Face Doesn't Fit?

A couple of people I know are having trouble with ‘face doesn’t fit’ syndrome right now. You know what I mean – your personality, values, dress-sense, whatever, isn’t a match for the prevailing culture (be it corporate or social) and no matter how hard you try, nothing you ever do is appreciated. The short answer, of course, would be to advise them to high-tail it out of there with indecent haste, but that in itself wouldn’t address the deeper issue - if your face doesn’t fit, why exactly would you be hanging around there?

We can all drag out the usual excuses of economic reasons, convenience, duty and responsibility, but the bottom line is we stay somewhere that’s painful because a part of us cannot let go, even when we want to. We want to prove ourselves – to get have our skills, our talents, our beauty, our contribution recognised – but no matter what we throw at it, it’s all good energy after bad. It seems unfair – and it is unfair – yet the longer we get hung up on who’s right and who’s wrong, the longer we avoid facing the basic question of ‘why am I trying to get the approval of people who don’t appreciate me?’.

Life really can be like Groundhog Day if we don’t get to the bottom of the essential question. We can get on our high horse, decide to blame those who failed to appreciate us, then move on to somewhere else where we’ll just replicate exactly the same pattern or we can start to look at what remains unhealed in us that causes us to find ourselves in those kinds of situations.

When you’re still looking to an outside source to give you the approval you crave, you can only find yourself in yet another dysfunctional family. The bad news is all families are dysfunctional, because in our humanness the love and approval we give and receive is conditional. Unconditional love is the preserve of the divine. The good news is that some environments are less dysfunctional than others. If you want to start moving up the scale from ‘face doesn’t fit’ to ‘welcome on board’, you’ll need to start giving yourself the love and acceptance that the world cannot give you.

We chase love and approval in all our relationships – at home, at work, in friendships and even in the most passing of acquaintances – yet what we chase can never be fully received until we are accepting of ourselves. We seem hard-wired to run around trying to get everyone to love us, but it’s only when we genuinely love ourselves that they really will too. Yeah, paradox sucks, but that’s the way it is.

When we care more for the opinion of others than we do for ourselves, we keep showing up in places where we’re not appreciated, as though by getting someone new to approve of us we’ll heal the old wounds of when we weren’t accepted or loved for who we are. Nice thinking, but sadly it doesn’t work that way. More approval from the outside does not heal inner wounds. It papers over the cracks, but eventually those flaws will start to show again. That’s why over-achievers are never satisfied, regardless of the dizzy heights they may reach in their ambitions – absolutely nothing from outside can fill the gaping hole of unworthiness inside.

Tedious as it may seem, there’s no magic bullet – just constant vigilance to take good care of yourself and keep yourself out of harm’s way, to be kind and gentle in the way you treat yourself and to dwell more on the good things about yourself than the ones you think are bad. When you value yourself, your body, your time and your energy, others have no choice but to do the same.
When you don’t, and you stay in environments that you know are destructive for you, one of the first places to suffer will be your health. The specialist in mind/body medicine, Joan Borysenko, reminds us “If we say yes to something while our bones are screaming "NO!", we need to be aware of what that does to the body. The tension this creates immediately releases stress hormones whether we are aware of it or not. These stress hormones engage the body's fight or flight system. If we do this continuously (override our needs), we wear down our adrenals which then compromises the immune system."

Before it gets to that point, gather up your self-respect, realise that you’re chasing something you’re never going to receive and resolve to make a better choice. Sometimes it’s not even as dramatic as a choice between a difficult environment and a better one, but more that your time is done in a particular place and your further growth would be better served in a different environment.

The spiritual author, Henri Nouwen, tells of his struggle in choosing to leave a working culture that he had enjoyed, but was now no longer serving his greater purpose. He writes, “I liked teaching at Harvard and I made some beautiful friends there. At the same time, I didn’t feel Harvard was a safe place for me. It was too much podium, too much publicity, too public. Too many people came to listen for an intellectual understanding rather than spiritual insight. It was an intensely competitive place, an intellectual battle-ground. Harvard was not home. I needed a place where I could pray more. I needed to be in a community where my spiritual life would deepen in relation to others.”

