Martini Rescue Squad

Inner Dialogue of Deliverance, a Comedy

Ah, mobile phones.  To most of us, they are a necessity.  At the same time, to many of us, they can be a burden.  Isn’t it bizarre how, in the last 15 or so years, our paradigms and whole life structures have changed so as to render us completely dependent on them, like them or not?

We have 24 hours in each day to do 28.63 hours worth of things.  What does this mean?  It means during the 10 minutes it takes us to flat iron or curl our hair, there are the 10 minutes it will take to call Aunt Millie and wish her Happy Birthday.

In the 30 minutes it takes to drive to work, there are the 30 minutes it will take to get through the five iterations of “Dr. Smithson’s office.  Please hold.” to schedule our dental check-up.

In the 90 seconds it takes from the time we hit the elevator button in the office lobby to the moment the elevator arrives at our office floor, there are the 90 seconds it will take to call the dry cleaner and confirm they will be open for pick-ups until 7 tonight so we do not have to reconfigure our last cleanish suit for the fourth day in a row.

No, changing shirts and tying our blazer around our waist instead of wearing it does not make it look like a different suit.

But what happens when we lose our mobile phone?

E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in our system stops.  Big, red, octagonal sign STOPs.

That’s what happened to me a few weeks ago when I misplaced my phone at some point during a party across town.

 

*Correction: the restaurant/lounge is not more than nine miles from my place, but it still takes 35-40 minutes each way during weekend night traffic.

 

Or did I leave it in the cab on the way home?

Exactly.

When I arrived home, I was exhausted, hopped in my jammies and went right to bed, i.e. I did not realize it was missing until the next morning.

“Good morning, XYZ Lounge.  This is Gillian in reservations.  How can I help you?”

"Hello, Gillian, my name is Paige and I was at the party in your main room last night.  I lost my mobile phone somewhere in your restaurant, or possibly in the taxi on the way home.  Did your maintenance team find a mobile phone when they cleaned up last night?”

"No, I’m sorry, they didn’t.”

“Are you sure they checked in every corner and under the big chairs?”

“Yes, our clean-up crew is pretty thorough.  Plus, after your party cleared out, they moved all of the furniture to accommodate a party we’re having here tonight.  If it was under any of the furniture, they would have found it when they moved everything last night.”

“Oh no, Gillian…Listen, I hate to be rude, but would you mind if I come by to look one last time?  Just to be sure?”

"No, I’d love that.  You never know.  A fresh pair of eyes may see something we missed.  Come on over and ring the bell on the side door when you’re outside.”

Very accommodating.

"Thanks, Gillian.  I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

Below is my tortured inner dialogue, as best I can recreate it, for the first few minutes of my drive back to the restaurant.

As you will see, every strategy I imagined to solve my mobile phone absence or to mitigate my own anxieties about not having my mobile phone required me to have – right – a mobile phone:

"Seriously, I cannot believe I did this.  Lost my phone...Oh, God, what if someone picked it up and started perusing through the numbers?  I don’t have any super personal information in there, do I?

“Oh GOD, I have my aunt’s credit card number in there for the thing she wanted me to order!”

"Do I have it entered under ‘credit card,’ or ‘cc’ – something obvious, or did I save it under her name?  Ah!  I just need to call her and ask her to make sure the bank did not notice any odd activity on her card in the last several hours…”

"Argh!  I don’t have my phone.”

"And this traffic is ridiculous.  It’s blocked as far as I can see and the freeway does not look any better.  I need to call Gillian and tell her it will be at least 35 more minutes before I can get there.”

"Argh!  I don’t have my phone!”

"Wait, my pass code – you’d have to enter my pass code to access my stored contact information – and no one could guess my pass code…but is hacking past mobile phone pass codes easy?  Oh, God…”

"And my mom, she is going to laugh.  Don’t I tell her I carry small purses specifically so I can keep track of everything?  And not lose it?  Hysterical.  She’s going to love this one.”

"Argh!  I don’t have my phone!”

"This traffic…I wonder if I take that side street, if that would be any faster…”

"Wow, and whoever has it may make unlimited calls to who-knows-where.  I need to call the mobile carrier and see if anyone has made any calls since last night.”

"Oh, my God, seriously?  I don’t have my phone!  Ooh, or could it be in the cab?”

"Who would remember which cab we took?...Rebecca!  She and Emily were the last stop among all of us who took it home.  And she gave him all of our share of the fare, so she probably had the most interface with the driver.  Yes!  Call her and ask if she remembers which cab company, or better yet, the driver’s name?…”

"Ahh!  I don’t have my phone!”

"Or call Gillian and ask her if she knows which cab companies usually queue up outside that lounge?  Right – but, again, I don’t have my phone.”

"I backed up all of my contact information on my home computer, right?  I think, I think…yes, I did probably sometime in the last week or so.  That’s good.  Oh, God, but all of my pictures from the pre-party are on it.  That stinks!”

"What if I left it in the cab on the way to the party?  No, no, no, I’m sure I didn’t.  I remember turning it off at the lounge, right before we got in the buffet line.”

"Damn.  That means I definitely cannot call it once I get there to see if we can hear the ring tone.  But why don’t I call it now and see if anyone picks up?”

"...And that would require me having the phone, wouldn’t it?”

"I feel completely helpless and dumb.  My dads used to joke this would happen; ‘What would you do without your cell phone?  You’re not as bad as your mother, who has it glued to her face, but, Paigey, I honestly don’t think I have your home phone number.  You’re always on your cell.’”

"Ha, they’d love this situation…”

"Annnd, I don’t have my phone.”

"It was Yellow Cab, right?  I’m almost sure of it.  Why don’t I just call Yellow Cab and ask if any of their drivers turned in a…”

"Paige!  You do not have your phone!  This is why you are sitting in your car, driving back across town, in the middle of this traffic.  Get that through your head…”

"Ha!  I need to call my brother, Pat.   I can hear the silence on the line as he shakes his head at me while I tell him...”  Right.

When I arrived at XYZ Lounge, it took me a few minutes to find the side door – “Down this little alley?  On the other side of the building?  Oooh, or is this it?”

Don’t think it did not cross my mind, how nice it would be to be able to call Gillian on my mobile and ask her to direct me to the correct door.

Sadly, my poor little mobile is my sacrifice to the festivities gods.

I went directly from the lounge to the mobile store and purchased a new phone with a great new minutes package.  The sales representatives informed me, to my great relief, no, you cannot hack past pass codes and all stored information erases after 10 bum attempts.  Whew!

Now this situation had become completely humorous.  What a tale to tell!

I left the store with my new mobile - and every intention to call my aunt, Rebecca, all four of my parents and my brother, Patrick, to have a laugh about the day.

Once I’d returned home and uploaded everyone’s contact information to the new device.

Sometimes we all may leave our mobile phones at home or turn them off, because we just don’t want to the distraction or disturbance.  Fine.  That’s our choice.  But isn’t it funny how, when we lose our mobile, our inner dialogue fills that noise vacuum and we notice how truly elemental to our lives those little devices have become?

"Hello?”

"Hi, Absurdity calling.”

A Weekend Happy/Philosophical Question

Take a look at one of the best ads ever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEiFIKBPUq8

Do those M&M's remind you of you sometimes?...Or am I alone in this one?

Better yet, do you identify more with the man, or with the M&M's?

Have a great weekend!

Posted by Paige at 05:00 PM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: independent, M&M's, martini rescue squad, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties, you get in the bowl commercial

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Jan 24, 2011

Faaadulous

The scary truth is we are now old enough to scratch our heads at some fashion and habit choices exhibited by our successors in 20/30-ness, i.e. teens.  For example, the 14 year-olds who beam their triumphant brace-face smiles while wearing their spaghetti strap tank tops, microminis and Uggs.

But recognizing their tendencies to follow fads does not let us off the hook.

I’m sure some of us think we are excused for succumbing to goofy fads, because we know they are fads - and can thus set ourselves apart from teenagers who may not know any better.  As if we recognize we are giving into those fads and doing so knowingly makes it dignified.

Or perhaps, some of those fads just seem like a really good idea.

Give yourself a day, maybe a week, and see if you notice – or if you exhibit – any of the fads below and laugh with me.

Each of the following is, on its surface, a bit ridiculous.  And, in context with our contemporary rationale, each fabulous.  Here we go:

• Using the word “like” as a comma – The word “like” is a verb, noun, or a preposition or conjunction to convey similarity.  We know this. We also know its use as an adverb or discourse particle remerged to popularity almost 30 years ago.  Reference: Valley Girl[1], the film. 

But even now, I hear newscasters, politicians and the newest 29 year-old bazillionaire on financial talk shows using it for punctuation, e.g. “We did a lot of research and found our investors, like, really liked our concept.  Just like that.”

• Refusing to drink coffee, because it is so bad for you – but drinking at least three energy drinks per day.

• Not really knowing world events, but knowing vampire movies line by line.

• Enslaving ourselves to TiVo – How many times do you hear people complain they don’t have time to do anything in their lives, but work – and yet, some of these same folks have never missed an episode of “American Idol,” or “The Biggest Loser,” or “Real Housewives?”

• Hydbrid dog breeds - The kinds with names that would get them beaten up on the playground if they were human; Yorkipoo, Maltipug, Papichon…

• Carrying your hybrid dog in your purse.

• "I’ll have the vegan spaghetti carbonara with the tempeh bacon and shaved parmesan on the side, please.”

• Downloading mobile phone apps for e-v-e-r-ything.

• When your age and skirt length are inversely proportionate.  Bad idea.

• The word “nother,” e.g. “Work is usually hard, but now it’s on a whole nother level.”  Possibly derived from the word “another,” by eliding the “a” but even then, would we say “it’s on a whole another level?” No.

Unless, of course, we mean to insert the word “whole” into the word “another” for emphasis, e.g. “It’s on a-whole-nohter level.”  That, like, totally makes sense.

• Spending $92 on a pair of yoga pants to wear to the donation-based free classes, because the classes at the studio are too expensive.

• Fuschia’s back in fashion?  Nooooooo! Say it ain’t so!

• Pole dancing classes.

• Tattoos – Huge, all-torso-consuming Sanskrit characters or rose vines wrapping-up-and-down-both-arms tattoos.  They look sexy, or at least make a statement.  Now.  But what’s that 18 square-inch Om going to look like in 40 or 50 years?

"Um, Mom, can you please wear the long-sleeve shirt when you come over for the barbeque today?  Your tattoos scare the kids and we can’t keep telling that Gramma has a special allergy that turns your skin purplish-green.” 

---

[1]Coleman, T. et al (Producers), & Coolidge, M. (Director). (1983). Valley Girl [Motion picture]. United States: Atlantic Pictures.

 

Posted by Paige at 12:00 AM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: fads, independent, martini rescue squad, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, trends, twenties

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Jan 17, 2011

Letting Go of the Things That No Longer Suit You, Part II of II

The question is, what mantras and mentalities had I or any of us adopted as foundational to our perspective on things, but that may no longer serve us?  That may reverse all of the good we had done ourselves by adopting them for a period in time when – for lack of a more sophisticated view – they had seemed the safest way to proceed.

In my early twenties, I started doubling back after parking anywhere to check that I had locked my car.  After 9-11, I started keeping water and a few weeks’ food in a transportable box in case I needed to evacuate due to a terrorist attack.

These are sensible things to do, but I’d stepped them up in my heightened awareness that I was newly the sole person in my day-to-day who would handle these things.

When someone would ask, “Paiger, don’t you think you’re going a bit overboard?,” I’d confidently reply, “Only the paranoid survive.”

I’d heard that many a time from someone I consider a strong, survivor-type.  It served that person well.

Sounds pretty bad-ass, or so I thought, and it served me well too as I learned to accept my new responsibilities for managing my own life as an adult out of college.

Sound familiar?

A handful of years ago, when I started business school on nights and weekends so I could continue working, I had to adjust to the requisite sleep deprivation and had to withdraw from seeing my friends as much as I would have liked.

I joked that “sleep and time with friends have to be optional.”

Sounded pretty hard-core, or so I thought, and it served me well as I learned to balance my new and completely unsustainable reality.  I knew at the time that working all day, attending class on nights and weekends, studying and preparing endless projects was an unsustainable rhythm, but I also knew the faster I could acclimate myself to it, the more tolerable it could be.

Sound familiar?

Throughout my teens and early adult years, I did what all of us do; we learn from the people in our life whose choices would suit us and whose choices would not.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, we harbor anger and hurt for a third set of people – those who always seemed to cut us down of shove us into a box constructed from their assumptions about what we wanted or were capable of achieving in our lives.

Sounds pretty blatant, and so I knew, but it was useful – like the fluorescent flags used to guide slalom skiiers; these demarcations in my mind were never subtle, but they directed me back on path when things got icy and I could not distinguish the ground from the sky in my life.

We mash those guideposts and role models altogether in one powerful composite of inspiration and that is useful.  It drives us, it pulls us back and it balances our sense of where and how everything is going.

Sounded healthy.  Or so I thought, in my twenties and earlier thirties, while I was trying to pinpoint who and what I was going to become post-college, post-first job and relationship or two...or three, and pre-almost everything else.

Sound familiar?

I don’t think any of us will regret the peace of mind that comes with preparedness, but in what ways do we let a glorified paranoia permeate the rest of our life in unhealthy ways?

I don’t think any of us will ever regret the confidence boost, gratification and value add we derive from taking on a new challenge, clearing a new hurdle – whether it’s continued education or switching careers -  but how might we still let our tendencies toward that harder, unsustainable lifestyle we had to adopt during those challenges to permeate our life in unhealthy ways?

