Martini Rescue Squad

"How Are You Showing Up in Your Life?"

This week's entry is a piece by Holly Sidell.  Holly is a writer, holistic healer, intenSati instructor and life-long friend.  I have mentioned her in this blog a number of times, either as Holly or under another fitting name when appropriate.  This is one of her insightful, compelling pieces.  Enjoy.

 

 How Are You Showing Up in Your Life?[1]  

 

"Whoa! You are perfectly capable of doing this on your own," my yoga teacher said in much surprise as she came to adjust my twisting triangle pose. In just one touch of her hand and my exhalation of breath, my ribcage and whole right side opened up effortlessly. I was sure it wouldn't. I was sure it couldn't. I just assumed. So my teacher assumed. And she and I were both surprised at just how capable I am to achieve the full pose on my own.

From that moment on in class, I was able to do full twists and poses that I have never done before in my 13 years of doing yoga because I thought I wasn't capable. I haven't been doing them not because of my body, but because of my mind! My body could do it, but I believed my mind that I couldn't, so my body listened. Ah, the power of the mind...! It was quite eye-opening, and made me think -- where else am I not even trying things because I assume I'm not capable?

I believe that the way we do anything is the way we do everything. So if I'm making assumptions about my lack of capability in my yoga class, where else am I making those assumptions? Where else am I short-changing myself? Probably everywhere else. I saw that I've done it in romantic situations... thinking I'm not capable of having everything that I want in a partner and a relationship, so I just settled for "good" because I didn't believe I was capable of "incredible." And I saw it with work.

I recently started a new writing job, which I am very excited about. Only, I feel like I'm in the waiting game with it. I've been waiting for instructions and guidance before I do anything. I want to do more, I just haven't because I've been waiting to be guided by others, and waiting to be instructed. In short, I haven't felt capable of just letting it rip on my own. I have been depending on others to "spot" me, just as I did with the yoga teacher. I haven't been trusting my own talent, my own gut, my instincts. I haven't felt capable. After the experience in my yoga class, that changed. I got right back to work and just wrote, without worrying about doing it wrong or waiting for anyone to direct me... because I'm perfectly capable!

Take a look for yourself, at your own life: how are you showing up? How do you show up when you're exercising, working, in relationships? Do you undervalue yourself, compete, doubt, self-sabotage, give up, push too hard? Are you showing up the same way everywhere in your life?

On another note, my yoga teacher assumed I wasn't capable because I assumed I wasn't capable. That's the vibe I put out. So she followed my lead. People in life treat us the way we teach them to treat us. When you are unhappy with the way someone is treating you, take some responsibility for it. How did you teach them to treat you like that? Look at your own actions and behaviors. They are just responding in kind.

 

---

[1] Sidell, Holly.  (2011).  “How Are You Showing Up in Your Life?”  Huffington Post.  Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/holly-sidell/how-are-you-showing-up-in_b_861419.html.

Who's Counting?

If 60 is the new 40 and 40 is the new 20, then 20 year-olds are newborns and teenagers are pre-zygotes.  If memory serves me from high school, that last one is quite true.

The point is, with all of this backdating, are we allowing ourselves to regress in the maturity we expect of ourselves at our age?  Or are we being progressive in not considering ourselves constrained by something so silly as our number of years on this planet?

And no matter which philosophy we claim, why would we want to deny the cool points we’ve earned for everything it has taken us to get ourselves to this point - right here?

Ah, high school.  Clinton was in, bathing was out – for some – and the whole country watched “Friends” and knew the theme song cold. 

                        So no one told you life was going to be this way.
                        Your job's a joke, you're broke, you're love life's DOA.
                        It's like you're always stuck in second gear,
                        Well, it hasn't been your day, your week, your month,
                        or even your year.

