What Unsuccessful People Do Differently

It's autumn here.

How do I do it?  end up looking at these articles on 7 Things Successful People Do Different From You Lazy Slobs?  In any case, here's one smelling up my inbox with sentences like this:

Successful people have a drive, a greediness, a push to get something done you could even call self-centered.

As you know, in my religion greed is considered a poison.  We don't cultivate it. On the personal side, I've known a few entrepreneurs, and I think the description is fair.  They're always alert for a way to make money.  In a particularly cool move, one of them once let us pick up the check for dinner, but asked for the receipt so he could write it off on his taxes.  I am not making that up.

A little further on I get this (I'm rewriting but retaining the essence):

Less successful people let anything drift into their environments—they don't control their lives. The average person only writes down their goals once a year. 

I note here that "less successful people" are "average."  Oh my.  And only make big resolutions once a year.  I, on the other hand, have resolved today to take a shower.  I did resolve to get a haircut, but Kenneth isn't in on Tuesdays. So I tried to schedule a haircut with him so tomorrow doesn't drift like this, but it's not like that - he takes his book home with him.  So I drifted into the environment of no haircut today. Blown around like a fallen leaf.  Lest I get self-critical about this,

More autumn.

I reframed it:  I am flexible.  I see the big picture in a time of the breaking of nations. And hey, what's the hurry?

What struck me most about the article was the difference between the self-centered vows of the Highly Successful and the vows handwritten on a card propped on the windowsill over my kitchen sink.  They are a sort of mantra, a variation on lovingkindness meditation, from Kristin Neff's book, Self-Compassion, which I mentioned recently:

May I be safe.
May I be peaceful.
May I be kind to myself.
May I accept myself as I am.

Such small goals,  in the Eastern tradition of humility.  Yet how large for all those who were abused or neglected or taught always to put others first and ignore their own needs.  And by the way, the vow to be safe kept me from recklessly scheduling a haircut with some unknown person.  Been there.

The writer on Success did say something I agreed with:

Every day presents an opportunity to set and reach goals regardless of how large or small they are.

Recently I read that achieving any goal gives us a good little hit of feel-good chemicals. A kind of starburst in the old neurochemistry.  Small achievements are something I pay attention to, since I am prone to letting myself drift, as the Ambition writer would say, into the environment of a merciless depression, and that doesn't get you anywhere.  Set a small enough goal, like Take a shower.  Do it.  Take a moment to pat your own back.  If you are lucky, you can actually reach over your shoulder and do that, which will make you smile.

That's all I know today.  Please enjoy your drifting.

When I'll Be Happy

You know:
When I graduate.
     When I get a better job.
When I find true love (or true sex).
When this move is over.

Of course, none of these joys last very long.  Actually, I did bask in happiness for about ten days after we moved to this house.  What a horrific move it was, 10,000 pounds from two stories and a basement, and Tom couldn't help with any of it, partly because he couldn't do stairs, partly because he's a man.  But we got moved in, staged the old house, sold it, and then - his polio doctor told him he was never going back to work.  Post-polio syndrome advancing.

There went that.  Now I had a man around the house   all   day   long.  And a morbidly depressed one at that.

But that was ten years ago and we adjusted to that and found other Big Problems to ruin our lives.

Today though, the weather is beautiful and I wasn't noticing myself brooding on a Big Huge Overwhelming Problem.  Instead I noticed myself criticizing myself in pretty much my father's tone, "Shut your mouth, you'll let the flies in." Something like that.  So maybe I had allergies as a kid, too.  Today the pollen was getting to me and my slender aristocratic nose was having a hard time streaming air, I guess.  I kept finding myself semi-mouth breathing. Ah jeez.

But that was only the beginning.  Then there was how fat I've gotten (30 lbs. over my high-school weight), and how lazy too, really not active enough in everybody else's opinion, and how I forgot what I came here for, and oh, the mess in the front closet and the kitchen floor and . . . I began to ask myself, When will I be happy with myself?


Actually, on a good day I am basically happy with my privileged first-world life and myself, though little things like that intrude.  Go back under the bed, monster.  On a bad day (which today was not) the self-criticism really flows.  I'm more aware of it now than ever, as I've been working with a book that had me look harder at how I do that.  This is much like Zen - dark enlightenment, it's sometimes called.  This is the part about spiritual practice and personal growth that nobody tells you about, and nobody likes.

So bringing this out into the light, I thought, I'll be happy with myself - that is, I'll be perfect - when I meditate twice every day, clean out the frig, hang up all my clothes, oh, the kitchen floor, get my manuscripts out and published, iron that scarf....

In short, I had a to-do list headed by
Lose 10 lbs.!  Maybe 20!
With at least 100 other things on it.
And that's how women are.