I don’t think any of us will ever regret the invaluable emotional mush that kept us on course through some interesting times while we were negotiating with ourselves who we want to be, but in what ways do we still let it swallow our progress?  In what ways do we allow our formerly useful defiance of anyone who tried to minimize us continue to make us hurt or angry?

In what ways do sticking to those mantras and mentalities, anxieties and resentments prevent us from letting go of relationships and habits that no longer serve us?

Every December or January, it seems many of us introspect about what we can improve about ourselves and the ways we live our lives.  This year on December 24, I tucked into bed at my grandmother’s house in the Midwest – we always go to the Queen Mum’s for Christmas – with my note pad and pen to write my “Contract for 2011.”

This is a big deal for me – it’s my resolution list I draw each year, sign and date on the x at the bottom.

"Sounds like you,” my brother, Pat, said as we laughed.

"Paige, is your list all do’s, do’s, do’s and don’ts, don’ts, don’ts?,” he continued.

"Yes, of course.  That’s simplest and most straightforward way to do it,” I replied.

"You might want to think about that,” he said.  “I heard something on the radio last week that stuck with me.  The commentator said that when you we make our resolutions black and white, we set ourselves up for failure.”

He has a point.

"When you make it all or nothing, and you do something you said you would not, or don’t do something you resolved you would, you feel like a failure.”

"Sure, Pat, but I don’t discouraged and throw the whole thing out the window if I slip up on one or two.”

Pshaw.  Do any of us ever commit to a list of projects that are so self-empowering, slip-up once or twice, and then get so discouraged we scrap the whole list?

Uh…maybe.

"It’s not that.  That’s not the point.  The commentator said instead of making things so definite, that our resolutions should be our commitments to ourselves to make a conscious effort to work toward our goals.  Our commitments should be to the process.”

"Ohhhh…huh.  I like that.”

Not just committing to doing or not doing A, B or C, Pat clarified, but committing to being mentally plugged in through every decision, mantra or mentality that perpetuates us doing A, B and C.

Fill in those letters as appropriate for you.

Commit ourselves to consciously evaluating what will and will not serve our bigger goals – including letting go of the reasons we let ourselves be motivated by fear, anger or resentment that is no longer useful, healthy or necessary.

It’s 2011.  An odd number and a beautiful time to transition.  Time to clear out the closets and get rid of things we no longer need.  Things that take up space in our lives.

And only then, do we leave ourselves open to the universe to replace those habits and things with new ones that could be better for us.  That we can use to sail toward our greater good.

This year might just be the year to consciously commit to moving toward goals Della Reese, the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto and your fortune cookie-ish Daily Meditations books so deftly articulated.

Posted by Paige at 12:00 AM in advice, relationships, Religion, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Ajahn Chah, clarity, Della Reese, independent, introspection, letting go, martini rescue squad, New Year's resolutions, not all it's cracked up to be, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

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Jan 12, 2011

Re: Live the Dream Expo 2011 tomorrow

Whether or not you plan to make it to the Live the Dream Expo 2011 tomorrow, take a look at the site: http://www.ltd365.com/. Very impressive.

Posted by Paige at 02:39 PM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: live the dream expo 2011, ltd365, martini rescue squad, paige nesbitt

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Jan 10, 2011

News story re: Congresswoman Giffords with input from UCLA Neurosugery

Take a look at this story with input from UCLA Neurosurgery. Please keep Congresswoman Giffords and her family, and all other victims from the Arizona assassination attempt, in your thoughts and prayers.

Dr. Neil Martin is one of the doctors who saved my life 15 years ago:

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=7890702

Posted by Paige at 07:17 PM in advice, Current Affairs, relationships, Science, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Dr. Neil Martin, martini rescue squad, paige nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties, UCLA Neurosurgery

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Letting Go of the Things That No Longer Suit You, Part I of II

“I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.” – Daily Meditations book

What do Della Reese, the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto and fortune cookie-ish Daily Meditiations books have in common?  They all seem to agree on the above statement.

Talk about lofty New Year’s Resolutions.

Last week, in “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be,” I suggested it’s hard, but necessary to let go of less-than-healthy regrets about people, places and things; the “What if’s” that may inaccurately idealize someone or something that is no longer part of our lives, i.e. the questions that leave us perpetually visualizing that, in a parallel reality, life with that person, place or thing would have been perfect.

Moving to a place where we can organically let go of those “What if’s” is an ideal.  A second, bigger-picture benefit from doing so is letting that freedom from regret open us to some introspection; what else are we holding onto in our lives that may just not be right for us?

A few other candidates for letting go may bob to the surface.  We covered that.

Letting go of the mantras and mentalities that only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy ties and regrets, however, is the iceberg under those surface bobbers that may complicate our smooth sail into warmer climes.  And, man, can those icebergs be doozies.

The tricky thing is, some of those mantras and mentalities may have been useful to us at one point, we may have depended on them for a period, but they now only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy situations and habits – and that is the much bigger picture.

Accordingly, breaking those down is the much harder task.  But chipping away at them little by little, with a few mani-pedis in between, and forgiving ourselves in advance for any set-backs in so doing, is something we can all do in the new year.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reflecting on my inspiration for the “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be” entry as I prepared for bed.  Before turning off my light, I read a page from a daily meditation book that I enjoy; I don’t always agree with its interpretations, but sometimes its entries are like that crazy fortune cookie that nails whatever is on my mind.

"I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.”

Let yourself reflect on whatever else it is in your life that is not fulfilling you, but you cannot let go.  The basics are obvious; approaches to relationships, the tenor of your inner dialogue -  how hard you are on yourself in some areas, or how you could be a little more rigorous with yourself in others, etc…

"But surely this means something more than that,” I thought.

Then I started reflecting on the times in life I have heard this maxim.  One of them could have been from Della Reese, who said “My idea of forgiveness is letting go of resentment that does not serve your better interest, ridding yourself of negative thoughts. All they do is make you miserable.”  Who knows if and where I had heard that one, but it sounds familiar.

Another is from the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto, the Buddhist monk who said, "If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace."

The most likely place I heard that was in yoga class, during one of my handsome instructor’s closing meditations.  Reference the “Om, my…” entry that ran on here in October.

The most impactful source of this wisdom was in that Daily Meditations book, as I tucked into my bed that night a few weeks ago, with my water glass and crossword on my nightstand.  This is the one that moved me.

Let go of relationships, quarrelsome personalities, unhealthy interpersonal situations.

Check.

Let go of staying up too late, not making it to the gym each week as often as I say I will every Monday morning, drinking too much coffee, freestyle interpretive dancing in the grocery market aisles a bit too often and miscellaneous intrapersonal situations.

Eh.  In progress.

Let go of all of the mentalities and mantras that may have served me for a finite period in life, but now may only perpetuate the not-so-cool interpersonal and intrapersonal tendencies listed above?

Let’s get specific: let go of founding my drive to propel myself forward on fear - on my fear of becoming like someone, or my fear of not achieving as much as someone else…

Let go of my desire to model myself after an unrealistic paragon I've created, and beating up on myself when I fall short.

Let go of being hurt by, or angry with, anyone who I think predicated their relationship with me on assumptions that only satisfied their own weaknesses - the people who I have reason to believe only liked me for how I offset their insecurities - whether or not their comparison was  valid.  Or relevant, for that matter.

Fill in the aforementioned with things that apply to you.

How the hell do we let go of those?

Uh-oh, Titanic passengers.  Iceberg time.

 

(To be continued next week...)

Posted by Paige at 12:00 AM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Ajahn Chah, clarity, Della Reese, independent, introspection, letting go, martini rescue squad, New Year's resolutions, not all it's cracked up to be, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

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Jan 03, 2011

Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

Have you ever found that your ideal in one freeze-frame in time can become your angel of deliverance in the next?  Whether that ideal is a person, place or thing?  Please forgive the biblical overtones and work with me.

Have you ever found that your one-time unachievable object of affection, borderline devotion, can – in one brief interchange – transform his, her or itself into both your Magna Carta of release and your justification you never should have cared that much to begin with?

It’s subtle, it’s classy and it’s irrefutably true.  That makes the clarity thereby derived nearly perfect.  In the new year, aspiring to that clarity is something to consider.

Part of the clarity I achieved recently is that the ability to let go requires a skill set that is far more nuanced and tactical than is the set required to hold on.

Holding on is pretty straightforward; you stoke your own flames for someone or something – or you try to stoke their/its flames for you.  You do what you can with preservation as your ultimate goal; preserving the relationship, the job, the connection, the involvement, your sense of status.

Letting go, however, that is more complicated.  It seems there are three types of “letting go” and each requires a distinct perspective on the situation to bolster your conviction.  By some cosmic grace, one can transform into the other and the whole process gets easier.  At the same time, the challenge that process can evoke in your mind grows rewardingly large.

In some situations, you let go, because the person/thing has done something so egregious or blatant, you have to move on.  The “Annnnd scene” kind; the boyfriend who cheated, the job situation that told you that you would never be considered for the position you thought you were on track to achieve and accordingly you had worked so hard to achieve it, etc…

This type of letting go, the letting go to save yourself from any more hurt, is almost as painful as persisting your grip.  At first.  But shortly thereafter, you vindicate yourself as your soul sighs and your whole existence welcomes the new peace.  We all understand that one – fortunate results from unfortunate circumstances.

In other situations, you let go, because that’s the only self-respecting thing to do.  We cover that in much greater depth in Martini, the book.

In these second types of situations, letting go is not quite as hard, but convincing yourself that calling it quits was the right thing to do – that there is not one more thing you should have tried to make it work, or that there isn’t some chance both parties are misunderstanding a situation on which you will both someday laughingly reflect, because it meant that everything was so obviously meant to work out just like that image of perfection in your mind – achieving that conviction is absurdly difficult.

And thirdly, sometimes as if a gift from the cosmos, you organically let go, because you just don’t want to hold on any longer.  No one has done anything to you.  You don’t necessarily have a lightning bolt moment that changes everything.

Instead, the object of study in your own perseverance to hold on can, in fact, teach you how to let go gracefully; that something or someone remerges in your life in just the right time to provide all the proof you ever needed that whom or whatever you had regretted never would have been right for you.

You run into that ex, that former coworker, your former fellow committee member and you find, after that former boyfriend took up that hobby, after that workplace has adjusted to its own internal politics, after that committee continued on its mission - after each has had some time to naturally go their own way, as have you - you gradually realize that you and they were never going to be a fit anyway.

No one is any worse off for the directions they have gone.  Contrarily, they and you have achieved a fuller manifestation of what you were always going to become, provided all parties remained true to themselves.  They are just not all they’re cracked up to be.  Not for you anyway.

In that brilliant clarity, you feel calm and confident in dismissing the issue altogether.

There is nothing dramatic or conflicted about this kind of letting go.  It just happens.  Any desire your mind may have had to nurse along any thoughts about what could and should have been with this person, place or thing vaporizes and blows away.  Your life refuses to incorporate it in your growth any longer.

Whew.  Exhale.  You and that object of your rue are both free.

In this latter situation type, the organic one, that clarity provides all of the conviction you will ever need to know that letting go is the natural thing to do.  This is something we all want.

And in that plain purity, you might see something else float to the surface – a meta-lesson; the subtle and more liberating realization that perhaps a few people or things you had held in that same rueful place in your heart never would have been right for you either.

Let that one realization spark the question in your mind for the new year what else is it in your life you have approached the same way?  What else is there in your life that is not fulfilling for you, but you just can’t let go?  And what is the one constant element to all situations?  Exactly.  You.

And here’s the beautiful part – who is the one person who can change that?  You.  In the 2011, that might be the resolution, the commitment to yourself, you know you can keep.

Posted by Paige at 12:33 AM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: clarity, independent, introspection, letting go, martini rescue squad, New Year's resolutions, not all it's cracked up to be, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

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Jan 01, 2011

Conclusion to Martini Holiday Game

Happy New Year!  Thanks to all of you who participated in the Martini Holiday Game, either actively on the blog, on Facebook, or with your fun comments to me directly.  This has been a riot.  The following are our winners:

 

 Week V Answer:  This week's is split between Sarah Brown and David Emerson - you are both half correct, so we'll combine your answers for two winners.  My brother, Pat, and I were both Photoshopped in this year.

Week IV Answer:  Bravo to Kinnison Bryan!  David Emerson, your analysis is impressive - thank you as well!  My brother, Patrick, and I were both Photoshopped into that one last year.  Pat's and my images were cropped from different work-related pictures we had taken in California at some point in 2009.  Everyone else was really there - including one invisible little person who is in this week's photo above. 

 

Week III Answer:  No one got this one - but again, I am amused by the guesses.  We were all there that year.  The picture was from my cousin's wedding luau in the Midwest two nights before the nuptials.  You will notice in the two cards that followed the additional munchkins who appeared over the last few years since that wedding.  

 

Week II Answer:  Congratulations to Jenna Guggenheim!  Big Nance was, indeed, not present.  That was her 2001 card.  Big Nance's image in the photo was cropped from a photo she took with Papa in approximately 1992.  Sweet.  Sadly, 2001 was a year we could not coordinate in time to get the two youngest cousins in the picture, either virtually or actually.
 

Week I Answer:  Congratulations, Ann Moran!  All of us were actually together for that picture.  I believe this was her card for Christmas 2002, but we posed for it during Christmas week the year prior.

