One of my favourite quotes is by Theodore Roosevelt, and it goes like this:
"It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points
out how the strong man stumbled, or when the doer of deeds
could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who
is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and
sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes
short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms,
the great devotions and spends himself in a worth cause;
who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement;
and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring
greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold
and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
I'd found it again the other day on a scrap of paper, kept because I wanted to share it with someone who has been having a hard time with external critics. I've now realised exactly why I love it, and it's because it absolutely nails the challenge I've been having with myself. The challenge of how to deal with my inner critic, a nagging, judgmental succubus that's been with me for as long as I can remember. I visualise this creature as a kind of cross between a loquacious and particularly pernickety High Court judge and one of J K Rowling's Dementors from Harry Potter, dissecting every argument I put forward about how well I've done something, reducing my self-confidence to shreds, and simultaneously sucking the life out of me. A highly sophisticated adult bully. It doesn't create a pretty picture, does it.
As I said in a post a few days ago, I have absolutely no idea where this comes from. I have no recollection whatsoever of anyone ever putting any pressure on me, either as a child or as an adult, or criticising me for how I did my schoolwork or paid work. Perhaps - and this is the scary bit - that's the problem. Part of me thinks that there should be criticism there so I've invented my inner critic to play the role for me. And boy, has it succeeded. Three weeks ago today, I wasn't a pretty picture either.
I'm great at picking up when others are being unfairly criticised and judged, and am apt to fly in like some kind of avenging angel with a keyboard when I see it happening. I find an astonishing articulacy when I spot injustice. I'm often the only one in a group which is boiling up to witch-hunt level, defending the one who's being torn to shreds and truly not caring a jot what anyone else thinks of me.
And yet - and this only came to me in one of those lightbulb moments this morning - that is exactly what I've been allowing my inner critic to do to me. Unfair criticism, judgment based on past mistakes, exaggeration of any little flaw and an assumption that I must have done something wrong. And whilst I've been an avenging angel for others, I haven't done it for myself.
I've found an inner warrior woman who is out fighting other people's battles for them and I love her. I love her passion, her articulacy, her ability to spot bullshit and deconstruct it, her inner fire and resolve, her refusal to back down, her bravery under fire, her thick skin and her confidence. When she emerges, feel blessed if she's on your side and watch out if she's not. I think of her much like the goddess Pallas Athena, described on Wikipedia as "the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and
justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts,
crafts, and skill ... she is also the shrewd companion of heroes and the goddess of heroic endeavour". She sounds like my sort of goddess, to be honest. The sort pretty much everyone, including I'd imagine, the odd hero or two, would love on their side. I want her on mine.
Which brings me back neatly to the Roosevelt quote. It isn't the [inner] critic that matters, it's the one who strives valiantly and dares greatly and spends the self in a worthy cause. The people I fight for are worthy causes, and so am I. I won't stop stepping in when I spot injustice - it's in my nature - but I also need to harness
this wonderful energy to fight for myself.
And that fight starts - now - with the inner critic. He'd better watch out.
Friday 29 March 2013
Tuesday 26 March 2013
Of Bags and Baggage
Someone said the magic word "baggage" in a reply to my last post. Bless you for that.
I'm a baggage queen. Ask the family friend who greeted me and enough luggage for 3 indecisive adults at her door in Sydney, Australia after I'd travelled to her from England via Los Angeles, San Francisco, Auckland and the local Sydney suburban railway system. She couldn't believe what I had with me. I couldn't quite believe what I had with me, either. Nor could anyone on the train with me out of Sydney. I'd packed too much to start with and with my propensity to collect, not to shed, I'd acquired the odd bag or two and bottle of wine whilst I meandered up the Napa Valley before crossing the Pacific. By the time I left Sydney and flew back home to England via LA, I'd acquired even more, including 3 further bottles of wine which, I can tell you, weigh a lot. I could have had a case shipped but no, I had to carry them. And they weren't even for me.
My weight? Well. That's a sore point. All I'll say there is that I'm a magnified version of my former self. When I want to comfort myself, I eat. Lots of excess baggage there, ripe for shedding.
