Day 7: almost there

Smoothie 7? Check!

OK, so as I mentioned elsewhere, this was a tough morning, one on which I nearly caved and made myself a delectable slice of toast.  Which would be completely absurd considering that I'm almost done, have almost completed this 7-day body cleanse de-tox that I embarked on last Saturday with the wonderful Dr. Kate Tenney, ND.  How silly would that be, to bail when the finish line is in sight?  It's really amazing how many rationalizations my little brain came up with, one after another, reasons why it really doesn't matter one way or the other which day it is, etc., etc., and you know you're just going back to the wheat-teat anyway, just get it over with.

Reminded me of this, by Peter Bregman, on why it's hard to keep resolutions.  It's not the motivation.  We generally have that in spades.  It's follow-through.  It's not letting our brains derail us.  Like mine almost did this morning.

I'm not going to lie. With the end so near, the oh-fuck-it voice was the loudest.  But instead of reaching for my beloved Dave's Killer Bread when I opened the freezer, instead it was the frozen mixed berries, of which I had just enough left for this morning's smoothie.  And because, honestly, at this point the taste of the so-called Medical Food is something I'm so over, yes, I threw a banana in there.  And then wondered, while drinking down its deliciousness, whether that was really so different after all than caving in to the bread.

Look, the list of things I've learned from this 7-day experience is long.  I think finally the whole food pH thing has really sunk in to a bone-level with me, something I've been resisting ever since Crazy Loretta (my former eyebrow technician) became its chief apostle about 10 years ago.  [Come to think of it, Crazy Loretta has been on the cusp on a lot of health issues, not just the pH, but she was the first person I ever heard talk about green juice, loaned me books years and years ago on the subject.   Hmmmm, crazy but prescient? Interesting.  But still crazy.]  Also, I have a new and deep appreciation for how sweet actual food can be, like aforementioned banana.  An apple?  Completely candy sweet.  So good.  And of all the things I've been craving -- toast, steak, toast, butter, cream in my  coffee -- note that sugar hasn't come up once.  No chocolate?  That's nuts!  I thought I couldn't live without it and now look at me, doing just fine.

I'm not sure what I will do tomorrow, how I will return to the Land of the Eating.  I do not, DO NOT, want to have become a fussy eater who says No to everything and has to bring her own food everywhere and is on some stringent impossible plan.  But I do want more greens on my plate and I want to stay plugged in to this awareness of how my food feels once I've eaten it.  That's just so precious.  And hard-won.

Oh, and I want some chicken.  Let's be clear about that.

XX

by jove, i've got it: 2012 is the Year of ...

Apparently it's not enough to lay out a two-page Chart for each new year.  Maybe it used to be enough, but then it growed.  A few years ago a theme emerged when I reviewed all the items in each labeled section.  Then, thanks to Laura Christensen, the Chart grew a sutra, too, a short easily-memorized phrase that summed it all up for me, that when repeated would bring me back, in an instant, to the whole point of it all. So, last year's pithy little sutra, summing up The Year of Discernment, was Say No, Say Yes.  Easy-peasy and kept me on point.  So a two-page Chart and a theme and a sutra.

But now it seems the year has grown a goddess, too, something I was completely not expecting, something I would have resisted had I had the opportunity.

Two days ago, after days of working on this year's plans, thinking and waiting and watching it all take form, suddenly a realization bonked me frying pan-style on the head, leaving me like a cartoon, little spinny wheels in place of my eyes, stars dancing over my head. Boing-oing-oing.  I was in the woods, hiking with Mr Burns, in that place where I do my best thinking, surrounded by all that green and texture and the sounds of squirrels chattering in the trees.  Something clicked.  Oooooh, that's what that's all about?

Listen: if you think years of practicing yoga doesn't change you, you're mistaken.  It gets inside you and does its thing even when you're unaware of it, and then shows itself in unexpected and delightful ways. That's what makes it seem like magic.  For reals.

So, suddenly two days ago the lightbulb went on and I realized that I was entering Year Three of a three-year cycle.  I had absolutely no idea I was in a three-year cycle, but as soon as I knew what the theme of this year was going to be, then I remembered the Navaratri workshop with Douglas Brooks and Sianna Sherman last September, and boy oh boy, did it all fall into place.  [Navaratri is a 9-day Hindu festival dedicated, three days each, to the goddesses Kali/Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, really one goddess fractalized into three, three ways of looking at reality, three stories that star you and me.]

Kind of spooky.  Check it out.

