Message from the Muse

Update!

Just a little FYI! I'm still working on the next inspired piece of writing for this blog, "Little Red Hen part deux", but in the meantime, if you're looking for me, I'm at art camp. In Bali. And I'm posting to the Angi in Wonderland site to keep everyone up to date on the odyssey!

Drop me a line!

A Certain Something (part duex)

continued from A Certain Something, Part One

Performance

And now for the performance part of our equation. Remember the equation? It looks like this:

Preparation + Performance + Trust = Confidence

Performance is really straightforward and yet it's amazing how easy it is to muck it up. There's only two things necessary to perform in a way that brings confidence:

1) Show Up
2) Do your best, leave the rest

Now most two year olds have #1 down pat. They know they have to wake up and cry or squeal or tumble out of bed and wander into mommy's room to get breakfast. They show up. And most  forty two year olds also have this down. You wake up, boot up the computer, fire up the car, go where you need to go. So what's with this hiding under the covers? I'll tell you what brings on hiding, and that's anxiety. When we feel as if we have to bounce the red rubber circus seal ball, always keeping it in the air, never dropping it, the pressure can be overwhelming. But that's where #2 comes in.

Do Your Best and Leave the Rest.  Most of us--ok, me--are trying to do The Best instead of Our Best.  And when I'm in that mode, I ransack my own energies. I attempt to Do The Best and Never Rest, which means I end up in an endless cycle of doing, critiquing and agonizing. When in this mode I neglect to Leave the Rest, which is a gorgeous sorta kinda double entendre. When I neglect to Leave the Rest (the details I cannot control, the remaining tasks when I'm already tired, the workload that extends beyond my means) then I Leave the Rest --I don't relax, don't sleep well, don't enjoy the little moments in the day that could be filled with peace but are instead filled with anxiety. If we are always attempting do the best, then evaluating our performance and stacking it against some imaginary ideal, on what rare occasions will we actually be satisfied and how incessant are the opportunities for dissatisfaction and disappointment?

If we stop at Our Best and let all the rest go on any given day, I wonder, would the drug companies producing Xanax and Prozac still remain in business? I'm not saying that pharmaceuticals don't have their place. But I've noticed when I'm exhausted or overwhelmed it's easy to become depressed and seek escape. Whether that escape is under the covers, over a plate of food or in a pill, it's often an escape from a self-created task master. I call mine the Drill Sergeant. He lives inside my left brain and wears a dark blue uniform and an old fashioned mortarboard police cap. Around his chest is a silver whistle and he's not at all shy about using it. He looks a lot like the policeman on the Monopoly board, the one that says "Go Directly to Jail."

It's not that my Drill Sergeant is a bad guy. He sprang from my  inner realms probably sometime around kindergarten when my little self was learning about schedules and agendas, responsibility and obligation. Around the time we're learning how to read the big hand and little hand on a clock, we're also figuring out that life isn't just a long episode of Kaptain Kangaroo interspersed by Shrinky Dinks, Play Doh Factories, and naptime. We learn about Right and Proper and Fitting In. We learn what will and won't get us knocked down on the playground. And up springs the Drill Sergeant as a way of protecting our sensitive selves. He tells us what to do better, stronger, faster so that we're always on the right side of approval. (The upward side of our parents smile)Of course his enthusiasm is rampant and if he goes unchecked he ends up acting like a dictator instead of a helper, driving our lives to the incessant sound of his whistle. Do this. Go here. Do. Go. Do. Go. We become driven until one day we look up from the human race and realize we're no longer driving.

I let this guy rule the driver's seat for thirty some years until I finally sent him to Jamaica and ordered him to remove his cap and whistle, don a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops and drink Mai Tais by the pool. He's much happier now and so am I. Of course he returns from time to time to oversee important projects. And occasionally he shows up unannounced and has to be shacked overnight in my guesthouse before I remind him of his retirement, pack his bags and send him back on the next plane.

And since many of us in this pandemonium of a day and age, allow ourselves to be driven, it's a good time to talk about pace vs. race. We are all involved in the Human Race but it doesn't mean we have to compete to win. I like to think of WIN (thanks to author Rick Jarow) as What's Important Now. When I live in the present, considering what takes precedence at any given moment rather than looking ahead to the stacks and piles to have-tos, or looking behind at the shoulda-wouldas, I feel present in a way that allows me to move at the pace of guidance, rather than race around at the beck and call of the Drill Sergeant. Being in the Now opens up a whole level of energy that is never open to me when I'm racing, running around with thoughts in my head of  "not enough" and "what if". Western society certainly does not support this idea, telling us through media and advertisement that we need more time, more youth, more money, more organization, more speed, more efficiency, (and more gadgets to increase our time, our money, our efficiency) in order for us to win, to feel good about ourselves.

It takes a lot of effort to live in the Human Pace instead of the Human Race, but it's effort well spent. Quite simply, I like myself better when I'm moving at a pace that engenders consciousness, presence. I muck up alot, but on the best days, I make myself a list and get what I can done, one thing at a time. Then I close the computer and feed the girls, have a glass of wine, watch an episode of The Office with Silas and let go. Tomorrow is another day. I've done my best. It's enough.

Part three coming up...stay tuned.