 

   

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

My grandmother and grandfather, the Queen Mum and Papa, taught me many priceless life lessons.  Among the first of those is that a picture truly is worth a thousand words.  And for them, the most valuable picture has always been their annual Christmas card photo.  Since my grandfather passed 17 years ago, that picture has become increasingly precious with each year.

We six grandchildren have all gotten older, gone to school here and taken a job there, changed our hair color to that, etc…

Some families enclose with their card an annual letter updating their friends on all of their family’s news.  Every year when we visit my grandmother for Christmas, I flop on her couch with a cup of coffee and read the letters she has received.

But this is not something we ever did.  Instead, in my grandparents’ subtle genius, they let the picture do the talking; if we all went on a terrific family vacation, the picture would show all of us at that destination.  If one of us got married or had a baby, that new spouse and child would be in the picture as well.

You don’t make it into the picture until there has been an “I do.”

Although our family on that side is based in the Midwest, we are scattered across the country.  Back in the late 1990’s, the four of us grandchildren who were in college at the time were in four different states and three different time zones.

That meant we always had to either take the picture a full year in advance or hope we would all be together during the summer.   The years when this did not work, Big Nance was understandably very sad.

Until the day she first heard the word “Photoshop.”  A beam from heaven must have shown down on her, wherever she was at the time.

Big Nance promptly found a Photoshop ace she could trust and for most of the last several Christmases, one of more of us has been Photoshopped into the picture.

Whether or not we were there, if she did not think our outfit suited her plan for the picture, her ace would Photoshop our clothes to fit her color scheme.

"Paige, where did you find that lovely crimson dress in this year’s photo?”

"Oh…it’s actually silver and that was from last New Year’s in Los Angeles, but thank you.  It’s a great dress.”

True.

Over the years, as technology has gotten more advanced, this whole process has become easier.  One of our relatives will e-mail us the picture Big Nance wants to use and those of us could not make it will collaborate on who gets which empty space.

We then have a couple of days to recruit a friend to take a picture of us at just the correct angle, dressed in just right color scheme, so the Photoshop ace can insert us as planned.

Each picture may only tell a partial truth – we may not have actually been together at the time.  However we are a close family even when copied, cut and pasted together for more Christmas cards than not.

Posted by Paige at 12:30 PM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Big Nance, christmas card, happy women, independent, martini rescue squad, paige nesbitt, photoshop, Queen Mum, single, twenties or thirties

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The scary truth is we are now old enough to scratch our heads at some fashion and habit choices exhibited by our successors in 20/30-ness, i.e. teens.  For example, the 14 year-olds who beam their triumphant brace-face smiles while wearing their spaghetti strap tank tops, microminis and Uggs.

But recognizing their tendencies to follow fads does not let us off the hook.

I’m sure some of us think we are excused for succumbing to goofy fads, because we know they are fads - and can thus set ourselves apart from teenagers who may not know any better.  As if we recognize we are giving into those fads and doing so knowingly makes it dignified.

Or perhaps, some of those fads just seem like a really good idea.

Give yourself a day, maybe a week, and see if you notice – or if you exhibit – any of the fads below and laugh with me.

Each of the following is, on its surface, a bit ridiculous.  And, in context with our contemporary rationale, each fabulous.  Here we go:

• Using the word “like” as a comma – The word “like” is a verb, noun, or a preposition or conjunction to convey similarity.  We know this. We also know its use as an adverb or discourse particle remerged to popularity almost 30 years ago.  Reference: Valley Girl[1], the film. 

But even now, I hear newscasters, politicians and the newest 29 year-old bazillionaire on financial talk shows using it for punctuation, e.g. “We did a lot of research and found our investors, like, really liked our concept.  Just like that.”

• Refusing to drink coffee, because it is so bad for you – but drinking at least three energy drinks per day.

• Not really knowing world events, but knowing vampire movies line by line.

• Enslaving ourselves to TiVo – How many times do you hear people complain they don’t have time to do anything in their lives, but work – and yet, some of these same folks have never missed an episode of “American Idol,” or “The Biggest Loser,” or “Real Housewives?”

• Hydbrid dog breeds - The kinds with names that would get them beaten up on the playground if they were human; Yorkipoo, Maltipug, Papichon…

• Carrying your hybrid dog in your purse.

• "I’ll have the vegan spaghetti carbonara with the tempeh bacon and shaved parmesan on the side, please.”

• Downloading mobile phone apps for e-v-e-r-ything.

• When your age and skirt length are inversely proportionate.  Bad idea.

• The word “nother,” e.g. “Work is usually hard, but now it’s on a whole nother level.”  Possibly derived from the word “another,” by eliding the “a” but even then, would we say “it’s on a whole another level?” No.

Unless, of course, we mean to insert the word “whole” into the word “another” for emphasis, e.g. “It’s on a-whole-nohter level.”  That, like, totally makes sense.

• Spending $92 on a pair of yoga pants to wear to the donation-based free classes, because the classes at the studio are too expensive.

• Fuschia’s back in fashion?  Nooooooo! Say it ain’t so!

• Pole dancing classes.

• Tattoos – Huge, all-torso-consuming Sanskrit characters or rose vines wrapping-up-and-down-both-arms tattoos.  They look sexy, or at least make a statement.  Now.  But what’s that 18 square-inch Om going to look like in 40 or 50 years?

"Um, Mom, can you please wear the long-sleeve shirt when you come over for the barbeque today?  Your tattoos scare the kids and we can’t keep telling that Gramma has a special allergy that turns your skin purplish-green.” 

---

[1]Coleman, T. et al (Producers), & Coolidge, M. (Director). (1983). Valley Girl [Motion picture]. United States: Atlantic Pictures.

 

The question is, what mantras and mentalities had I or any of us adopted as foundational to our perspective on things, but that may no longer serve us?  That may reverse all of the good we had done ourselves by adopting them for a period in time when – for lack of a more sophisticated view – they had seemed the safest way to proceed.

In my early twenties, I started doubling back after parking anywhere to check that I had locked my car.  After 9-11, I started keeping water and a few weeks’ food in a transportable box in case I needed to evacuate due to a terrorist attack.

These are sensible things to do, but I’d stepped them up in my heightened awareness that I was newly the sole person in my day-to-day who would handle these things.

When someone would ask, “Paiger, don’t you think you’re going a bit overboard?,” I’d confidently reply, “Only the paranoid survive.”

I’d heard that many a time from someone I consider a strong, survivor-type.  It served that person well.

Sounds pretty bad-ass, or so I thought, and it served me well too as I learned to accept my new responsibilities for managing my own life as an adult out of college.

Sound familiar?

A handful of years ago, when I started business school on nights and weekends so I could continue working, I had to adjust to the requisite sleep deprivation and had to withdraw from seeing my friends as much as I would have liked.

I joked that “sleep and time with friends have to be optional.”

Sounded pretty hard-core, or so I thought, and it served me well as I learned to balance my new and completely unsustainable reality.  I knew at the time that working all day, attending class on nights and weekends, studying and preparing endless projects was an unsustainable rhythm, but I also knew the faster I could acclimate myself to it, the more tolerable it could be.

Sound familiar?

Throughout my teens and early adult years, I did what all of us do; we learn from the people in our life whose choices would suit us and whose choices would not.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, we harbor anger and hurt for a third set of people – those who always seemed to cut us down of shove us into a box constructed from their assumptions about what we wanted or were capable of achieving in our lives.

Sounds pretty blatant, and so I knew, but it was useful – like the fluorescent flags used to guide slalom skiiers; these demarcations in my mind were never subtle, but they directed me back on path when things got icy and I could not distinguish the ground from the sky in my life.

We mash those guideposts and role models altogether in one powerful composite of inspiration and that is useful.  It drives us, it pulls us back and it balances our sense of where and how everything is going.

Sounded healthy.  Or so I thought, in my twenties and earlier thirties, while I was trying to pinpoint who and what I was going to become post-college, post-first job and relationship or two...or three, and pre-almost everything else.

Sound familiar?

I don’t think any of us will regret the peace of mind that comes with preparedness, but in what ways do we let a glorified paranoia permeate the rest of our life in unhealthy ways?

I don’t think any of us will ever regret the confidence boost, gratification and value add we derive from taking on a new challenge, clearing a new hurdle – whether it’s continued education or switching careers -  but how might we still let our tendencies toward that harder, unsustainable lifestyle we had to adopt during those challenges to permeate our life in unhealthy ways?

I don’t think any of us will ever regret the invaluable emotional mush that kept us on course through some interesting times while we were negotiating with ourselves who we want to be, but in what ways do we still let it swallow our progress?  In what ways do we allow our formerly useful defiance of anyone who tried to minimize us continue to make us hurt or angry?

In what ways do sticking to those mantras and mentalities, anxieties and resentments prevent us from letting go of relationships and habits that no longer serve us?

Every December or January, it seems many of us introspect about what we can improve about ourselves and the ways we live our lives.  This year on December 24, I tucked into bed at my grandmother’s house in the Midwest – we always go to the Queen Mum’s for Christmas – with my note pad and pen to write my “Contract for 2011.”

This is a big deal for me – it’s my resolution list I draw each year, sign and date on the x at the bottom.

"Sounds like you,” my brother, Pat, said as we laughed.

"Paige, is your list all do’s, do’s, do’s and don’ts, don’ts, don’ts?,” he continued.

"Yes, of course.  That’s simplest and most straightforward way to do it,” I replied.

"You might want to think about that,” he said.  “I heard something on the radio last week that stuck with me.  The commentator said that when you we make our resolutions black and white, we set ourselves up for failure.”

He has a point.

"When you make it all or nothing, and you do something you said you would not, or don’t do something you resolved you would, you feel like a failure.”

"Sure, Pat, but I don’t discouraged and throw the whole thing out the window if I slip up on one or two.”

Pshaw.  Do any of us ever commit to a list of projects that are so self-empowering, slip-up once or twice, and then get so discouraged we scrap the whole list?

Uh…maybe.

"It’s not that.  That’s not the point.  The commentator said instead of making things so definite, that our resolutions should be our commitments to ourselves to make a conscious effort to work toward our goals.  Our commitments should be to the process.”

"Ohhhh…huh.  I like that.”

Not just committing to doing or not doing A, B or C, Pat clarified, but committing to being mentally plugged in through every decision, mantra or mentality that perpetuates us doing A, B and C.

Fill in those letters as appropriate for you.

Commit ourselves to consciously evaluating what will and will not serve our bigger goals – including letting go of the reasons we let ourselves be motivated by fear, anger or resentment that is no longer useful, healthy or necessary.

It’s 2011.  An odd number and a beautiful time to transition.  Time to clear out the closets and get rid of things we no longer need.  Things that take up space in our lives.

And only then, do we leave ourselves open to the universe to replace those habits and things with new ones that could be better for us.  That we can use to sail toward our greater good.

This year might just be the year to consciously commit to moving toward goals Della Reese, the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto and your fortune cookie-ish Daily Meditations books so deftly articulated.

Posted by Paige at 12:00 AM in advice, relationships, Religion, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Ajahn Chah, clarity, Della Reese, independent, introspection, letting go, martini rescue squad, New Year's resolutions, not all it's cracked up to be, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

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Jan 12, 2011

Re: Live the Dream Expo 2011 tomorrow

Whether or not you plan to make it to the Live the Dream Expo 2011 tomorrow, take a look at the site: http://www.ltd365.com/. Very impressive.

Posted by Paige at 02:39 PM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: live the dream expo 2011, ltd365, martini rescue squad, paige nesbitt

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Jan 10, 2011

News story re: Congresswoman Giffords with input from UCLA Neurosugery

Take a look at this story with input from UCLA Neurosurgery. Please keep Congresswoman Giffords and her family, and all other victims from the Arizona assassination attempt, in your thoughts and prayers.

Dr. Neil Martin is one of the doctors who saved my life 15 years ago:

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=7890702

Posted by Paige at 07:17 PM in advice, Current Affairs, relationships, Science, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Dr. Neil Martin, martini rescue squad, paige nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties, UCLA Neurosurgery

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Letting Go of the Things That No Longer Suit You, Part I of II

“I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.” – Daily Meditations book

What do Della Reese, the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto and fortune cookie-ish Daily Meditiations books have in common?  They all seem to agree on the above statement.

Talk about lofty New Year’s Resolutions.

Last week, in “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be,” I suggested it’s hard, but necessary to let go of less-than-healthy regrets about people, places and things; the “What if’s” that may inaccurately idealize someone or something that is no longer part of our lives, i.e. the questions that leave us perpetually visualizing that, in a parallel reality, life with that person, place or thing would have been perfect.

Moving to a place where we can organically let go of those “What if’s” is an ideal.  A second, bigger-picture benefit from doing so is letting that freedom from regret open us to some introspection; what else are we holding onto in our lives that may just not be right for us?

A few other candidates for letting go may bob to the surface.  We covered that.

Letting go of the mantras and mentalities that only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy ties and regrets, however, is the iceberg under those surface bobbers that may complicate our smooth sail into warmer climes.  And, man, can those icebergs be doozies.

The tricky thing is, some of those mantras and mentalities may have been useful to us at one point, we may have depended on them for a period, but they now only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy situations and habits – and that is the much bigger picture.

Accordingly, breaking those down is the much harder task.  But chipping away at them little by little, with a few mani-pedis in between, and forgiving ourselves in advance for any set-backs in so doing, is something we can all do in the new year.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reflecting on my inspiration for the “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be” entry as I prepared for bed.  Before turning off my light, I read a page from a daily meditation book that I enjoy; I don’t always agree with its interpretations, but sometimes its entries are like that crazy fortune cookie that nails whatever is on my mind.

"I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.”