                        But, I'll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour.
                        I'll be there for you, like I've been there before.
                        I'll be there for you, cause you're there for me too.[1] 

 

Yeah, we could so get it.  Sort of.  And even if you did not watch the show, one in every five of my girlfriends attempted the Jennifer Anniston haircut at least once in the mid-to-late 1990’s.  One in every five who bathed, that is.

It is all so vivid in my mind, which is one of many reasons I halted – my breath, my motion, everything – upon reading this status update from my college friend, Mazi, “Last night I was watching Friends and realized that episode was almost 10 years old. As if that wasn't shocking enough, I then did the math and realized that Friends first aired 17 years ago this Fall... I just really don't have words... 17 years!?!?!?!?!?! That's a whole person who can drive plus a year!”

And more shocking yet is that we were “a whole person who can drive plus a year” old at that time, which means we are now two whole people who can drive plus two years old.

Oh - my - God.

Let’s keep going…

Mazi, our friend Patty and I met at summer pre-orientation at college in June 1995, which is, yes, a whole person who can drive plus two months ago.

Three years after that, i.e. 13 years ago, Clinton was out, Lenny Kravitz was back in and we were so close to graduating, we could taste it.  Or was that the chips and queso from SATCO, the off campus taco joint?  Hmm…not sure.

Moving on…

Fast forward six years after that, i.e. seven years ago, and it was the final season of Friends, the whole world was at war and, confoundingly, Britney released her 17^th pop single to go gold.

What?!

Whoosh ahead seven years from then and here we are in 2011.  And everything heretofore has made for a very full life thus far.  So many, many reasons to laugh, to mourn and to scratch our heads, e.g. why we ever thought the Jennifer Anniston haircut would work on us.

And there is so much still ahead, we so get it.  Sort of.

How old are you now?  How old do you feel?  Who’s counting?

 

---

[1] Crane, David et al.  (1995).  I’ll Be There for You [Recorded by The Rembrandts].  On LP [CD single].   New York: Atlantic, WEA.  (Recorded 1994).

 

 

Huge thanks to Bounceback.com for posting "16 Years Ago..."

http://www.bounceback.com/articles_details.php?id=4&article_id=629

And thank you for reading. Have a beautiful weekend!

Cheers,

Paige

Posted by Paige at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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16 years ago today...

Love and thanks to my family, friends, UCLA Department of Neurosurgery, B Company at LAFD Station #37 and many, many others. 

 

Reference: "15 Years Ago Today, I Should Have Died, Parts I and II":

• http://www.martinirescuesquad.com/my-blog/2010/09/15-years-ago-today-august-19-2010-part-i-of-ii.html
• http://www.martinirescuesquad.com/my-blog/2010/10/15-years-ago-today-august-19-2010-part-ii-of-ii-.html

Posted by Paige at 12:54 PM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: becker, bergsneider, coma, happy, hovda, independent, lafd, LAFD, martin, Martini, neurosurgery, single, tbi, ucla, UCLA, vespa

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Aug 15, 2011

"Oooh, Baby"

So much meaning is packed into the word “baby.” As women, we associate it with a few ideals – for me, if everyone in the world could be a baby or a puppy, I’d be happy.

And, of course, some day I’d love to give birth to a couple.  Babies, not puppies.  Although I’m prone to have a cow every now and then.  Different colloquialism for a different occasion.

The point is - and please think about this for a minute - what does that word mean to you?  “Baby.”

Do you think small, fleshy warm thing without much hair?  Do you think insipid pastel blocks and blankies?  Do you think of a status symbol – a symbol that you have “arrived” at adulthood?

Do you think of your pet or significant other?  Not that the two are the same.

As women, especially single women in the child-bearing years, I’m really not sure you could find a word that is more of a conversational land mine or sacred ground.  It can stoke in us both a longing, an “Ah yes…someday,” or a concern that we may never have the opportunity to cherish someone that completely – “Tick-tock, tick tock.”

In films where the sexy lead is a male or female, they sometimes address each other as “Baby,” although both characters are clearly adults.