I haven't even touched on the faults other people probably think I have, which I am blithely unaware of.*  So that at least is something to like about myself, that little streak of ignorant bliss.
~~~~~~~~~~~
* The old prescriptive grammar said, "Never use a preposition to end a sentence with"** but I have a PhD in English, and a rebellious streak, AND I'm not paid for this, so I write what I want.
** I know - I'm joking.

What Rescue Workers Know and Women Don't

Sundays, I like to go to church.  There isn't an American Zen center in my city, but I wouldn't leave my church if there was; I've been a member there for thirty years, and they've helped me through sickness and loss. I've gotten to know a lot of nice people there. I ran into three (3!) of them at my local library today, perhaps because we were all not at the OSU football game.

Maybe my long tenure there has meant I feel free to misbehave.  Often, the music and the sermon inspire me to write a poem quietly, on paper with a pen, not on my iPad.  If that bothers someone, they should sit with that, as we say in Zen, meaning, they should meditate on, What's my problem, anyway?

But last Sunday I was inspired not to poetry, but to some notes on self-compassion. What, have compassion for yourself?  You're a woman. Who has time?  Exactly.

Who has time to meditate, for example, to name the overall best way of taking care of yourself by reducing your stress.  I once heard a self-styled spiritual person say that.  Really? I thought thoughtfully.  But she worked, and had a family.  And after all, meditation - time to accomplish nothing at all in a certain way - is a luxury for those who don't have to work all their waking hours.

As I thought about self-compassion, and taking better care of This Wun, I remembered the fireman [sic] I once was doomed to work with; we co-edited a manual for fire fighters.  We'd have gotten along better if I'd said to him early on, "Look Ron - you know how to fight fires.  I don't tell you how to fight fires.  I am a language person.  I know how to edit.  Let me do my job."  In part, I kept silence out of a not-unreasonable fear of macho guys with big chips on their big shoulders.

From working with that book I learned the first rule of fire-fighting, whether you're a smoke jumper or a small-town volunteer:
       Save yourself first.
A rescue worker is a very important part of any community, as communities are places where people live in shelters, and shelters are important to animals.  So, you know those adorable pictures of a firefighter streaked with smoke, lovingly holding a tiny kitten?  If he or she* endangered their life to save that kitten, they will get chewed out mercilessly by the captain, and by Ron.  Because a trained rescue worker is more valuable than the idiot who started that fire by smoking in bed.  That's how Ron explained it to me, in more colorful language.  It's expensive to train a rescue worker and it can take years before you tame down their hero fantasies and they become good team players.  So Ron said.   

Women of the world - whether you fight fires or a harassing boss, are a mother or a daughter, a politician or a postal clerk - you are important, too.  Yes, even though you don't have a penis.  This is still news to many people.  Change comes slowly.  The general culture keeps subtly putting women "in their place" even if your parents were liberated and you are, too.  The comic strips are full of jokes about women working two jobs, the paying job, and that second shift they work when they come home and take care of a family.  But it really isn't funny.

When you fail to take care of your own needs - and who am I to suggest daily meditation? I'm not your mom - you are spending the vital chi you were born with.  It is exhaustible. 

I think that the reason most people stop meditation practice is that their truth is threatening to break through the boredom.  It does do that, and when it does it's a good thing to be working with an authentic Teacher.  Be prepared.  As my favorite author, Terry Pratchett, has written, "one edition of the Ankh-Morpork Times says on the masthead, 'The truth will make you fret.' (Other editions assert, 'The truth will make you free,' and 'The truth will make you Fred.')  There is debate about who first added an estimable second clause to that famous sentence, maybe Dead President James Garfield, who is not credited in this pretty poster -

Some prefer Gloria Steinem's version.
~~~~
* Rescue Workers have to wear so much gear, and lift so much weight that few women can qualify or, indeed, have dared to aspire to the job.

Appreciating the Least Thing

Impatiens self-seeded by my sidewalk

The moon is serenely shining up in the sky, and she is alone in all the heavens and on the entire earth; but when she mirrors herself in the brilliant whiteness of the evening dews which appear like glittering pearls broadcast upon the earth from the hand of a fairy,--how wondrously numerous her images! And is not every one of them complete in its own fashion? This is the way in which an enlightened mind contemplates God and the world.  God is immanent in the world and not outside of it; therefore, when we comprehend the secret of the "little flower in the crannied wall," we know the reason of this universe.
Soyen Shaku
Zen for Americans

The above is a description of the panentheism of Shin, a Buddhist sect that incorporates features of Shinto, an ancient Japanese nature religion in whose internet  manifestation I've been wandering this morning.  There I found the amulets below, which you can buy to protect your pet.  The love of our animal companions has become obvious with social media, which sometimes seem dominated by pictures of cats.  (Guilty as charged.)  My own UU church has a group devoted to compassion for animals; many American Buddhists don't eat meat out of that compassion, following the precept to do no harm.  I notice that many of the same people campaigning for mercy to animals are also involved with recycling, reuse, and sharing.