House clutter? Everywhere. I'm not one of these hoarders that feature on early evening TV who have to climb into their house over piles of yellowing newspaper, but I'm not great at parting with things I don't need/which don't work/which don't serve me any more. Even stuff I've decided to throw out or give away can spend a few days or even weeks in the hall - it becomes a kind of transit lounge - before it actually makes it out of the door. When I moved from my previous flat - a gorgeous, sprawling high-ceilinged top floor place in an old converted Victorian school, I got rid of monumental amounts of clutter. Or so I thought. I had to do exactly the same again when I got to the new place because I couldn't see my spare room for boxes. Paintings that looked amazing there and dwarfed my new place stayed in a cupboard for 18 months before I got around to selling them.
There's a pattern here, folks. No wonder I get backache.
How do the pros do it? They work at it, is how. I was listening a few days ago to a professional rugby referee talking about how he uses a sports psychologist to help him shed "baggage" from matches when, for whatever reason, things didn't go the way he'd intended and when he's been the target of public and press criticism. It's something, he says, "that you have to keep working at". I bet. He's in one of toughest sports roles there is. In that job, you're nobody's friend. Criticism - justified or not - is pretty much part of the deal. By working to let go of each week's baggage, by taking the good learning and ditching the rest, he does his best to ensure that he goes on to the next match with a fresh perspective and able to focus completely on what's in front of him, in the here and now.
What a deliciously simple concept. Take what you've learned, ditch what you don't need, move on and start afresh. Why on earth have I never thought of doing that?
Simple - because I've never acknowledged a recurring pattern which can only come of lugging an ever-heavier sack of rocks everywhere I pitch up. Instead of shedding as I go, I add to it because somewhere, deep in that dark spidery psyche of mine, there's a bit of me that says it's a good and admirable thing to do to be seen to carry ever-heavier loads. People will respect you more, or so I've come to think. Quite where that idea comes from - which past life it's crawled out of - I've no idea. But the time has come to say goodbye to it. Mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually, it's dragging me down. It's heavy, man.
However supported you are in learning a new role in life, if you bring old baggage to it, you're not approaching it with a clean fresh perspective. You're walking in with your brain and your heart tired and wired and heavy and clouded by doubts, already convinced, even if you don't acknowledge it consciously, that whatever tripped you up or pulled you over last time will do the same again, And you've guessed it, it does. It doesn't only apply to jobs, either. One lousy relationship can leave you falling into the same old, same old pattern.
So from now on, my aim is to practice travelling light. To keep what I need, and let go of what no longer serves me. I'm under no illusion that it's going to be easy. It's not, it's something you have to keep working at, as the pros will tell you.
If they can do it, so can I.
I'm a baggage queen. Ask the family friend who greeted me and enough luggage for 3 indecisive adults at her door in Sydney, Australia after I'd travelled to her from England via Los Angeles, San Francisco, Auckland and the local Sydney suburban railway system. She couldn't believe what I had with me. I couldn't quite believe what I had with me, either. Nor could anyone on the train with me out of Sydney. I'd packed too much to start with and with my propensity to collect, not to shed, I'd acquired the odd bag or two and bottle of wine whilst I meandered up the Napa Valley before crossing the Pacific. By the time I left Sydney and flew back home to England via LA, I'd acquired even more, including 3 further bottles of wine which, I can tell you, weigh a lot. I could have had a case shipped but no, I had to carry them. And they weren't even for me.
My weight? Well. That's a sore point. All I'll say there is that I'm a magnified version of my former self. When I want to comfort myself, I eat. Lots of excess baggage there, ripe for shedding.
House clutter? Everywhere. I'm not one of these hoarders that feature on early evening TV who have to climb into their house over piles of yellowing newspaper, but I'm not great at parting with things I don't need/which don't work/which don't serve me any more. Even stuff I've decided to throw out or give away can spend a few days or even weeks in the hall - it becomes a kind of transit lounge - before it actually makes it out of the door. When I moved from my previous flat - a gorgeous, sprawling high-ceilinged top floor place in an old converted Victorian school, I got rid of monumental amounts of clutter. Or so I thought. I had to do exactly the same again when I got to the new place because I couldn't see my spare room for boxes. Paintings that looked amazing there and dwarfed my new place stayed in a cupboard for 18 months before I got around to selling them.