2010: Durga

2010 was the year of Durga for me, my self-proclaimed Year of Intention. I stuck a big image of her on my red Moleskin and carried her everywhere I went, riding her tiger, wielding her weapons to cut down obstacles and bullshit in my path, to free myself at last from a situation I had been stuck in too long.  It was a powerful and ferocious year, in which I said Yes to so much.  By the end I was exhausted, but also jubilant: I had found the courage to give up safety for something more beautiful.  And yes, I was exhausted, bone-tired and ready for the big change I'd created for myself, to a simpler, less crazy life.

2011: Lakshmi

2011 was for me, as above, the Year of Discernment.  My notebook bore the image of my favorite animal, the wolverine, symbol of wildness and innate strength, my signifier to myself that there was no more need to wield a bristling bundle of weapons 'cause I had it all built in.  All I had to do now, now that I'd cut the head off the demon, was get clear.  Where would I draw the lines?  Where would I devote my time, my energy, my passion?  Until two mornings ago, I hadn't thought of Lakshmi ever in connection to that year, because I hadn't realized yet the final piece, the theme for 2012.  But once 2012 popped into my head, I knew it.  I returned to my notes, I saw these words and breathed, "Lakshmi invites you to the greatness of your creative potential, to turn your klesas [wounds] into lakshmis [boons]." It was her all along -- the year in which I realized with a jolt that I am a creative person trapped in a barely-creative profession, the year I grew my writing, the year in which I simplified everything, eliminated everything unnecessary, washed away everything until only gleaming little nuggets were left in the pan.  And with these in hand, I step into 2012.

2012: Saraswati

In all my musings, my dreaming of the year and my constant interviewing of Joe, getting his input on our shared plans, asking him about his own goals and my own, what came up over and over again as an overarching theme for this year for me as for him is "making things nice, making things beautiful."  While it may seem like fixing up the office at the shop or upgrading the website or finally getting a cushion for the window seat at home are disparate To Do items, they all support a general theme of shri, or beauty, of making our lives more beautiful.    They share something essential with my goal of stepping more fully into my writing this year -- more self-expression this year, in short: more art.  And if it was intention and Durga in 2010, and discernment and Lakshmi in 2011, then boom, if it's shri then it's got to Saraswati in 2012-- and getting down to the business of knowing what our lives are for and making them as beautiful an expression of who we are as we can.  

2012: The Year of Shri!

With so much gratitude to all my teachers, to my sister and Yogateau, and to the countless friends who make my world shine with joy: get ready, this year is going to be SO good!  

The Sutra, you ask? 

Shri. It. Up!

Resolutions, shared, more powerful

Woody Guthrie's resolutions for 1942 have been making the rounds for a few weeks. In case you didn't see them, they go like this.  I love that they're handwritten, along with doodles, at the middle of the book, and include beating fascism and wearing clean clothes.

It got me to thinking about how interesting it would be to see certain people's resolutions at key moments in their lives.  These people wouldn't necessarily know at the moment they wrote their resolutions that the coming year would turn out to be key, but with the benefit of hindsight, we'd all go, Duuuuuude, that was so prescient.  Like, for example, if Rosa Parks had it as a resolution in 1954 to change up her seat on the bus.  I'm making light of a huge thing she did, in fun, just to illustrate what I'm talking about.

I did a very fast search on Amazon and nothing turned up, so a book of resolutions hasn't been done yet.  Who wants to take that on?  Of course, it's now on my List of all the books I wish I had time to write, but until someone decides that they want to sponsor me so that I can devote myself 24/7 to this and other projects such as my field guide to the American Douche, then this blog is about it.

So, given my interest in reading other people's resolutions, natch I was very intrigued when I received email from Daily Candy earlier today, with the following tease:

It was definitely a let-down that clicking through just lands one on a slide-show of things the editors plan to buy this year to support their resolutions (although I won't lie: there are a couple of items that I fell immediately in love with, like the magnetic egg-cup train and the self-publishing kiosk and the espresso machine).  But still I liked this smidgen of insight.  Like I wrote elsewhere, I love hearing about other people's resolutions -- such a quick hit of what that person really cares about, really wants, like you're mainlining their essence for a sec.  

The Harvard Business Review blogger Peter Bregman had a really interesting bit in an interview that I listened to yesterday, about how most people don't keep their resolutions because  their fear of failure prevents them from making resolutions about the things they really, really care about.  Like you don't want to make a resolution that "this is the year I write my novel," because if you fail, then it means you're not really a writer.  And that scares you.  So you don't make that resolution; instead you resolve something that doesn't go straight to your heart, to your idea of who you really are, like the novel does.  Instead you resolve something about not biting your nails or being friendlier to strangers.  Something you don't really care about and which you can let go, in a few weeks, when your favorite show finally comes back on or whatever.

