Limbo October 18, 2009

I don’t close on the house for a month. However I’m about 90% packed and the waiting is torturing me. Especially since I haven’t found a renter yet for the duplex. I don’t feel at home, so I don’t really want to start any new routines here. At the same time this is a month of my life and I don’t want to waste it just waiting.

October is my favorite month. It’s the most beautiful when fall really takes hold and the heat of summer lets go completely. The light is most beautiful the most dramatic, rays of sun hitting everything at the most flattering angle. I want to enjoy it, delight in it. But I wake up every morning waiting, holding my breath, jaw set, tense, trying to convince myself I have to live in the moment and not wait to do anything.

Weekday mornings are fairly easy, getting ready for work involves the same things all the time: brush teeth, water, coffee, wash face, dress, gather various food and bags, leave with keys. The weekends are harder. The duplex has a shared washer/dryer in the detached garage. For me laundry has become a huge once a week thing. Getting up on Saturday or Sunday morning and racing to get it done.  Two loads every week, one clothes, one sheets and towels, washed and dried by noon, with various errands or trips during the two hour-long drying cycles. For some reason I can’t seem be relaxed about it.

Whenever I think about moving into the new house I stop myself, because if I don’t get the house I don’t want my world to end. I keep thinking of The Passion Test. When you list your passions, you add at the bottom “This or something better.” So, this house or something better.  I also don’t think about the house because when I do I start to think, “in 20 years, when I’m 63, I still will not have paid off this house. And I won’t be anywhere near retirement. And I wonder if I’ll have actually survived the apocalypse.”  It’s really not a good way to think.

So it’s a combination of thinking that way about the house and thinking I’ll never find a renter for the duplex. Actually it’s more Purgatory than limbo. I’m really bitter about having to put forth effort to find a renter. But I’ve decided that even if I don’t get the house I’ll still look for a renter for the duplex, and moving out as soon as I’ve found one. I’ll go month to month today and put up flyers, but I really don’t want to. I’d rather go for a long walk in the park. I’d enjoy that.

Asking permission September 6, 2009

Right now, in this moment, my life seems full of things I don’t want to deal with. That’s been the past couple of weeks. In a new place, still putting away the pieces of my life, but not seeing a whole, never seeing the whole. Each piece I put up still has a thin coating of regret and disappointment I can’t seem to wipe off:  I know this won’t bring me the life I want, I wish I had the life to use this more, I think I made a mistake.

The other day at the end of the yoga class I teach at work, my young colleague asked if I was teaching anywhere else. I’m not. I talked in circles about how I just hadn’t gotten around to it, blah blah blah. And then she said this: “Well if you really wanted to do this you’d be doing it. Right?”  I nodded my head because the affirmative was the only logical response to that question.

Let’s discover a passion! And then do everything to hide that passion, make it contingent on some other factor, make it a footnote in life instead of the major text. That’s the type of person I am. My desire for something automatically makes it off limits, unattainable.

I should at least ask, right? Honestly, what’s the worse that can happen?  “No. Who do you think you are? You can’t have this. What made you even ask? You’re so obviously not good enough!” All said in a look, or the avoidance of a look, thus confirming my lifelong suspicions.  Yes, I know this is insane. I know I can’t possibly know all of that. I know I can’t read minds. And I know I’m making assumptions, but… I am a self help addict after all and this is how we think. If I didn’t think like this I probably wouldn’t need to read all these books.

So how should I think instead? So I can step away from the fully loaded Kindle? I think I may have the whole asking-for-what-I-want thing backwards. I think I need to ask others to give me something, a job, love, joy. Instead I need to ask myself for more, ask myself for what I want, give myself permission.

Let me just say off the bat that this theory is wrong. Why?  The whole idea of asking for permission, for approval, is based on someone else – who knows more, has more, frankly is just better – giving it. That’s not me. Or is it? Maybe I know more, have more and am better than I believe. Maybe the first step is asking myself for permission – and giving it – before I go into the world and ask for anything.

That’s an interesting idea.

SHA Review: The Passion Test December 14, 2008

The Passion Test: the Effortless Path to Discovering Your Life Purpose by Janet and Chris Attwood is self help nirvana. Passion has always been the missing ingredient in my life. I haven’t done many things with passion, not jobs, not hobbies. This book gave me a framework and process for figuring out my true passions and understanding that they are real and want to manifest themselves in my life. As long as I suppress them, they’ll weigh down other parts of my life. Passion wants to live.

