Because taking a 10 minute walk or doing some relaxation exercises or drinking some tea? That’s just lazy. Sure it’s OK to do those things, and sure you admire the people who are in the habit of doing those things, but save them until you’re done with that big horrible task.

So I’d stay stuck doing nothing for way longer than I wanted to, but at least I wasn’t being lazy. No, Dr. Phil, that wasn’t working for me at all.

After a lot of experimenting, I came up with two things I could say to myself to get over this indecisive limbo state of thinking.

“Screw it, I’m going to …” and “If I had to be honest, I just want to …”

Those sentences would then finish themselves in my head with things like:

• get going on this thing, dammit!
• stick my head out of the window for 5 minutes.
• walk to the lab and move some heavy stuff for a while.
• just sit and breathe and not think of this until I notice I want to think about it again.
• finish this part and then I’m out of here!
• take a break and have some tea with a colleague.
• brainstorm this part for 5 minutes, OK?
• get someone to do this for me! But no, I don’t want to do that either, so how about I just do this one piece for now?

Or, if things were really bad:

• drop everything and go home RIGHT NOW.
• wait until next week’s meeting so I get some clarity, and until then I’m just going to not work on this at all!
• sit outside and throw a mini temper tantrum.

Worked fine, because once I’d decided these things I would do them, and not be stuck anymore. Effectively, that meant I’d spend 15 minutes max on things to get me going, which was a whole lot better than the marathon stuck sessions I am also capable of having.

Enter shame

Until, one day, someone whose opinion I value quite a bit wrote something like “I immediately cut contact with anyone who says ‘If I had to be honest’ because that means that on most other occasions they’re lying and untrustworthy.”

Ouch.

Imagine your best shrinking violet expression, please. Yeah, that was me.

Because I pride myself on being basically honest and trustworthy. I don’t share things people tell me in confidence, I do the things I promised, and I have a compassionate take-no-prisoners attitude towards my own thought processes and actions. Radical honesty, with radical meaning ‘get at the root of things.’

And, as you may have noticed, I use the words ‘honest’ and ‘honestly’ quite a lot in my writing.

So am I lying? Absolutely.

And I’ll tell you exactly how and why in part 2.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to cliffhanger you guys here. I wrote the whole post, but I keep thinking about the second half and changing things. The first part remained constant, and I stand by it, so in posting this I’m making an appointment with myself and with you that I WILL post the second half.

Honestly.

Comment-fu:

How about you? Are you honest? And how do you define that for yourself? How far should honesty go, and how does the type of relationship you have with someone influence your honesty? Should you volunteer your truths or is it still honest if you wait until someone asks?

I’d love to hear your two cents, or more!

Bloom where you are planted

And I have to admit I let myself be caught short by it for a while, trying to find out how I could make myself bloom without changing my situation and what was wrong with me for not being able to.

But honestly? It’s a crappy saying.

It’s harsh and uncompassionate to say to someone else, because it comes across as you are not allowed to want to change anything. But that’s nonsense - even the people who manage to bloom without picking up and starting over still change aspects of the situation.

They change the mindset that didn’t allow them to see they had everything they needed to bloom in the first place. They change the focus of their activities to be more in tune with the things they value. They change the order of their activities to be more appropriate to the way their mind works. They delegate, expand or contract their responsibilities. Or they make sure they get more fun and energy from other aspects of their life.

That’s changing ‘where you are planted’ right there.

(Or you’re this rare breed of lucky person who is perfectly happy never leaving their home town, and becoming exactly who they thought they would become when they were four years old, and never doubting the path they’re on. If you read this, please give a shout out in the comments, because I’d really like to get to know you!)

And it doesn’t even work as a metaphor

Sure, plants seem to bloom where they are planted. But here’s the rub – many of them don’t.

Most plants send out hundreds of seeds, because the odds of one single seed finding a place to take root and eventually bloom are so small. Even those seeds that do make it often have to stay dormant in the soil for ages, until the right conditions come along.

And lots of plants have evolved elaborate mechanisms to make sure that their seeds don’t just fall straight down and stay there – the ultimate ‘bloom where you’re planted, silly seed!’ mindset, if you ask me – because seeds that stay in their parents’ shade usually don’t get enough light and nutrition to even try to bloom.

