Focus on Shining, Not Eliminating the Competition
Currently, I’m participating in a blog competition that has offered wonderful opportunities. I’ve been introduced to many well-written and informative blogs and have learned a great deal from reading them. Also, people have visited my website who would not have found it otherwise. I’m grateful for the experience.
I’m puzzled by one feature of the voting process, however. Voters can vote not only for the blogs they support; they can vote other blogs down. I didn’t give this feature much thought until I watched contestant vote counts fall. I’ve always been a bit naïve, but the incidents of voting down surprised me.
I understand strategy. Voting down helps one’s favorite blogger get ahead. But does it really? Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to focus on asking friends to visit this person’s fabulous blog and to vote for it too? That would be a great way to introduce the blog to new people and increase its readership. To me, the energy would be more positive.
Unfortunately, “Voting Down” is not an unusual practice in our society. Without giving it much thought, I’m able to think of numerous situations where diminishing or eliminating the competition was considered a useful strategy.
Law firms are competitive environments; there can be a lot of pressure to stay on “partnership track.” The associates with whom I practiced law were diligent and bright; they were definite partner material. Even so, a few of them didn’t think doing a stellar job would be enough to get ahead. I remember their finding it necessary to say something negative about other associates to partners.
We see the “Voting Down” mindset in almost every state and national election in the form of dirty campaigning. Instead of focusing entirely on the issues and their candidate’s accomplishments, some campaign staff members tear down opponents’ reputations. The fallout is negative and often hurts innocent people.
An egregious example of eliminating the competition involved the American figure skater Tanya Harding. In 1994, she was competing in the U.S. Figure Skating Championship. Deciding to help his wife, Tanya’s then husband conspired with two other men to attack one of Tanya’s chief competitors, Nancy Kerrigan. Nancy’s knee was injured in the attack, and she was forced to withdraw from the competition. Tanya went on to win the event.
The question is: “Did Tanya really win the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championship?” She may have received the gold medal, but how could she believe she won without beating her competition? The answer is: “She couldn’t.” Tanya might have defeated Nancy Kerrigan fairly and squarely had Nancy been able to compete. Tanya might have been the true champion; no one will ever know.
I can see where voting down may be done in the spirit of fun, but I don’t recommend it. Instead, focus on how you or the person you are supporting shines.
Forget about diminishing or eliminating the competition in any way. If you work hard and do your best, you’ll generate positive energy. You’ll be a winner even if you don’t take home the gold medal.
What Difference Do You Want To Make?
Most, if not all, of us want our lives to stand for something; we want to make a difference. What that difference is, however, may not be crystal clear. If not, below are some questions that may prove helpful. In responding to these questions, please keep in mind that no answer is right or wrong; no difference is too big or small.
What Difference Do I Want to Make in My Own Life?
My answer today: I want to be more present, to pay attention. I want to open my heart further to joy and appreciate the blessings in my life with greater intention. I want to be more patient and self-accepting. I want to make greater space in my life for creative expression.
What Difference Do I Want to Make in the Lives of Those I Love?
My answer today: I want to be a better mother to my furry children and a more loving friend. I want to reside in my authentic energy, so that by example, I show loved ones they can do the same. I want to encourage loved ones to be who they are and help them connect to their joy.
What Difference Do I Want to Make in My Work?
My answer today: I want to help clients overcome any obstacles preventing them from living their best lives. I want to help them make the difference they want to make. I want to help them connect to their joy.
What Difference Do I Want to Make in My Community? (You can define community any way you want.)
My answer today: I want to help homeless persons and abused children in the greater Denver area by improving the circumstances of their lives. I want to help them heal their pain and overcome limiting beliefs. I want to help them connect to their joy.
What Difference Do I Want to Make in the World?
My answer today: I want to end the suffering of sentient beings worldwide, encourage people to treat each other with kindness, and help all persons connect to their joy.
What Difference Do I Want to Make ________________?
The answers I have written are my answers today; they may be different tomorrow. Working with these questions has given me more clarity, however. I feel certain that the difference I want to make relates to connecting people to their joy.
For the next few weeks, set aside a time each day to ask yourself the above questions. Don’t worry about getting answers right away; let your brain play and be open to receiving. In time, the answers will come. Some will be predictable, but others may surprise you.
Once you have a good sense of the difference you want to make, it will be time for a new question. That question: “What small step can I take today to ensure that I make this difference?”
Try Something New
I love this 3.5 minute video – it’s worth a listen. What Something New will you commit to doing for the next 30 days?
