Is it OK to be a Tortoise

My Clearing  Physical and Emotional Clutter Course is going very slowly and seems to be focusing on slowing things right down in order to reduce stress and make me  approach my days in a intentional and mindful manner.

I was a bit concerned about slowing down even more and was feeling quite resistant but then realised that I am actually one of life’s tortoises. 

Some people do well working under pressure, they multi task, leave things to the last minute and then put on a huge sprint at the end. The adrenaline that they generate gives them a natural high and they seem to always pull things off, even when they seem impossible. So they are always haring around. 

Not me, I am a tortoise. I don’t particularly do well at multitasking,  I Ieave too many things undone. I prefer to do less things but do them well. I like to prepare and plan ahead and take my time and arrive at my destination in a relative state of calm. 

Can a tortoise become a hare? I don’t know. Do I want to become a hare?  I’m not sure. Well actually I’m getting to accept my tortoiseness and am feeling  much  better with the realisation that I don’t have to do everything and be everything, all I have to do is the best I can in my own good time. 

What’s Stopping Me?

What’s Stopping Me?

Or to be more precise, why am I stopping me? 

That giant chip on my shoulder because I dropped out of of University when my mother was desperately ill and I didn’t get to  finish my degree. I don’t regret dropping out at the time but I never really had the chance to start again. I chose to start a family instead. No regrets about that either, so why the chip then? Because I feel unqualified.

I do have a Masters Degree in the University of Life though, I have that in spades. I brought up three sons, I went back to college on a vocational course when Ethan was a baby. I taught myself how to use a computer at night when the kids were in bed. I helped out in the family business, I set myself up as a freelance computer trainer and then became a Magistrate. I taught myself photography . I administrated a small charity for four years and ran educational and community programs.  After my father in law died I took on the care of my Mother in Law and have learned about medicine, family law, counselling ....I also look after my grandchildren.

I am still healing myself back to wellness after a minor emotional breakdown four years ago and have learned about Mindfulness, Emotional Frequency Tapping, and Inquiry. 

I have had to learn to divide my life between two countries, England and Israel. I have had to learn to drive on the other side of the road and am learning a new language.  I have had to learn online shopping, banking and to read the post in Hebrew. 

All these skills I acquired through determination and hard work, but still feel inadequate. Now I am training to be a Life Coach, I think I have what it takes and have been told I have the skills. And yet, and yet.... something is still holding me back and stopping me. That little voice, my worst enemy who says “Who do you think you are?  What makes you think you can be a Life Coach? Who gave you the authority to do that? There are plenty of Life Coaches out there far more qualified than you.”

I know it ‘s from my mind, I know it’s not really me....so why do I believe it? Why do I still have self limiting beliefs that hold me back and if I still have self limiting beliefs, how can I help others? How do I get over one of my most challenging hurdles? Once I get over it I know I’ll be OK but I still have a lot of work to do.... 

Intentions Intentions

Intentions Intentions

In addition to embarking on a year long project to clear Physical and Emotional Clutter from my life I am also trying to make room to complete a Course in Personal Coaching, followed by courses in Mindfulness, Neuro Linguistic Programming and Reiki.  

Thats quite a tall order from myself but I need to find something to occupy my mind and a way of making a bit of income. Yet something is holding me back from completing the courses even though I want to do them and I know I’m quite capable of finishing them. Something is holding me back from printing those business cards to promote myself as a life coach. It’s nit as if I’m not good at new challenges, I decided I wanted to be a magistrate and I did it, I decided to go for being the Chair and I did it, I set myself up as freelance computer trainer and did it very successfully. So why do I feel like there is something fraudulent about becoming a life coach? Is it because I think that I won’t be as good as the others? Am I afraid of the commitment and losing my freedom  because I am working. Do I think that I won’t give people the help they need. Am I frightened of success? I really don’t know what is holding me back. I’m looking forward to finding out! 

I have all these good intentions and I don’t know if I can follow through, and I feel like I am being dishonest with myself. Hopefully I will get some clarity as I work through all these issues

So today is Day 7 of the Clearing Clutter Course and I am being asked to consider am few points 

Objects that make me feel grounded, centred and excited about the coming year. 

Well it’s not objects that excite me, it’s ideas. I am excited about the idea of exploring deeper into myself and of getting rid of objects, ideas and releasing people that drain me of energy. 

Creating a dedicated space just for me makes me feel:

Weird! Building an altar of bits of candles and photos and things that are special to me sounds distinctly pagan. I don’t do pagan. I like the idea of having a little nook in my room with a comfy place to meditate but that’s about it and I have two bedrooms, neither of which have anywhere I could make a nook. So I’ll just have to let that one go. 

Intentions for my journey (and worries)

To try and stay motivated , even when it feels impossible. 

Feeling like I am getting too much into myself at the expense of others 

Not getting too worked up if I miss a couple of days or can’t manage to journal everything 

When I consider taking a year off, just for me I feel

Selfish

No one will understand me. 

Life in the Slow Lane

Life in the Slow Lane

Having succumbed to,two nasty viruses in two weeks certainly slowed me down. Thank goodness I’m recovered and feel much more like my old self. I have to admit that I have quite enjoyed the slowing down process, it’s given me time to do things that I usually deny myself because I’m too busy. 

Nothing exciting, my Hebrew lessons, reading, watching TV, things I would call guilty pleasures. 

Why should I feel guilty about doing things that I enjoy, give me pleasure and grow from? A life of practising delayed gratification because I have  more important things to do. What if this is  the time for me to spend more time doing the things I really enjoy? What if I benefited more from doing the things that I enjoy the most, not as a reward but as part of my growth.? What is wrong with slowing right down and just smelling the coffee for a while.? Maybe my slowing down will create more mental space for me to work out exactly where I am going.? 

