My 100-Day Project Week 9
1. Last night we were sitting on the deck sharing a bottle of wine (Austrian Gruner Veltliner) and Rick was speaking with a client on the phone. I was watching nature around me: trees sprouting new leaves of spring, a gathering of carpenter bees, a pretty little bird with a yellow belly and a sweet chirp high up in the tree of our deck, a couple of squirrels chomping away at something, also high up in the tree. The low light of sunset illuminated the tree’s limbs with yellow-white light. A lovely moment, then I got up to open the door and realized we were locked out of the house. One of the cats stepped on the lever and, just like that, we couldn’t get in. Ha! That’s life — a beautiful moment followed by a challenge. Laugh, cry, smile, get frustrated. All in a day’s experience. P.S. a friend has a key, so she came to the rescue.
2. I woke up at 4 am this morning with so many ideas of what I wanted to write about this morning and now I can’t think of a single one. I am reading Anita Moorjani’s book Dyi ng to be Me. What an impactful story. She was in a coma with stage-4 lymphoma, had a near death experience, and fully recovered to tell the story. Seems unreal to think about it but you can’t deny the authenticity with which she writes. Her story makes me question and think about the nature of human experience.
3. I had a realization this morning when I was finishing reading Anita’s book. She wrote how our feelings about ourselves are the most important factors for determining our lives. It dawned on me that this was what Michael meant when he said emotions are like directional signals showing us where we are going. They signal the direction we are heading — toward who we truly are or away from who we are. Emotions are not to be judged but to be understood in the context of finding our way to our authentic lives. I’m sure I don’t really understand this at a deep level, but I’ll keep exploring the concept.
4. We had a couple of pieces of furniture to get rid of that we could not give away online or donate (have you seen how many sofas are on NextDoor? Most places don’t want them, especially, if you have animals in your home.) I thought of Goodwill of course but learned that people use it as a dumping ground, costing Goodwill time and money to sort and dump items that should never have been donated in the first place. So, I called one of the junk removal companies. They try to donate the items and if that doesn’t work, they break them down to recycle as much as possible. It wasn’t cheap by any means but there are really few options.
5. My MEA subgroup has been discussing the question of Who Am I? Most comments focused on the outward: I am a mother, father, spouse, lawyer, whatever. Another person asked: Who Am I Becoming? We all struggle with knowing who we are. I am learning that we aren’t the outward things and we aren’t our thoughts. We live underneath our thoughts. This is a difficult concept to get my mind around. It’s hard for me to separate myself from my thoughts.
6. I was working yesterday and was so involved in what I was doing that I completely forgot I had a coaching call. I missed the call and was shocked. I expected my computer calendar to ding to remind me and it didn’t. This is the first time I have ever missed a coaching call and I felt mortified. My coach was so understanding but I was embarrassed. She kindly allowed me to re-schedule. She said that I must have been so in the flow. True but I wonder if it was because of the work or the fact that I was just trying to get it done. But it probably doesn’t matter either way.
7. I am thinking about the idea of downsizing this morning. We go through our lives accumulating stuff and then later we realize we have so much stuff. Many times it’s overwhelming to even think about how much stuff we have and what to do about it. Growing up moving around a lot makes it easier for me to get rid of stuff. Since we had the house painted and new flooring put it, it was the perfect time to reduce the level of stuff. But I am struggling with the art work. I have too much but it’s hard to part with it. That is my next challenge.