Fruit is a strategy to get birds to pick up the seed and bring it elsewhere.

Sequoia seeds only germinate after they were exposed to a fire - fire that will have destroyed many of the surrounding plants. (This strategy is not something I recommend for your personal life, by the way.)

Maple seeds are shaped like little helicopters so they can fly away from where they’d otherwise be planted.

Burrs – the seeds of a plant apparently named ‘burdock,’ which I didn’t know – stick to fur and clothing and hitch a ride to new and faraway places.

And don’t you think plants would up and leave inhospitable situations if only they could? Plants can’t run away, or even take an elegant exit stage left if they need it. We can. So let’s, OK?

And let’s look at the other side of this

To change the course of this argument a little: isn’t who you are a more important aspect of where you are planted than where you happen to be right now?

I’m planted to be intuitive, opinionated, caring and ambitious, and to love being proven wrong about something because that means I’ve actually learned something. I’m planted to love symbols and metaphors, and to be easily touched by story and music. I’m planted to love physical work but to dislike physical exercise.

I can pretend I am not like that, but that’s never served me well.

I’m not planted to be a 27-year old. I’m not planted to live in this house. I’m not planted to have my three cats forever and ever, although I will surely miss them when they are gone and hope they will be with me for a long time. I am not even planted to be with my husband.

Those things are all choices or happenstances, not givens. Most of them I need to work to maintain, and some, like the 27-year-old thing, I won’t be able to maintain even if I wanted to.

Let’s respect the parts of ourselves we can’t change, because they are usually the parts that have the biggest promise of making us feel and act awesome. Like details? Throw yourself on details, and find someone to help you with the big picture. Like big pictures? Sketch them out as broadly as you feel like, and find people who will be happy to take care of the details for you. Find what makes your heart go pitterpatter or your brain whirr like a happy machine, and get more of that in your life.

Plant yourself where you can bloom. And while only you can tell what that looks like, I bet you don’t have to go all sequoia on your life to get it. But please – and I’m talking to myself here just as much as to you – don’t ever feel bad for wanting to bloom.

Comment-fu:

Where do you bloom? And is that where you had thought it would be? Did you have to look far to find it, or was it a change of mind away?

(Yes, I was still annoyed when the mostly non-Dutch-heritage non-Spanish inhabitants of my neighbourhood started celebrating when Holland lost. I sympathise with living in a country where much of the political discourse is aimed at making you feel like a second-class citizen, but it’s your country too, right? Making a point of celebrating that people did NOT get what they so badly hoped for seemed overly adversarial to me. On the other hand, calling other people adversarial is basically concern trolling. Gah. Complicated, these privilege issues. On top of that, I dislike competition on principle – I like it when people celebrate a WIN, but not when people celebrate a LOSS. Takes me straight back to high school.)

And no, this post isn’t meant to be about soccer, politics or competitiveness.

It’s about goals.

I am in a mastermind group. Every other week, I meet up with my three wonderful, generous and smart mastermind buddies to discuss our lives, plans and results. At the end of last year we decided to go pro and set some 6-month goals. And now those 6 months are over, and we have set a date to celebrate and evaluate over High Tea.

Looking forward to it SO much.

Even though I pretty much failed all my goals.

Embracing failure, me? What just happened?

I had 3.5 goal areas, with a couple of projects in each. (The .5 goal didn’t have projects, but habits I was going to pick up for myself.)

1: Some hardcore work on my mindsets and beliefs, using the different techniques I picked up from the wonderful people that inhabit the interwebz.

2: Finding my blogging voice, by writing 12 blog posts and 12 reviews.

3: Expanding my comfort zone, by making and showing 6 drawings or paintings and making and performing 6 songs. And a bunch of other stuff.

So, what went wrong?

Firstly, I was overly ambitious. Story of my life. I’m one of those ‘shoot for the moon and land among the stars’ kinda people. Luckily, that means I don’t beat myself up that much when I don’t do something the way I planned to. Which is a good thing, or I’d have a lot of beating to do.

In total, I published 6 blog posts and 1 review. That’s 50% and 8% of my goal.