In my mid-twenties, I dated a man who used to lovingly tease me about how I often said to him in funnier moments, “Oooh, Baby.”  He found this particularly amusing since I still had my Southern accent hangover from five years’ hard time in college in Middle Tennessee.

When our parents talk to us when we are really up or really down, they often start their treatise of parental wisdom with the word “Baby”; “Baby, we never thought he was the guy for you anyway,” or “Baby, sometimes life is tough/great like that.”

They mean it to reassure us.  To recognize, under all of our life experience and sophistication, they still see and love the simple, uncomplicated and innocent little person they brought into this world.

When I talk to my dogs, who are six-and-a-half and almost six years old, I call them “Baby Boy” and “Baby Girl,” although in dog years, they are older than I.

And sometimes, some bitter times, a particularly rude person will start his or her piece addressing us as “Baby” in an effort to pull rank or imply condescension.  Not so nice.

How can such a peculiar word that sounds as sweet as honey from a little girl’s mouth when talking about her younger sibling or her doll, that sounds so warm and accepting from parental figures, also signify something so unkind from a disgruntled individual?

"Baby” really is the funniest word.

Posted by Paige at 12:00 AM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tags: "Oooh, Baby", happy, independent women, martini rescue squad, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

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Aug 08, 2011

Slide Area, Part II of II

With our thoughts, through repetition, we carve topography into our minds – victorious peaks, cold, dark valleys, open fields and yes, precarious cliffs. These were not imposed on us, these ways of thinking. They are thought pathways we chose, aren’t they?

The resentment, mockery and criticism were not forced on us – they were our choices. And the resultant loneliness was not imposed on us either. It is the effect of isolating ourselves into that place where there is something wrong with everyone. Especially ourselves.

As single adults, occasionally it’s tempting to feel ourselves in competition for happiness with people who are in some way coupled or not single. The couple who has couples-only barbeques in their backyard all summer. The pair who has a perfect card for the holidays each year, featuring a picture of them taken at the base of the ski run in some coveted resort town. The gorgeous duo who you imagine taking off for romantic car trips to that B&B up the coast. The couple who has everything all figured out, or so they seem.

We know this is seeming is all in our heads, but it can be vivid, life-like entertainment.

On that, think of those people who you know live their whole life in their head, entangling themselves in one hypothetical situation after the other that has very little resemblance to reality.

These people are both the gossip columnist lauding their own audacious thoughts and the Statler and Waldorf Muppets, criticizing their performance from the theater balcony in their brain.

And what is our reaction to them almost every time we see them? Exactly. How lonely.

Making it habitual to sink into our own critical head for solace is mean, but also further isolates us from the reality where most of us try to live.

We know it’s hurtful – the intentional kind – to be critical of that awkward couple on TV, or of anyone, even if the subjects of our criticism will “never know.” Yet, we do it anyway.

We know it doesn’t make us feel any better about ourselves, or anything else for that matter – or change whatever obstacle that negativity is supposed to help relieve. Yet, we do it anyway.

We know makes us all the more vulnerable to all of those terrible feelings tumbling down on top of us until we are not only lonely, but feel trapped there. Yet we do it anyway.

What if we carve a different path in our minds? No matter how old, realistic or cynical we reward ourselves for being. What if we shake it all down and start over? Start looking at things without any preconceived, negative formula. Start letting go of a need to find something terribly wrong with one person or enviably right with another. Start by revving up our minds, then setting them to neutral to coast through wherever the day takes us.

I’ll bet you we start to enjoy that aesthetically goofy couple and their new Mediterranean cottage. We start to take compassion on that perpetually negative, lonely friend. We start carving new paths without resentment, mockery and criticism - paths without hypocrisy. Paths without slide areas.

Posted by Paige at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: happy, independent women, martini rescue squad, Paige Nesbitt, single women, Slide Area, thirties, twenties

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Aug 06, 2011

Bounceback posted on of my pieces...