He adds, “My decision to leave Harvard was a difficult one. For many months I was not sure if I would be following or betraying my vocation by leaving. The outer voices kept saying ‘You can do so much good here. People need you!’. The inner voices kept saying ‘What good is it to preach the gospel to others while losing your own soul?’. Finally I realised that my increasing darkness, my feelings of rejection, my inordinate need for affirmation and affection, and my deep sense of not belonging were clear signs that I was not following the way of God’s spirit. The fruits of the spirit are not sadness, loneliness and separation, but joy, solitude, community and ministry. As soon as I left Harvard, I felt so much inner freedom, so much joy and new energy, that I could look back on my former life as a prison in which I had locked myself.”

This week, observe yourself closely for where you are seeking the approval of others, particularly in places where you’re not appreciated. Are you locking yourself in a prison? If you’re a square peg, what are you doing hanging out with the round holes? Why aren’t you looking for a somewhere with a lot of other square pegs? If your face doesn’t fit, find somewhere that it does. And before you go, take a close look at the unhealed issues that landed you in a place like that. They’ve come up for healing, so don’t suppress them or you’ll just find yourself back in a similar prison some time soon.

Give yourself a lot of love this week. Speak kindly to yourself. Drop the criticism. Look in the mirror and smile – don’t count the wrinkles. Remember the good things about yourself and forget the rest. Take a holiday from self-criticism. Give yourself something you’ve been depriving yourself of for a while – maybe it’s a day out, a massage, some new clothes or time alone. It doesn’t have to be expensive, just let it be an action that clearly says you value yourself.

And while you’re at it, say ‘no’ to something you don’t want to do – strong self-worth is as much about saying ‘no’ to what you don’t want as it is saying ‘yes’ to what you do want. Be your fabulous self and love who that is. Dust off the ‘I Am Fabulous’ mantra and give it another whirl. Say it like you mean it – when you believe it, everyone else will too.

Finally, here’s an open letter from James Arthur Ray, author of Harmonic Wealth, to the newly-incumbent President Obama. You might find some inspiration and insight for these troubled times there …

http://blog.jamesray.com/2009/01/open-letter-to-president-obama.html?utm_source=president20090126&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=Blast

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

A Change Is Gonna Come

By the time you read this, the American presidential inauguration will probably have taken place for a candidate who rode in on slogans of change. My guess is that he probably hadn’t imagined quite how much change we’d all be experiencing by this time – and not all of it feeling too good. But then again, unexpected change is rarely experienced as a joyful event. As creatures of habit, we don’t like it when the walls shake around us and we’re forced to open up to a new way of being. We try desperately to hang on – even to things that aren’t working for us – just to avoid change. Yet, as we grow and change within ourselves, we become totally incompatible with the structures – and often the people – with which we’ve surrounded ourselves.

While we’re feeling the impact of the collapse of so many structures in our collective lives, we’re bound to be experiencing similar breakdowns in our private lives, where relationships, friendships and work environments that no longer bring us joy are beginning to feel totally untenable. Navigating these times is going to take a little faith and a lot of intuition, as we work through our own individual renegotiation of our assets and liabilities, to balance the books on our personal lives.

There’s a sweet illustration of this in a book a friend lent me on the weekend, Petite Anglaise, by an English girl whose blog about her life in Paris became a cause celebre when she lost her job over it (and subsequently won the case). More interestingly, the book covers the impact on her personal life as her social life expanded when the blog became successful, ultimately taking its toll on her relationship. The subtitle tells it all: In Paris, In Love, In Trouble.

Having pursued her childhood dream to live in Paris, had a child – Tadpole – with her French partner, Mr Frog, her life had settled into the deadening routine of metro, boulot, dodo or tube, work, sleep that we all know so well. Her relationship with Mr Frog was as dead as that routine, but still somehow functioning. Then, through her blog, she struck up a conversation with one of her readers, who lit a spark of passion in her otherwise flat-lined life. That’s where the change (otherwise known as trouble) begins. The ensuing story is a real rollercoaster that highlights just how – even when we’re not willing to accept it – change can spread through our lives like wildfire. And just like fire, when it’s done with destruction, there’s an opportunity for new life to arise again.