I made a bunch of sketches but no finished artwork, and I didn’t show my sketches to anyone.

I didn’t record any songs, even though I did noodle around on my guitar.

I did a lot of mindset work, but not even near the astronomical amount I had planned.

And the habits? Did them for a while, changed them up again, followed them, dropped them altogether, followed them again. Hit or miss.

Secondly, I could definitely make the case for real life interfering. 6 months ago I was unhappy in my PhD research and dreamed of the time I’d finally be able to become a postdoc, although I severely doubted my capacities. Right now I’m unemployed (well, not yet, they’re still paying me this month), taking steps towards starting my own business, and not even slightly unhappy about being turned down for a job. Standards, baby, I haz them! But reached goals? Not so much.

So, what went right?

The whole mindsets and beliefs? They changed. By themselves. I think I practiced the techniques enough that they continued operating more or less automatically. I read the diary I kept from 2001-2006 a while ago, and I’m a new person. (Still feel like the old person, and people around me still seem to recognise me, so that’s a good thing.) I used to think and feel and believe so many things that just aren’t there anymore, and my life has become richer, easier and more enjoyable for it. And even when I read the diaries of last year, the changes are remarkable. The Germans have a term for that, I think: DELLE. (Durch einfach liegenlassen erledigt, or ‘problem solved by doing nothing.’)

Finding my voice? I already have one! In re-reading my old stuff, I noticed that I like how I write. Yes, I’ve become less cumbersome over the years (not to mention less neurotic) and I’ve learned how to proofread, but the basis was always there. Re-reading things I wrote always makes me happy, even when that feeling is tinged with embarrassment about how much of a clueless teenager I used to be.

The second objective of wanting to write all those blog posts was convincing myself that I have something to write about. Even though I didn’t get my quota of posts in, I do have more than 20 drafts lined up, and they’re all good ideas and I’m sure I’ll get to fleshing them out soon. So yeah, I have ideas. And I’ll get more and more if I step up the interaction with people. I used to fear that I was a factory writer – give me an assignment and I’ll make it look good, but don’t ask me to come up with my own ideas – but that’s blatantly not so.

The comfort zone? I think that was a trick goal. Just thinking about showing my work to people or – gasp! – singing for them made me faint. Now? Not so much. Haven’t actually done it yet, but I know I can. And once I know I can, I know I will. One of the other little things was getting nice pictures of myself taken. Didn’t do that either, but my idea has shifted from ‘I just don’t look good on photos because I have a weird head’ to ‘I’m a very expressive person, and it’s OK to take a bunch of pics and find the ones that look good and ditch the ones that depict me mid-expression-change.’ Consider my comfort zone duly expanded.

And the habits? Well, I’ve dropped them so often now that I have experienced first hand how I feel when I stick to them and when I slack off on them, and I know that they’re both worth getting back to AND that it’s no big deal to leave them for a while.

Success guaranteed!

See what I did there?

I’ve been reading a lot on Jungian function theory coupled to the MBTI personality profiles, and it turns out that I have a strong preference to Introverted iNtuition (Ni). Hallmark of Ni: redefining stuff in your own head, even though nothing changes outside of your head. A so-called ‘paradigm shift’ (and I know at least one person sighed when reading that term – hi there!), new outlooks on old things.

Makes it impossible to lose, really.

Comment-fu:

So, do you do goals? And do you do failure, or just success? Please share if you feel like it!

And with that, I quit my career and my future.

Classmates in elementary school already teased young, bookish, shy me by calling me ‘professor.’ I tried to escape that fate by going to university to do something decidedly unprofessorish, but I gravitated towards research more and more. And when the leader of a very respected research group asked me to apply for a PhD position, I was thrilled.

I was going to love the research, I was going to love working with people from all over the world, I was going to love having projects of my own, I was going to love presenting my work to audiences from professors to high school kids, and I was going to love the future that came with that decision.

That was almost three years ago. And now I quit.

It’s funny, but all the things I was going to love I actually loved. Even though not all of them came to pass, I still agree with them. Thing is, it’s not enough. And sometimes, you don’t know what makes you tick until you step into a situation that doesn’t.