Bounceback.com is an incredible site.  They posted one of my pieces you may recognize.  Please take a look:  http://www.bounceback.com/articles_details.php?id=4&article_id=611

Posted by Paige at 10:05 AM in advice, relationships, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: bounceback, happy, independent women, martini rescue squad, Paige Nesbitt, single women, thirties, twenties

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Aug 01, 2011

Slide Area, Part I of II

Have you ever come home from dinner with friends late at night, when you are not tired enough to go to sleep, but not energetic enough to do much else?

You found a great parking spot, not too close to your place and not too far to be convenient when you leave for work in the morning. Despite the summer daytime heat, it’s a bit chilly outside that night and your sweater or wrap isn’t cutting it – so you walk more briskly.

That and, however likely or unlikely, you feel more vulnerable to any miscreants who could be hanging around.

You get to your front door, unlock it with the keys and turn on the TV as you move about, getting ready for bed. Wouldn’t you know it, you left your TV set to that home improvement channel when you turned it off before leaving this morning, which is classic – when you turn the TV back on, the program on the station right now is all about finding the right house in the right price range for the oddly well-matched couple.

“Great,” you think.

These two – every two – people in the world who are featured on this show found just about the cutest home in the cutest village in the whole freaking Mediterranean.

“No problem – they’re such an unusual pair…so it’s a good thing they found each other,” you think.

Then you proceed watching in morbid curiosity – the only thing certain is you will find plenty about the couple to criticize in order to stay entertained as you put your things away and get into bed.

Freeze.

From here, anyone and everyone seem like fair game to criticize – but where does that leave us?  This is where we enter the Slide Area - the territory in our mind’s landscape where the highway runs right between the ocean on one side and the precarious cliffs on the other.

 If we let ourselves get too critical, we bury ourselves under tons of resentment rubble, sand-bagging ourselves into a logic/rhetorical corner where we have secretly debunked everyone around us and now we feel worse – for them, for us and for the poor realtor on the TV program who had to sell the cottage or duplex to THAT awkward couple.

Yup, it’s pretty lonely in this corner.  It can be beautiful there, but disaster can shake the whole thing and send it tumbling down on top of us.  And there is a very strong risk it will only become harder to eke out breath from that position. 

Or we can detour to firmer ground. Ooh…Deliverance.  The Duran Duran “Ordinary World” kind.

Well, maybe not that extreme, but still - where’d they come from, that safe place and its geologically risky alternative?

(To be continued next week…)

Posted by Paige at 12:05 AM in advice, relationships, Television | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: happy, independent women, martini rescue squad, Paige Nesbitt, single women, Slide Area. Duran Duran Ordinary World, thirties, twenties

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

Love and thanks to my family, friends, UCLA Department of Neurosurgery, B Company at LAFD Station #37 and many, many others. 

 

Reference: "15 Years Ago Today, I Should Have Died, Parts I and II":

• http://www.martinirescuesquad.com/my-blog/2010/09/15-years-ago-today-august-19-2010-part-i-of-ii.html
• http://www.martinirescuesquad.com/my-blog/2010/10/15-years-ago-today-august-19-2010-part-ii-of-ii-.html

So much meaning is packed into the word “baby.” As women, we associate it with a few ideals – for me, if everyone in the world could be a baby or a puppy, I’d be happy.

And, of course, some day I’d love to give birth to a couple.  Babies, not puppies.  Although I’m prone to have a cow every now and then.  Different colloquialism for a different occasion.

The point is - and please think about this for a minute - what does that word mean to you?  “Baby.”

Do you think small, fleshy warm thing without much hair?  Do you think insipid pastel blocks and blankies?  Do you think of a status symbol – a symbol that you have “arrived” at adulthood?

Do you think of your pet or significant other?  Not that the two are the same.

