Needing an Abundance of Words

And just like “that”, I’ve now tripled my writing activity as compared to last year. This is my third blog of the year. Mwa-haa.

I’ve been working with a coach recently, as a part of my professional development.* My coach and I have been digging into the self-limiting behaviors and thought processes I have. Everyone has them, and mine have been coming close enough to the surface of my consciousness that I’ve begun some kind of little emotional side war with them. I’ve been yet unsuccessful with understanding WHY I can’t take leaps, even as bold and no-nonsense as I am. I am uncovering them, and here are a few reflections along the way.

1) When you’re little, you don’t have words. The adult work is to find them.

Things do happen to you when you’re little, damaging things and wounding things – and these things don’t have to be anything that someone else would call traumatic, but they affect you for the rest of your life. Some folks have undeniable tragedies and horrors of course. But no matter what, if things happened to you when you’re little, you’re young enough you don’t have words for what happened and how it affected you. And you grow up, and you still don’t have words. And you don’t have words until you do some very hard work about bringing that little child experience into your adult mind and process, process, process. 

You know the things I’m talking about. That thing that one person said or did you remember clearer than anything. Something that’s buried deep, something you sense is shrouded in shadow, but you can’t call out and manifest without an expert guide’s help.

Well, I’m finding those little things, and because I was a sensitive child, they affected me deeply and rather inexplicably. They are echoes of feeling that ring outward and gain terrifying amplification the longer they live without words. And I carry those stupid weights with me apparently wherever I go. The way I know that there’s an issue is when I start to feel that sense of being cornered and sense of going a little bit (or a lot) crazy. Those are definitely issues that don’t have language, and therefore don’t have resolution. I think processing, resolution, healing and other things require words.

The reason I think they need words is that without words, we can’t make sense of what happened. In the void, chaos reigns and I think that’s what’s behind that sense of feeling like there’s not enough oxygen in the room when someone or something hits a nerve. When that bruise gets hit, I wonder if it’s sometimes more the sense of pure chaos that’s coming that we are stressed out by more than the incident itself. To put words around it defines it, and eradicates chaos.

2) It’s hard to find inspiration around abundance thinking. And why is there so much crap about abundance and money?

I think I’m a decent practitioner of abundance thinking in some ways, but I feel like I could do better. I went on a hunt to find symbols or reminders or inspiration to help me exercise this muscle better, and what I found was kind of dumb. Discarding all the hopeless memes and inspirational quotes, nearly every article and story and blog that linked abundance with money. And that was especially true with religious-flavored articles. It was amazing the consistency between the linkage of “abundance” and “money” page after page. 

Then I got to wondering: is this indicative of this specific point in time? What would abundance-related literature look like a generation ago? A decade from now? My guess is that:

• The previous generations would have equated abundance with ENOUGH FOOD. Who doesn’t have a grandparent from the Greatest Generation who hoards food? My grandmother’s fridge is like a massive 3D version of Tetris, with small wrapped up bits of cheese or meat or what have you precariously placed together creating complex brainteaser puzzles to access the milk.
• Generations now probably equate abundance with ENOUGH MONEY. The debt crises, housing issues, wage stagnation, etc. etc. etc. Busts and booms, esoteric economic forces that most people don’t understand but still affect the world global population with senseless recessions. The declining, elusive quality of life people used to think acquiring more money would solve.
• I think some generations now and into the future will equate abundance with ENOUGH TIME. We’re seeing the tradeoffs between fancy, high-paying jobs for slower paces of life. Young people are moving away from over-valuing money (what happiness did it ever bring?) to valuing time more and more. After all, they’ve seen money come and go – time is the truly most limited resource we have. I think this also helps explain the increasingly discussed phenomenon of FOMO (fear of missing out) – not being or doing things at the right time. There’s more talk now about opportunity cost than ever, as well. It’s all about time and timing. Tiny house owners talk about using their resources for experiences instead of things – which is an emphasis on time well spent.

I have no scientific basis for these observations, but I wonder if researching them would prove them correct. Before it was food, now (and before) it’s about money, tomorrow (and now) it’s about time.

In my own bones, I think I experience anxiety around all three of these. I have traced my being overweight in some respects to food anxiety (odd as it sounds). I have made myself miserable thinking too much about why I’m not further ahead financially. And I’m stressed out these days with the 41 years I’ve had on this planet and not quite enough to show for it, in my humble opinion. 

The next 20 years had better count, but I’m still running with these weights on my heart and limbs. So, let’s confront these childhood moments, put words to them, face them down, reframe them, and do the work to grieve, forgive, let go, or whatever. Right now, I need abundance thinking to find the right words.

* Ladies and gentlemen, if you are driven people, I can’t evangelize enough the value of a coach. For me, I’m pretty introspective, probably too reactive and honest, deeply passionate, and some odd combination of “too much” sometimes and “too introverted” other times. Probably, like most humans, I am some concert of clashing colors and ideals. But when you need help understanding some of that at a more intimate level, you need someone like a coach who tells you how things are – how you are – with the benefit of sophisticated paradigms and life experience.