I chose this group because they were doing interesting and complicated research. Turns out, I need a subject that matters to me, that tugs on my heartstrings, that keeps the part of me that rails against injustice awake at night. And I bet it’ll be interesting and complicated as well.

I chose this group because the people in it are magnificent. Turns out, I need a common goal, with everyone doing their bit – either alone or together – to bring it to life. Everyone had personal goals, which sometimes caused us to join forces and sometimes caused us to compete, but there was no sense of us. I need that us, and I bet the people in it will be magnificent as well.

I chose this group because it has a staggering amount of intellectual power. Turns out, I need emotional power as well. I need an environment in which it is clear and accepted by all that “It’s not working, but I love the challenge” and “It’s not working, and I’m getting frustrated with it” are not the same problems, and should not get the same solutions. And I need that to be standard operating procedure, not something that depends on 1-on-1 interactions.

I struggled for a very long time, and for most of that time I thought there was something wrong with me for not thriving.

But there’s not.

People need different circumstances to thrive. People who are driven by curiosity and get energized by being first, fastest, best, do wonderfully in soon-no-longer-my group. And I, a hippie at heart who gets energized by building a team to change the world, will do wonderfully somewhere else.

So, it is done. My last working day will be next week, and I’m wrapping up my work to make it easy for others to carry on with it. My projects were cool; they deserve a proper send-off. The future I had counted on for the past 7 years no longer exists.

And it feels GOOD.

Like the dramatic young first singer of a local metal band wrote three years ago:

The bridge is gone
The path is set
All letters sent
No words unsaid
New chance to soar
New lease on life
Come what may I know I will survive

(Yeah, that was me. Want proof? Download the mp3 here, and be gentle with your comments. I’d LOVE to record this song again some day, now I’m not as shy and have better technique. And no, it’s not about quitting your job.)

The Sailboat Kit

The tagline of this kit is ‘Weekly Time Management for People Who Hate Structure (but Love Metaphors).’ Honestly, I could have stopped reading the kit at that point and STILL recommend it to you with fervour, because that tagline is right up my alley.

I love juggling a bunch of different things, even things where I need to coordinate with other people and things that have *gasp* deadlines. However, whenever I try to plan my days too meticulously, I instantly get a claustrophobic feeling, leaving me so stressed I either pull out my hair or throw out my planning.

I rather like my hair, so it’s usually the planning that goes overboard.

And, as it turns out, I’m not alone. Eileen uses this method to plan her own week, and The Sailboat Kit leads you through the exact process to come up with your own planning and your own metaphor for freedom, spaciousness and movement. Just in case you don’t like sailing.

Lookin’ good!

The first thing that jumps out at me when opening the main e-book are the high production values. The design is gorgeous and clear, and the half-pages make it a breeze to read through.

Eileen’s writing is a joy to the senses. She’s funny and kind and doesn’t take herself too seriously at all, while still honing in on the exact issues she’s describing. Also, and this is something I wish I saw more often in authors, whenever I raise an objection to something in the text, she immediately gives the answer in the next section!

She really covers all the bases.

Learning the ropes

Of course, reading about something makes a person (OK, me) feel a lot better and more intelligent, but it’s the doing that gives the results. The Sailboat Kit contains three main exercises, using several imaginative angles to get all the information out of you that you need to hit the waves.

And when I say angles, do I ever mean angles! You even get to use what you do when you’re avoiding the things you think you have to do to make your days BETTER. That’s a sentiment after my own heart.

And after looking at all the things you do from a cloud level, she brings you right back down to earth with some really practical, yet rebellious, advice.

Unexpected side-effects

I dove into The Sailboat Kit with a passion. I got it the weekend after my birthday, and I immediately set down for some serious ship-building.

And as you can see from the update frequencies of my blog since then, my life has come to a sort of stand-still. And yes, this is due to my boat-building activities, but in a good way.

One of the exercises, as it turned out, is a variation of the Ideal Day exercise many coaching-type people use. I’ve done that exercise before, and I always rather liked it, dreaming about what I’d do if I didn’t HAVE to do anything. After spending a pleasant 30 minutes with my dreams, I’d wake up, smile and get on with my day.

Eileen’s version, however, hit me like a ton of bricks. For one, she asks you to imagine a whole Ideal WEEK!

