What triggers your resistance?

April 24, 2013 / Jill Winski / 6 Comments

One of the benefits of being a rabid journaler is that I have ample evidence of my patterns and habits and defaults. All that stuff I “tend to do” when I’m scared, overwhelmed, panicked, what have you. It’s there in ink on actual, physical pages. Hard evidence.

A client who also journals told me recently that he picked up a notebook from ten years ago and was depressed to see that he was struggling with exactly the same stuff as he is today. He thought it meant that he hadn’t changed at all, had been stagnating for ten whole years.

Which is so not the case.

Of course you were struggling with the same stuff back then, I said. Those are your core issues.

We all have core issues, those deep, resonant conflicts within us that we’re on this earth to be with, work with, and, over time, learn from. These issues are our teachers. It’s not about overcoming them or even letting go of them. The work is to become more and more intimate with our core issues as we cycle through them again and again in our lives. We peel our layers like an onion, each time getting closer and closer to our center.

I still struggle with much of the same stuff I did at twenty — it just doesn’t throw me as much, because I understand it better. I know how to work with it, play with it, in ways I didn’t then. In fact, some of the areas where I’m strongest now are the areas I had most difficulty with at twenty, even if those areas still cause me trouble.

For me, this is the work of my life. This is my real work, above, beyond, and beneath any other “work” I do in the world.

It’s these core issues, though, that trigger our resistance. Of course they do. They’re painful. Nobody wants to delve into pain. When I feel like I’m spinning my wheels and I just don’t see a way out, I can be pretty sure that some core issue has risen to the forefront and I’m in resistance to it.

What’s tricky is that we can often be blind to our core issues when they’re “up” for us. This is why I keep lists of my “resistance triggers” in my journals.

When I’m feeling stuck, I go to one of my lists. Resistance triggers basically boil down to painful thoughts that reflect our core issues. Here are some sample triggers from one of my lists:

You have to write something special, original and amazing or there’s no point. People have to be totally wowed by your writing or why are you doing it?

If you take too much time to yourself, people you love won’t understand and they’ll leave you. You have to be available to others when they need you or you’ll end up alone.

Even when you work really hard, it isn’t enough — what’s the point?

It doesn’t matter if you’re tired. Just keep going.

These are some of the biggies for me. You get the idea. The reason I write this stuff down is because I often don’t recognize that these issues are “up” for me. All I know is I’m feeling sad, empty, or pissed off and like I can’t move forward. Often, when I consult one of my lists I immediately see the thought causing the resistance jump off the page at me. Ahhh. Now I have something to work with.

So let me show you how this resistance thing plays out: If I’m in the grip of a thought like, “If you take too much time to yourself, people you love won’t understand and they’ll leave you,” but I don’t know it, I’m often over-responding to others, overscheduling myself, saying yes more than feels good to me.

Pretty soon I’m fed up, angry, withdrawing from and resisting interaction — even interaction that could be helpful and nourishing to me (such as taking time to truly connect with myself or with a friend who deeply wants to hear me).

If I’m in the grip of a belief like, “You have to write something special, original and amazing or there’s no point,” I become extra-hard on my writing. I become unwilling to experiment. I belabor every sentence. Everything feels squeezed and distorted, like I’m trying to fit my words through a teeny, tiny keyhole and hope they can make it through to the other side as magical, life-altering prose.

Pretty soon I don’t want to sit down at my desk at all. Writing has become painful, not life-enhancing. And certainly not fun. So now I’m resisting writing at all; I’ve become disconnected from why I ever wanted to do it in the first place.

Writing these triggers down as we become aware of them is a huge act of self-care. It’s about knowing ourselves. Seeing your thoughts on paper is a good way to cut them down to size — sometimes, thoughts that feel horrifying when they’re stuck in our heads can look absolutely ridiculous when you see them written down.

Just the act of noticing that I’m being triggered by one of these thoughts can create a huge shift for me. I’m no longer merged with the thought — I’m now outside of it, observing it, so it’s over there where I can question it, and not a driving force within me. The next step is to question these thoughts, look for evidence of where they are not true. (The Work of Byron Katie is an excellent way to question your painful thoughts.)

What triggers resistance for you? How do you know you’re “in it”? Let me know in the comments!

Image is “Stone and Brick Wall” © Peter Szucs | Dreamstime Stock Photos

What one thing can you let go of?

April 11, 2013 / Jill Winski / 6 Comments

I’ve noticed a pattern with myself and some of my clients. We want to add new things to our lives and we’re excited about that. But our current lives are so full that there literally isn’t any space for that newness. We try to stuff the newness into the cracks in our current lives, but our lives start to feel like they’re bursting at the seams. Ouch. The newness can’t truly take root and grow because there’s no rich soil for it to anchor itself to.