Let yourself reflect on whatever else it is in your life that is not fulfilling you, but you cannot let go.  The basics are obvious; approaches to relationships, the tenor of your inner dialogue -  how hard you are on yourself in some areas, or how you could be a little more rigorous with yourself in others, etc…

"But surely this means something more than that,” I thought.

Then I started reflecting on the times in life I have heard this maxim.  One of them could have been from Della Reese, who said “My idea of forgiveness is letting go of resentment that does not serve your better interest, ridding yourself of negative thoughts. All they do is make you miserable.”  Who knows if and where I had heard that one, but it sounds familiar.

Another is from the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto, the Buddhist monk who said, "If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace."

The most likely place I heard that was in yoga class, during one of my handsome instructor’s closing meditations.  Reference the “Om, my…” entry that ran on here in October.

The most impactful source of this wisdom was in that Daily Meditations book, as I tucked into my bed that night a few weeks ago, with my water glass and crossword on my nightstand.  This is the one that moved me.

Let go of relationships, quarrelsome personalities, unhealthy interpersonal situations.

Check.

Let go of staying up too late, not making it to the gym each week as often as I say I will every Monday morning, drinking too much coffee, freestyle interpretive dancing in the grocery market aisles a bit too often and miscellaneous intrapersonal situations.

Eh.  In progress.

Let go of all of the mentalities and mantras that may have served me for a finite period in life, but now may only perpetuate the not-so-cool interpersonal and intrapersonal tendencies listed above?

Let’s get specific: let go of founding my drive to propel myself forward on fear - on my fear of becoming like someone, or my fear of not achieving as much as someone else…

Let go of my desire to model myself after an unrealistic paragon I've created, and beating up on myself when I fall short.

Let go of being hurt by, or angry with, anyone who I think predicated their relationship with me on assumptions that only satisfied their own weaknesses - the people who I have reason to believe only liked me for how I offset their insecurities - whether or not their comparison was  valid.  Or relevant, for that matter.

Fill in the aforementioned with things that apply to you.

How the hell do we let go of those?

Uh-oh, Titanic passengers.  Iceberg time.

 

(To be continued next week...)

Posted by Paige at 12:00 AM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Ajahn Chah, clarity, Della Reese, independent, introspection, letting go, martini rescue squad, New Year's resolutions, not all it's cracked up to be, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

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Jan 03, 2011

Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

Have you ever found that your ideal in one freeze-frame in time can become your angel of deliverance in the next?  Whether that ideal is a person, place or thing?  Please forgive the biblical overtones and work with me.

Have you ever found that your one-time unachievable object of affection, borderline devotion, can – in one brief interchange – transform his, her or itself into both your Magna Carta of release and your justification you never should have cared that much to begin with?

It’s subtle, it’s classy and it’s irrefutably true.  That makes the clarity thereby derived nearly perfect.  In the new year, aspiring to that clarity is something to consider.

Part of the clarity I achieved recently is that the ability to let go requires a skill set that is far more nuanced and tactical than is the set required to hold on.

Holding on is pretty straightforward; you stoke your own flames for someone or something – or you try to stoke their/its flames for you.  You do what you can with preservation as your ultimate goal; preserving the relationship, the job, the connection, the involvement, your sense of status.

Letting go, however, that is more complicated.  It seems there are three types of “letting go” and each requires a distinct perspective on the situation to bolster your conviction.  By some cosmic grace, one can transform into the other and the whole process gets easier.  At the same time, the challenge that process can evoke in your mind grows rewardingly large.

In some situations, you let go, because the person/thing has done something so egregious or blatant, you have to move on.  The “Annnnd scene” kind; the boyfriend who cheated, the job situation that told you that you would never be considered for the position you thought you were on track to achieve and accordingly you had worked so hard to achieve it, etc…

This type of letting go, the letting go to save yourself from any more hurt, is almost as painful as persisting your grip.  At first.  But shortly thereafter, you vindicate yourself as your soul sighs and your whole existence welcomes the new peace.  We all understand that one – fortunate results from unfortunate circumstances.

In other situations, you let go, because that’s the only self-respecting thing to do.  We cover that in much greater depth in Martini, the book.

In these second types of situations, letting go is not quite as hard, but convincing yourself that calling it quits was the right thing to do – that there is not one more thing you should have tried to make it work, or that there isn’t some chance both parties are misunderstanding a situation on which you will both someday laughingly reflect, because it meant that everything was so obviously meant to work out just like that image of perfection in your mind – achieving that conviction is absurdly difficult.

And thirdly, sometimes as if a gift from the cosmos, you organically let go, because you just don’t want to hold on any longer.  No one has done anything to you.  You don’t necessarily have a lightning bolt moment that changes everything.

Instead, the object of study in your own perseverance to hold on can, in fact, teach you how to let go gracefully; that something or someone remerges in your life in just the right time to provide all the proof you ever needed that whom or whatever you had regretted never would have been right for you.

You run into that ex, that former coworker, your former fellow committee member and you find, after that former boyfriend took up that hobby, after that workplace has adjusted to its own internal politics, after that committee continued on its mission - after each has had some time to naturally go their own way, as have you - you gradually realize that you and they were never going to be a fit anyway.

No one is any worse off for the directions they have gone.  Contrarily, they and you have achieved a fuller manifestation of what you were always going to become, provided all parties remained true to themselves.  They are just not all they’re cracked up to be.  Not for you anyway.

In that brilliant clarity, you feel calm and confident in dismissing the issue altogether.

There is nothing dramatic or conflicted about this kind of letting go.  It just happens.  Any desire your mind may have had to nurse along any thoughts about what could and should have been with this person, place or thing vaporizes and blows away.  Your life refuses to incorporate it in your growth any longer.

Whew.  Exhale.  You and that object of your rue are both free.

In this latter situation type, the organic one, that clarity provides all of the conviction you will ever need to know that letting go is the natural thing to do.  This is something we all want.

And in that plain purity, you might see something else float to the surface – a meta-lesson; the subtle and more liberating realization that perhaps a few people or things you had held in that same rueful place in your heart never would have been right for you either.

Let that one realization spark the question in your mind for the new year what else is it in your life you have approached the same way?  What else is there in your life that is not fulfilling for you, but you just can’t let go?  And what is the one constant element to all situations?  Exactly.  You.

And here’s the beautiful part – who is the one person who can change that?  You.  In the 2011, that might be the resolution, the commitment to yourself, you know you can keep.

Posted by Paige at 12:33 AM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: clarity, independent, introspection, letting go, martini rescue squad, New Year's resolutions, not all it's cracked up to be, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

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Jan 01, 2011

Conclusion to Martini Holiday Game

Happy New Year!  Thanks to all of you who participated in the Martini Holiday Game, either actively on the blog, on Facebook, or with your fun comments to me directly.  This has been a riot.  The following are our winners:

 

 Week V Answer:  This week's is split between Sarah Brown and David Emerson - you are both half correct, so we'll combine your answers for two winners.  My brother, Pat, and I were both Photoshopped in this year.

Week IV Answer:  Bravo to Kinnison Bryan!  David Emerson, your analysis is impressive - thank you as well!  My brother, Patrick, and I were both Photoshopped into that one last year.  Pat's and my images were cropped from different work-related pictures we had taken in California at some point in 2009.  Everyone else was really there - including one invisible little person who is in this week's photo above. 

 

Week III Answer:  No one got this one - but again, I am amused by the guesses.  We were all there that year.  The picture was from my cousin's wedding luau in the Midwest two nights before the nuptials.  You will notice in the two cards that followed the additional munchkins who appeared over the last few years since that wedding.  

 

Week II Answer:  Congratulations to Jenna Guggenheim!  Big Nance was, indeed, not present.  That was her 2001 card.  Big Nance's image in the photo was cropped from a photo she took with Papa in approximately 1992.  Sweet.  Sadly, 2001 was a year we could not coordinate in time to get the two youngest cousins in the picture, either virtually or actually.
 

Week I Answer:  Congratulations, Ann Moran!  All of us were actually together for that picture.  I believe this was her card for Christmas 2002, but we posed for it during Christmas week the year prior.

 

   

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

My grandmother and grandfather, the Queen Mum and Papa, taught me many priceless life lessons.  Among the first of those is that a picture truly is worth a thousand words.  And for them, the most valuable picture has always been their annual Christmas card photo.  Since my grandfather passed 17 years ago, that picture has become increasingly precious with each year.

We six grandchildren have all gotten older, gone to school here and taken a job there, changed our hair color to that, etc…

Some families enclose with their card an annual letter updating their friends on all of their family’s news.  Every year when we visit my grandmother for Christmas, I flop on her couch with a cup of coffee and read the letters she has received.

But this is not something we ever did.  Instead, in my grandparents’ subtle genius, they let the picture do the talking; if we all went on a terrific family vacation, the picture would show all of us at that destination.  If one of us got married or had a baby, that new spouse and child would be in the picture as well.

You don’t make it into the picture until there has been an “I do.”

Although our family on that side is based in the Midwest, we are scattered across the country.  Back in the late 1990’s, the four of us grandchildren who were in college at the time were in four different states and three different time zones.

That meant we always had to either take the picture a full year in advance or hope we would all be together during the summer.   The years when this did not work, Big Nance was understandably very sad.

Until the day she first heard the word “Photoshop.”  A beam from heaven must have shown down on her, wherever she was at the time.

Big Nance promptly found a Photoshop ace she could trust and for most of the last several Christmases, one of more of us has been Photoshopped into the picture.

Whether or not we were there, if she did not think our outfit suited her plan for the picture, her ace would Photoshop our clothes to fit her color scheme.

"Paige, where did you find that lovely crimson dress in this year’s photo?”

"Oh…it’s actually silver and that was from last New Year’s in Los Angeles, but thank you.  It’s a great dress.”

True.

Over the years, as technology has gotten more advanced, this whole process has become easier.  One of our relatives will e-mail us the picture Big Nance wants to use and those of us could not make it will collaborate on who gets which empty space.

We then have a couple of days to recruit a friend to take a picture of us at just the correct angle, dressed in just right color scheme, so the Photoshop ace can insert us as planned.

Each picture may only tell a partial truth – we may not have actually been together at the time.  However we are a close family even when copied, cut and pasted together for more Christmas cards than not.

Posted by Paige at 12:30 PM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Big Nance, christmas card, happy women, independent, martini rescue squad, paige nesbitt, photoshop, Queen Mum, single, twenties or thirties

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Whether or not you plan to make it to the Live the Dream Expo 2011 tomorrow, take a look at the site: http://www.ltd365.com/. Very impressive.

Take a look at this story with input from UCLA Neurosurgery. Please keep Congresswoman Giffords and her family, and all other victims from the Arizona assassination attempt, in your thoughts and prayers.

Dr. Neil Martin is one of the doctors who saved my life 15 years ago:

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=7890702

“I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.” – Daily Meditations book

What do Della Reese, the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto and fortune cookie-ish Daily Meditiations books have in common?  They all seem to agree on the above statement.

Talk about lofty New Year’s Resolutions.

Last week, in “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be,” I suggested it’s hard, but necessary to let go of less-than-healthy regrets about people, places and things; the “What if’s” that may inaccurately idealize someone or something that is no longer part of our lives, i.e. the questions that leave us perpetually visualizing that, in a parallel reality, life with that person, place or thing would have been perfect.

Moving to a place where we can organically let go of those “What if’s” is an ideal.  A second, bigger-picture benefit from doing so is letting that freedom from regret open us to some introspection; what else are we holding onto in our lives that may just not be right for us?

A few other candidates for letting go may bob to the surface.  We covered that.

Letting go of the mantras and mentalities that only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy ties and regrets, however, is the iceberg under those surface bobbers that may complicate our smooth sail into warmer climes.  And, man, can those icebergs be doozies.

The tricky thing is, some of those mantras and mentalities may have been useful to us at one point, we may have depended on them for a period, but they now only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy situations and habits – and that is the much bigger picture.

Accordingly, breaking those down is the much harder task.  But chipping away at them little by little, with a few mani-pedis in between, and forgiving ourselves in advance for any set-backs in so doing, is something we can all do in the new year.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reflecting on my inspiration for the “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be” entry as I prepared for bed.  Before turning off my light, I read a page from a daily meditation book that I enjoy; I don’t always agree with its interpretations, but sometimes its entries are like that crazy fortune cookie that nails whatever is on my mind.

"I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.”

Let yourself reflect on whatever else it is in your life that is not fulfilling you, but you cannot let go.  The basics are obvious; approaches to relationships, the tenor of your inner dialogue -  how hard you are on yourself in some areas, or how you could be a little more rigorous with yourself in others, etc…

"But surely this means something more than that,” I thought.

Then I started reflecting on the times in life I have heard this maxim.  One of them could have been from Della Reese, who said “My idea of forgiveness is letting go of resentment that does not serve your better interest, ridding yourself of negative thoughts. All they do is make you miserable.”  Who knows if and where I had heard that one, but it sounds familiar.

Another is from the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto, the Buddhist monk who said, "If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace."

The most likely place I heard that was in yoga class, during one of my handsome instructor’s closing meditations.  Reference the “Om, my…” entry that ran on here in October.

The most impactful source of this wisdom was in that Daily Meditations book, as I tucked into my bed that night a few weeks ago, with my water glass and crossword on my nightstand.  This is the one that moved me.

Let go of relationships, quarrelsome personalities, unhealthy interpersonal situations.

Check.

Let go of staying up too late, not making it to the gym each week as often as I say I will every Monday morning, drinking too much coffee, freestyle interpretive dancing in the grocery market aisles a bit too often and miscellaneous intrapersonal situations.

