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Sun 10/21/2007
Luxuries
Topic: Making Changes
There are just so many choices for most of us who have time to even think about the richer things in life. It is by realizing this that we learn to shake up our own lives in creative ways in order to produce a controlled chaos that allows us to take risks, being unsure of the outcomes. And yet not needing the outcomes to go a certain way every time. In other words, not needing to be in control. Sounds like a paradox? It is. One of the secrets in finding balance in our lives has to do with finding ways not to be so needy. This doesn’t mean we deny our needs. We just shorten our list of real needs, deleting a lot of things that our limited circle of acquaintances, even though that includes most in our culture, consider as necessary. An example I gave a few days ago was the automatic washer. So much of our lives are devoted to building bigger houses or buying luxuries that we put on the “necessity” list. It’s fine to put some luxuries on that list, but not okay when we fail to realize that they are indeed luxuries. Children need to hear often that we consider many things in our lives to be luxuries. We need to hear ourselves say this, too. Sometimes right out loud.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Thu 10/18/2007 7:11 AM CDT
Fri 10/19/2007
Problem with Small Circles
Topic: Making Changes
One thing I’ve noticed about people who stay stuck or depressed: They tend to have small circles of acquaintances that are void of the rich strata of people who make up our world. Same goes for institutions. When a parent tells me “everybody I know is doing it this way” and it’s a way that is totally off-the-wall, sometimes even by today’s standards in mainstream, I figure this parent has a very limited strata of support. Same goes for how someone manages finances or a hundred other of life’s challenges. When a family or institution tries to make corruption within itself out to be normal, we know that they are living in a small “neighborhood,” even though they may be a huge mega-church or denomination.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Mon 10/15/2007 3:25 PM CDT
Thu 10/18/2007
Re-Writing
Topic: Making Changes
Bold action doesn’t happen suddenly. Even when it appears to be an impulsive act. Effective, bold action comes because the actor has found ways to re-write the scripts of life creatively, in ways that work for individual fulfillment, happiness, and often just plain fun. That re-writing hasn’t come without much internal work, however. Some of that work may be done with a therapist. Often much of it is. It may also come through being fortunate in finding other people who can infuse into our minds and hearts radical ideas that are born out of their own history of re-writing. What few outsiders know is that the hardest part of writing is the re-write work. Often I've done it over and over again. Not always for the same reasons. Editors may ask for a total re-write. One editor asked me to re-write a manuscript to say things I knew I couldn't say--blaming the victim statements, in fact. I refused. Therapists may ask clients to do the same thing, sometimes failing to respect the belief systems that are firmly planted, whether those are solidly grounded or not. Re-writes that require me to summarize complex ideas or put them simpler can be so gruelling. Yet I am much more ready to undertake them and to learn from that process. Most annoying are the re-writes I cause myself, the ones that happen because I still haven't always been careful to save my material as I go. It's such a sick feeling to find the mouse suddenly not working. It's an omen that I've learned to recognize before the sinking feeling that comes with the "fatal error" message that I've had on so many manuscripts over the years. Why is it that they seem to come just as I'm wrapping things up in the last paragraph! Ready to shift gears to something else in the structure of my life. Suddenly, it seems I have to start all over after I have a reasonable time for ranting and raving and "kicking" myself, swearing this will be the last time I ever forget, yet knowing it probably won't be. What I've really learned from those "fatal errors," though, is that they aren't really fatal. Not only do I survive them. My article is often twice as nice. It seems to flow better the second time--well, it may be the fifteenth time I've actually re-written parts of it! Plus, I am able to reconstruct it, in new form, much faster when I just stop, calm myself down, and realize that it's going to be okay. Oh, that I could learn that about many other things in my life!
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Mon 10/15/2007 3:42 PM CDT
Wed 10/17/2007
The Need for Predictability
Topic: Making Changes
Change happens, whether we plan for it or not. Try getting a rigid person (or institution) to make a change or try a new approach to a problem, and the first thing you’ll hear is: “Well, we can’t do that because we don’t know what is going to happen!” Like we MUST know in order to move?