We need to actually make space in our lives for the newness. We need to create room where the future can enter. If we keep ourselves constantly busy and scheduled every day, if we choose not to notice our need to let go of something which no longer feels good or serves us, we spin our wheels.

I know, this sounds mildly upsetting and maybe even scary. Change can suck, even when you desperately want it.

But you can open up this space in your life, this space in which to allow for the new, bit by bit. You don’t have to do a massive overhaul of your entire life.

One of my clients who felt ready for change but completely burdened by her schedule had been taking a weekly Pilates class for more than two years. It wasn’t feeling great to her anymore, but how could she let go of it? It was Pilates, and therefore, good for her! Right?

After some poking around on the issue, we realized that the energy of the group in the class had shifted significantly and it didn’t resonate for her anymore. What had once felt like a supportive habit no longer did. She quit the class, and just that one open evening a week began to pave the way for change. She found herself using the open time to sit quietly and within a couple of weeks she started cleaning out a closet and packing up some very old stuff to donate to charity.

Sometimes the “one thing” might just be a one-time letting go, too. A friend of mine who never, ever takes a day off work recently decided she would take just one day off. She’d been convinced that things would “go to hell in a handbasket” (I love that phrase! — what does it mean?) at her office if whe wasn’t there.

As it turned out, everything went smoothly in her absence and it occurred to her that she could loosen her grip on things around there a little, delegate more, and maybe take a day off here and there in the future. (If you have perfectionistic tendencies, you are likely addicted to “showing up”. See what happens when you don’t. Just once.)

So, I know you’re thinking, what if the one thing you choose to let go of is on a grander scale, like a job, a relationship, a project near and dear to your heart? I know. That is so, so hard. But, while there’s no denying letting go can feel utterly crappy, the way we think about letting go can make it either harder or easier.

Letting go happens in layers. You don’t have to do it all at once. Even the big things we let go of are full of tiny things you can let go of one at a time.

Years ago, I left a job I’d been at for a long time, and it was hard. I knew in my heart that letting go was the thing I needed to do, but the thought of it was so overwhelming. The change! The massive change! For several months, I spun around in this cycle: I want to leave. But it’s so hard. It’s so overwhelming. I can’t do it! I won’t. But I want to leave. But it’s so hard. I can’t do it!

Then one day it occurred to me that I could make the decision to leave without having to act on it. I know, it sounds counterintuitive, right? But that’s what I did. Making the decision to leave was my “one thing.” And as soon as the decision was made, my entire body felt lighter. I didn’t actually give my notice at the job until almost a month after I’d made the decision to do it. Giving notice was another “one thing” in a series of “one things” that needed to happen for me to exit the job.

Note that my making the decision to leave — even before I’d actually given my notice at work, before I’d actually physically left the job — created space for newness to enter. Because I was no longer spinning my wheels — do I or don’t I? — my energy was freed up to magnetize itself to my not-yet-created future. And because I could see a finite end to the work situation, it became far more bearable for the remaining time I was there.

As I write this, I remember, too, that another “one thing” that helped me make the decision to leave was that I had decided to sit on the blue chair in my apartment instead of the couch where I usually sat. Yep, that was it. I looked at the chair and thought, I’m sitting here while I write in my journal today. Not there. And from that journaling space on the blue chair came my decision to leave my job.

Do not underestimate the power of letting go of one thing. Even if it’s only for today.

For a variation on this theme, check out my previous article, “The power of tiny new things.”

Work With Me: Are you in transition and feeling stuck or scared about moving forward? I have two openings for new coaching clients. Read more here to see if we might be a good fit.

Image is “Lizard 1” © Alexey Lisovoy | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Getting clear on “success”

March 28, 2013 / Jill Winski / 8 Comments

Too often we are vague about our definitions of success. We don’t really clarify what we mean by “successful,” or we take on somebody’s else’s definition (maybe a family member’s) and work toward it without actually asking ourselves if it’s what we want.

Or, our idea of success is all tied up with money, even though the amount of money we make and the feeling of being successful are very different things.

My current definition of success is “knowing and understanding myself better and better and showing up for others who want to do the same.”

Notice how I can go into literally any situation and be successful based on my personal definition? Can I be this version of success working as a receptionist? Check. Can I be this version of success at a cocktail party? Check. Can I be this version of success in prison? Sure.

For me, a definition of success that works is one that lights me up, one I feel deeply connected to, and one that is NOT dependent on an external circumstance that is outside of my control.

I can live my current definition of success when I’m writing or when I’m coaching a client, but I can also live it when I’m with a friend, at the dentist’s office, or riding the bus. I may or may not choose to act on this definition, say, at the dentist’s office, but it can still light me up while I’m there.