As women, especially single women in the child-bearing years, I’m really not sure you could find a word that is more of a conversational land mine or sacred ground.  It can stoke in us both a longing, an “Ah yes…someday,” or a concern that we may never have the opportunity to cherish someone that completely – “Tick-tock, tick tock.”

In films where the sexy lead is a male or female, they sometimes address each other as “Baby,” although both characters are clearly adults.

In my mid-twenties, I dated a man who used to lovingly tease me about how I often said to him in funnier moments, “Oooh, Baby.”  He found this particularly amusing since I still had my Southern accent hangover from five years’ hard time in college in Middle Tennessee.

When our parents talk to us when we are really up or really down, they often start their treatise of parental wisdom with the word “Baby”; “Baby, we never thought he was the guy for you anyway,” or “Baby, sometimes life is tough/great like that.”

They mean it to reassure us.  To recognize, under all of our life experience and sophistication, they still see and love the simple, uncomplicated and innocent little person they brought into this world.

When I talk to my dogs, who are six-and-a-half and almost six years old, I call them “Baby Boy” and “Baby Girl,” although in dog years, they are older than I.

And sometimes, some bitter times, a particularly rude person will start his or her piece addressing us as “Baby” in an effort to pull rank or imply condescension.  Not so nice.

How can such a peculiar word that sounds as sweet as honey from a little girl’s mouth when talking about her younger sibling or her doll, that sounds so warm and accepting from parental figures, also signify something so unkind from a disgruntled individual?

"Baby” really is the funniest word.

With our thoughts, through repetition, we carve topography into our minds – victorious peaks, cold, dark valleys, open fields and yes, precarious cliffs. These were not imposed on us, these ways of thinking. They are thought pathways we chose, aren’t they?

The resentment, mockery and criticism were not forced on us – they were our choices. And the resultant loneliness was not imposed on us either. It is the effect of isolating ourselves into that place where there is something wrong with everyone. Especially ourselves.

As single adults, occasionally it’s tempting to feel ourselves in competition for happiness with people who are in some way coupled or not single. The couple who has couples-only barbeques in their backyard all summer. The pair who has a perfect card for the holidays each year, featuring a picture of them taken at the base of the ski run in some coveted resort town. The gorgeous duo who you imagine taking off for romantic car trips to that B&B up the coast. The couple who has everything all figured out, or so they seem.

We know this is seeming is all in our heads, but it can be vivid, life-like entertainment.

On that, think of those people who you know live their whole life in their head, entangling themselves in one hypothetical situation after the other that has very little resemblance to reality.

These people are both the gossip columnist lauding their own audacious thoughts and the Statler and Waldorf Muppets, criticizing their performance from the theater balcony in their brain.

And what is our reaction to them almost every time we see them? Exactly. How lonely.

Making it habitual to sink into our own critical head for solace is mean, but also further isolates us from the reality where most of us try to live.

We know it’s hurtful – the intentional kind – to be critical of that awkward couple on TV, or of anyone, even if the subjects of our criticism will “never know.” Yet, we do it anyway.

We know it doesn’t make us feel any better about ourselves, or anything else for that matter – or change whatever obstacle that negativity is supposed to help relieve. Yet, we do it anyway.

We know makes us all the more vulnerable to all of those terrible feelings tumbling down on top of us until we are not only lonely, but feel trapped there. Yet we do it anyway.

What if we carve a different path in our minds? No matter how old, realistic or cynical we reward ourselves for being. What if we shake it all down and start over? Start looking at things without any preconceived, negative formula. Start letting go of a need to find something terribly wrong with one person or enviably right with another. Start by revving up our minds, then setting them to neutral to coast through wherever the day takes us.

I’ll bet you we start to enjoy that aesthetically goofy couple and their new Mediterranean cottage. We start to take compassion on that perpetually negative, lonely friend. We start carving new paths without resentment, mockery and criticism - paths without hypocrisy. Paths without slide areas.