The key to success, Bregman says, is to make resolutions about things you really do care about.  And then to keep those resolutions right in front of your nose, integrating them into what you do every day, so that they don't exist in a separate dimension apart from your daily transactions.

For me, another key is sharing what your resolutions are, so that you're more accountable.  Saying them out loud makes them more powerful, give them form.  Volume gives them volume, ho ho ho.  But I'm kind of a weirdo who dreams of friendships in which we share things like this, things like our resolutions for the year, and then have lunch once a month and talk about how it's going.  That's my idea of dreamy: a Saturday lunch with friends and notebooks, maybe a glass of something sparkly and a tasty plate of food, listening and cheering and dreaming.  That would be sweet, indeed, and so real, so much better than catching up on details, details we can all read about on-line anyway.

As I'm completing my resolutions project for this year, I'm really taking Bregman's words into account -- really making sure that I am resolving about things that truly matter to me, that have the potential to be life-changing.  Sure, there's always the nest-egg resolution but what about the rest, the really juicy stuff?  What about the book?  What about getting paid to write?  

It's about keeping the map on the dashboard, just staying focused on what you really want.  And who doesn't need help with that?  By sometime in the middle of next week, I'll be posting my resolutions here, as a way of giving them volume.  And if you want to email me your list, I'm so your Resolution Buddy.  

Let's Go Big this year.  It's time.

XX

my thing with the resolutions

I've probably got a couple more posts in my system this month regarding resolutions, so if you're sick of the subject, consider this fair warning.  In my opinion, resolutions get a bad rap, so I'm staying in my corner, cheering, wishing their beneficial effects for all.

Maybe the problem is the word.  Resolutions is so non-specific and tired.  As you can see at left, I prefer the word Plans.

I have a lot of practice at this resolutions thing. Since my birthday is in January, this month always feels like a beginning to me and I've nearly always taken advantage of it to re-check my destination, consult a map, jot some notes.

Some people do a Vision Board this time of year.  I have never made one of those, but I like the idea.  My several attempts to stage a Vision Board party at my house, complete with poster board, magazines, glue sticks and scissors have fizzled -- couldn't make the calendars work -- but I may try and make one soon, if only to put up pretty pictures of sloths and rainforest to stoke my intention of getting to Costa Rica this year.

Resolutions, plans, intentions: they're not magic.  I have no such notion that I will wake up on January 1st a completely changed person, as Bernadette Birney put it on her blog this morning, "with new resolve--as though the past had been surgically removed."  Nope, it isn't that at all.

But wait: in a way they actually ARE magic, these little plans I laboriously write down, in pencil with color-coded underlining, in my brand-spankin'-new notebook on pages that I will later flag with a post-it, for easy reference.  There is something that actually does feel magical to me about creating a little space at the beginning of the calendar year to think about what I really want in the coming period, writing it down in my neat little categories, then using this Chart to steer my life throughout the months.  Not only do I consciously choose the destination, but I even get to make the map. Dude, that is magic.

And it works.  I swear.

OK, it's not foolproof.  Sometimes it doesn't stick for as long as I'd like.  Although I managed to settle my sleep in 2010 (Goal #1 under Personal, which you can see in the photo above), it is still something I work on -- although less consistently since my sleep is less disturbed now as a rule.  And some goals, particularly in the Financial section of my annual Chart, seem to migrate from year-to-year.  The nest egg is just a permanent fixture.

But I really can't say enough about how beneficial this process can be, no matter the bad rap it gets all over the place.

I'm in charge of my life. For me, that means I have a say in where I'm going and I go there consciously, with my bags packed neatly, never forgetting my toothbrush or a pocket knife, essential tools for all journeys, magical or otherwise.

And really if we're talking magic, there is nothing more magic than just being alive.

I'm driving. You in?

Viveka: what good's a theme without a test?

For the past two weeks, I've been seriously dragging by Friday morning, so so sleepy and eager for the weekend and rest.  School started three weeks ago, and the Shri Series with Laura Christensen last week, so I'm gone from home Tuesday - Thursday evenings, getting home between 8:30 and 10.  I recognize that for regular people that's not late, but since we wake up at 5:30 around here, by Friday, I am little more than a caffeinated zombie.