The problem with getting too situation-specific with our definitions of success is not that it’s unlikely we can make whatever situation it is happen. (We’re very often led into the exact situations we want because our interests, passions and curiosities take us right to them.) This is not at all about saying, well, it’s unlikely to happen so don’t dream it! It is wonderful, and necessary, to dream big. But let me give you a little example of what I’m talking about.

Say your definition of success is “becoming an Oscar-winning filmmaker.” First off, winning an Oscar is never going to be totally within your control. (Even if your film is nominated for best picture, you can be snubbed in the director category; just ask Ben Affleck.)

Still, could this definition of success be one that lights you up and that you feel deeply connected to? Sure. The idea of winning an Oscar one day could totally inspire you to make great films.

The problem with this definition of success is that winning an Oscar for your film isn’t really what you want. It’s only the costume your definition of success wears. The real definition of success beneath that Oscar disguise might be something like this: “My definition of success is making movies that affect others in a powerful way.”

But wait: Even that is not really it. “Making movies” is still window-dressing for something else. Let’s try again: “My definition of success is telling stories that affect others in a powerful way.”

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. “Telling stories” is close enough to the essence of what you want to do that this definition of success can work if you’re a receptionist, at a cocktail party, or in prison. You’re not dependent on standing behind a camera with a crew behind you in order to tell stories.

But wait: There’s still a problem with this definition of success. “Telling stories that affect others in a powerful way.”

Do you see it?

It’s dependent on an external circumstance. You do not have any real control over how others react to you. I know that’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s true. You might be able to give me all kinds of evidence that seems to prove that you have some kind of control over others’ reactions, but it won’t hold water. In the end, the way others react is up to them. They are choosing to react to something in a powerful way, by what they’re thinking about it, based on who they are and their experiences.

This is why I can think What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is a beautiful and amazing movie, and my friend’s brother falls asleep twenty minutes into it.

So what’s actually the definition of success we’re really looking for here?

How about this: “My definition of success is telling stories that affect me in a powerful way.”

Because YOU are the only one you truly have any control over affecting. The only person you are guaranteed to inspire is yourself. Which is very good news. Imagine if we all went around inspiring ourselves rather than angsting over whether or not we were inspiring others enough?

Ahhh. So, can you have this definition of success working as a receptionist? At a cocktail party? In prison? In a box? With a fox? Totally.

This doesn’t mean you don’t pursue becoming an Oscar-winning moviemaker if that’s what lights you up. Of course you do! It’s just an invitation to notice that the core essence of what you want doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with getting behind a camera or holding a golden statuette. Knowing this actually frees you up to pursue success — as you define it — in any number of ways. It isn’t out there, when the “great thing” happens — it’s within you, right now.

What might you do differently if “success” were already here? How do you act when you feel successful right now?

Work With Me: I help writers, artists, artisans and coaches who are feeling stuck get moving again. I have openings for new clients in April. Learn more, here.

Image is “Bridge into the Mountains” © Pat Young | Dreamstime Stock Photos

The shark is working well enough … really.

March 16, 2013 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

Anyone who knows me fairly well knows that I am obsessed with the movie Jaws. I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen Jaws, but … just … don’t get me started. (Writers, study Jaws if you want to see a movie where every single scene moves the story forward. Nothing is wasted.)

If you know anything about the making of Jaws, you know that the mechanical shark, a.k.a. “Bruce”, didn’t work very well. In fact, there were so many problems with the shark that it wasn’t seen on screen nearly as much as director Steven Spielberg had originally intended. During production on Martha’s Vineyard in 1974, the frequent refrain from the loudspeakers was “The shark is not working. The shark is not working.”

Welp. As we all know, the shark worked well enough. In fact, the semi-working shark worked so well that Jaws was the movie for which the term “summer blockbuster” was coined, back in 1975 when it first appeared in theaters.

One of the main things I do as a coach, when I have a session with a client, is listen for stressful thoughts. Thoughts are stressful when they are not deeply true for us, but we believe them anyway. So when I hear something that strikes me as painful or stressful for a client, I scribble it down in my notebook. If it seems important, I’ll point this thought out to the client and we’ll work with it.

I was going back over some notes before a session recently, and it really hit me just how often our thoughts are perfectionistic. They have to do with how we’re not doing enough, not doing it well enough (whatever it is), and how our reality is not matching the vision inside our heads. (I say “our” because, like my clients, I have a strong penchant for perfectionism. I’m always teaching what I most need to learn.)