Eh.  In progress.

Let go of all of the mentalities and mantras that may have served me for a finite period in life, but now may only perpetuate the not-so-cool interpersonal and intrapersonal tendencies listed above?

Let’s get specific: let go of founding my drive to propel myself forward on fear - on my fear of becoming like someone, or my fear of not achieving as much as someone else…

Let go of my desire to model myself after an unrealistic paragon I've created, and beating up on myself when I fall short.

Let go of being hurt by, or angry with, anyone who I think predicated their relationship with me on assumptions that only satisfied their own weaknesses - the people who I have reason to believe only liked me for how I offset their insecurities - whether or not their comparison was  valid.  Or relevant, for that matter.

Fill in the aforementioned with things that apply to you.

How the hell do we let go of those?

Uh-oh, Titanic passengers.  Iceberg time.

 

(To be continued next week...)

Have you ever found that your ideal in one freeze-frame in time can become your angel of deliverance in the next?  Whether that ideal is a person, place or thing?  Please forgive the biblical overtones and work with me.

Have you ever found that your one-time unachievable object of affection, borderline devotion, can – in one brief interchange – transform his, her or itself into both your Magna Carta of release and your justification you never should have cared that much to begin with?

It’s subtle, it’s classy and it’s irrefutably true.  That makes the clarity thereby derived nearly perfect.  In the new year, aspiring to that clarity is something to consider.

Part of the clarity I achieved recently is that the ability to let go requires a skill set that is far more nuanced and tactical than is the set required to hold on.

Holding on is pretty straightforward; you stoke your own flames for someone or something – or you try to stoke their/its flames for you.  You do what you can with preservation as your ultimate goal; preserving the relationship, the job, the connection, the involvement, your sense of status.

Letting go, however, that is more complicated.  It seems there are three types of “letting go” and each requires a distinct perspective on the situation to bolster your conviction.  By some cosmic grace, one can transform into the other and the whole process gets easier.  At the same time, the challenge that process can evoke in your mind grows rewardingly large.

In some situations, you let go, because the person/thing has done something so egregious or blatant, you have to move on.  The “Annnnd scene” kind; the boyfriend who cheated, the job situation that told you that you would never be considered for the position you thought you were on track to achieve and accordingly you had worked so hard to achieve it, etc…

This type of letting go, the letting go to save yourself from any more hurt, is almost as painful as persisting your grip.  At first.  But shortly thereafter, you vindicate yourself as your soul sighs and your whole existence welcomes the new peace.  We all understand that one – fortunate results from unfortunate circumstances.

In other situations, you let go, because that’s the only self-respecting thing to do.  We cover that in much greater depth in Martini, the book.

In these second types of situations, letting go is not quite as hard, but convincing yourself that calling it quits was the right thing to do – that there is not one more thing you should have tried to make it work, or that there isn’t some chance both parties are misunderstanding a situation on which you will both someday laughingly reflect, because it meant that everything was so obviously meant to work out just like that image of perfection in your mind – achieving that conviction is absurdly difficult.

And thirdly, sometimes as if a gift from the cosmos, you organically let go, because you just don’t want to hold on any longer.  No one has done anything to you.  You don’t necessarily have a lightning bolt moment that changes everything.

Instead, the object of study in your own perseverance to hold on can, in fact, teach you how to let go gracefully; that something or someone remerges in your life in just the right time to provide all the proof you ever needed that whom or whatever you had regretted never would have been right for you.

You run into that ex, that former coworker, your former fellow committee member and you find, after that former boyfriend took up that hobby, after that workplace has adjusted to its own internal politics, after that committee continued on its mission - after each has had some time to naturally go their own way, as have you - you gradually realize that you and they were never going to be a fit anyway.

No one is any worse off for the directions they have gone.  Contrarily, they and you have achieved a fuller manifestation of what you were always going to become, provided all parties remained true to themselves.  They are just not all they’re cracked up to be.  Not for you anyway.

In that brilliant clarity, you feel calm and confident in dismissing the issue altogether.

There is nothing dramatic or conflicted about this kind of letting go.  It just happens.  Any desire your mind may have had to nurse along any thoughts about what could and should have been with this person, place or thing vaporizes and blows away.  Your life refuses to incorporate it in your growth any longer.

Whew.  Exhale.  You and that object of your rue are both free.

In this latter situation type, the organic one, that clarity provides all of the conviction you will ever need to know that letting go is the natural thing to do.  This is something we all want.

And in that plain purity, you might see something else float to the surface – a meta-lesson; the subtle and more liberating realization that perhaps a few people or things you had held in that same rueful place in your heart never would have been right for you either.

Let that one realization spark the question in your mind for the new year what else is it in your life you have approached the same way?  What else is there in your life that is not fulfilling for you, but you just can’t let go?  And what is the one constant element to all situations?  Exactly.  You.

And here’s the beautiful part – who is the one person who can change that?  You.  In the 2011, that might be the resolution, the commitment to yourself, you know you can keep.

Happy New Year!  Thanks to all of you who participated in the Martini Holiday Game, either actively on the blog, on Facebook, or with your fun comments to me directly.  This has been a riot.  The following are our winners:

 

 Week V Answer:  This week's is split between Sarah Brown and David Emerson - you are both half correct, so we'll combine your answers for two winners.  My brother, Pat, and I were both Photoshopped in this year.

Week IV Answer:  Bravo to Kinnison Bryan!  David Emerson, your analysis is impressive - thank you as well!  My brother, Patrick, and I were both Photoshopped into that one last year.  Pat's and my images were cropped from different work-related pictures we had taken in California at some point in 2009.  Everyone else was really there - including one invisible little person who is in this week's photo above. 

 

Week III Answer:  No one got this one - but again, I am amused by the guesses.  We were all there that year.  The picture was from my cousin's wedding luau in the Midwest two nights before the nuptials.  You will notice in the two cards that followed the additional munchkins who appeared over the last few years since that wedding.  

 

Week II Answer:  Congratulations to Jenna Guggenheim!  Big Nance was, indeed, not present.  That was her 2001 card.  Big Nance's image in the photo was cropped from a photo she took with Papa in approximately 1992.  Sweet.  Sadly, 2001 was a year we could not coordinate in time to get the two youngest cousins in the picture, either virtually or actually.
 

Week I Answer:  Congratulations, Ann Moran!  All of us were actually together for that picture.  I believe this was her card for Christmas 2002, but we posed for it during Christmas week the year prior.

 

   

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

My grandmother and grandfather, the Queen Mum and Papa, taught me many priceless life lessons.  Among the first of those is that a picture truly is worth a thousand words.  And for them, the most valuable picture has always been their annual Christmas card photo.  Since my grandfather passed 17 years ago, that picture has become increasingly precious with each year.

We six grandchildren have all gotten older, gone to school here and taken a job there, changed our hair color to that, etc…

Some families enclose with their card an annual letter updating their friends on all of their family’s news.  Every year when we visit my grandmother for Christmas, I flop on her couch with a cup of coffee and read the letters she has received.

But this is not something we ever did.  Instead, in my grandparents’ subtle genius, they let the picture do the talking; if we all went on a terrific family vacation, the picture would show all of us at that destination.  If one of us got married or had a baby, that new spouse and child would be in the picture as well.

You don’t make it into the picture until there has been an “I do.”

Although our family on that side is based in the Midwest, we are scattered across the country.  Back in the late 1990’s, the four of us grandchildren who were in college at the time were in four different states and three different time zones.

That meant we always had to either take the picture a full year in advance or hope we would all be together during the summer.   The years when this did not work, Big Nance was understandably very sad.

Until the day she first heard the word “Photoshop.”  A beam from heaven must have shown down on her, wherever she was at the time.

Big Nance promptly found a Photoshop ace she could trust and for most of the last several Christmases, one of more of us has been Photoshopped into the picture.

Whether or not we were there, if she did not think our outfit suited her plan for the picture, her ace would Photoshop our clothes to fit her color scheme.

"Paige, where did you find that lovely crimson dress in this year’s photo?”

"Oh…it’s actually silver and that was from last New Year’s in Los Angeles, but thank you.  It’s a great dress.”

True.

Over the years, as technology has gotten more advanced, this whole process has become easier.  One of our relatives will e-mail us the picture Big Nance wants to use and those of us could not make it will collaborate on who gets which empty space.

We then have a couple of days to recruit a friend to take a picture of us at just the correct angle, dressed in just right color scheme, so the Photoshop ace can insert us as planned.

Each picture may only tell a partial truth – we may not have actually been together at the time.  However we are a close family even when copied, cut and pasted together for more Christmas cards than not.

Faaadulous

The scary truth is we are now old enough to scratch our heads at some fashion and habit choices exhibited by our successors in 20/30-ness, i.e. teens.  For example, the 14 year-olds who beam their triumphant brace-face smiles while wearing their spaghetti strap tank tops, microminis and Uggs.

But recognizing their tendencies to follow fads does not let us off the hook.

I’m sure some of us think we are excused for succumbing to goofy fads, because we know they are fads - and can thus set ourselves apart from teenagers who may not know any better.  As if we recognize we are giving into those fads and doing so knowingly makes it dignified.

Or perhaps, some of those fads just seem like a really good idea.

Give yourself a day, maybe a week, and see if you notice – or if you exhibit – any of the fads below and laugh with me.

Each of the following is, on its surface, a bit ridiculous.  And, in context with our contemporary rationale, each fabulous.  Here we go:

• Using the word “like” as a comma – The word “like” is a verb, noun, or a preposition or conjunction to convey similarity.  We know this. We also know its use as an adverb or discourse particle remerged to popularity almost 30 years ago.  Reference: Valley Girl[1], the film. 

But even now, I hear newscasters, politicians and the newest 29 year-old bazillionaire on financial talk shows using it for punctuation, e.g. “We did a lot of research and found our investors, like, really liked our concept.  Just like that.”

• Refusing to drink coffee, because it is so bad for you – but drinking at least three energy drinks per day.

• Not really knowing world events, but knowing vampire movies line by line.

• Enslaving ourselves to TiVo – How many times do you hear people complain they don’t have time to do anything in their lives, but work – and yet, some of these same folks have never missed an episode of “American Idol,” or “The Biggest Loser,” or “Real Housewives?”

• Hydbrid dog breeds - The kinds with names that would get them beaten up on the playground if they were human; Yorkipoo, Maltipug, Papichon…

• Carrying your hybrid dog in your purse.

• "I’ll have the vegan spaghetti carbonara with the tempeh bacon and shaved parmesan on the side, please.”

• Downloading mobile phone apps for e-v-e-r-ything.

• When your age and skirt length are inversely proportionate.  Bad idea.

• The word “nother,” e.g. “Work is usually hard, but now it’s on a whole nother level.”  Possibly derived from the word “another,” by eliding the “a” but even then, would we say “it’s on a whole another level?” No.

Unless, of course, we mean to insert the word “whole” into the word “another” for emphasis, e.g. “It’s on a-whole-nohter level.”  That, like, totally makes sense.

• Spending $92 on a pair of yoga pants to wear to the donation-based free classes, because the classes at the studio are too expensive.

• Fuschia’s back in fashion?  Nooooooo! Say it ain’t so!

• Pole dancing classes.

• Tattoos – Huge, all-torso-consuming Sanskrit characters or rose vines wrapping-up-and-down-both-arms tattoos.  They look sexy, or at least make a statement.  Now.  But what’s that 18 square-inch Om going to look like in 40 or 50 years?

"Um, Mom, can you please wear the long-sleeve shirt when you come over for the barbeque today?  Your tattoos scare the kids and we can’t keep telling that Gramma has a special allergy that turns your skin purplish-green.” 

---

[1]Coleman, T. et al (Producers), & Coolidge, M. (Director). (1983). Valley Girl [Motion picture]. United States: Atlantic Pictures.

 

Letting Go of the Things That No Longer Suit You, Part II of II

The question is, what mantras and mentalities had I or any of us adopted as foundational to our perspective on things, but that may no longer serve us?  That may reverse all of the good we had done ourselves by adopting them for a period in time when – for lack of a more sophisticated view – they had seemed the safest way to proceed.

In my early twenties, I started doubling back after parking anywhere to check that I had locked my car.  After 9-11, I started keeping water and a few weeks’ food in a transportable box in case I needed to evacuate due to a terrorist attack.

These are sensible things to do, but I’d stepped them up in my heightened awareness that I was newly the sole person in my day-to-day who would handle these things.

When someone would ask, “Paiger, don’t you think you’re going a bit overboard?,” I’d confidently reply, “Only the paranoid survive.”

I’d heard that many a time from someone I consider a strong, survivor-type.  It served that person well.

Sounds pretty bad-ass, or so I thought, and it served me well too as I learned to accept my new responsibilities for managing my own life as an adult out of college.

Sound familiar?

A handful of years ago, when I started business school on nights and weekends so I could continue working, I had to adjust to the requisite sleep deprivation and had to withdraw from seeing my friends as much as I would have liked.

I joked that “sleep and time with friends have to be optional.”

Sounded pretty hard-core, or so I thought, and it served me well as I learned to balance my new and completely unsustainable reality.  I knew at the time that working all day, attending class on nights and weekends, studying and preparing endless projects was an unsustainable rhythm, but I also knew the faster I could acclimate myself to it, the more tolerable it could be.

Sound familiar?

Throughout my teens and early adult years, I did what all of us do; we learn from the people in our life whose choices would suit us and whose choices would not.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, we harbor anger and hurt for a third set of people – those who always seemed to cut us down of shove us into a box constructed from their assumptions about what we wanted or were capable of achieving in our lives.