Bounceback.com is an incredible site.  They posted one of my pieces you may recognize.  Please take a look:  http://www.bounceback.com/articles_details.php?id=4&article_id=611

Have you ever come home from dinner with friends late at night, when you are not tired enough to go to sleep, but not energetic enough to do much else?

You found a great parking spot, not too close to your place and not too far to be convenient when you leave for work in the morning. Despite the summer daytime heat, it’s a bit chilly outside that night and your sweater or wrap isn’t cutting it – so you walk more briskly.

That and, however likely or unlikely, you feel more vulnerable to any miscreants who could be hanging around.

You get to your front door, unlock it with the keys and turn on the TV as you move about, getting ready for bed. Wouldn’t you know it, you left your TV set to that home improvement channel when you turned it off before leaving this morning, which is classic – when you turn the TV back on, the program on the station right now is all about finding the right house in the right price range for the oddly well-matched couple.

“Great,” you think.

These two – every two – people in the world who are featured on this show found just about the cutest home in the cutest village in the whole freaking Mediterranean.

“No problem – they’re such an unusual pair…so it’s a good thing they found each other,” you think.

Then you proceed watching in morbid curiosity – the only thing certain is you will find plenty about the couple to criticize in order to stay entertained as you put your things away and get into bed.

Freeze.

From here, anyone and everyone seem like fair game to criticize – but where does that leave us?  This is where we enter the Slide Area - the territory in our mind’s landscape where the highway runs right between the ocean on one side and the precarious cliffs on the other.

 If we let ourselves get too critical, we bury ourselves under tons of resentment rubble, sand-bagging ourselves into a logic/rhetorical corner where we have secretly debunked everyone around us and now we feel worse – for them, for us and for the poor realtor on the TV program who had to sell the cottage or duplex to THAT awkward couple.

Yup, it’s pretty lonely in this corner.  It can be beautiful there, but disaster can shake the whole thing and send it tumbling down on top of us.  And there is a very strong risk it will only become harder to eke out breath from that position. 

Or we can detour to firmer ground. Ooh…Deliverance.  The Duran Duran “Ordinary World” kind.

Well, maybe not that extreme, but still - where’d they come from, that safe place and its geologically risky alternative?

(To be continued next week…)

16 years ago today...

Love and thanks to my family, friends, UCLA Department of Neurosurgery, B Company at LAFD Station #37 and many, many others. 

 

Reference: "15 Years Ago Today, I Should Have Died, Parts I and II":

• http://www.martinirescuesquad.com/my-blog/2010/09/15-years-ago-today-august-19-2010-part-i-of-ii.html
• http://www.martinirescuesquad.com/my-blog/2010/10/15-years-ago-today-august-19-2010-part-ii-of-ii-.html

"Oooh, Baby"

So much meaning is packed into the word “baby.” As women, we associate it with a few ideals – for me, if everyone in the world could be a baby or a puppy, I’d be happy.

And, of course, some day I’d love to give birth to a couple.  Babies, not puppies.  Although I’m prone to have a cow every now and then.  Different colloquialism for a different occasion.

The point is - and please think about this for a minute - what does that word mean to you?  “Baby.”

Do you think small, fleshy warm thing without much hair?  Do you think insipid pastel blocks and blankies?  Do you think of a status symbol – a symbol that you have “arrived” at adulthood?

Do you think of your pet or significant other?  Not that the two are the same.

As women, especially single women in the child-bearing years, I’m really not sure you could find a word that is more of a conversational land mine or sacred ground.  It can stoke in us both a longing, an “Ah yes…someday,” or a concern that we may never have the opportunity to cherish someone that completely – “Tick-tock, tick tock.”

In films where the sexy lead is a male or female, they sometimes address each other as “Baby,” although both characters are clearly adults.

In my mid-twenties, I dated a man who used to lovingly tease me about how I often said to him in funnier moments, “Oooh, Baby.”  He found this particularly amusing since I still had my Southern accent hangover from five years’ hard time in college in Middle Tennessee.