And that’s where the standstill comes in: Even though it’s almost as flexible in scheduling as a non-self-employed person can get, none of the things that are a regular part of my job come up in my Ideal Week. And I can live with the idea of one day not containing anything ideal, but a whole WEEK? Hard to hide from that. Enter the claustrophobic feeling again, and I still like my hair too much to pull it out.

In other words: I am going to have to make a career switch to get to do the things I really want to do. Not exactly what I expected when I opened up the Kit, but it’s such a relief to finally admit to myself that I’m just doing the wrong thing.

So it’s not really a standstill, but plotting a new course. A course where a sailboat will definitely come in handy.

Is The Sailboat Kit worth using?

Not for everyone. You shouldn’t buy this kit if you:

• Already have an excellent time management system in place and don’t like fine-tuning it.
• Have many small deadlines and meticulously timed projects. For this kit to work at its best, your schedule needs a little flexibility.
• Get agoraphobic from a too-flexible planning. Your Sailboat is supposed to give you more freedom, which is excellent unless you crave more structure.
• Are independently wealthy and don’t care whether you get things done.

Definitely get yourself a kit if you:

• Love playing around with language and metaphor.
• Already basically enjoy what you do, and want to make sure you spend enough time with all the aspects of your life.
• Basically don’t like what you do, and want Eileen’s strong, supportive voice to show you what you would enjoy doing.
• Are self-employed or have a lot of flexibility in your schedule, and want your days to be more efficient while still supporting your love for deciding what you’re going to do on the spot.
• Want Sailboat benefits for your personal life, even though your job does not have enough flexibility.

In other words, if you’re a rebel at heart but still want your projects to get somewhere, definitely check out The Sailboat Kit!

But maybe one day you go shopping with a friend, who points you to the type of shoes you’d never pick by yourself. And when you humour your friend and try the silly things on, you find out that actually, they’re pretty much perfect.

Who am I again?

I took a DISC test recently. (For stingy Dutch folks like me, they’re giving away free tests at Persolog if you’re willing to help them with validating their statistics.) It tests for four characteristics measuring dominance, emotionality, how much you like change and how much you like following the rules. And yup, the four letters of the names stand for those four characteristics, even though people can’t agree on which words belong with which letter.

Anyway, it was an easy 5 minute test and I was absolutely blown away by the result. I got a 30-plus page document describing how someone with my test score probably behaves in certain situations, and even a little checklist of what kind of people I may like interacting with. And it was pretty much spot-on.

I tested low on obeying the rules, caring for details and resisting change, and high on emotionality. What else is new. But the kicker?

Dominance was my highest score.

Noooooooo!

(Cue dramatic movie scene where hero is holding the body of his self-image, which was just mortally injured and passed away after a poignant and much too long ‘I never got the chance to say’ speech.)

I hate following the rules, I hate doing what other people say just because they say it. For that reason, I also hate putting MY opinions out there as rules. I want people to trust in themselves, think for themselves and advocate for themselves! I want people to come to me blazing with every scrap of strength and compassion they have, so I can blaze with every scrap of mine and we can BUILD together.

I hate feeling small and powerless, and I hate doing things that result in others feeling small and powerless. I love it when people can convince me I was wrong about something, because I love honing my perspective until I’m seeing the world through a clear lens.

Besides, I’ve been struggling all my life with people who come across as dominant. Actually, I don’t naturally come out on top of the social scrap heap AND I dislike many people who do.

So who are you calling dominant, folks? Surely your 70 years of research and statistical analysis is wrong, wrong, WRONG.

I’ve got another think coming

But of course, when something is wrong, wrong, WRONG, it’s all too easy for things to happen to prove it’s right on the mark.

Sure, I hate pushing my opinions on people, but if there’s no opinion forthcoming, we’re going with mine until someone protests. I’m the kind of Nature that abhors a vacuum, and I’ve ended up leading committees, games and meetings more times than I can remember, just because I’m quickest and people just end up agreeing.

(Oddly enough, this often results in me cycling behind my husband: if I see something coming I’m going to take back speed and get behind him, so I can respond best to whatever it is while also seeing what he’s doing. He often tells me he wants me in front, but he’s not decisive enough to slow down before I have.)