I’ve written a lot here about perfectionism in the past (you can click on the categories link titled Perfectionism to the right to check out more). But I don’t know if I’ve emphasized how important it is for perfectionists to make a point of noticing what is working — and what is working well enough.

Because one of the biggest issues I see perfectionists struggling with is decision paralysis. We’re so terrified of making an imperfect decision and the havoc it will surely wreak that we hang out in indecision until it hurts. And then, then, we beat ourselves up for not making decisions quickly enough! It’s a totally lose-lose scenario.

And here’s the thing: We don’t struggle with decision paralysis as much when we give ourselves credit for having made good decisions in the past. Most perfectionists have a pretty big story about being poor decision-makers (it’s in keeping with the idea that we never quite measure up). We are also control freaks, so we tend to think we have much more control over our futures than we actually do.

Therefore, we think, we have to weigh each present or future decision very, very carefully, so we don’t repeat our past mistakes and don’t screw up our futures.

Why do we have this story? Probably because when life happens, as it will, it feels more familiar for us to blame ourselves than to admit the truth: Life is messy, and life is not fair. No matter how “good” we are, we can’t escape this reality.

So what if we were to flip this story on its head? What if we were to look back and notice how we made good enough decisions, and how some of them were even really good? How would we proceed if we basically believed that our lives worked well enough?

I think we’d go on making our movies, doing our writing, living our lives. We’d trust ourselves to create something good. What if Spielberg had decided to resign in the middle of production on Jaws because the shark wasn’t good enough? (Well, probably Universal would have replaced him with a different director. And we’d have had a very different Jaws. Which would have been a damn shame.)

At the bottom of it all, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about our lives, are either helpful or not helpful.

I don’t mean that we should tell ourselves things we don’t truly believe. I’m not talking about piling positive affirmations on top of our fear like white-washing a rotted fence. I’m saying we need to really give ourselves some credit. I’m saying we need to lower our standards enough that we can show up in our lives and in our creative work (or creative play, as I prefer to call it).

Perfectionists, aim for the B rather than creating A+ work that exists only in your head. Make the decision that feels best to you and call it a day, knowing you can course-correct tomorrow. Admit that the shark at the core of your movie is working well enough to continue the filming. Create your flawed-but-amazing works of art and live your flawed-but-amazing lives.

Work With Me: I work with writers, artists, artisans and coaches who are feeling vulnerable and stuck. Learn more about how we might work together, here.

Image is Shark Kite by Ryan Somma at flickr; some rights reserved

Feed yourself images — it’s good for you

March 3, 2013 / Jill Winski / 7 Comments

“Filling the well involves the active pursuit of images to refresh our artistic reservoirs. Art is born in attention. Its midwife is detail.” — Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

Yesterday I slept in because I had woken up in the middle of the night, scared by a dream. (When I came to consciousness, I was lying flat on my back shouting “death angel!” My boyfriend tells me he thinks Death Angel was an ’80s metal band — can anyone confirm this? — but that is not what my dream was about.)

I was so afraid I’d see a death angel in my bedroom mirror that I got up and went into the living room and watched TV until my bedroom didn’t seem so scary anymore.

Anyway, because I let myself sleep late to compensate for being up in the middle of the night, I walked out of the house at 10:30 to get my morning coffee with my mind full of all I had to do, feeling irritated and stressed. I hate starting the day late. It screws up my to-do list, makes me feel I’m already behind just by virtue of not beginning when I thought I would.

I got my coffee and then walked over to the hardware store to buy some lightbulbs. The person working at the front desk was tied up with a return, so I walked to the back of the store to the other register.

And I noticed the store had an old-fashioned red-and-gold popcorn cart set up back there, complete with little bags of popcorn and a hand-written sign that said “Take one!” I didn’t take one — I was working on my coffee — but I loved this. It brought back another memory of free popcorn, when I was a kid, maybe in a similar setting, and my mom grabbing two little bags of popcorn just like this, and handing one to me.

And then I began to think about how I really like my hardware store. The employees are always friendly, and customers are allowed to bring their dogs in, and when I go in there I feel like I’ve stepped back into the 1980s, in a very good way.

The popcorn cart made me feel happy and I left the store with my lightbulbs feeling a little less stressed. And I thought, you know, it’s Saturday. There was a time when Saturday was my day of relaxation. Now I too often make it my day to “get a lot done that I didn’t get done earlier in the week.”

So I decided I would reclaim some of that old Saturday relaxed energy and take a little walk.

When I returned from it, I scribbled down bits of what I remembered from the walk in my journal:

A snowman dressed like he was on a tropical vacation — Hawaiian shirt, grass skirt, sunglasses perched above his carrot nose — with a tube of SPF 50 lying in the snow next to him.

