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Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Where the heck is Gayle?
I am listening to her heart and blogging like crazy with hubby Ron over at MayDecemberSecrets.com. Please stop by, you'll always find new content there! Between the new website and my private practice (yes, I have
openings for new clients from time to time), I am staying busy! Feel free to email me if you have questions. "None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which
is heard by him alone."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sunday, October 19, 2008
How to Keep the Waters Clear in Your Relationship
Lust is easy. Love is hard. Like is most
important.
~Carl Reiner
(I originally posted this in May on our May December Secrets Blog.
I hope you enjoy... )
Spring doesn’t last long here in our part of Texas. It already feels like summer,
but I’m frustrated because our pool isn’t ready for swimming. I’ve been practicing pool chemistry for 9
years now and I still can’t quite get it right. Today Ron and I made one of our numerous summer treks to the pool store.
I wish we had gone sooner. Today would have been a great day to get in the water. One more time, we show up with a
bottle of pool water in hand begging for HELP! A pool connoisseur is going to have to show us how to fix this
mess. Again I learn something new about pool water chemistry. I continue to be amazed at how much there is discover about
this subject and wonder if that’s what they were teaching the day I skipped chemistry class in my senior year. We
return home with list of detailed instructions. We have pool homework! Add a little of this, wait a few hours, put in a dash
of that, wait a bit more, and top it off with a skosh of something else. Sleep on it and the pool should be good to go in
the morning. During 21 years of swimming in the same pool with Ron - so to speak, we’ve made treks all over the
country (including the Barnes and Noble right down the street) to get expert advice for our marriage. In some instances, more
desperately than in others. Keeping the waters of our marriage swimable is an ongoing process and a delicate balance. Some
days I need a little extra togetherness. On others, I “vant to be left alone”. Ron isn’t a mind a reader
and I don’t come with one of those nifty chemical test kits to help him figure out exactly how much of what I need and
when. One of the things we know for absolutely positively sure about each other is that we don’t know anything
for absolutely positively sure about each other (an exaggeration - our genders have remained the same throughout the years
give or take a little estrogen and testosterone). When our water gets murky, we try to figure it on our own. If it doesn’t
clear up after awhile, we get help. We’ve learned that getting help is NOT a sign of failure, it’s a part of our
commitment to staying “in love”. We don’t wait to ask for assistance nearly as long as we used to. We want
the waters swimable as much as possible. We also discovered that sometimes we have to sleep on it and we’ll be
good to go in the morning! Today I ask myself if I am willing to do what
it takes to keep the waters in my relationships swimable?
7:30 pm cdt
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Judgments
What other people think about you
is none of your business! What is important is
what you think about you.
~ Melanie Tonia Evans ~ Oh how I wish I could tell you that I've
perfected this! I first heard it from a client of ours who was in one of our groups. It ended up becoming
the motto for that group. Today Ron and I were being interviewed for a new column on we.com. I heard the same words
coming out of my mouth and shortly there after Ron "Stumbled" on the exact quote. Since I was getting ready
to write my pondering, I knew I was being given a gentle nudge to write about it. I wonder how many hours of my life
have been given to judging what I perceive to be the judgments someone might have about me. And I'm not talking
about the good stuff. I can imagine all kinds of unflattering things that someone might be thinking. If I could
count all the times I've actually been confronted directly by someone (outside of my parents and husband), I think I would
have digits left to spare. What's so scary about a handful of frank discussions in 50 years? If someone won't
come to me and tell me there is a problem, then why am I wasting my precious energy fearing what they might be thinking.
If it isn't important enough for them to come to me directly, then it probably shouldn't be important enough for me
to give it any air time. On the other hand, I'm also guilty of judging myself pretty harshly. No wonder
I'm afraid of what "you" are thinking. I'm thinking things much worse about myself than you ever could.
Come to think about it, if you are like me, then you are too busy worrying about what I am thinking about you because you
are judging yourself more harshly than I ever could. Whew, that was a mouthful! And I think I just did it again.
*!$#! I just judged you by judging that you are judging you. Obviously, it can be an endless cycle and
on paper it seems pretty silly. Let's just give it a rest!
Today I ask myself,
will I be more gentle with myself and think some kind thoughts about you and me both?
Using Your Powers for Good
"The highest reward for a person's
toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it."
~John Ruskin
Many of you have noticed my interest in a certain
little chap from Great Britain. No, we are NOT related! I discovered Elliot innocently enough. A cousin
of his recruited me to give Elliot an interview. Seems he was running out of family members to interview for his weekly
podcast. When I finally listened to his show, it was amusing and interesting. Knowing that Elliot was only 8 and
half years old intrigued me. Clearly this was a very smart boy. I assumed his parents were into podcasting or
perhaps were in the broadcasting field. Sometime after my interview with Elliot, his dad shared the story of the podcast's
conception. The story has stayed with me. When Elliot was
about 7 and a half, I decided the only way to stop him from going around saying how bored he was when the family computer
was being used by his mother or brother was to buy him a laptop. Rather
than "chucking money at him and spoiling him", we agreed that he would sit with me for an hour each Saturday for
six months to learn how to do everything: word processing, spreadsheets, databases, operating system configuration, you name
it. As you might imagine, Elliot tore through everything. By the time
we got around to buying the laptop, Microsoft had put Vista on every PC that you could buy. (A happy day for Apple - Gayle
would like to add). So we bought Elliot a book on Vista to go with the laptop and gave it to him for his eighth birthday.