I love being proven wrong, but I have the strictest criteria for how that happens. I have thought about my own opinions and delved into my own feelings so much that I’m pretty clear on them, thankyouverymuch, and you need to bring a world class idea if you want to dethrone mine.

Yes, I want things to be a win/win situation, but I’ll aggressively reject any attempt of others to make either of us losers. I’ll fight for my happiness, and I can’t count the times I’ve told someone “You don’t seem happy about what you’re offering, so I’m not going to agree to that.”

Of course I’ll accept you feeling small and powerless if that’s how you feel right now, because who am I to tell you what your truth is? But I will not contribute to it willingly, and I will always hope there is something I can say that lets you see how magnificent I think you are.

In general, when something is WRONG I will go put it RIGHT. While I may be lazy in some areas in my life, and wholly ineffective in others, I always see how I want things to be, and will strive to make it so.

So, I guess I really am dominant.

Huh.

Thank you, DISC, for pointing out this really odd pair of footwear to me. Now all I can do is hope to fill them.

The book talks about three ‘Aeons,’ or periods in history marked by certain ways of thinking.

In the Aeon of Isis, the ideal woman was a goddess, using her mystical powers to bring forth life.

In the Aeon of Osiris, the ideal woman was a virgin, indiscriminately rejecting everyone and staying ‘pure.’

The ‘current’ Aeon is the Aeon of Horus, cast throughout the book as a GOOD thing. I get that, in a way – in the Aeon of Isis people didn’t have a clue about how the physical world works, and in the Aeon of Osiris people didn’t have a clue about how the mental world works, so the Aeon of Horus can only improve on that.

However, in the Aeon of Horus, the ideal woman should be the sacred whore, indiscriminately ACCEPTING everyone to her bosom.

Honestly people. The only time the deck talks about a woman who CHOOSES, who is SOVEREIGN, it’s called ‘woman’s prerogative’ with a nudge and a wink.

A famous quote by the creator of the Thoth Tarot is ‘Every man and woman is a star.’ But when are we going to accept that every single one of these stars is also a PERSON?

(*Otherwise an extremely interesting introduction into a very complex symbolic and psychological system, although I’m always unsure of when they use terms like ‘Angel’ as metaphors and when as tangible things. I’m all for the metaphors, not so much fan of the tangible.)

I knew that already, of course, but today I had an epiphany on an epic scale. It was the oddest experience. One second you’re happily cycling along, the next second your heart is thumping in your chest and your hands are shaking.

It’s like dropping a box of jigsaw pieces, and seeing the pieces land in a perfect picture.

Countdown to revelation

I was listening to one of Havi‘s old teleclasses, where she explains a technique of unpacking the metaphors you use. Once you know the way you think, you can start tweaking it.

In the class, people explained their thought processes about money, and of course that set off all sorts of firecrackers in my head. Eventually, I thought to myself “OK, how does this work for me?”

“Hmm. Money is . . . necessary. Gives freedom. Is unpredictable, and I-”

And then I saw him. Clear as day.

This wiry, stern-faced man in a grey suit, arms crossed and with a set of keys in one hand.

“That f*cking Hierophant!”

(I don’t usually swear in writing, but I literally said that out loud on my bike, so I think I can repeat it here. Yes, out loud, in English, even though I’m Dutch.)

What’s he got do do with it?

I’m an inconsistent but fascinated Tarot reader. I love the artwork in the different decks, I love the rich layers of symbolism and the way the same cards yield a different story every time, depending on what detail catches your eye. There’s good and bad to every card, if you know where to look, and each problem carries its solution with it.

What I never loved, though, was card V: The Hierophant. He stands for an older, wiser figure who helps you with your worldly problems. He spent his life gathering wisdom, he knows truths and traditions and is now ready to pass them on. At least, if you believe the textbook definition.

At his worst, the Hierophant is the spiritual dictator who tells you your own beliefs are wrong, or the person who knows something that’s of vital importance to you and won’t tell you even if you ask, because you don’t measure up.

Yeah. Guess which interpretation I can’t see beyond.