 It is also interesting to me that amulets are traditionally returned after a year to the temple, to be burned in a ritual way, part of the respect for all phenomena that also causes the temple to sell recycle bags.

There seems to me to be lots of room in this country for a religion that supports the love of nature.  In fact, the warming of our climate, finally agreed upon by every major scientific group, is telling us we need to cherish nature much more than we do, and stop cutting down trees to manufacture disposable (paper) towels.  When I was a girl, they didn't exist.  My mother used rags, like everyone else, made from worn-out clothes and linens not good enough to go in a quilt.

We are meant to extend the same kind of caring to ourselves, as well.  Americans - overworked, badly fed, sick from spending our whole lives sitting - have a special need to adopt self-care in the face of commercial interests that want you to think a powerful new car or great vacation or ED pill or new shoes or bacon pretzel burger or more money or winning the game will make you happy.  Not so.  Not for long. 

An alternative to the dissatisfied consumer life is the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson referred to above:

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

To entirely understand a flower, root and all, qualifies as an epiphany, or awakening, if you like.  It's a grander awakening to understand ourselves the very same way.  For this, you have the serious practice of zazen.
~~~~~~~~~~
p.s.  Or course, I always notice when the word "man" is used to mean "humankind," which would include the, uh, fair sex, woman.  This dates from times when women indeed had no civil rights, and were seen as sexual objects and helpmeets.  I didn't have a chance to talk with Lord Tennyson about this. 

The Courage to Take Care of Yourself

 Women!  What does a woman want?!  Some old sexist said that, and it's been picked up a lot by men who like to aggrandize themselves by sighing at our frivolity.  

If you want to know what women want, pick up a magazine while you're waiting for a diagnostic mammogram.  All they have are "women's magazines," but they're not for women - they're for eternal girls.  You'll see cover articles promising youth and beauty and great sex and how to fit yourself properly in $100 jeans.  And oh yes, skin care.  Skin care is - a spiritual matter.

Being desired on the basis of our looks isn't really what we want, is it?  We want to love and be loved.  We want to be esteemed.  We want to actualize ourselves, to be who we are and give our gifts to the world.  God knows we want a better world for the kids we love, a world without war.  But Revlon and Clinique and many other wealthy companies want you to think their "skin care" will bring you happiness.  (Click here for an intelligent article on a sneaky beauty campaign.)

I got into thinking about all this just last night, propped up with my iPad (gift of a wonderful daughter with a scientific mind, who earns decent money!) when I read an interview with a wise old woman who runs an interesting-sounding Zen Center called Goat-in-the-Road.  Here's an excerpt.

Yvonne Rand

Q: And how do you feel when you look at yourself and see yourself change?

Yvonne Rand: Well, I use that as the occasion for returning to [the fact that] everything changes, nothing remains the same, including skin. I mean, I've actually done meditations on hair, nails, and sagging skin -- taking on as a focus for noticing change where I might want to turn away. Okay, for the next week or ten days I will bring my attention to standing in front of the mirror and noticing, bringing attention to oh, sagging, impermanence of the body. And I won't linger with that attention on sagging long enough to get caught with storytelling about it. I'll notice and come back to the present moment by bringing attention to the alignment of the head, heart center and hara, and the breath.
~~~~~~~
The storytelling will occur.  I remember doing something like this when I was about 40 and had, by months of counting calories, lost 30 pounds I'd put on with antidepressants.  I never thought I'd have a different body than I'd had three years ago. I could fit into my white jeans, but I'd never look as good in them again. 

The story my mind went to was not, "I need liposuction."  I was a feminist, after all.  I saw the truth.  I was done for as an object of lust.  (Well, mostly.  I still got hit on by the occasional married man.)  I couldn't think of anything to do with my life now but keep writing.  

A Falling-down Life

Wisdom of the Elders:

If I want your advice, I'll ask for it.

I seem to have left out something very important.  Last Thursday I fell off the second rung of a stepstool flat on my back, hit my head and one buttock. I've been generally confused and scattered since then, so much that I didn't even see my good doctor, who's a DO, until yesterday.  I was afraid I'd cracked something in my back, because the pain has been fierce, but X-rays didn't show anything new.

This doctor is good with physical exam, too, and felt that the pain is from my neck seizing up to protect the head, which he says is natural when you fall.  That radiates down my back, which already has various problems. So I have been told to take it very easy.  Heat, painkillers.  Call him if I want to be put to sleep.  I wish.

On Saturday someone I called for consolation made me angry by coming up with a stream of advice, quite outdid herself.  There are some people you just vow to keep in your life, no matter what.  So on Sunday I got over that, but then another woman made me mad all over again by calling me just as if our e-mail exchange earlier that week had simply not penetrated at all.  I won't go into that (but did have to express my feelings in a previous post). And I had to restrain myself from calling her back.  Too angry to dare speak.  Sometimes that's the best you can do.