A sleek black dog in a red collar, digging in the snow and retrieving a tennis ball. The dog pranced around its fenced-in yard with the ball in its mouth, peppy and proud. It was an adult dog, but it bounded and flopped like a puppy. It saw me, dropped the ball to its feet, and froze, staring at me brightly with its ears perked and a dusting of snow on its chin that looked like cake frosting.

The dog and I exchanged a long, contemplative look, and then I rounded the corner and saw the sheets of snow coating yard after yard. The snow appeared perfectly smooth, but when I looked closely, I saw that hundreds of tiny rabbit tracks peppered each blanket. Now, I haven’t actually seen a rabbit in months — unlike squirrels, who are the chatty, ever-visible extroverts of the neighborhood animal kingdom, rabbits keep their distance and when you do see them, they freeze until you move on. But I love that rabbits leave traces of themselves, so we know they’re around.

The popcorn cart in the hardware store drew me into the present moment, and I moved on through my day more alert to the sights around me. Filling up on these images and then writing them down felt so nourishing. It connected me with the wonder that is the world around me, and I forgot about the to-do list that had been hanging over me when I’d left the house. When I returned to it, I felt more grounded and saw that not everything on the to-do list needed to be done. The peace I thought I would have when I had completed everything on the list was already within me.

My walk turned into what Julia Cameron calls an Artist’s Date. The purpose of an Artist’s Date is to fill your “creative well” with nourishment, in whatever form that takes for you. For me it is often the beauty of the everyday. How could so much amazingness be just outside my door? Well, it’s always there, but most of the time I don’t see it. I had to consciously open myself to it — which I did by choosing to slow down and have a leisurely walk — in order for it to find me.

This kind of nourishment is always available, and it’s totally free.

Try this: Make a practice of writing down images that inspire you, in as much detail as you can. See how you feel while you do it, and afterward.

Image is “Benches in Snow”, © David Coleman | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Taking action on what you know

February 19, 2013April 3, 2013 / Jill Winski / 6 Comments

One thing that I really like to drive home to my coaching clients is the importance of knowing ourselves.

I mean, really, really knowing ourselves — and particularly, the things we have a tendency to do that create chaos and disconnection for us.

Because very often, we know what doesn’t work for us, but we do it anyway.

Particularly if you are highly sensitive or an introvert, or both, the “general way” our society does things may not work for you. But it’s easy to toss away our particular, unique self-understanding when we convince ourselves that “everybody else” seems to be living, well, differently.

When we’ve been through the hell of learning something that brings us to our knees and connects us with our core (or, to put it another way, our essential self), we need to actually own that and act from what we know.

I call this acting from exquisite self-knowledge.

It is powerful to put this stuff into action. And you can often tell when you’re not putting it into action, by the way you feel.

This is true on both smaller points and large ones.

Like today, I was writing in my journal and I was completely caught up in the flow. As I’ve written about before, when my journal is truly calling to me, I have got to heed that call. Journaling has been, for many years now, the way I process and ultimately integrate what’s happening for me. It is my practice. If I don’t do it — especially when it’s really calling to me — I keep spinning my wheels and I don’t move forward.

But: I get really antsy and am easily distracted when I can feel something big about to come through in my journal. And I have a tendency to sabotage these “hardcore” journaling sessions by reacting to stuff in the external environment.

Today I actually grabbed my iPad in the middle of my journaling session — even though it was going brilliantly — and searched for youtube videos on Jaws 2. (Okay, not even a good movie, but I’ve been feeling oddly nostalgic for it lately.)

Before I knew it, I was watching shark attack videos which were obviously fake (and why in the heck would I do that to my HSP self?), and then somehow I was watching videos of cats stuffing themselves into small boxes (how do I always end up there?).

So I moved away from the iPad and picked the journaling session back up. A couple minutes later, the phone rang. I am like one of Pavlov’s dogs when the phone rings. I don’t know why I think I have to get up and see who it is. But get up I did.

It was a friend of mine who I really wanted to talk to. Normally, when the caller ID comes up as a close friend or a family member, it’s almost impossible for me not to pick up. I pick up as a kind of reflex. I figure I’ll make up the journaling time later; I tell myself the call will only take a couple minutes and then I’ll get back to my writing.

But experience has shown, this isn’t what happens. I get sucked into the call and when I get off the phone it’s hard to get my flow back. I put the journaling off. I toss away my practice. And I feel disconnected from myself.

So today, I didn’t pick up the phone. Why? Because I finally know myself well enough to know that if I pick up the phone during sacred journaling time, I will regret it.

And I have to tell you, acting on that exquisite self-knowledge felt really powerful. It felt congruent.

