Author: virginiaolson

On Scars

I just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. In it, a missionary moves his family from Georgia to the Congo in the late 1950s to convert the natives to Christianity. The experience profoundly affects his wife and children, each in a different way.

Near the end of the story, his daughter Adah reflects on the experience, saying, “If chained is where you have been, your arms will always bear marks of the shackles. What you have to lose is your story, your own slant. You’ll look at the scars on your arms and see mere ugliness, or you’ll take great care to look away from them and see nothing. Either way, you have no words for the story of where you came from.”

I couldn’t help but reflect on how this is true in many situations. We all have injuries, some physical and some emotional. And in some way we are all marked by those experiences. Healing isn’t about erasing the experience itself, so much as it is about integrating it. Our hurts are part of us. They aren’t evidence of weakness. They can, in fact, be evidence of strength.

Later, she concludes, “The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.” Thus, if we allow all of our experiences to become part of the tapestry of our lives, we can create something even more beautiful than we might by simply cataloguing our success stories.

There’s a lesson in here, too, about not holding too tightly to our own stories, to our “slant.” If we identify too strongly with a certain role, as victim, or if we cast others as perpetrators, we run the risk of getting too entrenched in our own stories, getting stuck in an emotional and psychological rut.

If we can find the balance, indeed if we can find words to weave our own stories, in full color and complexity, they acquire a richness that serves as inspiration for others, and a catalyst for our own growth and development.

Inquire Within

“Nothing in the world can ever make you happy, because happiness comes from within.” – David Hawkins

I’ve been listening to Healing by Dr. David Hawkins on CD in my car. He presents a scenario: you are sitting in a chair, and someone comes in and hands you a bag of money. You immediately feel happier. But nothing in your life has really changed. You feel happier because you have a thought that reflects the belief that money can make you happy.

Likewise, your thoughts can make you unhappy. And they can be a reflection of limiting beliefs you hold about yourself and the world around you. So, thoughts generate feelings which create and color experiences in life.

Happiness is an inside job.

Really.

It may seem like it’s not true at first, but it is. Oh sure, life is easier (and arguably better) when you have good friends, a nice place to live, and a great job.

But true happiness isn’t a feeling state, it’s a being state.

Feelings are reactive, and transitory. If you spend your life chasing a happy feeling, you’re likely to be disappointed.

Think of some of the happiest people you know. I mean the ones who are always up. The ones you feel good just being around. Are they happy because of circumstances? Or because of an attitude and approach to life that reflects an unshakeable inner quality?

Want to start an inner journey towards greater happiness and well-being? Meditation is a good first step. Why? Because a meditation practice makes you more aware of your thoughts, and your thoughts shape your experience of the world. How do you change your thoughts? Start by watching them – the act of observation itself is powerful because it makes you less reactive.

The big picture? Change your thoughts, and you will change your life.

Is it worth it?

A friend recently asked this question: “What makes relationships/friendships worth not giving up on?”

The short answer? If you have to ask yourself if any relationship (romantic or otherwise) is worth it, the answer is that it probably isn’t.

Unfortunately, some people and situations will just be a drain on your energy (as well as your time). What constitutes a drain differs from person to person, but when you come upon an energy vampire, you will know it. How? By the way that you feel.

Take a moment to think about some of the people in your life. Which ones do you consistently look forward to spending time with? Which ones lift you up and allow you to be your best self? Which ones encourage you and support your dreams? These are the relationships that are worth it.

Now, of course, it’s important to look at the overall tone of the relationship. Just because someone in your life has a bad day, or a bad week, doesn’t mean it’s time to give them the boot. But if you notice a pattern of behavior that leaves you drained, depressed, discouraged and exhausted, it’s time to walk.

Likewise, if it feels like the relationship is a constant battle in which your needs never get met, or in which you find yourself virtually begging the other person to consider your feelings and your perspective, it’s time to leave. The sooner the better.

You’ll not regret taking care of you. But you will certainly regret sacrificing your peace of mind and emotional well-being in order to keep questionable people in your life.

“When will you arrive?”

“At a size 6?

At one million dollars?

When Mr. Right marries you?

When you find your purpose?

Maybe when you arrive,

you will realize

the trip is over…” – Brooke Castillo

When we don’t achieve what we’d like in our external lives, it’s really easy to get caught in, “I’ll be happy when…” It’s a dangerous place to be though, because when we pin our happiness on the external world conforming to our personal wishes and preferences, we may be consigning ourselves to indefinite misery. Sometimes if we can’t let go, we get dragged kicking and screaming.

I’ll be happy when I get that promotion at work. I’ll be happy when the kids go off to school. I’ll be happy when I retire.