I had previously struggled for two weeks trying to get Vista to talk with my wireless router. Apparently MS
changed the broadcasting settings and I gave up trying to fix it. Two days later, Elliot had solved that particular
problem on his own.
In the Vista book, there was a chapter on podcasting and one week after his 8th birthday,
he produced his first podcast on his new laptop. It took me a few weeks to sort out the website etc.. by which time
he had completed three podcasts. He is less bored now! I wonder what might have become of Elliot without ingenious parents
who were willing to help him channel his interest into something useful. They taught him how to "use his powers
for good (not evil)" so to speak. What's even more amazing than an 8 year old creating his own podcast (which
includes looking up facts, learning to say hello and goodbye in a different language each week, finding people to interview,
writing scripts, finding jokes, creating listener competitions, and delivering a ponderous thought for the week to end each
show) is that he hasn't missed a show in 37 weeks. Talk about follow through - I can't even get my weekly pondering
out every week! I need to call it the "every so often" pondering! Elliot needed to be guided into finding
something useful and stimulating to do with his 150+ (my guesstimate) IQ points. Perhaps he could have mastered Guitar
Hero or World of Warcraft. His parents thought outside the box to find ways to supplement his education. Rather
than punish him for bugging them about the computer, they found a way to use his interest to educate him. I wonder how
many brilliant kids out there are falling through the cracks because their parents impose their will on the child without
regard to the child's talents and interests. The story could have gone quite differently had Elliot continued to complain
about being bored and his parents hadn't come up with the splendid idea of letting him EARN his birthday present. He might
be sitting in his room right now figuring out a plan for total world domination
I challenge you to notice where
your attention is naturally drawn. Are your interests idle hobbies or might they be used in a different way?
Could you focus your energy into something that would make your life richer? Perhaps your talent might make you extra
money or even help someone else. If you have children and find yourself fighting the same battles every week, ask yourself
what you can do to help your child channel that energy into something creative and useful. Quit fighting with the energy
and see where it is pointing. Chances are it is leading you to a strength that just needs help being cultivated. Today I ask myself - am I becoming the person I want to be and I am
helping others reach their potential. I will follow the flow of my energy and attention and see where it leads. I will
help my children discover their hidden strengths and teach them how to use "their powers for good!"
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Magic Moments
Last week I ran across a movie I really love on TV - Instinct with Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding
Jr. It came out in the late '90's. I had not seen it in many years.
One of the major themes in the movie is control or our lack there of in life. When I first saw the movie,
this resonated deeply with me. It still does. It moved me so much I wrote about it in my newsletter
in December of 1999.
Here is what I wrote:
Hopkins plays an imprisoned doctor and Gooding is the psychiatrist who tries to save him.
During a harrowing moment, Hopkins attacks Gooding's character and throws him into a choke hold to make a point. Hopkins is shouting at him. He angrily demands "tell me what you have
lost?" "Tell me what have I taken from you?"
Gooding desperately replies "you've taken my control".
Hopkins screams "no - try again! That's the
wrong answer!"
You can see the answer dawn on Gooding's face as he weakly replies "you've taken
away my ILLUSION that I am in control."
The cinematic moment gripped me in a very real way. The "correct" answer was
in my head before the character had it. My eyes were wet with tears because the truth was obvious even in my life. For me,
deadlines and commitments are the choke hold.
I don't like admitting that I am not in control. You probably don't either.
I'm learning that the more I surrender my illusion of control, the more peaceful
I become. The choke hold of everyday life eases. I have choices about how I respond. I have many tools to help me decide what
I'm going to do next. The more flexibility I allow myself - the more freedom I experience. I may not be in control - but I
am free. So are you.
Today, remember flexibility is the key to freedom.
If you want to create your dreams, you'll have to change your mind along the way!
In retrospect, the timing of those words was amazing.
I was a month away from entering into one of the most difficult years of my life. I spent most of 2000 watching one
of my closest friends die. That year taught me that any sense of control I thought I had was indeed an illusion.
During my recent viewing, I was taken by a different
facet - the impact of and need for acceptance. Many of you took time to share with me "magic words" when I
asked for them a few weeks ago. One theme that developed in your responses was really more of a "magic
moment" than words. In times of need, having someone listen to and hear you wihout judgment made
a significant difference for you.
The movie illustrates how critical having someone
"be with us" is to our emotional development and healing. We don't need to be told what to do. We need to know
that we matter and are loved in spite of our faults. In those magic moments we usually can figure out what to do
for ourselves.
Never underestimate the power of “being with” someone. Next time a friend or loved one takes time to share their pain or fear with you listen
without the need to fix; hear without the need to get them to turn down the volume; just be present and you may become part
of the magic.
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2008.12.01
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