Possibly I caught the viruses because my body knew that’s what was required to get me to slow down . I’ve quite enjoyed spending time here in my Jerusalem home. I’m here for another week and intend to keep it slow. 

I had a really delicious breakfast this morning at Roladin. Creamed spinach on toast, topped with two eggs and Parmesan cheese, a dish I would quite like to have a go at recreating. Maybe on the next lazy Sunday! 

Lay of the Land

Lay of the Land

So this is how it goes. 

For most of my adult life I’ve had this massive chip on my shoulder that I was never enough. Always defined by who I am by whose person I was. David’s wife, the boys’s mother, daughter in law, daughter, sister in law... but who was I? 

Most people when they meet me ask me what I do, that’s always met with a big question mark. Well, I do a lot...  but what is my vocation, my career, what have I done to save the world today? What do I do to earn money? I don’t know. Defining myself within these parameters is impossible for me. I usually make something up like “I work for my husband”.  It’s so unsatisfactory. Are we really what we do? I don’t think so any more. My qualities and characteristics make me who I am, not what I do. 

This is going to be part of my exploration, my journey because I think that the more I understand myself, the more effective I will become at helping others to do the same,  because we are all locked into the same trap of thinking that what we do makes us who we are. 

So why is this the lay of the land? It’s because I’m setting out a path of discovery, for myself and then it will branch out and I will be able to help others do the same. 

Being Here

 Being Here

This is the year I journal. I’ve tried before but without success... I think it’s because I didn’t have a program to follow... free journaling doesn’t seem to work for me. 

So,I subscribed to a program for the year called 

Clearing Physical and Emotional clutter. Each day I get a lesson to follow and then I’m going to journal my progress. I’m hoping that the emotional toolkit I have built will give me the tools to follow this effectively.

So here goes....

Being Here... today’s lesson was to do nothing, just to be here. This was an excellent start because I’m recovering from a tummy bug and there was very little I could do except sit and do very little indeed. Yet I did do one important thing... get over my phobia of throwing up. 

For most of  my life since I was five years old and threw up after eating carrots at school, I have had a fear of vomiting.  In fact I have spent the last couple of years working on overcoming various phobias but this one was THE biggie.  This time I knew that the best thing for me to do was to throw up and that I would probably feel better afterwards no matter how awful the experience would be. So yesterday I just decided to accept the fact that I was going to vomit and let it go..rather than fighting it which actually makes you feel much worse for longer. 

It was horrible... the retching, the heaving, the horrible taste in my mouth, the head in the toilet bowl, the lying on the bathroom floor. Yet, the fear wasn’t there, I felt truly awful but I wasn’t scared. I don’t know what shifted and when but there was a definite shift....  Maybe it was because I had let some of my other fears go, maybe it was when my friend Viv called me fearless, perhaps I shouldn’t even be questioning it too much. One thing I realised that the feeling of nausea is actually worse than the throwing up itself. 

I know this is really an unpleasant subject but I can’t really verbalise it, it’s much better in writing...and I had to get it out! 

“Today is your day, your mountain is waiting, so get on your way” Dr Seuss

So it’s Day 1 and I’ve already climbed a huge mountain, I’m looking forward to the rest of this years challenges 

On The Lines

We are often asked how much time we are spending here in Israel. My stock answer until a couple of weeks ago was " Chetzi Chetzi" which means "Half and Half"...it's about right when it comes to describing my life in a time frame but it says very little about what it's like to divide your time between two spaces.

Thanks to my brother in law, I now have a much more elegant and descriptive phrase to use. In Hebrew it's "Al HaKav"... which means "On the Lines" or commuting, .and is really spot on.

Our life situation is very much experienced On the Lines.

As one who tries to practice Mindfulness, my aim is to try and be in the present as much as possible, to live and experience the moment in order to get the maximum out of life. It means focusing on what I am doing in the present without letting my mind flip to thoughts that are either in past and future, it involves concentrating on the now in order to be more productive and to be able to give my full attention to those who are trying to engage with me without being lost in thought. Easier said than done.

Being Al HaKav means that wherever I am, a bit of me is always somewhere else. It's cognitive dissonance, contrary to all that Mindfulness practice dictates, which according to Jon Kabat Zinn's famous book  is interpreted as  " Wherever you go, There You are" . On the other hand, if I didn't practice Mindfulness, it would be so much harder, my body would be in one place while my mind would be elsewhere, not a good recipe for a life well lived.

Somehow the Almighty and the path our life and that of our family has taken dictates that we should be for the time Al Hakav, because we are the filling in the sandwich. Our children and grandchildren live in Israel and my parents and my husbands' ailing mother and sister live in Manchester. Competing demands for time, attention and care, actual and imagined, pull us in both directions... . Until the day that we can be successfully cloned...we will be Al HaKav. For most of the last three weeks, David has been in Manchester and I have been here but it is what it is and there's no point resisting it, we have been where we needed to be. .

A couple of months ago, a good friend of mine gave me some advice that she thought was for my own benefit.  She thought that I should not be posting so much on Social Media, mainly Facebook. She was tired of people commenting to her about my activities ( she's not on FB so wasn't aware of many of them). She felt that I was exposing myself to gossip and judgement. She was partly correct... and I was feeling quite vulnerable at the time, having just made Aliyah very quickly and with no explanation ( which incidentally I didn't and don't owe anyone ). So I tried to take her advice but it's made me feel cut off. The reason I like using FB and social media is precisely because I am Al Hakav... it helps me bridge the gaps and keep in communication with friends and family who I don't always have time to have long telephone chats with...for me it's the perfect way to keep in touch.  So to my friend, I'm truly sorry if you feel that I have let you down... but when you are On the Lines, you have to do everything you can to make sure you don't fall off!