Making Things Happen vs Seeing What’s Happening

Be the Best Emotional Wreck You Can Be

One of the major things I notice in the Forest Dweller years is I am much more interested in seeing what is happening rather trying to make something happen.

For example, I just glanced out my window and saw a brightly colored green and turquoise lovebird drinking out of an orange and red bird of paradise flower. So beautiful. The birds are distracting me from making this post happen!

I am in the learner’s permit stage of doing this! I really ran with “I am powerful and can make this happen” for so many years. As an “Enrollment Manager” for a leadership training program, I would do almost anything to reach my weekly target; throwing my health and well-being off the cliff at every turn.

The problem with the “being powerful” model is that deep down you know you are not! If you hit your head against the wall long enough, you realize that all the energy you put into changing yourself- be more congenial, more fit, eat a clean diet (whatever the hell that is), be less angry- isn’t actually in your control. Yes, change happens, but not the way we have been led to believe.

My image of how change happens for me is more like an iceberg where every once in a while a large chunk of ice I am carrying just falls off on its own accord. If I’m lucky!

Then there is changing someone else- you can’t! That for me is a giant relief. I love the 12 Step pointer of ‘gardening your own acre.’ I feel my work here is first be clear what my acre is and next to take care of it the best I can.

Lastly I’ll leave you with this advice I was given once when hosting a retreat here in Hawaii. All was going well, but for some reason I found myself getting more and more anxious as each day passed; something I knew intellectually was ridiculous, but didn’t have the ability to stop. The course leader’s wife asked me conversationally how I was doing and I burst into tears.

At the break an older woman came up to me and told me a story about going through a divorce several years earlier. She found herself constantly upset and unable to stop not matter how hard she tried. She smiled at me and said “I just decided to be the best emotional wreck I could be.”

This helped me so much at that moment and other times in my life when I have felt trapped in that state. That is what’s happening!

So whether you are in an emotional wreck stage or another, I would love to hear your comments on how making things happen vs seeing what is happening impacts your life.

Thank you for reading this!

Heidi

And now there are 5 lovebirds on the bird of paradise!