When our parents talk to us when we are really up or really down, they often start their treatise of parental wisdom with the word “Baby”; “Baby, we never thought he was the guy for you anyway,” or “Baby, sometimes life is tough/great like that.”

They mean it to reassure us.  To recognize, under all of our life experience and sophistication, they still see and love the simple, uncomplicated and innocent little person they brought into this world.

When I talk to my dogs, who are six-and-a-half and almost six years old, I call them “Baby Boy” and “Baby Girl,” although in dog years, they are older than I.

And sometimes, some bitter times, a particularly rude person will start his or her piece addressing us as “Baby” in an effort to pull rank or imply condescension.  Not so nice.

How can such a peculiar word that sounds as sweet as honey from a little girl’s mouth when talking about her younger sibling or her doll, that sounds so warm and accepting from parental figures, also signify something so unkind from a disgruntled individual?

"Baby” really is the funniest word.

Slide Area, Part II of II

With our thoughts, through repetition, we carve topography into our minds – victorious peaks, cold, dark valleys, open fields and yes, precarious cliffs. These were not imposed on us, these ways of thinking. They are thought pathways we chose, aren’t they?

The resentment, mockery and criticism were not forced on us – they were our choices. And the resultant loneliness was not imposed on us either. It is the effect of isolating ourselves into that place where there is something wrong with everyone. Especially ourselves.

As single adults, occasionally it’s tempting to feel ourselves in competition for happiness with people who are in some way coupled or not single. The couple who has couples-only barbeques in their backyard all summer. The pair who has a perfect card for the holidays each year, featuring a picture of them taken at the base of the ski run in some coveted resort town. The gorgeous duo who you imagine taking off for romantic car trips to that B&B up the coast. The couple who has everything all figured out, or so they seem.

We know this is seeming is all in our heads, but it can be vivid, life-like entertainment.

On that, think of those people who you know live their whole life in their head, entangling themselves in one hypothetical situation after the other that has very little resemblance to reality.

These people are both the gossip columnist lauding their own audacious thoughts and the Statler and Waldorf Muppets, criticizing their performance from the theater balcony in their brain.

And what is our reaction to them almost every time we see them? Exactly. How lonely.

Making it habitual to sink into our own critical head for solace is mean, but also further isolates us from the reality where most of us try to live.

We know it’s hurtful – the intentional kind – to be critical of that awkward couple on TV, or of anyone, even if the subjects of our criticism will “never know.” Yet, we do it anyway.

We know it doesn’t make us feel any better about ourselves, or anything else for that matter – or change whatever obstacle that negativity is supposed to help relieve. Yet, we do it anyway.

We know makes us all the more vulnerable to all of those terrible feelings tumbling down on top of us until we are not only lonely, but feel trapped there. Yet we do it anyway.

What if we carve a different path in our minds? No matter how old, realistic or cynical we reward ourselves for being. What if we shake it all down and start over? Start looking at things without any preconceived, negative formula. Start letting go of a need to find something terribly wrong with one person or enviably right with another. Start by revving up our minds, then setting them to neutral to coast through wherever the day takes us.

I’ll bet you we start to enjoy that aesthetically goofy couple and their new Mediterranean cottage. We start to take compassion on that perpetually negative, lonely friend. We start carving new paths without resentment, mockery and criticism - paths without hypocrisy. Paths without slide areas.

Bounceback posted on of my pieces...

Bounceback.com is an incredible site.  They posted one of my pieces you may recognize.  Please take a look:  http://www.bounceback.com/articles_details.php?id=4&article_id=611

Have you ever come home from dinner with friends late at night, when you are not tired enough to go to sleep, but not energetic enough to do much else?

You found a great parking spot, not too close to your place and not too far to be convenient when you leave for work in the morning. Despite the summer daytime heat, it’s a bit chilly outside that night and your sweater or wrap isn’t cutting it – so you walk more briskly.