There's a pattern here, folks. No wonder I get backache.
How do the pros do it? They work at it, is how. I was listening a few days ago to a professional rugby referee talking about how he uses a sports psychologist to help him shed "baggage" from matches when, for whatever reason, things didn't go the way he'd intended and when he's been the target of public and press criticism. It's something, he says, "that you have to keep working at". I bet. He's in one of toughest sports roles there is. In that job, you're nobody's friend. Criticism - justified or not - is pretty much part of the deal. By working to let go of each week's baggage, by taking the good learning and ditching the rest, he does his best to ensure that he goes on to the next match with a fresh perspective and able to focus completely on what's in front of him, in the here and now.
What a deliciously simple concept. Take what you've learned, ditch what you don't need, move on and start afresh. Why on earth have I never thought of doing that?
Simple - because I've never acknowledged a recurring pattern which can only come of lugging an ever-heavier sack of rocks everywhere I pitch up. Instead of shedding as I go, I add to it because somewhere, deep in that dark spidery psyche of mine, there's a bit of me that says it's a good and admirable thing to do to be seen to carry ever-heavier loads. People will respect you more, or so I've come to think. Quite where that idea comes from - which past life it's crawled out of - I've no idea. But the time has come to say goodbye to it. Mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually, it's dragging me down. It's heavy, man.
However supported you are in learning a new role in life, if you bring old baggage to it, you're not approaching it with a clean fresh perspective. You're walking in with your brain and your heart tired and wired and heavy and clouded by doubts, already convinced, even if you don't acknowledge it consciously, that whatever tripped you up or pulled you over last time will do the same again, And you've guessed it, it does. It doesn't only apply to jobs, either. One lousy relationship can leave you falling into the same old, same old pattern.
So from now on, my aim is to practice travelling light. To keep what I need, and let go of what no longer serves me. I'm under no illusion that it's going to be easy. It's not, it's something you have to keep working at, as the pros will tell you.
If they can do it, so can I.
Out of the Shadows
So wow - this is me back to blogging, then. What's brought this on?
The urgent, fiery need to create something out of what turned out to be quite a traumatic experience. I usually find - after I've gone through some pretty tough crap - that what I needed to do was create something out of it, rather than try to squash it and push it down and bury it. An eminent astrologer, Liz Greene, memorably said that whenever you bury something (she was talking about planetary energies) it ain't going to be very pretty when you finally dig it up, or it burrows its way out. Which it will, if you don't get your shovel out first.
So what was it? A job - which I won't talk about in detail - which I started off loving and which, after several weeks of pretty intense learning, I found was overwhelming me. I did the only thing I could do, and stopped. I lived with some dark shadows for several days, down in the dark spidery corners of my psyche. I wasn't alone - I found kind souls. I found them close by. And gradually, with space, I found peace. And it's amazing, isn't it, what peace and space and kind souls do for you. They made me realise how little peace or space or kindness I've been giving to myself. Past tense - I'm remedying that now.
That sort of realisation puts you in a bind, I can tell you. Why the hell not? Why be kind to animals and other people (including those who make you want to tear your hair out in handfuls) and not to the self? Is it something about me that doesn't, somehow, deserve that? Because if not, why not? I don't like the answer to that one but I'm sure as hell asking myself the question. And what on earth use am I to anyone else shrivelled up and sobbing? None whatsoever, except if you want to scare those who love you. And I've no wish to do that.
After a period of two weeks, I thought I was ready to return to my job, only to hear that because of funding cuts, it no longer existed. I was out, and it was totally out of my control. I was caught up in a myriad of conflicting feelings - gratitude both for the opportunity and for the money, fear (that old devil) and panic - how am I going to pay the rent now? I went through a dozen changes of heart and mind about whether I was disappointed or relieved. Both, neither, one, then the other, then both again.
Something, through all this thinking (and boy, sometimes, do I overthink) was nagging me. This much emotional investment in anything that you do to pay the rent really isn't sustainable or healthy. I should be surfing the stars, taking myself lightly, marvelling at the beauty of the universe and working out what is my part in the great scheme of things. Instead of which I'd managed (and not for the first time - to my shame, the third time) to get myself sucked into a greedy, grasping black hole which would carry on taking every ounce of my energy if I allowed it to. How many more times?