That’s the bit we usually forget when faced with change. We focus on what we are about to lose, rather than what can rise up in its place – and that it could be even better than what we’re currently holding on to for dear life.
Problem is, none of us are overly keen on a baptism of fire, yet that does seem to be the way life likes to throw change at us. Or, more accurately, that’s how life has to throw change at us when we refuse to read the signposts along the way.

Of course I say this as a card-carrying, world-class, Olympic-standard avoider of change, utterly word-blind when it comes to reading the signs in my own life – although I am getting a little better at that. Let me illustrate.

Let’s see, it took being incapacitated by chronic fatigue so badly that I didn’t even get out of bed for six months (or recover for several years) for me to grasp the concept that the work I was doing (and the workaholic way in which I was doing it) was completely incompatible with who I was at heart, and that it was eating away at my immune system on a daily basis.

Ah yes, and then there’s a relationship that went on for six years when it was probably only good for about six months. We were fabulous friends, but in all honesty, that’s what we should have stayed. Did I leave in the early days when I realised it probably wasn’t going to go the distance? Nah, held on to the bitter end, as it all crumbled slowly and painfully around me.

So, those are some of my qualifications for the How Not To Do It club and there’s plenty more where that came from. Curiously enough, those kinds of experiences are precisely the ones that have given me the greatest growth and wisdom – even if most of it came after the fact. Don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather listen to someone who’d been through the mill, rather than just had a theory about it. Anyway, here we all are, going through the mill together in times of enormous change and my hard-won best advice is pay attention and act early.

This week, really take a look at the structures and patterns in your life and see just how well they’re working for you. If something’s feels stale and lifeless, investigate whether it’s DOA or capable of resuscitation. If there are no signs of life, start looking elsewhere. If you hang on to a dead thing, sooner or later it’s going to stink.

If something’s not working for you, but you can see a better way to handle it, speak up. This is no time to stifle your feelings or your opinions. Maybe the other person or the organisation could do with a new viewpoint. We’re all in this together and it’s a time to look forward, not get tied up in the constraints of the past. You can’t follow your intuition if you’re suppressing what it’s bringing up, so pay real attention to your all your feelings and those uncanny inklings that foretell the winds of change. It feels a whole lot better to be riding the wave than get dumped by it.

If you’ve outgrown something, have the courage to face it head on. Avoidance is not a helpful strategy. Having been the queen of that particular tactic, you have first-hand evidence that it’s not the way to go – and that it makes for a rocky ride. Get with the programme sooner rather than later, as the wisdom gained from taking the long way round does rather tend to come at a hefty price.

Be fabulous – bite the bullet and face things exactly as they are. When you do that, your intuition will kick in and help you find the path that really is right for you. Clarity is your security. When you know what you’re dealing with, you can handle it.

The Art Of Full Engagement

Tough times necessitate creativity, so on some level perhaps the universe is stimulating us all to find more creative ways of living our lives – experiencing them in our own individual ways, as only we can. With that gauntlet thrown down, we need to explore new ideas that open up greater possibilities for us that might not necessarily involve the old paradigm of time and money. Jim Loehr, in his book The Power of Full Engagement, encourages us to think of our lives in terms of energy, saying “Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance”.

Loehr points out that, while it may seem obvious, we seldom take into account the impact of energy at work and in our personal lives. He adds “Without the right quantity, quality, focus and force of energy, we are compromised in every activity we undertake. Every one of our thoughts, emotions and behaviours has an energy consequence, for better or for worse. The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time that we have.”

Before you moan that life seems to conspire to drain your energy, Loehr has that point covered too, saying “There are undeniably bad bosses, toxic work environments, difficult relationships and real life crises. Nonetheless, we have far more control over our energy than we ordinarily realise. The number of hours in a day is fixed, but the quantity and quality of energy available to us is not. It is our most precious resource. The more we take responsibility for the energy we bring to the world, the more empowered and productive we become. The more we blame others or external circumstances, the more negative and compromised our energy is likely to be.”