I’ve been reading this great little book by life coach Brooke Castillo called It was Always Meant to Happen that Way. In it she says, “Everything that is meant to happen does. Everything that isn’t meant to happen doesn’t. “

Imagine that you believe that…what does it feel like? When things happen, you just know it was meant to be. Likewise, when things don’t happen, is it easier to let it go?

It’s kind of like the Taoist story of the farmer. Let’s face it, we never really know what anything is for, do we? Sometimes things that happen seem so good, and then later we’re not so sure. To quote Hamlet… “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

If nothing is good or bad, and things and events just are (or aren’t, as the case may be), how much mental energy does that free up?

And if everything is truly in divine order right now, is it okay to exhale and just…be?

Giving the Devil a Ride

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“An old man at church once told me never to give the devil a ride. Because if he likes the ride, pretty soon he’ll want to drive.” – Anne Lamott

Some of our biggest regrets in life have the most innocuous beginnings. It’s often the little things, the seemingly insignificant choices we make, each day, that become the fabric of our lives.

How we spend our time: Where we go. What we do. Who we talk to.  And, what we talk about.

In a book called The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy discusses how our habits, the things we sometimes do without thinking about them, can make our break us. Simply deciding to take a fifteen minute walk every day on your lunch hour may not seem like much, but if you do so every day, after a year or two, you will notice the difference. After a couple of weeks, or a month or two, it may seem unimportant, but over time, the impact will be revealed. It is that way with so many of our little habits.

On the flipside, the little things we do that are not so healthy, like sipping on a sugary drink every afternoon at work, may reveal themselves as choices that seemed unimportant at the time, but had larger repercussions later.

When we adopt healthy habits and keep positive company, we establish a trajectory which will lead us to a particular destination, if we stay on course.  Small adjustments may mean arriving far from your intended destination.

It’s good advice: Be careful who you give rides to…and make sure you stay in the driver’s seat.

On Storytelling

I’ve been thinking about storytelling since I watched Life of Pi. (Yes, I hear the collective sigh from my former English teachers.) As several wise persons have noted, it’s not so much what happens to us in life, but our response to what happens to us, that reveals our character. And much of how we respond to what happens to us has to do with the stories that we tell ourselves, and others, about the events our lives.

If two stories have the same events, and the same ending, which is true? This is the question in Life of Pi. And the answer: the one you like better is the one that’s true.

There’s a great deal of wisdom in that observation. While we can’t go back and change the past, we can change the lens, change our focus, and thereby also change our understanding and attitude about the things that happen to us.  Our beliefs shape the world and vice versa. The world shapes us, and we also shape the world. What we see we believe. And what we believe we live, and relive, over and over.

Every problem and every difficulty, when turned around, is an opportunity to learn and grow. The question is, do we allow our challenges to dictate our attitudes? Our treatment of others? Our goals and aspirations?

Often we get comfortable with familiar stories. Stock characters. Stories of good and evil. But real life is rarely so black and white. We all have within us capacity for great kindness and great cruelty. Whichever aspects of our consciousness manifest in our behavior is a direct result of the choices we make – the little choices – day in and day out.

Whether you grow your capacity for kindness is up to you.…because what you think upon grows.

The Heat of the Moment

“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.” – Anne Lamott

One of the important things I’d like to think I’ve (mostly) learned over the years is not to make decisions in the emotional heat of the moment.

Sometimes, in the midst of an emotional storm, it’s tempting to take some action, to relieve the pressure of the intensity of our feelings. We can start to mistakenly believe that if we take drastic action, we will arrive at the solution to the problem, whatever it may be.

Unfortunately, this is rarely (if ever) the case. In my own life, I haven’t yet made a decision in a state of emotional turmoil that seemed wise when I considered it later. As an adjunct to this, conflict resolution became much easier when I learned that every thought does not need to be shared aloud. Indeed, there are a great many better left unsaid.

One of the things I noticed when I started meditating was the sheer amount of garbage manufactured by my mind, on an almost constant basis. I daresay this power would be impressive if it could be put to good use – though I think that’s the idea behind affirmations and positive thinking. But sometimes the mind has to be left to just wear itself out spinning crazy, awful stories.

And they are just that: stories. Fortunately, a regular meditation practice helps make that clear, because when we start to believe our own stories we’re treading on dangerous ground.

Eventually the mind grows tired, and we can step out of the “thought-emotion-action” loop, thereby gaining access to our greater wisdom. If we can weather the emotional storm, watching it until it dies down, and acting in the calm after the storm, we stand a better chance of achieving the outcome we truly want.

It’s a process, and a non-linear one at that. In the words of Anne Lamott, “You can get the monkey off your back but the circus never leaves town.”

That’s why they call it a practice.