Well - no more times. That's when the reality hit. This kind of thing is Not For Me Any Longer. No Can Do if I want to stay emotionally, physically, mentally and crucially, spiritually healthy. Which I DO and that realisation is stronger than any need for control, any desire to prostrate myself on the blessed altar of hard work just so that I'll be thought of as a better person. The wise ones - and there are plenty of them about, too - just think "why?".
I'm told I'm wise. I may be around others, I haven't been over this. I'm wising up, fast.
I did a little meditation this afternoon and saw myself, as if from outside, struggling. I instantly visualised wrapping that tearful me in loving arms, as I would wrap any suffering soul, and saying to her "you don't have to carry this. It doesn't have to be like this. Walk away and let go".
Let go, and create. Which is what has led to this blog, the first for months. I've edited it a bit, but not a lot. This is writing in the raw - writing for creation's sake, writing for healing's sake, writing for the sake of loving myself.
The urgent, fiery need to create something out of what turned out to be quite a traumatic experience. I usually find - after I've gone through some pretty tough crap - that what I needed to do was create something out of it, rather than try to squash it and push it down and bury it. An eminent astrologer, Liz Greene, memorably said that whenever you bury something (she was talking about planetary energies) it ain't going to be very pretty when you finally dig it up, or it burrows its way out. Which it will, if you don't get your shovel out first.
So what was it? A job - which I won't talk about in detail - which I started off loving and which, after several weeks of pretty intense learning, I found was overwhelming me. I did the only thing I could do, and stopped. I lived with some dark shadows for several days, down in the dark spidery corners of my psyche. I wasn't alone - I found kind souls. I found them close by. And gradually, with space, I found peace. And it's amazing, isn't it, what peace and space and kind souls do for you. They made me realise how little peace or space or kindness I've been giving to myself. Past tense - I'm remedying that now.
That sort of realisation puts you in a bind, I can tell you. Why the hell not? Why be kind to animals and other people (including those who make you want to tear your hair out in handfuls) and not to the self? Is it something about me that doesn't, somehow, deserve that? Because if not, why not? I don't like the answer to that one but I'm sure as hell asking myself the question. And what on earth use am I to anyone else shrivelled up and sobbing? None whatsoever, except if you want to scare those who love you. And I've no wish to do that.
After a period of two weeks, I thought I was ready to return to my job, only to hear that because of funding cuts, it no longer existed. I was out, and it was totally out of my control. I was caught up in a myriad of conflicting feelings - gratitude both for the opportunity and for the money, fear (that old devil) and panic - how am I going to pay the rent now? I went through a dozen changes of heart and mind about whether I was disappointed or relieved. Both, neither, one, then the other, then both again.
Something, through all this thinking (and boy, sometimes, do I overthink) was nagging me. This much emotional investment in anything that you do to pay the rent really isn't sustainable or healthy. I should be surfing the stars, taking myself lightly, marvelling at the beauty of the universe and working out what is my part in the great scheme of things. Instead of which I'd managed (and not for the first time - to my shame, the third time) to get myself sucked into a greedy, grasping black hole which would carry on taking every ounce of my energy if I allowed it to. How many more times?
Well - no more times. That's when the reality hit. This kind of thing is Not For Me Any Longer. No Can Do if I want to stay emotionally, physically, mentally and crucially, spiritually healthy. Which I DO and that realisation is stronger than any need for control, any desire to prostrate myself on the blessed altar of hard work just so that I'll be thought of as a better person. The wise ones - and there are plenty of them about, too - just think "why?".
I'm told I'm wise. I may be around others, I haven't been over this. I'm wising up, fast.
I did a little meditation this afternoon and saw myself, as if from outside, struggling. I instantly visualised wrapping that tearful me in loving arms, as I would wrap any suffering soul, and saying to her "you don't have to carry this. It doesn't have to be like this. Walk away and let go".
Let go, and create. Which is what has led to this blog, the first for months. I've edited it a bit, but not a lot. This is writing in the raw - writing for creation's sake, writing for healing's sake, writing for the sake of loving myself.
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