The Dollhouse: Lightning Dreamwork the Robert Moss Way
It was a cool overcast morning in Boulder, Colorado, but the mood was warm and festive in Robert Moss’ Shamanic Lucid Dreaming workshop. More than forty people had gathered to work (as it turned out a better word would be “play”) with Robert, and the room was brimming with enthusiasm.
Gathered in a circle, we listened intently to Robert Moss as he taught us a tool called the “Lightning Dreamwork Game.” I was particularly excited because he had selected one of my sleep dreams to work with in teaching the tool.
STEP ONE of the tool is to tell your dream as a story and give it a name. By telling your dream as a present tense story, you re-immerse yourself in the experience. True to the real nature of dreaming, your dream becomes dynamic, rather than the static snapshot of a journal entry. If you are working with a partner or a group, telling your dream as story engages your audience; it allows them to experience your dream more vividly.
“Please share your dream.” Robert Moss’ eyes twinkled.
My dream:
I am extremely fatigued, and all I want to do is go to sleep. I can’t because the kids who live next door and several other neighborhood kids are running around in my front yard, chasing one another, and screaming. It’s 11:00 at night; why on earth don’t their parents make them come home and go to bed?
Finally, the kids are gone. I still can’t sleep! Now the nanny who works next door is outside speaking loudly on her cell phone. Engaged in conversation, she paces back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, along the side of my house where my bedroom is.
I’m getting more and more frustrated by her loud talking. I go into the basement of my house and stare up through the window at her pacing back and forth. She does this all the time. I have to figure out what nights she works, so I can turn my sprinkler system on. That should keep her away.
At last the nanny leaves. I go into my backyard which looks onto the back of my next door neighbors’ home. As I look at their home, I see the neighborhood kids racing back and forth, playing, laughing, and yelling on the second floor of the house. I’m surprised to see them awake already because it’s 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. I can see them clearly because there are no walls on the back of my next door neighbors’ house. It looks like a dollhouse.
Suddenly, it dawns on me: “If I can see the kids so clearly, they can see me.” I really don’t want them to see me, so I hide in the bushes.
What is the name of your dream?” Robert Moss asked.
“The Dollhouse.”
STEP TWO is for someone listening to your dream to ask several questions that will help put your dream in a context and determine how the dream may apply to your life – past, present, and future.
“How did you feel immediately after you woke from the dream?” Robert asked.
“Disconcerted.” Your emotions upon waking serve as a good guide to the dream’s nature.
“What do you recognize in your dream from the rest of your life? Has anything in the dream happened; could anything in the dream happen in the future either literally or symbolically?”
“As I was trying to go to sleep last night, someone – not a child, but an adult – was out in the street in front of my house speaking very loudly. This kept me awake. The neighborhood kids are sweet, but they can be quite noisy at times. What resonates the most with me, however, is that I came to this workshop to connect with my inner child. I find it interesting that my next door neighbors’ home was like a dollhouse filled with children.”
“What do you want to know about this dream?”
“I want to know several things, but what I would like to know most is why I didn’t want the children to see me. Why did I hide from them?”
STEP THREE is to open the discussion to everyone in the group. They aren’t allowed to interpret your dream. A dream belongs to the dreamer; only you can know what your dream truly means. That said, people in the group can say what they would want to know or do if it were their dream. The rule is that each person must begin his or her comments by saying “If if were my dream.”
I found other people’s comments both interesting and helpful. For example, several people wanted to know more about the nanny:
“If it were my dream, I would want to know why the nanny was pacing back and forth on the side of my house. Was she establishing some sort of boundary?”
“If it were my dream, I would want to know what the nanny was saying on the phone. Does the phone conversation hold a message for me? Is she so loud to get my attention, to make me hear the message?”
When I woke up, I was puzzled by the children and preoccupied by what their presence meant. It hadn’t occurred to me to question why the nanny appeared in my dream.
“If if were my dream,” Robert Moss stated, I would want to talk to the children. I suspect that these children may be young “Roberts” or aspects of my inner child. They may have great wisdom to share.”
“Aha!” I thought.
STEP FOUR is to have you devise an action plan to honor your dream. Robert Moss, Jungian analysts, and others treat Dreaming as if it’s a living, breathing being with which you develop a relationship. Just as with any human friend, the more time you spend with Dreaming, the more interest you show in it … the more Dreaming will give back to you.
There are many ways in which you can act to honor a dream. You can paint a picture of an image in the dream. You can dance in its spirit. You can research a creature, place, or unknown word that shows up. One action you can take that almost always makes sense is to reenter your dream and learn what it is you want to know. Importantly, if you don’t honor your dreams with action, you don’t dream well.
“What action will you take to honor your dream? Robert asked.