And it’s true, I do look at money that way. Of course you can earn a lot of money, but only if you know the right passwords. And of course you only GET those passwords if you commit to not caring who you hurt in the process.

And I wish it was just the money.

It’s a capital-P Pattern

This guy is EVERYWHERE in my life. My entire life’s history is built upon me trying to figure out what magical combinations of actions would unlock people’s good will towards me, what it would take for people to be clear about their expectations of me. What actions would finally make it safe to be myself?

• I could never get my mother to stop screaming at me.
• I could never get my father to pay attention to me.
• I never understood why the kids in my school would beat me up at recess and then ask me to explain math homework to them.
• I never understood how other people could talk so easily while I was constantly confused and playing catch-up with all the social mores.
• I could never figure out what would please my teachers at school so they’d stop trying to get me to fail.

And even in more recent times, even though nobody would call me socially handicapped, the Hierophant influence is still there.

• The first years after I met my now-husband, his actions would be a complete mystery to me, and he just wouldn’t clarify. I wanted connection and affection, and it was completely unpredictable what he’d do.
• At my student’s association, I was always very happy to help. But as soon as I finished doing the thing that was clear-cut and just had to steer on my social radar, I started getting afraid I was going to be ‘found out.’
• I have huge problems with my boss at work, because he has the authority to approve or doom my PhD dissertation, but will not tell me what his expectations are.

I’m fine with not knowing everything. That’s not the point. Most things just don’t matter, you know?

But these areas, they’re important. Basic human needs of safety and connection, and every time I am outside in the cold with a storm fast approaching on the horizon. Between me and the safety of a strong and warm home there’s this guy who could easily let me in but won’t. Because I don’t know the secret handshake.

Upside down and inside out

I only ever resolved one of the situations I mention above by talking it through with the people involved. That’s why my now-husband is now my husband. However, many of these situations stopped occurring as I changed my perspective. Even the more sticky ones respond to what I’m thinking when I’m dealing with them.

Because, as was to be expected, the problem was the solution. I was looking at it upside down and inside out. I saw myself as in danger, so my first priority was to get to safety. Self-expression is a luxury to be indulged in after the sabre-toothed tiger stops chasing you, right?

Wrong.

I started being very clear that I have my own keys to my own strong and warm home, and that I only have to step out into the storm when I bloody well feel like it. I have my truths and traditions, and I started treating them as valuable even if other people didn’t.

Only when I started being a Hierophant in my own right did people stop treating me as a supplicant.

That poor Hierophant

I’ve done you wrong, poor archetype!

It’s one of those truisms, that the thing you hate is the thing you need. I dislike truisms, but this time it’s, well, true.

But I know what you look like now, pattern. I know which face of the Hierophant you use to try to get me scrambling for safety.

And I know the solution to a locked door: remember that I’ve got my own keys, and use them.

It took me some time, but I finally wrote down three lovely goals. You know, the kind that makes you go all tingly inside while not eliciting that annoying twinge of anxiety that means you’ve either overreached or left out something important. And I also made a list of little things to do each day to keep me sane and unstressed.

I was happy as a child when I showed my achievements to my mastermind group.

No, don’t do that!

So, colour me surprised when they didn’t really seem to like my goals very much. Especially my poor keep-me-sane list got a lot of flack. “Restrictive!” and “I get the heebeejeebies just looking at that!” And when I posted my three words for 2010, I again got this careful, worried nudge of “You know, I heard it’s not such a great idea to overplan the things you want with such detail.”

And the odd thing is, I’ve been loving my daily list. I have this little dayplanner in which I note the most important things I want to do this day and this week, and where I track how much of my daily list I’ve managed to finish.

More important than the tracking, though, is that it keeps the list fresh in my mind. I look at it several times a day, because I keep forgetting which actions I marked ‘most important.’ (Maybe this says something about the absolute importance of stuff going on in my life right now, but hey. )

And each time, I am reminded that I have some great relaxation techniques I could do RIGHT THEN, or maybe journal a little, or let off some steam physically. And sometimes I do, and sometimes I just don’t need it right then, but I sure am happy to have been reminded.