Loehr asks “If you could wake up tomorrow with significantly more positive, focused energy to invest at work and with your family, how significantly would that change your life for the better? As a leader and a manager how valuable would it be to bring more positive energy and passion to the workplace? If those you lead could call on more positive energy, how would it affect the quality of service they deliver to clients and customers?”

Defining energetic full engagement, he notes “To be fully engaged, we must be physically energised, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest. Full engagement begins with feeling eager to get to work in the morning, equally happy to return home in the evening and capable of setting clear boundaries between the two. It means being able to immerse yourself in the mission you are on, whether that is grappling with a creative challenge at work, managing a group of people on a project, spending time with loved ones or simply having fun. Full engagement implies a fundamental shift in the way we live our lives.”

OK, so it’s not going to be as easy as it first looked. Full engagement is going to demand a commitment to playing full tilt at whatever you’re doing, not just going through the motions. It’s going to ask that you set the boundaries that allow you to say ‘no’ to what drains you and to say a whole-hearted ‘yes’ to the things that energise you. It’s going to require that you stand up for your life.

If creativity feels like it’s failing you right now and you don’t even know where to start, begin by looking at examples of lives you admire and at people you know who show up fully, whatever they’re engaged in. Creativity isn’t always about making something entirely new, but in combining existing things in new ways. Maybe you already have the building blocks of the life you want, but you haven’t quite got them in the right order yet.

The artist Michael de Meng – who makes extraordinary post-modern sacred shrines from the mundane items that make up our daily lives – says “In my view, creativity is rampant thievery mixed with reinterpretation … I see the act [of creativity] as being like a martini shaker, in which you add all those ingredients that you like or admire. Three parts Picasso, two parts Joseph Cornell, seven parts Mexican folk art, a splash of abstract expressionism and garnish with a twist of Dadaism.”

This week, what’s going into your cocktail shaker? What would it take for you to show up fully-charged in every area of your life? How can you keep your energy high in mind, body, heart and soul? Who has a life you’d want? Who has a way of being you’d like to emulate? What’s the purpose beyond your own immediate self-interest that you could get juiced-up about? Come on, it’s going to be a big year. It’s time to bring you’re A-game – do you know what that looks like? Even more importantly, do you know how to sustain it?

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Pearls Before Breakfast

Having taken the decision that this year’s theme for me would be joy, I’ve been swotting up on all things pleasurable. In a new book entitled Sex, Drugs & Chocolate: The Science of Pleasure, Paul Martin has a fine old romp through the history of pleasure and the science behind it, coming up with some useful tips for creating a more joyful life.

As pleasure-seeking creatures, we will naturally spend our lives in the pursuit of pleasure, although paradoxically that may not bring us happiness. As Martin writes “Put at its simplest, pleasure is the biological currency which evolved to guide our everyday behaviour. Pleasure and its dark counterpart, pain, are there to encourage us to do ‘the right things’. Pleasure entices us to behave in ways that are likely to be biologically beneficial, while pain discourages us from doing ourselves harm. To some degree, therefore, we are hard-wired to be hedonists, devoting our lives to the pursuit of pleasure.”

The fly in the ointment of the pleasure-seeking equation is, according to Martin, that “For pleasure to do its job as a motivational common currency, it must be short-lived … we habituate quite rapidly to pleasurable sensations, no matter how earthshaking they may be at the time, forcing the determined hedonist to keep increasing the dosage or to seek new thrills. Socrates likened pleasure-seekers to the damned in hell, who are condemned forever to keep trying to fill leaky jars. Psychologists today prefer to call the phenomenon ‘the hedonic treadmill’. And what keeps the treadmill turning? Desire – the force which compels us to keep wanting new things, new experiences, no matter how wonderful our present pleasures may be.”