“I am going to reenter the dollhouse through shamanic journeying to see what the children have to tell me.”
I smiled thinking: “This workshop is so cool and so much fun.” I also couldn’t wait to meet my kids..
You can learn more about Robert Moss by visiting his website at: http://www.mossdreams.com/. He discusses the “Lightning Dreamwork Game” in his book Active Dreaming: Journeying beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom.
…
For information related to Dream Analysis Martha Beck Style, please see the following blogs posts:
June 1, 2010 - http://ahalifedesign.com/2010/06/01/dream-analysis-martha-beck-style/
November 7, 2010 - http://ahalifedesign.com/2010/11/07/another-dream-analysis-martha-beck-style/
.
Posted in An Aha Life, dream analysis, reJOYvenating
Tagged dreams, dreamwork, lightning dreamwork, Martha Beck, Robert Moss
Leave a comment
Dreams
Dreams are reflections of our soul.
Freedom Is
Freedom is the present, letting go of past and future, reveling in here and now.
Freedom is seeing with fresh eyes – no names, no labels, no conceptions; seeing without thinking.
Freedom is forgetting how much I hated beets as a child and tasting them again. I still may not appreciate their flavor … or I may be pleasantly surprised. They may not taste like “remembered” beets at all.
Freedom is sitting on a river bank where I have sat a hundred times and hearing the river speak in a way I have never heard before and will never hear again.
Freedom is letting go of past grievances. A man may have angered me when I last saw him a decade ago. If I see him today without letting go of my anger, I may not see him clearly. I will see a man who angered me, not the man he is today.
Freedom is not escaping responsibility, but embracing responsibility that has meaning.
Freedom is like the wind. Its spirit is unbridled, but it moves with direction.
Freedom is having a choice.
Freedom is being comfortable with who you are in this moment.
Freedom
Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide. (Napoleon Bonaparte)
Today I Mourn the Loss of the Children I Never Had.
Yesterday, I was feeling deeply saddened as I walked my golden retrievers, Liza Jolie and Zydeco Ardoin, on the parkway. Zydie is nine-years old, and he has begun to experience serious health problems as so many golden retrievers do at that age. The thought of losing either Liza or Zydeco breaks my heart. They may not be human, but they are my children.
As I continued walking, I found myself grieving that I have never had human children. This is a profound grief I feel from time to time, and I give myself permission to work through it. One thing I’ve found helpful is rereading a post I wrote in early 2010: “Today I Mourn the Loss of the Children I Never Had.”
After returning home, I reread that blog post, and it did make me feel better. Because there are many people who grieve the loss of the children they never had, I’m reposting what I wrote. Hopefully, it will help others who are grieving feel better too.
…
February 2010
Recently, I wrote the following status on Facebook: “Today I mourn the loss of the children I never had.” I am a 55 year old woman who has never married. I adore children but don’t have any of my own. There are days when I miss the life, the joy, even the pain I might have had, had circumstances been different. Because I have always loved children, the loss I feel is real. It’s important to grieve this loss. Doing so is necessary to healing.
I am posting this today because I want other single, middle-aged women who don’t have children to know that it’s okay to grieve the loss of being childless. I want everyone else to know it too.
Only rarely do I feel the need to mourn the loss of children I never had. I discovered years ago that being angry or depressed about this circumstance didn’t serve me well. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I learned to turn my focus to the benefits of not having children. I have a freedom that many of my friends don’t have. I can pack a bag and travel on a moment’s notice. I don’t have to be home in time to pay the baby sitter. I also have freedom on a much greater scale. For example, I was able to leave the practice of law more easily because I didn’t have children. My decision affected only me and not an entire family.
Being childless is an issue that confronts many of us in the Second Half of Life. This is when the reality of the situation smacks us and smacks us hard. It’s different than the empty nest syndrome. We grieve the loss of possibility. We are haunted by a sense of finality. We mourn the death of a person we are never to be.
A Facebook friend responded to my status by telling me about a client she is coaching. Like me, her client sometimes grieves the loss of the children she never had. One day while working on this issue, her client realized that she has many children in her life, even though they aren’t her biological offspring. In fact, she has raised, nurtured, and encouraged many children over the years; mothering is her calling in everything she does. Another Facebook friend wrote that she saw me as a Universal Mother. She said that while some women mother a select few only, my mothering path crossed all age, biological, and spiritual barriers.
I smile every time I think about these comments. I love that even childless, I am a mother. Universal Mother – I can live with that.
Posted in An Aha Life, midlife, second half of life
Tagged childless, grieving, midlife, mourning childlessness
6 Comments