Keep the wrong ones out

So, why do the others think these daily activities are such a bad idea? Well, to be honest, I still don’t quite know. But I know that when I feel caged by my goals, I’ve put the wrong things on my list.

The things I think I ‘should’ do. The things that are ‘good for me.’ The things everybody knows a person of my age/stage of life/strengths and weaknesses needs to be focusing on. In other words, the boring, awful, aargh-no-way stuff.

Of course these things never got done.

And since I was still beating myself up about everything I was NOT, that was torture.

And let the right ones in

This time, I went about it differently.

I picked the things on my daily list with three criteria: fun, immediately beneficial, and so easy my highly tuned boredom and resistance system doesn’t notice them.

Fun: I have things on there like journaling, jumping around for 5 minutes and taking time to meditate. Fun things! The kind of things that I actually WANT to do, even if I didn’t get paid for it.

(Oh wait, I don’t.)

Immediately beneficial: Delayed gratification may be all the rage among gurus, but I like a healty dose of immediate gratification. Doing a relaxation technique keeps me from having a burnout long term, but it gets me from anxiety scale 8 to 2 in only a few minutes. What’s not to like?

Flies under the resistance radar: Yes, exercising for an hour is better for you than exercising for 5 minutes. But exercising for 5 minutes every day is a lot better than resisting exercising for an hour every day. Escpecially when I’m enjoying my bouncing around so much that I keep doing it.

Basically, I’m reminding myself to eat candy. Sometimes, though, I still need some reminding.

Everything moves

The best thing is that these goals aren’t set in stone. You can try them on for size, and if they don’t work, no problem! You can tweak, replace, and drop them any time. The most important thing is to remember that you’re doing this because it helps you, and not for anyone else. There’s no sense in beating yourself up, or even beating yourself up for beating yourself up.

And besides, brushing your teeth doesn’t mean you’re overplanning your health, right?

So, of course I used to make New Year’s Resolutions. I used to write down ALL the things that I EVER wanted to do. And when I was done writing, I’d have this great list to look back on, put in a drawer and forget.

And when I’d find my list again, the resolutions that had seemed inevitable at the start of the year would’ve been reached anyway, and most of the other ones would’ve been dropped.

So, this year I’m not working with resolutions, but with a Theme.

I started brainstorming with Christine Kane’s Word of The Year Discovery Tool, and just at the moment I got stuck where I usually get stuck, in “What do you mean, pick ONE?!” land, Chris Brogan posted that he uses three words for a year!

Problem solved. My three words just jumped out at me.

My three words: Majestic, Crystalline, Goofball

Since words, especially abstract words, have a different meaning to different people, I’ll explain briefly what these say to me.

Majestic: I let myself be pushed aside. I add ‘unless you don’t want to’ to requests. I say ‘maybe I’m wrong, but’ when I make an observation. I let people trick me into feeling small and insignificant. This year, I am going to hold my ground. This year is all about practicing sovereignty, pride, balance and charisma.

Crystalline: I procrastinate on projects that are unclear or involve hostile conversations in the near future, and of course these are the projects that I really want or need to do. To make matters worse, I feel guilty about procrastinating, so I procrastinate more. The antidote for both overwhelm and hostility is clarity. Crystalline clarity. Crystalline is mindful, deliberate, effective. Crystalline is analytical, surgical and calm. This year, crystalline will remind me to look at the big picture, and take the time to find the right things to take action on.

Goofball: I could never be only majestic and crystalline. Just the thought cracks me up, actually. (Especially when I imagine the props that come with ‘majestic.’) So, to balance out all this seriousness and get myself out of my head and into my body, I give you goofball. Goofball will keep me from needing things to be perfect, will remind me to sing and dance and bounce around, and will enable one eyebrow to remain permanently arched.

Want your own words?

Saunter over to Christine Kane’s for a tool that gives some great brainstorming and insight questions.

Let Chris Brogan convince you of the need to use three words. While you’re there, take a look at his words for the past few years as well. Great demonstration of how different words speak to different people!

And if you’re in the mood to let yourself sink into a colourful oasis of planning and reflecting, take a look at the Create your Goddess Year Workbook, from the wonderfully woo-woo Goddess Leonie. I’m still looking forward to filling this one out!

Have a great 2010, everyone.