Like many of the self help books I’ve read, I first checked this one out of the library. (If I’d bought all the SHBs I’ve read, I’d never have any money. That said, I still own a lot of SHBs.)  I knew after the first few chapters I needed to buy it, so I could underline key statements, write in the margins, keep it as a reminder of my true passions.

The authors Janet and Chris Attwood (formerly married couple. Now that’s interesting) do a couple of things that I hadn’t seen before, especially in terms of determining what your real passions are. One, the authors define “passion” and make a distinction between passions and goals:

Remember, passions are how you live your life. Goals are things that you achieve. Living a life of peace could be a passion. Creating peace in the world is a goal. Living life in abundance could be a passion. Eliminating poverty on earth is a goal… Do you get the difference? Passions are about process. Goals are about outcomes. (page 26)

I had never understood this distinction before. I don’t think I realized there was a distinction to understand. Once I read this, I understood on a deeper level what living with passion really is. I don’t (necessarily) have to have goals, I can just be on my path. What’s the saying? “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” A saying I really hadn’t applied to my own life until now. I always assumed I needed a strong, defined, worthy destination to even begin the “real” journey. Not so. How you live your life, day to day, is more than the goals that you may (or may not) reach. Or at least that’s now my interpretation of it.

The second thing the authors do, unlike other SHBs I’ve read (see: the best year of your life by Debbie Ford or honestly, anyone’s therapist), they really stress that you put down your ideal life, even if it’s being a rock star:

When most people take The Passion Test, they start to write down a passion, but if they can’t immediately see how they can practically manifest it, they erase it (especially the really big ones! ) and put something down that they can easily put their arms around. In other words, the play it “safe.” (page 18)

Their theory is that if you don’t put down your ideals you’re not really putting down your passions. I can’t agree with this idea.

The way I really really really want to live is the very life I avoid because I think I’m not good enough, not thin enough, not experienced enough, not young enough to live that way. So when someone asks me about my job and my life and I say “I’m not happy”, and they say “Well what do you want to do?”, I always end up saying “I don’t know”. That’s just a flat out lie. I know exactly how I want to live, I just don’t have the courage to give voice to it. And of course if I don’t have the courage to say it, I don’t have the courage to even try to pursue it, let alone go all out after it.

The authors ask you to list 10-15 passions (not goals) with active verbs, (I am living, thriving, teaching), then prioritze them into your top 5. Those are your passions. This was incredibly revealing for me. Most of these things have been in the back of my head as “one day, some day, if only” ideals for my life, but when I put them on paper I realized I really really wanted to live my life that way.

While I fantasized about them, I avoided actually believing I could live that way, without some deus ex machina like winning the lottery, because it was too painful to think about and not pursue. Honestly it’s still painful to think of my ideal life, because there’s still a little – o.k. a big part of me that believes I can’t really live that way. The authors suggest that you write your passions down, carry them with you, tape them on the bathroom mirror, in the kitchen. I’ve only written them down on a little piece of paper and put it in my purse, my huge purse that I can practically lose my wallet in.  So I’m going to write them here. Publish them to announce that this is the life I want, to manifest them.

My Passions

1. Being in love and married in my ideal relationship

2. Living in a beautiful home on the beach

3. Teaching and learning yoga nationally and internationally

4. Thriving as a professional writer

5. Traveling the world First Class

This or something better!

“This or something better!” is a little ending they put on to let the universe know that you are open to passion and happiness. The authors were a part of The Secret so there’s a lot of intention/attention/letting the universe do it’s work stuff. Actually the authors seem to know and be a part of lots of fields of self help, especially the business end. They know everybody!  So some of the writing comes off as marketing for some of these organizations. Some of what the authors do and believe in is out there, and this is coming from a chant-loving yogini.

The Passion Test is like other SHBs in that it’s overly long because they mostly have one basic (although in this case really good) idea and the rest is filler, oh sorry, examples from people, famous people in this case. I still haven’t actually finished it as truth be told, I don’t finish most SHBs.

All in all The Passion Test is a great SHB for anyone who’s ever said “I don’t know” when they were asked what they really wanted to do with their lives. It’s the essence of self help books in that it goes right to the heart of why people read these things: to become the person of their (often secret) passions, to actually go after what it is in life they truly want, without explanation, without apology, without asking permission. This is what we’re seeking, all of us, no matter what we call it: Passion.