Sounds pretty blatant, and so I knew, but it was useful – like the fluorescent flags used to guide slalom skiiers; these demarcations in my mind were never subtle, but they directed me back on path when things got icy and I could not distinguish the ground from the sky in my life.

We mash those guideposts and role models altogether in one powerful composite of inspiration and that is useful.  It drives us, it pulls us back and it balances our sense of where and how everything is going.

Sounded healthy.  Or so I thought, in my twenties and earlier thirties, while I was trying to pinpoint who and what I was going to become post-college, post-first job and relationship or two...or three, and pre-almost everything else.

Sound familiar?

I don’t think any of us will regret the peace of mind that comes with preparedness, but in what ways do we let a glorified paranoia permeate the rest of our life in unhealthy ways?

I don’t think any of us will ever regret the confidence boost, gratification and value add we derive from taking on a new challenge, clearing a new hurdle – whether it’s continued education or switching careers -  but how might we still let our tendencies toward that harder, unsustainable lifestyle we had to adopt during those challenges to permeate our life in unhealthy ways?

I don’t think any of us will ever regret the invaluable emotional mush that kept us on course through some interesting times while we were negotiating with ourselves who we want to be, but in what ways do we still let it swallow our progress?  In what ways do we allow our formerly useful defiance of anyone who tried to minimize us continue to make us hurt or angry?

In what ways do sticking to those mantras and mentalities, anxieties and resentments prevent us from letting go of relationships and habits that no longer serve us?

Every December or January, it seems many of us introspect about what we can improve about ourselves and the ways we live our lives.  This year on December 24, I tucked into bed at my grandmother’s house in the Midwest – we always go to the Queen Mum’s for Christmas – with my note pad and pen to write my “Contract for 2011.”

This is a big deal for me – it’s my resolution list I draw each year, sign and date on the x at the bottom.

"Sounds like you,” my brother, Pat, said as we laughed.

"Paige, is your list all do’s, do’s, do’s and don’ts, don’ts, don’ts?,” he continued.

"Yes, of course.  That’s simplest and most straightforward way to do it,” I replied.

"You might want to think about that,” he said.  “I heard something on the radio last week that stuck with me.  The commentator said that when you we make our resolutions black and white, we set ourselves up for failure.”

He has a point.

"When you make it all or nothing, and you do something you said you would not, or don’t do something you resolved you would, you feel like a failure.”

"Sure, Pat, but I don’t discouraged and throw the whole thing out the window if I slip up on one or two.”

Pshaw.  Do any of us ever commit to a list of projects that are so self-empowering, slip-up once or twice, and then get so discouraged we scrap the whole list?

Uh…maybe.

"It’s not that.  That’s not the point.  The commentator said instead of making things so definite, that our resolutions should be our commitments to ourselves to make a conscious effort to work toward our goals.  Our commitments should be to the process.”

"Ohhhh…huh.  I like that.”

Not just committing to doing or not doing A, B or C, Pat clarified, but committing to being mentally plugged in through every decision, mantra or mentality that perpetuates us doing A, B and C.

Fill in those letters as appropriate for you.

Commit ourselves to consciously evaluating what will and will not serve our bigger goals – including letting go of the reasons we let ourselves be motivated by fear, anger or resentment that is no longer useful, healthy or necessary.

It’s 2011.  An odd number and a beautiful time to transition.  Time to clear out the closets and get rid of things we no longer need.  Things that take up space in our lives.

And only then, do we leave ourselves open to the universe to replace those habits and things with new ones that could be better for us.  That we can use to sail toward our greater good.

This year might just be the year to consciously commit to moving toward goals Della Reese, the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto and your fortune cookie-ish Daily Meditations books so deftly articulated.

Posted by Paige at 12:00 AM in advice, relationships, Religion, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Ajahn Chah, clarity, Della Reese, independent, introspection, letting go, martini rescue squad, New Year's resolutions, not all it's cracked up to be, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

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Jan 12, 2011

Re: Live the Dream Expo 2011 tomorrow

Whether or not you plan to make it to the Live the Dream Expo 2011 tomorrow, take a look at the site: http://www.ltd365.com/. Very impressive.

Posted by Paige at 02:39 PM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: live the dream expo 2011, ltd365, martini rescue squad, paige nesbitt

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Jan 10, 2011

News story re: Congresswoman Giffords with input from UCLA Neurosugery

Take a look at this story with input from UCLA Neurosurgery. Please keep Congresswoman Giffords and her family, and all other victims from the Arizona assassination attempt, in your thoughts and prayers.

Dr. Neil Martin is one of the doctors who saved my life 15 years ago:

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=7890702

Posted by Paige at 07:17 PM in advice, Current Affairs, relationships, Science, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Dr. Neil Martin, martini rescue squad, paige nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties, UCLA Neurosurgery

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Letting Go of the Things That No Longer Suit You, Part I of II

“I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.” – Daily Meditations book

What do Della Reese, the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto and fortune cookie-ish Daily Meditiations books have in common?  They all seem to agree on the above statement.

Talk about lofty New Year’s Resolutions.

Last week, in “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be,” I suggested it’s hard, but necessary to let go of less-than-healthy regrets about people, places and things; the “What if’s” that may inaccurately idealize someone or something that is no longer part of our lives, i.e. the questions that leave us perpetually visualizing that, in a parallel reality, life with that person, place or thing would have been perfect.

Moving to a place where we can organically let go of those “What if’s” is an ideal.  A second, bigger-picture benefit from doing so is letting that freedom from regret open us to some introspection; what else are we holding onto in our lives that may just not be right for us?

A few other candidates for letting go may bob to the surface.  We covered that.

Letting go of the mantras and mentalities that only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy ties and regrets, however, is the iceberg under those surface bobbers that may complicate our smooth sail into warmer climes.  And, man, can those icebergs be doozies.

The tricky thing is, some of those mantras and mentalities may have been useful to us at one point, we may have depended on them for a period, but they now only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy situations and habits – and that is the much bigger picture.

Accordingly, breaking those down is the much harder task.  But chipping away at them little by little, with a few mani-pedis in between, and forgiving ourselves in advance for any set-backs in so doing, is something we can all do in the new year.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reflecting on my inspiration for the “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be” entry as I prepared for bed.  Before turning off my light, I read a page from a daily meditation book that I enjoy; I don’t always agree with its interpretations, but sometimes its entries are like that crazy fortune cookie that nails whatever is on my mind.

"I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.”

Let yourself reflect on whatever else it is in your life that is not fulfilling you, but you cannot let go.  The basics are obvious; approaches to relationships, the tenor of your inner dialogue -  how hard you are on yourself in some areas, or how you could be a little more rigorous with yourself in others, etc…

"But surely this means something more than that,” I thought.

Then I started reflecting on the times in life I have heard this maxim.  One of them could have been from Della Reese, who said “My idea of forgiveness is letting go of resentment that does not serve your better interest, ridding yourself of negative thoughts. All they do is make you miserable.”  Who knows if and where I had heard that one, but it sounds familiar.

Another is from the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto, the Buddhist monk who said, "If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace."

The most likely place I heard that was in yoga class, during one of my handsome instructor’s closing meditations.  Reference the “Om, my…” entry that ran on here in October.

The most impactful source of this wisdom was in that Daily Meditations book, as I tucked into my bed that night a few weeks ago, with my water glass and crossword on my nightstand.  This is the one that moved me.

Let go of relationships, quarrelsome personalities, unhealthy interpersonal situations.

Check.

Let go of staying up too late, not making it to the gym each week as often as I say I will every Monday morning, drinking too much coffee, freestyle interpretive dancing in the grocery market aisles a bit too often and miscellaneous intrapersonal situations.

Eh.  In progress.

Let go of all of the mentalities and mantras that may have served me for a finite period in life, but now may only perpetuate the not-so-cool interpersonal and intrapersonal tendencies listed above?

Let’s get specific: let go of founding my drive to propel myself forward on fear - on my fear of becoming like someone, or my fear of not achieving as much as someone else…

Let go of my desire to model myself after an unrealistic paragon I've created, and beating up on myself when I fall short.

Let go of being hurt by, or angry with, anyone who I think predicated their relationship with me on assumptions that only satisfied their own weaknesses - the people who I have reason to believe only liked me for how I offset their insecurities - whether or not their comparison was  valid.  Or relevant, for that matter.

Fill in the aforementioned with things that apply to you.

How the hell do we let go of those?

Uh-oh, Titanic passengers.  Iceberg time.

 

(To be continued next week...)

Posted by Paige at 12:00 AM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Ajahn Chah, clarity, Della Reese, independent, introspection, letting go, martini rescue squad, New Year's resolutions, not all it's cracked up to be, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us | |

Jan 03, 2011

Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

Have you ever found that your ideal in one freeze-frame in time can become your angel of deliverance in the next?  Whether that ideal is a person, place or thing?  Please forgive the biblical overtones and work with me.

Have you ever found that your one-time unachievable object of affection, borderline devotion, can – in one brief interchange – transform his, her or itself into both your Magna Carta of release and your justification you never should have cared that much to begin with?

It’s subtle, it’s classy and it’s irrefutably true.  That makes the clarity thereby derived nearly perfect.  In the new year, aspiring to that clarity is something to consider.

Part of the clarity I achieved recently is that the ability to let go requires a skill set that is far more nuanced and tactical than is the set required to hold on.

Holding on is pretty straightforward; you stoke your own flames for someone or something – or you try to stoke their/its flames for you.  You do what you can with preservation as your ultimate goal; preserving the relationship, the job, the connection, the involvement, your sense of status.

Letting go, however, that is more complicated.  It seems there are three types of “letting go” and each requires a distinct perspective on the situation to bolster your conviction.  By some cosmic grace, one can transform into the other and the whole process gets easier.  At the same time, the challenge that process can evoke in your mind grows rewardingly large.

In some situations, you let go, because the person/thing has done something so egregious or blatant, you have to move on.  The “Annnnd scene” kind; the boyfriend who cheated, the job situation that told you that you would never be considered for the position you thought you were on track to achieve and accordingly you had worked so hard to achieve it, etc…

This type of letting go, the letting go to save yourself from any more hurt, is almost as painful as persisting your grip.  At first.  But shortly thereafter, you vindicate yourself as your soul sighs and your whole existence welcomes the new peace.  We all understand that one – fortunate results from unfortunate circumstances.

In other situations, you let go, because that’s the only self-respecting thing to do.  We cover that in much greater depth in Martini, the book.

In these second types of situations, letting go is not quite as hard, but convincing yourself that calling it quits was the right thing to do – that there is not one more thing you should have tried to make it work, or that there isn’t some chance both parties are misunderstanding a situation on which you will both someday laughingly reflect, because it meant that everything was so obviously meant to work out just like that image of perfection in your mind – achieving that conviction is absurdly difficult.

And thirdly, sometimes as if a gift from the cosmos, you organically let go, because you just don’t want to hold on any longer.  No one has done anything to you.  You don’t necessarily have a lightning bolt moment that changes everything.

Instead, the object of study in your own perseverance to hold on can, in fact, teach you how to let go gracefully; that something or someone remerges in your life in just the right time to provide all the proof you ever needed that whom or whatever you had regretted never would have been right for you.

You run into that ex, that former coworker, your former fellow committee member and you find, after that former boyfriend took up that hobby, after that workplace has adjusted to its own internal politics, after that committee continued on its mission - after each has had some time to naturally go their own way, as have you - you gradually realize that you and they were never going to be a fit anyway.

No one is any worse off for the directions they have gone.  Contrarily, they and you have achieved a fuller manifestation of what you were always going to become, provided all parties remained true to themselves.  They are just not all they’re cracked up to be.  Not for you anyway.

In that brilliant clarity, you feel calm and confident in dismissing the issue altogether.

There is nothing dramatic or conflicted about this kind of letting go.  It just happens.  Any desire your mind may have had to nurse along any thoughts about what could and should have been with this person, place or thing vaporizes and blows away.  Your life refuses to incorporate it in your growth any longer.

Whew.  Exhale.  You and that object of your rue are both free.

In this latter situation type, the organic one, that clarity provides all of the conviction you will ever need to know that letting go is the natural thing to do.  This is something we all want.

And in that plain purity, you might see something else float to the surface – a meta-lesson; the subtle and more liberating realization that perhaps a few people or things you had held in that same rueful place in your heart never would have been right for you either.

Let that one realization spark the question in your mind for the new year what else is it in your life you have approached the same way?  What else is there in your life that is not fulfilling for you, but you just can’t let go?  And what is the one constant element to all situations?  Exactly.  You.

And here’s the beautiful part – who is the one person who can change that?  You.  In the 2011, that might be the resolution, the commitment to yourself, you know you can keep.

Posted by Paige at 12:33 AM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: clarity, independent, introspection, letting go, martini rescue squad, New Year's resolutions, not all it's cracked up to be, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us | |

Jan 01, 2011

Conclusion to Martini Holiday Game

Happy New Year!  Thanks to all of you who participated in the Martini Holiday Game, either actively on the blog, on Facebook, or with your fun comments to me directly.  This has been a riot.  The following are our winners:

 

 Week V Answer:  This week's is split between Sarah Brown and David Emerson - you are both half correct, so we'll combine your answers for two winners.  My brother, Pat, and I were both Photoshopped in this year.

Week IV Answer:  Bravo to Kinnison Bryan!  David Emerson, your analysis is impressive - thank you as well!  My brother, Patrick, and I were both Photoshopped into that one last year.  Pat's and my images were cropped from different work-related pictures we had taken in California at some point in 2009.  Everyone else was really there - including one invisible little person who is in this week's photo above. 