This might sound like a small point, not picking up the phone during a journaling session, but all these seemingly “small” points add up over the long haul. When I toss the needs of my essential self away on a regular basis and tell myself these “little things” don’t matter, I end up disconnected from myself, over time, in a big way.

There are larger points, too — like going back, out of fear or familiarity, to that job or that relationship we just know in our gut isn’t good for us. Or saying “yes” to something that we know from experience we simply have no desire to do.

None of this is about “doing it right” all the time or never making choices that don’t feel good to us. Part of the process of knowing ourselves is learning through trial and error what doesn’t work for us.

And sometimes, like with my Pavlovian response to the ringing phone, we have a very long learning curve. But when we do finally learn, it’s important to own what we know and take action on that knowing.

Try this: Make a habit of keeping a written record of things you’ve learned — the hard way — about yourself but have a tendency to forget. (I call this my Exquisite Self-Knowledge List.) Then check in with it from time to time, particularly if you’re feeling crappy and you’re not sure why.

What do you absolutely know about yourself that you might put on your own list? I’d love to hear from you.

And: Speaking of putting pen to paper, Thursday, Feb. 21, is the last day to register for the next session of Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. I’ve been a member of this group for going on a year and a half, and I’m also one of the coaches. You can read about the strides I’ve made with my writing in this group here. We’d love to have you join us! You can check it out here.

Image is “Doves” © Cook | Dreamstime.com

Sometimes it’s simpler than we think

February 8, 2013 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

I often write here about how anything we struggle with is usually more complex, and less black-and-white, than we make it. Which is good news. Black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking is at least part of the issue about 99% of the time we’re stuck in fear.

But for some of us, and particularly for those of us who fall into my just-created category of “so-beautifully-complex-it’s-ridiculous” (and I say this with deep love and respect because I adore people who are ultra-complex), it can be good to remind ourselves that sometimes it’s actually kinda simple.

I’m thinking of that useful acronym, H.A.L.T. It stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. When we’re feeling crappy, it helps to ask if one of these things is going on for us. Hunger is one that sometimes sneaks up on me. If I don’t catch hunger before it becomes full-blown, I get into low-blood-sugar panic. This happened to me last week and I found myself grabbing food I’d never normally buy off the shelves in CVS, then ripping open a package of cookies in the car. I got so hungry I went into survival mode — food, now!

Luckily, this rarely happens because I don’t allow myself to get that hungry. But it was pretty simple: I derailed my afternoon because I convinced myself it was important to run errands before eating lunch. I didn’t need to make it mean anything other than that, even though I caught myself having thoughts about how clearly my life was spinning out of control as I stared through my windshield eating Mint Milanos in the CVS parking lot.

It’s good to notice what we’re making something mean. (In fact, if I were forced to choose my all-time favorite coaching question, it would be “What are you making that mean?”) Feeling crappy doesn’t always mean so awfully much.

Like today, I was sitting in my office about to start working on this blog post, and I started feeling uncomfortable and vulnerable. I often feel uncomfortable and vulnerable before I start writing a blog post. But in this case, I was also cold. (The heat doesn’t reach from the living room into my office very well, so I need to be extra-bundled-up while I’m in here during the winter months.) I put on a warmer sweater and I felt instantly more comfortable and a lot less vulnerable.

My writer friends and I have noted that when we’re tired, we’re a lot more judgmental about our writing. Geesh, when I’m tired, everything looks a little bit bleaker. And the same for when I’m dehydrated.

Sometimes, things truly are complex and need some heavy untangling. But sometimes, it really is as simple as putting on a sweater or drinking a glass of water or getting more sleep. When you’re so-beautifully-complex-it’s-ridiculous, this can be deeply comforting to remember.

Try this: The next time you find yourself grid-locked by analysis paralysis, apply H.A.L.T. (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) to your situation and see what you comes up for you. The last time I did this, I discovered I was actually lonely, called a close friend, and emerged from the conversation with an entirely new — and workable — perspective on my situation, even though we hadn’t actually discussed what I was worried about.

You can check out my previous article on analysis paralysis, here.

Image is “Sunrise Solitude” © Lyn Adams | Dreamstime.com

Creating rituals around the tough stuff

January 30, 2013February 2, 2013 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

For almost everything we call “hard,” it’s hard in part because our tendency is to force ourselves to jump in and “just do it.” We live in a culture that loves the idea of “just do it”.

And sometimes just doing it is totally helpful and appropriate.

And sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it makes the hard stuff harder.

When we think of something we want to do that scares us as a big, solid mass, like some monolithic thing rising up out of the sea, and we tell ourselves to “just jump over that!”, of course it’s going to feel really hard.

Everything that we think is hard has many, many increments and layers to it. And we can approach it this way, too.