Essentially, no matter how much you love getting or doing something, it’s going to get old pretty quickly. Martin notes “Solid research evidence shows that people who are highly motivated to acquire money, material goods, social status or celebrity are, on average, unhappier and have poorer mental health than those whose priorities are more balanced.”

The good news comes in understanding that while the intense pleasure of reaching a big goal will ultimately always fade – leaving space for desire to arise anew – we’d enjoy our lives more on a day-to-day basis if we increased the frequency of our smaller pleasures. It’s the little indulgences that are the bread and butter of a happy life, not just the big achievements. That’s not to say that you don’t keep chasing your dreams, but that you don’t forget to enjoy your life as it is now.

As Martin puts it, “Pleasure-seekers who want lasting happiness should therefore concentrate on finding more frequent opportunities for less overwhelming sensations. This means pursuing more of the pleasures in life that many of us take for granted.” He says those pleasures should be “readily available, repeatable at frequent intervals (preferably at least once a day), not too risky and cheap or free (pleasure is not the preserve of the wealthy)” and goes on to offer the following suggestions:

· Sex and chocolate: Should be high on any pleasure-seeker’s list. When used correctly, they deliver intense pleasure as well as improving your mental and physical health.
· Acquiring new information: Studies have shown that keeping the brain active by learning and processing new things stimulates the release of pleasure-giving endorphins.
· Use your nose: We are so pre-occupied with our other senses that the pleasure of smell is overlooked. For me it is in pencil shavings, damp earth after rain, vanilla and Chanel No 19. You will have your favourites. Remind yourself of what they are – and enjoy a good sniff.
· Sitting in silence: An increasingly unfamiliar experience. Besides being pleasurable in its own right, sitting in silence for a while is the simplest method known to science of alleviating mild anxiety.
· Trust people more: The idea that we can gain pleasure from trusting and co-operating with one another is not just wishful thinking. It is based on hard empirical evidence. Numerous studies have shown that it activates the ‘reward centres’ of the brain, leading to pleasurable sensations.

Martin concludes “There are countless other more obvious pursuits – from a spot of gardening or cooking, to appreciating an uplifting piece of music or an exhilarating view – that will work perfectly well to increase your harvest of pleasure. The point is that when it comes to happiness, many of us would do better to ignore the siren calls of desire that tempt us toward novelty or excess, and instead focus on doing more of the everyday pleasures that are familiar and available to all.” Right – that’s me down the bakery for a cupcake, then!

Lord knows why we need a scientist from the Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious to point this out to us, but clearly a life made up of a lot of small, regular pleasures –with its own high points – is preferable to a lot of misery punctuated by the occasional peak experience. Now why is that so hard for us to learn?

Well, apparently the residents of Washington DC are no smarter than the rest of us when it comes to the little things. A couple of years ago, the Washington Post set up an experiment where the renowned virtuoso classical violinist, Joshua Bell, busked to a morning commuter crowd at L’Enfant Plaza metro station with his 1713 Stradivarius to see if anyone would stop to listen. They wanted to know if, “in a banal setting, at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”. In short, hardly.

It took three whole minutes of exquisite musicianship for even one person to turn their head and notice the music, even though they kept on walking. Six minutes passed before the first person actually stopped to listen and in the three quarters of an hour that Bell played, only seven people stopped, while 1,070 hurried by. Of those who did listen, few recognised the extraordinary quality of the performance and only one person recognised the musician. Before we label Washingtonians as total philistines, we have to realise that – given the same set of circumstances in the rush hour commute – we’d probably do the same. How sad is that? Our lives are not built with space for spontaneous beauty and pleasure unless we make them so.

This week, start as you mean to go on. Take pleasure in the small things. Make a list of the things that bring you joy and start scheduling opportunities to enjoy them into the diary – people you adore, places you love, scents that inspire you, food that makes you swoon. Cast your mind back to past pleasures and enjoy the memories. What were the real highlights for you? Were they big things you chased or small, spontaneous pleasures. Remember you can have both, just make sure that pleasure in small doses is a frequent prescription for you if more lasting happiness is what you’re really after.

If you’d like to know more about the Washington Post experiment you can read the full story at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html and see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.