 

Week III Answer:  No one got this one - but again, I am amused by the guesses.  We were all there that year.  The picture was from my cousin's wedding luau in the Midwest two nights before the nuptials.  You will notice in the two cards that followed the additional munchkins who appeared over the last few years since that wedding.  

 

Week II Answer:  Congratulations to Jenna Guggenheim!  Big Nance was, indeed, not present.  That was her 2001 card.  Big Nance's image in the photo was cropped from a photo she took with Papa in approximately 1992.  Sweet.  Sadly, 2001 was a year we could not coordinate in time to get the two youngest cousins in the picture, either virtually or actually.
 

Week I Answer:  Congratulations, Ann Moran!  All of us were actually together for that picture.  I believe this was her card for Christmas 2002, but we posed for it during Christmas week the year prior.

 

   

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

My grandmother and grandfather, the Queen Mum and Papa, taught me many priceless life lessons.  Among the first of those is that a picture truly is worth a thousand words.  And for them, the most valuable picture has always been their annual Christmas card photo.  Since my grandfather passed 17 years ago, that picture has become increasingly precious with each year.

We six grandchildren have all gotten older, gone to school here and taken a job there, changed our hair color to that, etc…

Some families enclose with their card an annual letter updating their friends on all of their family’s news.  Every year when we visit my grandmother for Christmas, I flop on her couch with a cup of coffee and read the letters she has received.

But this is not something we ever did.  Instead, in my grandparents’ subtle genius, they let the picture do the talking; if we all went on a terrific family vacation, the picture would show all of us at that destination.  If one of us got married or had a baby, that new spouse and child would be in the picture as well.

You don’t make it into the picture until there has been an “I do.”

Although our family on that side is based in the Midwest, we are scattered across the country.  Back in the late 1990’s, the four of us grandchildren who were in college at the time were in four different states and three different time zones.

That meant we always had to either take the picture a full year in advance or hope we would all be together during the summer.   The years when this did not work, Big Nance was understandably very sad.

Until the day she first heard the word “Photoshop.”  A beam from heaven must have shown down on her, wherever she was at the time.

Big Nance promptly found a Photoshop ace she could trust and for most of the last several Christmases, one of more of us has been Photoshopped into the picture.

Whether or not we were there, if she did not think our outfit suited her plan for the picture, her ace would Photoshop our clothes to fit her color scheme.

"Paige, where did you find that lovely crimson dress in this year’s photo?”

"Oh…it’s actually silver and that was from last New Year’s in Los Angeles, but thank you.  It’s a great dress.”

True.

Over the years, as technology has gotten more advanced, this whole process has become easier.  One of our relatives will e-mail us the picture Big Nance wants to use and those of us could not make it will collaborate on who gets which empty space.

We then have a couple of days to recruit a friend to take a picture of us at just the correct angle, dressed in just right color scheme, so the Photoshop ace can insert us as planned.

Each picture may only tell a partial truth – we may not have actually been together at the time.  However we are a close family even when copied, cut and pasted together for more Christmas cards than not.

Posted by Paige at 12:30 PM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Big Nance, christmas card, happy women, independent, martini rescue squad, paige nesbitt, photoshop, Queen Mum, single, twenties or thirties

Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us | |

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Whether or not you plan to make it to the Live the Dream Expo 2011 tomorrow, take a look at the site: http://www.ltd365.com/. Very impressive.

Take a look at this story with input from UCLA Neurosurgery. Please keep Congresswoman Giffords and her family, and all other victims from the Arizona assassination attempt, in your thoughts and prayers.

Dr. Neil Martin is one of the doctors who saved my life 15 years ago:

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=7890702

“I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.” – Daily Meditations book

What do Della Reese, the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto and fortune cookie-ish Daily Meditiations books have in common?  They all seem to agree on the above statement.

Talk about lofty New Year’s Resolutions.

Last week, in “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be,” I suggested it’s hard, but necessary to let go of less-than-healthy regrets about people, places and things; the “What if’s” that may inaccurately idealize someone or something that is no longer part of our lives, i.e. the questions that leave us perpetually visualizing that, in a parallel reality, life with that person, place or thing would have been perfect.

Moving to a place where we can organically let go of those “What if’s” is an ideal.  A second, bigger-picture benefit from doing so is letting that freedom from regret open us to some introspection; what else are we holding onto in our lives that may just not be right for us?

A few other candidates for letting go may bob to the surface.  We covered that.

Letting go of the mantras and mentalities that only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy ties and regrets, however, is the iceberg under those surface bobbers that may complicate our smooth sail into warmer climes.  And, man, can those icebergs be doozies.

The tricky thing is, some of those mantras and mentalities may have been useful to us at one point, we may have depended on them for a period, but they now only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy situations and habits – and that is the much bigger picture.

Accordingly, breaking those down is the much harder task.  But chipping away at them little by little, with a few mani-pedis in between, and forgiving ourselves in advance for any set-backs in so doing, is something we can all do in the new year.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reflecting on my inspiration for the “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be” entry as I prepared for bed.  Before turning off my light, I read a page from a daily meditation book that I enjoy; I don’t always agree with its interpretations, but sometimes its entries are like that crazy fortune cookie that nails whatever is on my mind.

"I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.”

Let yourself reflect on whatever else it is in your life that is not fulfilling you, but you cannot let go.  The basics are obvious; approaches to relationships, the tenor of your inner dialogue -  how hard you are on yourself in some areas, or how you could be a little more rigorous with yourself in others, etc…

"But surely this means something more than that,” I thought.

Then I started reflecting on the times in life I have heard this maxim.  One of them could have been from Della Reese, who said “My idea of forgiveness is letting go of resentment that does not serve your better interest, ridding yourself of negative thoughts. All they do is make you miserable.”  Who knows if and where I had heard that one, but it sounds familiar.

Another is from the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto, the Buddhist monk who said, "If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace."

The most likely place I heard that was in yoga class, during one of my handsome instructor’s closing meditations.  Reference the “Om, my…” entry that ran on here in October.

The most impactful source of this wisdom was in that Daily Meditations book, as I tucked into my bed that night a few weeks ago, with my water glass and crossword on my nightstand.  This is the one that moved me.

Let go of relationships, quarrelsome personalities, unhealthy interpersonal situations.

Check.

Let go of staying up too late, not making it to the gym each week as often as I say I will every Monday morning, drinking too much coffee, freestyle interpretive dancing in the grocery market aisles a bit too often and miscellaneous intrapersonal situations.

Eh.  In progress.

Let go of all of the mentalities and mantras that may have served me for a finite period in life, but now may only perpetuate the not-so-cool interpersonal and intrapersonal tendencies listed above?

Let’s get specific: let go of founding my drive to propel myself forward on fear - on my fear of becoming like someone, or my fear of not achieving as much as someone else…

Let go of my desire to model myself after an unrealistic paragon I've created, and beating up on myself when I fall short.

Let go of being hurt by, or angry with, anyone who I think predicated their relationship with me on assumptions that only satisfied their own weaknesses - the people who I have reason to believe only liked me for how I offset their insecurities - whether or not their comparison was  valid.  Or relevant, for that matter.

Fill in the aforementioned with things that apply to you.

How the hell do we let go of those?

Uh-oh, Titanic passengers.  Iceberg time.

 

(To be continued next week...)

Have you ever found that your ideal in one freeze-frame in time can become your angel of deliverance in the next?  Whether that ideal is a person, place or thing?  Please forgive the biblical overtones and work with me.

Have you ever found that your one-time unachievable object of affection, borderline devotion, can – in one brief interchange – transform his, her or itself into both your Magna Carta of release and your justification you never should have cared that much to begin with?

It’s subtle, it’s classy and it’s irrefutably true.  That makes the clarity thereby derived nearly perfect.  In the new year, aspiring to that clarity is something to consider.

Part of the clarity I achieved recently is that the ability to let go requires a skill set that is far more nuanced and tactical than is the set required to hold on.

Holding on is pretty straightforward; you stoke your own flames for someone or something – or you try to stoke their/its flames for you.  You do what you can with preservation as your ultimate goal; preserving the relationship, the job, the connection, the involvement, your sense of status.

Letting go, however, that is more complicated.  It seems there are three types of “letting go” and each requires a distinct perspective on the situation to bolster your conviction.  By some cosmic grace, one can transform into the other and the whole process gets easier.  At the same time, the challenge that process can evoke in your mind grows rewardingly large.

In some situations, you let go, because the person/thing has done something so egregious or blatant, you have to move on.  The “Annnnd scene” kind; the boyfriend who cheated, the job situation that told you that you would never be considered for the position you thought you were on track to achieve and accordingly you had worked so hard to achieve it, etc…

This type of letting go, the letting go to save yourself from any more hurt, is almost as painful as persisting your grip.  At first.  But shortly thereafter, you vindicate yourself as your soul sighs and your whole existence welcomes the new peace.  We all understand that one – fortunate results from unfortunate circumstances.

In other situations, you let go, because that’s the only self-respecting thing to do.  We cover that in much greater depth in Martini, the book.

In these second types of situations, letting go is not quite as hard, but convincing yourself that calling it quits was the right thing to do – that there is not one more thing you should have tried to make it work, or that there isn’t some chance both parties are misunderstanding a situation on which you will both someday laughingly reflect, because it meant that everything was so obviously meant to work out just like that image of perfection in your mind – achieving that conviction is absurdly difficult.

And thirdly, sometimes as if a gift from the cosmos, you organically let go, because you just don’t want to hold on any longer.  No one has done anything to you.  You don’t necessarily have a lightning bolt moment that changes everything.

Instead, the object of study in your own perseverance to hold on can, in fact, teach you how to let go gracefully; that something or someone remerges in your life in just the right time to provide all the proof you ever needed that whom or whatever you had regretted never would have been right for you.

You run into that ex, that former coworker, your former fellow committee member and you find, after that former boyfriend took up that hobby, after that workplace has adjusted to its own internal politics, after that committee continued on its mission - after each has had some time to naturally go their own way, as have you - you gradually realize that you and they were never going to be a fit anyway.

No one is any worse off for the directions they have gone.  Contrarily, they and you have achieved a fuller manifestation of what you were always going to become, provided all parties remained true to themselves.  They are just not all they’re cracked up to be.  Not for you anyway.

In that brilliant clarity, you feel calm and confident in dismissing the issue altogether.

There is nothing dramatic or conflicted about this kind of letting go.  It just happens.  Any desire your mind may have had to nurse along any thoughts about what could and should have been with this person, place or thing vaporizes and blows away.  Your life refuses to incorporate it in your growth any longer.

Whew.  Exhale.  You and that object of your rue are both free.

In this latter situation type, the organic one, that clarity provides all of the conviction you will ever need to know that letting go is the natural thing to do.  This is something we all want.

And in that plain purity, you might see something else float to the surface – a meta-lesson; the subtle and more liberating realization that perhaps a few people or things you had held in that same rueful place in your heart never would have been right for you either.

Let that one realization spark the question in your mind for the new year what else is it in your life you have approached the same way?  What else is there in your life that is not fulfilling for you, but you just can’t let go?  And what is the one constant element to all situations?  Exactly.  You.

And here’s the beautiful part – who is the one person who can change that?  You.  In the 2011, that might be the resolution, the commitment to yourself, you know you can keep.

Happy New Year!  Thanks to all of you who participated in the Martini Holiday Game, either actively on the blog, on Facebook, or with your fun comments to me directly.  This has been a riot.  The following are our winners:

 

 Week V Answer:  This week's is split between Sarah Brown and David Emerson - you are both half correct, so we'll combine your answers for two winners.  My brother, Pat, and I were both Photoshopped in this year.

Week IV Answer:  Bravo to Kinnison Bryan!  David Emerson, your analysis is impressive - thank you as well!  My brother, Patrick, and I were both Photoshopped into that one last year.  Pat's and my images were cropped from different work-related pictures we had taken in California at some point in 2009.  Everyone else was really there - including one invisible little person who is in this week's photo above. 

 

Week III Answer:  No one got this one - but again, I am amused by the guesses.  We were all there that year.  The picture was from my cousin's wedding luau in the Midwest two nights before the nuptials.  You will notice in the two cards that followed the additional munchkins who appeared over the last few years since that wedding.  

 

Week II Answer:  Congratulations to Jenna Guggenheim!  Big Nance was, indeed, not present.  That was her 2001 card.  Big Nance's image in the photo was cropped from a photo she took with Papa in approximately 1992.  Sweet.  Sadly, 2001 was a year we could not coordinate in time to get the two youngest cousins in the picture, either virtually or actually.
 

Week I Answer:  Congratulations, Ann Moran!  All of us were actually together for that picture.  I believe this was her card for Christmas 2002, but we posed for it during Christmas week the year prior.

 

   

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

My grandmother and grandfather, the Queen Mum and Papa, taught me many priceless life lessons.  Among the first of those is that a picture truly is worth a thousand words.  And for them, the most valuable picture has always been their annual Christmas card photo.  Since my grandfather passed 17 years ago, that picture has become increasingly precious with each year.

We six grandchildren have all gotten older, gone to school here and taken a job there, changed our hair color to that, etc…

Some families enclose with their card an annual letter updating their friends on all of their family’s news.  Every year when we visit my grandmother for Christmas, I flop on her couch with a cup of coffee and read the letters she has received.