Naturally, I exagerrate.   It's the caffeine talking.

I am remembering that my theme for the year is viveka, discernment.  For me, this really means being discriminating about how I expend my energy.  Since I said Yes to pretty much everything last year and ran myself ragged, this is the year to practice saying No.  So far, sort of good.  But as an indication of how things are going, for the past couple of days I've been carrying around an index card in my calendar, adding notes to my list of Priorities: Allocation of Personal Time.  So far I've written:

- more time to read, read more consistently.
- more time to write, write more consistently.
- time outside every single day.
- set a bedtime and stick to it.

There's more but I'm too tired to get up and fetch the card.  The details matter less than the point -- which is that already, 6 weeks or so into the new year and my new theme, I have come to its first test.

Excellent!

I am really, really serious about doing less and being more particular about what I say Yes to.  I have definitely said No to some things already this year, and made some different choices about how to spend my time.  It's been fun and a little sad also, as I shift the pattern.

So what's the problem?

The problem is that I arrive from class or yoga, excited to be home and eager for kick-back family time on the couch.  Which generally means that the TiVo is in someone's hand and I'm hanging around, in a pile of pillows, watching an animal show or comedy or enjoying Steven Tyler as a judge on American Idol.  Watching TV isn't an activity that really does anything for me at all, except that it's companionable time under a shared blanket, laughing together or discussing yet another delusional singing contestant or crying about some astounding feat of vocal prowess.

But it's keeping me up way too late at night.  Because of course, once the tv goes off and we make our way to bed, then there's the book I've been waiting all day to resume reading.  I can get by on 6 or so hours of sleep for a couple of nights, but if insomnia happens to strike somewhere in there, I'm done for.

Wouldn't it be so much easier to stick to my resolutions if there weren't so many distractions? If it weren't so hard?  But that's exactly the point, ain't it -- if you want it, sometimes you have to work for it.  For me in this year of viveka, I know I need to come back to foundations, re-establish some fundamental discipline at the core of every day.   I need a schedule, damn it, including a bed time.  Since I started my new job at the beginning of January (not coincidentally, at the beginning of viveka-year), I've been de-toxing and floating a bit, part of my recovery.  Enough!

Tomorrow, while Joe is gone at his race, before and after I go to yoga in the morning, I'll be sitting and thinking about how to structure my new schedule so that I'm spending my time on what I really want to spend it on -- reading, writing, thinking, being outside, hanging out, having fun, and still getting enough beauty sleep.  'Cause lord knows, I do need that beauty sleep.

Durga is my homegirl

Probably because it’s Year of the Tiger, this has been a Durga year for me.  I’ve been living with her image from the start, her picture on the front of my notebook and in front of my eyes every time I take it out to scribble an idea, take some more notes.

Year of the Tiger is my year, anyway.  Born in January 1963, I got in at the tail-end J of Year of the Tiger 1962.  And naturally, I have a tiger-thing, have long dreamed of visiting Ranthambore or some other tiger park in India before my demise.  And that there was a tiger painted on the backdrop of the 7-day long Immersion and workshops with John Friend in SF in February, helped seal the image in.

But more than just the tiger, it really has been about Durga  all year for me.  Every time I saw her now-peeling image on my notebook, she reminded me to wield all those weapons in defense of what’s true and right, for me.  I thought about the work of cutting what’s unnecessary, mustered the ferocity to stay on track.

And believe me, you need all those arms and all those weapons.

I’m still reflecting on everything that happened this year.  Durga served me well.  I am really grateful, humbled and happy and satisfied with how much everything has evolved in one year.  And aware of how much work it was to maintain that degree of sustained focus.

And since we’re here, at the end of 2010, it’s time for 2011 notebook and 2011 goals.   Which means pretty soon Durga and the red Moleskin notebook she adorns will be heading into the cabinet soon to sleep with 2009 and prior yeas.

Thanks to this year’s experience,  I realize that the work of setting a course for the year gets bigger every year. It used to be coming up with New Year's resolutions. Then it became for me a list of goals, in discrete categories, 'cause that's how my mind works. Then, thanks to yoga, I added in the creation of a sutra for the coming year, a word or phrase or couple of lines, to help keep on course, a distillation, concentration of the idea of the year.

And now I see that there's another level, too. There's the image, the visual to help keep me on track, to provide a non-verbal heads-up every single day.

So excited to dream about 2011, to consider where I want this path to take me over the coming 12 months.  Year of the Rabbit, here we come!