dinosaur comforters I've promised, cleaning, stripping and sanding the dresser that will be repurposed to house all the electrical gadetry and memorabilia in boxes under my husband's work bench--all the stuff that we'd either pay someone to do or it wouldn't get done.  Then there's all the time that seems as if it is liesure, but it is activity that, although often "fun", also demands a certain quality of attention and energy--playing or reading with our son, coordinating playdates and getting to know the parents of our son's friends, facilitating "homework", answering the endless stream of questions and discussing the issues of importance to him, writing, keeping up with family and friends, planning the next event, ritual, project, time away....

Why am I musing on this?  I guess because I've been sitting in my newly placed and designated knitting chair this morning.  Knitting for no reason other than I want to sit for a while.  I want to be in the company of my own thoughts, rest my eyes, reenergize for all that is to come in a bit.  Yes, it feels a bit decadent--it's 10 a.m. and my husband is at his "job".  So, I have to remember that I don't get early mornings to sleep in.  I don't get nights off very often.  I don't get weekends to shift gears from my "job" to my "life."  It's all one big neverending symphony for me.  And even the longest symphonies have pauses, rests, between phrases and movements.  So, I won't feel guilty today for taking this hour or so to knit, read, daydream, bask.  It is as essential to my daily round as all the tasks I do.  It keeps me sane.  It helps me remember who I am and to order my priorities. 

It is a form of self-care.  As I knit one stitch at a time, or write one word at a time, I am doing the necessary work of expressing myself, stoking the fire of my soul, nourishing and restoring my spirit.  There must be time for this and everything else.  Otherwise things don't make sense.  So, I will strive to banish embarrassment about my "liesurely" life and strive to take pride in ALL that I do, even when it looks like I'm doing nothing.

 

 

Taking care of myself is part of my job

I've had a couple of people what I mean when I say that taking care of myself is part of my job. 

Like many women, I sometimes find it easier to do something for someone else than to do it for myself.  That's the short answer.  I am trading up from not exercising, for example, to exercising because others need me.  They need me to be healthy so I can be there for them, yes?  One of my struggles is that doing it for myself doesn't seem like motivation enough.   enough, so at least for now I find it helpful to define it as part of my job. 

But, there's actually more thinking here...

The rest of the perspective I'm cultivating here is about owning my choices fully and completely, so that I can be free to celebrate them or change them.  I have made lots of choices in my life.  I choose to be a mom, and a certain kind of mom (available, at home, an active leader and partner in my child's life). 

I choose to stop working for pay, partly because we can afford it and partly because I can't find a way for it to make sense for us to do it any other way.  We didn't want other people raising our child and since I am married to a man who works many, many hours for higher pay than I could earn doing my "job,"  it made logical sense for someone to be the primary parent, organizer, home economist, social chairman, health care provider, nurturer, relationship builder, school liaison, yada yada yada.  I choose this and I gain so much. 

The truth is I've also lost a lot in the process. This is true for everyone, I suspect.  Part-time working mom, single mom, working outside the home mom, stay at home dad, working outside the home dad....  I just dwell on it more than is probably healthy.

My husband does cool woork that pays him pretty well.  We are lucky.  My choice sometimes doesn't feel like a choice.  I wonder if it's actually just a rolling cascade of sequelae, each "choice" the natural result of the previous choices.  Sometimes it feels like I/we just aren't able to figure out another way given the constraints of our values and culture. 

So, in addition to this, my primary job of parenting, I also choose to teach yoga twice a week.  I choose to cook our food from scratch.  I choose to handmake a lot of gifts.  I choose to help manage my parents' affairs.  I have all kinds of work to do.  Work that is unpaid, unsung, often invisible.  If I weren't doing it, someone would be paid to do it (or it wouldn't get done).   

I want to be healthy and well and live a long time so I can be their for my son and to enjoy our life together as a family.  I want to be smart, supportive, helpful and loving toward my husband. I want to be thoughtful and caring toward my family and friends.  I want to live as simply and sustainably as we can given the whole world situation. I want to to have the physical, mental and emotional stamina, strength and flexibility to do all my jobs well. 

So, since I've chosen this particular job description, a necessary qualification (for me) is to be well and thriving.  I am unable to accomplish my "jobs" in the manner that I want if I am unwell.  Therefore, I define it as part of my personal job description to maintain my physical, mental and emotional wellness.   

It's not enough of a reason.  I have many other reasons to prioritize self-care.  But, in truth, a significant part of my self-image is tied up with the work I do and how well I do it, so if taking care of myself will help me do it with more care, intelligence, integrity, joy and peace that seems like a pretty good reason to aim for it.