Once, I was asked to create a piece of writing around a photograph in a museum exhibit, then read the piece to an audience as part of a writing festival. I had only about a week to get to the museum, look at the photograph, write the piece, and practice the reading.

A week goes fast, and I had lots of other stuff going on that week, too, so in reality, I knew I’d only have a few hours to do this. But it felt fun and challenging, so I decided to take it on.

Except when I looked at it all as a whole, it felt really hard. And when I say hard, I mean it actually felt hard, like a glinting black bowling ball. I could feel my abdomen contract just thinking about having to write this thing.

And this is what we often do when we’re confronted with something difficult that needs to be done: we get really hard and rigid ourselves around that thing. We set up walls around it and then we talk about “breaking through them.”

What if we set up softness around the tough stuff? What if we created a relationship with it that we enter and exit?

If I go back to my example of that piece of writing, I notice that there was a lot of entering and exiting the hard parts, within the whole process of getting it written.

There was going to the museum to look at the photograph. I made that softer by wandering around the exhibit for a while, letting the work of these photographers sink in and appreciating it. I made it softer by doodling stars and cat faces in my notebook before I started taking notes. I made it softer by treating myself to coffee on the way home.

Then I made the process softer by giving myself some time after I got home to sit with my notes and the feeling I got from the photograph. I let my notebook simmer next to my computer before I sat down to write. I let myself take a little time to get a good sense of what the picture conjured up in me.

And when I sat down to write, I made that process softer by reminding myself that right now, I was just writing, not sharing. I wasn’t thinking about the sharing until I was good and done with the writing. And I was writing one sentence at a time.

And within that writing, I took little breaks from time to time where I exited the process.

On the day of the actual reading, there was a lot of entering and exiting, too.

I didn’t turn it into, “Just do the reading! Just Do It!!!” Instead, it was more like: Get up. Have coffee while taking ten minutes to do a run-through of the reading. Keep enjoying that coffee while choosing an outfit. Ride train to reading, and while on train, start getting into reading mode — start entering reading mode and preparing for the reading.

Ahhh. Being allowed to enter and prepare, and making that a completely separate thing of its own, made the impending reading feel so much more soft.

There was a little period before the reading, where I congregated with the other readers, who were also freaked out, and acknowledging each other’s freaked-out-ness made it all feel much softer.

And then there was the reading itself, and meeting the warm eyes of certain appreciative audience members. And that made the reading itself so much softer, so much less like a glinty, flinty bowling ball and much more like a marshmallow or some Silly Putty.

Fast-forward to the present. When I sit down to work on my novel, it often feels hard, until I remember about creating rituals of softness.

There’s getting coffee and feeling the warm cup in my hand. There’s turning on my computer and watching my wallpaper come up (it’s a picture of my cat stretched out on the couch, sleeping). There’s opening my document and noticing all the other documents alongside this one, documents full of things I’ve written in the past, and that makes me happy and gives me courage: Oh, yeah, I’ve done this before, this writing.

And then there’s the first sentence of the day. I make that softer by allowing it to be a totally crappy sentence. And I make that softer by reminding myself that I can go back and change it later. And then, nine times out of ten, I’m off and writing. If I get stuck (which I often do), I make the stuckness softer by allowing myself another crappy sentence which I can change later. A lot of days, my cat jumps into my lap while I sit at my computer.

Ahhhh. So soft.

How do you create tiny rituals of softness around the tough stuff? I’d love to know.

The power of tiny new things

January 17, 2013 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

I was talking with one of my clients the other day about how when we’re getting ready to let go of an old, painful pattern, it usually seems to get worse. It seems worse because (yay!) we notice it more. We’re really, really aware of how terribly incongruent this pattern is with the new-us-we-are-becoming. So of course it feels more painful than it ever has before.

When a pattern is really painful, I know my tendency can be to get really hard on myself about it. “How could you create this mess?” “How can you be here, again?” “Are you never going to learn from your stuff?”

These kinds of thoughts are like a smokescreen, or code, for: big internal changes are happening, and they scare me, so I need to slow down the process by being really hard on myself. Then I have something to struggle with and rail against, so I can ensure that the change is as slow as a part of me needs it to be.

The part of me who is deep and wise knows that I don’t need to do this; I don’t need to make the process harder than it is. Actually, when a pattern is playing itself out and it’s really, really painful, this is the time to step back and be the observer. I don’t have to do anything; I don’t have to fight with the pattern or try to get rid of it.

By the time I’m noticing how acutely painful it is, it’s already on its way out.