That and, however likely or unlikely, you feel more vulnerable to any miscreants who could be hanging around.

You get to your front door, unlock it with the keys and turn on the TV as you move about, getting ready for bed. Wouldn’t you know it, you left your TV set to that home improvement channel when you turned it off before leaving this morning, which is classic – when you turn the TV back on, the program on the station right now is all about finding the right house in the right price range for the oddly well-matched couple.

“Great,” you think.

These two – every two – people in the world who are featured on this show found just about the cutest home in the cutest village in the whole freaking Mediterranean.

“No problem – they’re such an unusual pair…so it’s a good thing they found each other,” you think.

Then you proceed watching in morbid curiosity – the only thing certain is you will find plenty about the couple to criticize in order to stay entertained as you put your things away and get into bed.

Freeze.

From here, anyone and everyone seem like fair game to criticize – but where does that leave us?  This is where we enter the Slide Area - the territory in our mind’s landscape where the highway runs right between the ocean on one side and the precarious cliffs on the other.

 If we let ourselves get too critical, we bury ourselves under tons of resentment rubble, sand-bagging ourselves into a logic/rhetorical corner where we have secretly debunked everyone around us and now we feel worse – for them, for us and for the poor realtor on the TV program who had to sell the cottage or duplex to THAT awkward couple.

Yup, it’s pretty lonely in this corner.  It can be beautiful there, but disaster can shake the whole thing and send it tumbling down on top of us.  And there is a very strong risk it will only become harder to eke out breath from that position. 

Or we can detour to firmer ground. Ooh…Deliverance.  The Duran Duran “Ordinary World” kind.

Well, maybe not that extreme, but still - where’d they come from, that safe place and its geologically risky alternative?

(To be continued next week…)

Slide Area, Part I of II

Have you ever come home from dinner with friends late at night, when you are not tired enough to go to sleep, but not energetic enough to do much else?

You found a great parking spot, not too close to your place and not too far to be convenient when you leave for work in the morning. Despite the summer daytime heat, it’s a bit chilly outside that night and your sweater or wrap isn’t cutting it – so you walk more briskly.

That and, however likely or unlikely, you feel more vulnerable to any miscreants who could be hanging around.

You get to your front door, unlock it with the keys and turn on the TV as you move about, getting ready for bed. Wouldn’t you know it, you left your TV set to that home improvement channel when you turned it off before leaving this morning, which is classic – when you turn the TV back on, the program on the station right now is all about finding the right house in the right price range for the oddly well-matched couple.

“Great,” you think.

These two – every two – people in the world who are featured on this show found just about the cutest home in the cutest village in the whole freaking Mediterranean.

“No problem – they’re such an unusual pair…so it’s a good thing they found each other,” you think.

Then you proceed watching in morbid curiosity – the only thing certain is you will find plenty about the couple to criticize in order to stay entertained as you put your things away and get into bed.

Freeze.

From here, anyone and everyone seem like fair game to criticize – but where does that leave us?  This is where we enter the Slide Area - the territory in our mind’s landscape where the highway runs right between the ocean on one side and the precarious cliffs on the other.

 If we let ourselves get too critical, we bury ourselves under tons of resentment rubble, sand-bagging ourselves into a logic/rhetorical corner where we have secretly debunked everyone around us and now we feel worse – for them, for us and for the poor realtor on the TV program who had to sell the cottage or duplex to THAT awkward couple.

Yup, it’s pretty lonely in this corner.  It can be beautiful there, but disaster can shake the whole thing and send it tumbling down on top of us.  And there is a very strong risk it will only become harder to eke out breath from that position. 

Or we can detour to firmer ground. Ooh…Deliverance.  The Duran Duran “Ordinary World” kind.

Well, maybe not that extreme, but still - where’d they come from, that safe place and its geologically risky alternative?

(To be continued next week…)