The important thing is that my doctor diagnosed a concussion.  So. That explained how difficult many things have been.  And my inability to put up with people I usually try to understand and allow for their MAJOR huge compassion deficiencies. There.  That felt better.  And all this on top of my usual bipolar crap.  Just when I had gotten over that statin thing and felt like I was having a life.  I think some compassion is in order, and since I'm not getting it anywhere else, I'm working on giving it to myself. I know that some of you know how much we need to do that.
With a bow,
Jeanne

Health Update

Where to begin?  Just chat, I guess.  I am propped in bed, Tashi on knees, a scene I sometimes feel is heaven.  I am icing my right ankle 20 minutes on, 20 off, and taking care to do the least possible walking because every step hurts.  Tom is in bed in the other room though it's only 8:00 pm here, and we're both hoping he's just tired, not getting sick.  Long active day, and he had to do all the driving.

What happened was that the transplant doc way last December saw my total cholesterol bump over  200 and prescribed a statin.  He made a good case for it, and I thought he knew what he was doing.  I took it for 3 days and ended up in the hospital being looked at for heart attack.  They ruled that out and released me, and nobody ever talked about the statin.  Then household calamities arose and somehow it was displaced from the box that holds my medicines, and had not yet gotten on my med list.

Two weeks ago I was somehow reminded that I was supposed to be taking the damn thing, so I started it again.  No one had ever connected the events of last December with the statin.  No one ever asked, "What's the last medication you started?" which I now know is always an important question.  This time, when I made a fairly urgent (next day) appointment at the clinic I use, nobody asked again, though the nurse went through the tedious business of updating my med list.

Wednesday I was worse off yesterday than I'd been in December: terrific edema in my legs and feet, and my right foot so painful I could hardly bear to walk.  Short of breath, by which I mean out of breath from tying my shoes.  Temp low, blood pressure low.  They took chest x-rays, listened very carefully to my lungs and heart, then sent me over to the hospital for a venous ultrasound and an echo.  These things showed no blood clots, no heart problem.  Home, relieved that I wasn't admitted.  I am really tired of going through so much to stay half-alive.

Thursday I had a message from the clinic that the urine sample showed some bacteria, so they are culturing it.  Meanwhile they wanted to throw Cipro at it.  I told the pharmacist I wouldn't be picking that up. Both my shoulders have torn rotator cuffs, apparently as a result of taking Cipro for a week when it turned out to be the wrong thing altogether, but it was Christmas and nobody checked the lab results...

Today I saw my really good doctor about the painful foot.  He is a DO who specializes in musculoskeletal-skeletal problems.  He x-rayed the foot six ways and said, "The good news is, nothing's broken. Your bones are fine." Once again, I was giddy with relief.  It has worn off.

He did say two other things.  One was something about how they now think statins do something else to lower cholesterol, and that's not good.  The other was that this is not classical rhambodyolosis, but I'm such a delicate balance he thinks the statin went in and upset everything.  He's going to be out of town next week, but made sure I knew to call the office it I have any questions or it isn't going well.  And asked me to check in the following week and let him know how I'm doing.

Tom thinks he and I can be excused for not questioning the transplant doc's prescription of this low dose of statin because of how learned and certain the guy seemed.  This is what he does, deal with kidney transplant patients. I think nobody has ever looked after me in my life and I am never again going to take anything without researching it thoroughly.

I had not read this article or heard about the book.  A whole goddam book against the most-prescribed drug in the world.  Then, leafing through Wired magazine, I read,that 30,000 people die every year in America from over-treatment.  At the same moment the evening news was,informing me that seven people die every day texting while driving.  I'm an English major - you do the math.

God knows how long it will take to get back in some kind of physical balance and be able to maybe walk without pain, and drive.  I talked today to someone I thought would care and she told me with veiled impatience that it's not the doctor's fault, it's the system.  And don't bother to try changing the system.  Or even think about a lawsuit.  And I am just thinking deeply about this idea, self-compassion.  Caring for myself as much as I have for other people.  It's a woman's problem.  In a good mood, I have a grip on it, how you're no good to anyone if you don't take care of yourself.  How martyring yourself is nothing to brag about. 
~~~~~~
I wrote this last night, propped in bed, the foot elevated, feeling my mood go down.  It is still doing that up/down, but is less predictable now.  I felt that what I wrote didn't begin to express how frightening this was, how low I felt. 

Just fielded a phone call from the clinic nurse, about how they want me to start Cipro.  I feel like the medical system has continued the abuse my father started, the utter failure to look at me as an individual or listen to me.  It's the patriarchy.  That's what he did, trained me to accept abuse.....I can't think of a title for this.  Just going to post it for the information of friends, I guess.