Mixed in with the pain of “this so doesn’t work for me anymore” is, believe it or not, some grief — sometimes a lot of grief. A coping mechanism that, on some level, has been useful for (often) many years is being let go. There’s sadness in that. That coping mechanism has become part of my identity, so, truly, I am letting go of something that feels like me (even if it isn’t).

In these periods of watching old patterns rev themselves up to high speed until they burn up and work themselves out of my system, it can be so gratifying to notice tiny new good-feeling things that enter my life. As the old stuff is leaving, I like to set an intention to notice what feels new and good and light.

The new and the good and the light are so often commonplace AND unexpected. Like this morning when I was getting dressed, I saw this sweater in the bottom of my drawer that I’d bought a long time ago but never really worn. I put it on and smelled the sharp, fresh scent of new wool and it felt so snuggly and cocoon-like.

And then when I was reaching into my drawer for my earrings, I noticed this blue jay pin I love but haven’t ever worn much, either, and I put it on the sweater. And it looked like it was made for that sweater, like, how could I not have put these two things together before?

A tiny thing, yes, putting a pin on a sweater. But tiny bits of newness can be powerful. Because I’ve never put this sweater and this blue jay together before, they are already creating a tiny new alchemy that is about now, not then. Good to notice as the old stuff comes up to be kissed goodbye and released.

Try this: Experiment with tiny change. Move two tiny things in your house to new places, or put two things next to each other that have never shared the same space before. Notice what this tiny change sets into motion for you.

Coaching in the New Year: I have limited open slots for new coaching clients. If change is on the horizon for you, or you’re already knee-deep in it and need some support, check out my one-on-one coaching. Consultations are always free!

Starting 2013: The Bitter and the Sweet

January 7, 2013 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

The tree; the culprit.

I’m welcoming the New Year a few days late, thanks to getting hit with the flu just as the old year was ending.

As usual, I don’t want to take down my Christmas decorations. Sometimes, I love the after-Christmas “hush” more than Christmas itself. I like to sit in my dining room and stare at my little three-foot fiber optic Christmas tree on its table in the corner, where it has sat for the past seven Christmases. I like to reflect and be still, preferably with a manageable coating of snow outside, to make everything sparkly and glistening.

But this may be my little fiber optic tree’s last year of service. Because of:

The Bitter

Eight days ago, while I lay half-asleep in bed and the flu wormed its way through my body and I flashed hot, cold and sweaty, there was a crash in the dining room.

My cat, ever-fascinated with my little Christmas tree, had jumped up on the table, gotten scared by the aluminum foil I’d put around the base of the tree for the sole purpose of keeping him away, and bolted, bringing the tree down with him.

“Good God, no,” I thought. “Don’t do this to me today, when the ibuprofen hasn’t even kicked in yet.”

I shuffled into the dining room and the tree lay on the wood floor like a slain animal, ornaments rolling in all directions. My cat lurked in the bedroom doorway, surveying the destruction with rapt curiosity, as though he had no part in it.

At first I thought that, amazingly, no ornaments had been broken. Everything seemed to be intact. But then, the carnage came into focus: a red flocked deer leg, delicate and tiny, lay on the floor a few inches from the tree. It was from my very favorite ornament ever — my vintage deer with the white wreath around its neck.

“No!” I moaned, cradling the tiny leg in my palm. “No!”

But more carnage was revealed: the Puss ‘n Boots ornament my boyfriend gave me for Christmas last year was smashed to pieces. A paw here, a boot there, his sword flung all the way to the kitchen doorway.

I cleaned up the mess, sweating and shaky. By the time I talked to my boyfriend, I had accepted that things I love had been ruined. Puss ‘n Boots, at least, was beyond repair.

And, I discovered later, the tree no longer lights up.

“That is so terrible,” my boyfriend kept saying into the phone. “That is so terrible.” He’s very into Christmas ornaments, and he’d helped me decorate the tree.

His reaction helped me put things into perspective. It was disappointing, but not terrible. My good friend’s dog had passed away unexpectedly just a couple of days before, and I stared at my little twelve-year-old kitten culprit and felt such deep gratitude that he’s healthy enough to wreak havoc with the Christmas tree.

Fast forward several days, to:

The Sweet

I read a beautiful, magical short story by Kij Johnson, called “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss.” Of course, it’s a fact that I am completely obsessed with monkeys, but I don’t love this short story just because of the monkeys. I love it because it reminds me of how the everyday and the tragic are always, always, interlaced with the magical and the mysterious, if we look closely enough.

And: New clients to begin the New Year, clients whose authenticity, brilliance, and willingness to go there remind me of why I wanted to become a coach. Thank you, brave souls.

And: I’m flu-free!

I hope that you, too, are starting the New Year with hearty glimpses of health, magic, brilliance, and bravery.