But this is not something we ever did.  Instead, in my grandparents’ subtle genius, they let the picture do the talking; if we all went on a terrific family vacation, the picture would show all of us at that destination.  If one of us got married or had a baby, that new spouse and child would be in the picture as well.

You don’t make it into the picture until there has been an “I do.”

Although our family on that side is based in the Midwest, we are scattered across the country.  Back in the late 1990’s, the four of us grandchildren who were in college at the time were in four different states and three different time zones.

That meant we always had to either take the picture a full year in advance or hope we would all be together during the summer.   The years when this did not work, Big Nance was understandably very sad.

Until the day she first heard the word “Photoshop.”  A beam from heaven must have shown down on her, wherever she was at the time.

Big Nance promptly found a Photoshop ace she could trust and for most of the last several Christmases, one of more of us has been Photoshopped into the picture.

Whether or not we were there, if she did not think our outfit suited her plan for the picture, her ace would Photoshop our clothes to fit her color scheme.

"Paige, where did you find that lovely crimson dress in this year’s photo?”

"Oh…it’s actually silver and that was from last New Year’s in Los Angeles, but thank you.  It’s a great dress.”

True.

Over the years, as technology has gotten more advanced, this whole process has become easier.  One of our relatives will e-mail us the picture Big Nance wants to use and those of us could not make it will collaborate on who gets which empty space.

We then have a couple of days to recruit a friend to take a picture of us at just the correct angle, dressed in just right color scheme, so the Photoshop ace can insert us as planned.

Each picture may only tell a partial truth – we may not have actually been together at the time.  However we are a close family even when copied, cut and pasted together for more Christmas cards than not.

Re: Live the Dream Expo 2011 tomorrow

Whether or not you plan to make it to the Live the Dream Expo 2011 tomorrow, take a look at the site: http://www.ltd365.com/. Very impressive.

News story re: Congresswoman Giffords with input from UCLA Neurosugery

Take a look at this story with input from UCLA Neurosurgery. Please keep Congresswoman Giffords and her family, and all other victims from the Arizona assassination attempt, in your thoughts and prayers.

Dr. Neil Martin is one of the doctors who saved my life 15 years ago:

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=7890702

Letting Go of the Things That No Longer Suit You, Part I of II

“I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.” – Daily Meditations book

What do Della Reese, the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto and fortune cookie-ish Daily Meditiations books have in common?  They all seem to agree on the above statement.

Talk about lofty New Year’s Resolutions.

Last week, in “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be,” I suggested it’s hard, but necessary to let go of less-than-healthy regrets about people, places and things; the “What if’s” that may inaccurately idealize someone or something that is no longer part of our lives, i.e. the questions that leave us perpetually visualizing that, in a parallel reality, life with that person, place or thing would have been perfect.

Moving to a place where we can organically let go of those “What if’s” is an ideal.  A second, bigger-picture benefit from doing so is letting that freedom from regret open us to some introspection; what else are we holding onto in our lives that may just not be right for us?

A few other candidates for letting go may bob to the surface.  We covered that.

Letting go of the mantras and mentalities that only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy ties and regrets, however, is the iceberg under those surface bobbers that may complicate our smooth sail into warmer climes.  And, man, can those icebergs be doozies.

The tricky thing is, some of those mantras and mentalities may have been useful to us at one point, we may have depended on them for a period, but they now only serve to perpetuate those unhealthy situations and habits – and that is the much bigger picture.

Accordingly, breaking those down is the much harder task.  But chipping away at them little by little, with a few mani-pedis in between, and forgiving ourselves in advance for any set-backs in so doing, is something we can all do in the new year.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reflecting on my inspiration for the “Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be” entry as I prepared for bed.  Before turning off my light, I read a page from a daily meditation book that I enjoy; I don’t always agree with its interpretations, but sometimes its entries are like that crazy fortune cookie that nails whatever is on my mind.

"I release anything and everything that no longer serves my unfolding good.”

Let yourself reflect on whatever else it is in your life that is not fulfilling you, but you cannot let go.  The basics are obvious; approaches to relationships, the tenor of your inner dialogue -  how hard you are on yourself in some areas, or how you could be a little more rigorous with yourself in others, etc…

"But surely this means something more than that,” I thought.

Then I started reflecting on the times in life I have heard this maxim.  One of them could have been from Della Reese, who said “My idea of forgiveness is letting go of resentment that does not serve your better interest, ridding yourself of negative thoughts. All they do is make you miserable.”  Who knows if and where I had heard that one, but it sounds familiar.

Another is from the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhatto, the Buddhist monk who said, "If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace."

The most likely place I heard that was in yoga class, during one of my handsome instructor’s closing meditations.  Reference the “Om, my…” entry that ran on here in October.

The most impactful source of this wisdom was in that Daily Meditations book, as I tucked into my bed that night a few weeks ago, with my water glass and crossword on my nightstand.  This is the one that moved me.

Let go of relationships, quarrelsome personalities, unhealthy interpersonal situations.

Check.

Let go of staying up too late, not making it to the gym each week as often as I say I will every Monday morning, drinking too much coffee, freestyle interpretive dancing in the grocery market aisles a bit too often and miscellaneous intrapersonal situations.

Eh.  In progress.

Let go of all of the mentalities and mantras that may have served me for a finite period in life, but now may only perpetuate the not-so-cool interpersonal and intrapersonal tendencies listed above?

Let’s get specific: let go of founding my drive to propel myself forward on fear - on my fear of becoming like someone, or my fear of not achieving as much as someone else…

Let go of my desire to model myself after an unrealistic paragon I've created, and beating up on myself when I fall short.

Let go of being hurt by, or angry with, anyone who I think predicated their relationship with me on assumptions that only satisfied their own weaknesses - the people who I have reason to believe only liked me for how I offset their insecurities - whether or not their comparison was  valid.  Or relevant, for that matter.

Fill in the aforementioned with things that apply to you.

How the hell do we let go of those?

Uh-oh, Titanic passengers.  Iceberg time.

 

(To be continued next week...)

Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

Have you ever found that your ideal in one freeze-frame in time can become your angel of deliverance in the next?  Whether that ideal is a person, place or thing?  Please forgive the biblical overtones and work with me.

Have you ever found that your one-time unachievable object of affection, borderline devotion, can – in one brief interchange – transform his, her or itself into both your Magna Carta of release and your justification you never should have cared that much to begin with?

It’s subtle, it’s classy and it’s irrefutably true.  That makes the clarity thereby derived nearly perfect.  In the new year, aspiring to that clarity is something to consider.

Part of the clarity I achieved recently is that the ability to let go requires a skill set that is far more nuanced and tactical than is the set required to hold on.

Holding on is pretty straightforward; you stoke your own flames for someone or something – or you try to stoke their/its flames for you.  You do what you can with preservation as your ultimate goal; preserving the relationship, the job, the connection, the involvement, your sense of status.

Letting go, however, that is more complicated.  It seems there are three types of “letting go” and each requires a distinct perspective on the situation to bolster your conviction.  By some cosmic grace, one can transform into the other and the whole process gets easier.  At the same time, the challenge that process can evoke in your mind grows rewardingly large.

In some situations, you let go, because the person/thing has done something so egregious or blatant, you have to move on.  The “Annnnd scene” kind; the boyfriend who cheated, the job situation that told you that you would never be considered for the position you thought you were on track to achieve and accordingly you had worked so hard to achieve it, etc…

This type of letting go, the letting go to save yourself from any more hurt, is almost as painful as persisting your grip.  At first.  But shortly thereafter, you vindicate yourself as your soul sighs and your whole existence welcomes the new peace.  We all understand that one – fortunate results from unfortunate circumstances.

In other situations, you let go, because that’s the only self-respecting thing to do.  We cover that in much greater depth in Martini, the book.

In these second types of situations, letting go is not quite as hard, but convincing yourself that calling it quits was the right thing to do – that there is not one more thing you should have tried to make it work, or that there isn’t some chance both parties are misunderstanding a situation on which you will both someday laughingly reflect, because it meant that everything was so obviously meant to work out just like that image of perfection in your mind – achieving that conviction is absurdly difficult.

And thirdly, sometimes as if a gift from the cosmos, you organically let go, because you just don’t want to hold on any longer.  No one has done anything to you.  You don’t necessarily have a lightning bolt moment that changes everything.

Instead, the object of study in your own perseverance to hold on can, in fact, teach you how to let go gracefully; that something or someone remerges in your life in just the right time to provide all the proof you ever needed that whom or whatever you had regretted never would have been right for you.

You run into that ex, that former coworker, your former fellow committee member and you find, after that former boyfriend took up that hobby, after that workplace has adjusted to its own internal politics, after that committee continued on its mission - after each has had some time to naturally go their own way, as have you - you gradually realize that you and they were never going to be a fit anyway.

No one is any worse off for the directions they have gone.  Contrarily, they and you have achieved a fuller manifestation of what you were always going to become, provided all parties remained true to themselves.  They are just not all they’re cracked up to be.  Not for you anyway.

In that brilliant clarity, you feel calm and confident in dismissing the issue altogether.

There is nothing dramatic or conflicted about this kind of letting go.  It just happens.  Any desire your mind may have had to nurse along any thoughts about what could and should have been with this person, place or thing vaporizes and blows away.  Your life refuses to incorporate it in your growth any longer.

Whew.  Exhale.  You and that object of your rue are both free.

In this latter situation type, the organic one, that clarity provides all of the conviction you will ever need to know that letting go is the natural thing to do.  This is something we all want.

And in that plain purity, you might see something else float to the surface – a meta-lesson; the subtle and more liberating realization that perhaps a few people or things you had held in that same rueful place in your heart never would have been right for you either.

Let that one realization spark the question in your mind for the new year what else is it in your life you have approached the same way?  What else is there in your life that is not fulfilling for you, but you just can’t let go?  And what is the one constant element to all situations?  Exactly.  You.

And here’s the beautiful part – who is the one person who can change that?  You.  In the 2011, that might be the resolution, the commitment to yourself, you know you can keep.

Conclusion to Martini Holiday Game

Happy New Year!  Thanks to all of you who participated in the Martini Holiday Game, either actively on the blog, on Facebook, or with your fun comments to me directly.  This has been a riot.  The following are our winners:

 

 Week V Answer:  This week's is split between Sarah Brown and David Emerson - you are both half correct, so we'll combine your answers for two winners.  My brother, Pat, and I were both Photoshopped in this year.

Week IV Answer:  Bravo to Kinnison Bryan!  David Emerson, your analysis is impressive - thank you as well!  My brother, Patrick, and I were both Photoshopped into that one last year.  Pat's and my images were cropped from different work-related pictures we had taken in California at some point in 2009.  Everyone else was really there - including one invisible little person who is in this week's photo above. 

 

Week III Answer:  No one got this one - but again, I am amused by the guesses.  We were all there that year.  The picture was from my cousin's wedding luau in the Midwest two nights before the nuptials.  You will notice in the two cards that followed the additional munchkins who appeared over the last few years since that wedding.  

 

Week II Answer:  Congratulations to Jenna Guggenheim!  Big Nance was, indeed, not present.  That was her 2001 card.  Big Nance's image in the photo was cropped from a photo she took with Papa in approximately 1992.  Sweet.  Sadly, 2001 was a year we could not coordinate in time to get the two youngest cousins in the picture, either virtually or actually.
 

Week I Answer:  Congratulations, Ann Moran!  All of us were actually together for that picture.  I believe this was her card for Christmas 2002, but we posed for it during Christmas week the year prior.

 

   

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

My grandmother and grandfather, the Queen Mum and Papa, taught me many priceless life lessons.  Among the first of those is that a picture truly is worth a thousand words.  And for them, the most valuable picture has always been their annual Christmas card photo.  Since my grandfather passed 17 years ago, that picture has become increasingly precious with each year.

We six grandchildren have all gotten older, gone to school here and taken a job there, changed our hair color to that, etc…

Some families enclose with their card an annual letter updating their friends on all of their family’s news.  Every year when we visit my grandmother for Christmas, I flop on her couch with a cup of coffee and read the letters she has received.

But this is not something we ever did.  Instead, in my grandparents’ subtle genius, they let the picture do the talking; if we all went on a terrific family vacation, the picture would show all of us at that destination.  If one of us got married or had a baby, that new spouse and child would be in the picture as well.

You don’t make it into the picture until there has been an “I do.”

Although our family on that side is based in the Midwest, we are scattered across the country.  Back in the late 1990’s, the four of us grandchildren who were in college at the time were in four different states and three different time zones.

That meant we always had to either take the picture a full year in advance or hope we would all be together during the summer.   The years when this did not work, Big Nance was understandably very sad.

Until the day she first heard the word “Photoshop.”  A beam from heaven must have shown down on her, wherever she was at the time.

Big Nance promptly found a Photoshop ace she could trust and for most of the last several Christmases, one of more of us has been Photoshopped into the picture.

Whether or not we were there, if she did not think our outfit suited her plan for the picture, her ace would Photoshop our clothes to fit her color scheme.

"Paige, where did you find that lovely crimson dress in this year’s photo?”

"Oh…it’s actually silver and that was from last New Year’s in Los Angeles, but thank you.  It’s a great dress.”

True.

Over the years, as technology has gotten more advanced, this whole process has become easier.  One of our relatives will e-mail us the picture Big Nance wants to use and those of us could not make it will collaborate on who gets which empty space.

We then have a couple of days to recruit a friend to take a picture of us at just the correct angle, dressed in just right color scheme, so the Photoshop ace can insert us as planned.

Each picture may only tell a partial truth – we may not have actually been together at the time.  However we are a close family even when copied, cut and pasted together for more Christmas cards than not.