Behavioral planning for Fit 150 by 50

I know quite a bit about my habits and the relationship between my emotions and self-care.  That doesn't mean I've successfully changed much about them.  Although we generally eat a solid whole foods diet and I am a home cook, I've never done much planning around my personal food intake.  I've never really counted calories or controlled portions.  I lost weight and managed my weight with exercise and a global change in diet from junk to whole foods.  As I age, however, I notice that it's time to get the most nutrition out of every calorie and to monitor my total intake.  I also have some habits of using certain foods and beverages to manage my energy, when it would be better to manage my energy with exercise, yoga, sleep and real food.  So, here is an outline of my behavioral goals for the first 10 weeks of my experience.  I'll be using this checklist to monitor myself and tweak things when I notice I am habitually unable to meet certain goals.

Weeks 1-10 (draft)

 Food

• Gradually reduce coffee to 1 8 oz cup daily
• Add a cup a day of green or black tea, if desired.
• Gradually eliminate all cheese (except 1-2 x weekly small servings of goat, feta or blue cheese)
• Reduce baked goods to 3 breakfasts /week (make awesome vegan scones, muffins and quick breads, but I think I need to branch out a bit because I notice how hungry I get my 10:30)
•  Eat three meals (eat a sufficient amount that I am not hungry and not pulled to snack).
• Stop eating and drinking at 6:30 p.m.
• Take supplements on schedule (I try to regularly take a probiotic, digestive enzymes, Vit D, B-complex, CoQ10, St. John's Wort, Green Tea extract, Herbal Equilibrium)
• Drink 2 liters of water (and/or green drink such as vitamineral green and water) daily
• Reduce sugar intake (no candy, sweetened beverages or sugar-added products like flavored yogurt)
• Increase vegetables and salads
• Keep food diary & measure foods

 Exercise

• Enjoy and savor a walk or other non-impact aerobic exercise 30, increasing to 45 minutes per day
• Enjoy and savor a yoga practice 5-7 days a week for 30-60 minutes upon waking (or in conjunction with the M/F class I teach)

 Sleep

• Computer off by 9 p.m.
• In bed reading by 9:45 p.m.
• Get up at 6:15 gradually changing to 6:00 a.m.

 Emotional Work

• Write in productivity/gratitude journal daily
• Increase life story writing
• Sing youtube karaoke 3 times per week
• Meditate or savasana 10 minutes daily
• Self-empathy worksheets at least weekly

Fit 150 at 50 ::: the 26 week plan

Living with integrity must begin with taking care of myself--a lifelong struggle that has only intensified with becoming a wife and mother.  Here I'm outlining the beginnings of my personal manifesto on self-care.  I've come to these principles through a wide array of avenues.  I'll expand on each of these and on the points of my personal manifesto in future posts.

• I walked a path of major weight loss 15 years ago (80 pounds in about a year and a half), 50 pounds of which has stayed off.  I permanently changed my body and my life.
• I have read many major books on the link between weight and emotional stuff.
• I have training, academic knowledge and practice in the fields of health behavior and health education, yoga, psychology, biology, and nutrition.
• My role as a stay at home mom for 5 years.  My role as a caregiver to aging parents.  I have  been thinking well about other people, but not so well about myself.
• Lately, I am reading and researching spiritual matters and "happiness,"  documenting and synthesizing my learnings into a plan that may best serve me.
• Years of counseling, co-counseling, and learning and practicing non-violent communication (mostly empathy training).
• 11 years of marriage to someone incredibly different from me.

So, I have a goal and I want to use this blog to keep myself on track.  This is largely for self-monitoring, but also to document the progress of my journey. 

My goal:  To be fit and 150 pounds by my 50th birthday (which is August 3, 2012).  I have 28.6 pounds to lose, but along with the pounds, my intention is to shed any vestige of the baggage that has kept me from loving myself fully, taking responsibility for my health and wellbeing, and enjoying my life.

So, here is the beginning of my manifesto on self-care, which will guide my journey on my 150 by 50 path

My Self Care Manifesto (in Progress) - January 23, 2012 

• I am equal with everyone else (I am as important and as in need of time, care, attention, consideration, kindness, gentleness and respect).
• Taking care of my self and getting my needs met is solely my responsibility.
• Taking care of my self is non-negotiable.
• Taking care of my self is actually time for me to enjoy life and experience pleasure in my body, mind and spirit!
• Taking care of my self is part of my job as a woman, wife, mother, daughter and parent.
• I cannot fully love others unless I fully love myself.
• Wellness and vitality require expenditures/investiments of time, energy and (sometimes) money.  These may require sacrifices in other areas (leisure, sedentary pleasures, relationships that are draining, impulse spending, long term financial investing, etc.)
• Taking care of my self must first and foremost matter to me. 
• I also must assume that taking care of myself matters to everyone else in my life, no matter what other messages I receive.
• Help is always available.

There it is.  Comments?  Suggestions? 

Tomorrow I'll outline my behavioral goals for the first 10 weeks of my plan.