Processing Your Order (How I Created my Vision Board)

Leah's vision board going to print

I heard about vision boards from a few friends. One gal friend was telling me about her experience putting one together with her sisters and cousins, who (I'm sure) were also as equally talented, driven, beautiful as she is. And not only do they meet and encourage/challenge each other regularly on their vision boards, they do this kind of thing every year. What a gift to have a cadre like that. (I'd almost kill for one.) And while I crave deep conversations and partnership, I've always struggled with spending a little too much time inside my own head, and find it hard to find folks to do this kind of thing with. #introvertchallenges

Well, normally I resist things that feel gimmicky, but I also realize that when I say that, I'm trying to shut things out that sound non-native to me. And. Well. But isn't that contrary to the point? When you need fresh perspective, you need to do things differently. Right? I need to be open, and stop being dumb about this. Ok. So here's my little project I did this morning. I'm ridiculously proud of myself for doing this. 

• I started with a bit of googling and youtubing, because sadly I've never done a vision board before. That was helpful to get started. The guidelines were simple and thoughtful. Just my style.
• I decided that since I didn’t have time to gather a bunch of magazines and print and cut out images and break out my glitter glue, I’d use Canva. I love Canva. I use it a lot for work and decided it would work great for me today. And it turned out to be perfect for me!
• The how is kind of fun. Canva has layouts with grids. You can upload images, and then “click” the images into the grids, reposition, crop, and apply filters if you want, and boom. It’s GTG. (Being a marketer helps here, as I do stuff like this – image selection, messaging, calls to action – all the time.)
• I searched for images online, free good ones. And I superimposed some words on top of them, like captions. Batta boom, batta bing, presto chango = vision board.
• My vision board is all about things I want. Things I want to be, to have, to do. I recently wrote out a bucket list, so some of those went onto the board. Some images and words were things I wanted in the near future, and some were longer term goals, and others were perpetual wishes for myself. I spent some time switching some pictures out for bolder images and words. That was an interesting process to notice that a particular wish or goal wasn’t bold or honest enough. It felt really good to dig deeper and deeper, and I replaced several images and captions a few times. I had to redo my layout a couple of times because of this, but that was a part of the process for me.
• I had one final issue – I need some physical version of my vision board to look at home or at work or whatever. (Vision boards supposedly work best if you look at them regularly, to inspire and challenge and focus you.) So this was one of the coolest parts: Canva has a print function where you can create flyers and posters with a few clicks. For a couple hours of work online, and for less than $10, I will have a few copies of professionally printed vision board coming my way in a few days.

How cool is that?

I’m not sure if I would have gotten through this process without these tools available to me. I’m a professional and a mom and a wife and all that other stuff, too. My evenings are crunched, my mornings harried, and most weekends spent chasing some elusive sense of rest and well-being. Finding the time to get a bunch of old print magazines and art supplies together is NOT my idea of a good time or one that even feels practical. I’m going to say God bless image searches and free online graphics tools and my professional skill set that made doing all this super easy.

And it’s funny. This image in this blog is showing the final step, which is submitting my flyer-sized vision board to print. And it’s also rather indicative of what a vision board is all about at its core – you’re supposed put an order into Life, essentially, about what you want. You tell LIFE what YOU want. And you’re to focus on realizing that order for yourself. Being present and reflective in the process, is important too. Processing your order, indeed! 

Burnout, Shmurnout

So, alas.  I am yet again entirely average. I have hit some kind of mid-career burnout, and am working on addressing it.  Which is more work, and too much work was the cause of this to begin with. Talk about conundrum!

Swamps of Sadness, from that glorious
childhood movie Never Ending Story

This isn't the excruciating moments of parenting with small children where one wonders how to get from one second to the next, or the piercing reality that "I chose this" of some hard job or something.  This is the relentless march of putting other things ahead of the truly most important things like self and family for far too long that one has pretty much lost one's way.  Bedraggled of hair and imagination, one is wearing torn, gray clothes in a torn, gray land, wondering what happened.  But scarily not caring overly much how and when it did happen so wrong.

It's REAL. And thank God some of my friends know what this is and have been there or are still there and regard this state of mind and heart with the death-like seriousness it deserves.  I am burned out utterly. 

Some say...

...that burnout is common for people in mid career.

...that it affects those in the "giving" professions, like medical professional, ministers, etc. more than others.  I don't quite qualify here, but whatev.

...that recovery is entirely possible - and I believe it. 

...that recovery takes time - and I believe it.

And I simply want to say, in the midst of this working on life with calloused fingertips with no fingernails and raw, bleeding tips - that I'm ok or will be.  But I also am confused. 

When did we get here?

-Lear