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Tue 10/16/2007
Creative Chaos
Topic: Making Changes
So, I’m suggesting that we have the most fun and see the most productivity in our lives when we have a healthy dose of chaos, along with the structure. That healthy dose isn’t very much, though. This is where I believe so many activists divert from an effective course of action to bring about change. Chaos comes when we dare to take risks and ask others to do the same. It throws the status quo into unknown territory! My concern is that we often jump into creating chaos before we have, as individuals, a healthy personal structure. It never works. Teens do it all the time, often with disastrous results! When I ask our society or an institution or an individual to change very quickly, we forget that we ourselves have slowly evolved into the person that we are, especially if we have lived according to healthy principles, nurturing the structure and allowing for careful thought and planning in how we proceed to make change. We are deceived if we believe in the magic of quick change. We are frustrated with unrealistic expectations. We must stop thinking that the way out of the current mess we see is going to happen in an instant. Whether the change, or anticipated change, is in ourselves or others. True change starts with a change in the belief system. In all of us! That means we have to accept that old things we cling to really HAVE passed away. Without that, there is no hope. No place for the new.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Tue 10/16/2007 7:35 AM CDT
Mon 10/15/2007
Nurturing the Structure
Topic: Health Choices
The trick is to nurture the structure. Let it be your calming force. The vast majority of life, with healthy people, is devoted to establishing and maintaining structure. This means healthy habits. Things as basic as sleep, grooming, nutrition, exercise, and work. All of it laced with fun and happiness, whenever possible. Kids, of course, would like to have all of life being fun and irresponsibility. Forget the boring stuff! So parents have to find ways of coaxing their offspring into experiencing delight and intrinsic rewards in the tasks that are required for structure. Hopefully, as we mature, we learn to build fun into the habits of routine, wherever possible. Watch a healthy bunch of senior citizens with health challenges and disabilities. You'll find them doing just this. I noticed that even in Africa, where things seem to be extremely routine and basic needs hard to come by, people are amazingly good at this. Singing and dancing just permeate the culture, with such meaning! All without instruments, most of the time. In the Western world, especially in the United States, we seem to require gadgets to save us from the "drudgery" of the structure. I know: I had to wash for a few months with a ringer washer in Africa, before my automatic arrived. I thought it was just awful while any African would have considered that ringer a luxury! Most of them never saw a rubboard, like the one my grandmother used when I was very small, leaning over her bathtub to do the laundry--and, in case, you haven't seen one lately, you'll find one in most garden-variety museums (go ask if you don't get the picture immediately). The second trick to finding fulfillment in life, beyond basic health, is not so much searching for ways to save our atrophied muscles or brains from further development. It's in learning to sometimes create the chaos. No, I'm not contradicting myself. Think on these things.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 8:34 AM CDT
Sun 10/14/2007
Structure or Chaos
Topic: Health Choices
AS we examine our personal timelines, each of us will find times when we were healthier--physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and socially than at other times. Hopefully, we are healthier today than ever before in our lives. If so, chances are we've learned something about structure. "Old things are passed away. Behold all things are become new." Those words don't just apply to the once-and-for-all Christian conversion, taught by staunch evangelicals. They are applicable every time we have a transformation in our lives, a transformation that allows for a major spiritual revelation to enter the realm of old, rigid realities that we may have held onto for years. Many of you grew up, as I did, in a family that thrived on chaos. One thing I've noticed about such families (and other institutions) is that most seem to get more chaotic with each passing year. Eventually, those who have differentiation--you know, the ones that know how to be individuals who can stand on their own feet--are forced to pull away for self-preservation, moving into other circles, where there is a sense of peace. Ideally, many peole have their needs for connection met in churches, professional organizations, by neighbors or civil groups. The opposite of chaos is structure. Not necessarily rigidity, though many people confuse structure and rigidity. Structure, laced with flexibility, allows for growth and development. Structure allows us to have security and a degree of predictability so that real crises are more easily handled. Structure provides us with a sense of self. It gives direction, so that we do not have to stop and think about every move we make. Chaos seems to be preferred by many people. Since crises seem to be all that keeps them feeling alive! It also keeps participants from having to make vital decisions that will produce long-term results. After all, when you live in chronic crisis, there's no time to think beyond the next few hours. Maybe that's why people who live in chronic chaos consider everything to be a crisis. Yet the real crises are ignored or denied. They thrive on adrenaline, in a state of hypervigilance so that anything less is considered boring. If a healthy person walks into such a situation and begins voicing observations or solutions that would easily calm the system down, hold the most chaotic accountable, and force people to look at the truth, the messenger's speaking BECOMES the crisis, a crisis that suddenly is at a higher decibal than usual! In fact, that's exactly what happens in collusion. The nursing profession cannot function well without structure. Neither can you nor I, as individuals. Structure is efficient. Healthy, too. Even when it seems to be so ordinary.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Fri 10/12/2007
Habits
Topic: Health Choices
Learning to cope with new realities requires that we turn down the volume for some music in our heads, even as we increase volume on what we most want to hear. It also necessitates breaking old habits in how we think or spend time. It’s possible to fall into new sets of bad habits, as we attempt to cope with the trauma and stress of violence, abuse, and collusion, even as we are working to establish functional ones. In January’s Good Housekeeping, Dr. Phil said that we really don’t break old habits. We just replace them. When I was a kid, most New Year’s resolutions were centered on character issues. That was before the greatest mortal “sins” became boredom, and pain, and obesity--all to be avoided if we are to have this ideal world that we find so elusive. Amazing how priorities can change in one lifetime! Seems the greatest resolution most want to tackle in western cultures today is the hard work of getting the scale to move in a southerly direction. While most of the world’s population--the ones who can’t afford a computer or even the electricity to run it--are struggling to get enough to keep the scale from going that way! In our narcissism, we complain about our boring diets, never stopping to think that we might be able to change the world if we poured half as much creative energy into reflecting on ways to solve the economic inequities and social injustices that cause starvation. Instead our efforts go into “disciplining“ ourselves to put up with a calorie-restricted, boring diet along with finding motivation to leave behind the remote control and forwarded e-mails so we can get out and discover some magical ways to burn calories in our leisure time. Fun ways, of course! As you go about your routine this weekend, please take time to think about your own health priorities and the well-being of others not so fortunate. If being free from physical disease is the first thing that pops into your mind when you think of the word “health,” maybe you can explore ways to broaden the meaning and identify some healthy habits you’d like to establish, to replace some of the old ones that have you in a rut.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Thu 10/11/2007
Learning to Appreciate the Discords
Topic: music
Each of us IS a silent music-maker. The music is made in our hearts. We determine how we want to make the music sound, though. Notice, it’s not the events and people who have impacted our lives that decide. Oh, the music can have minor chords--that’s for sure! Most complicated music does. Minor chords may represent things we don't like in ourselves. Or things we don't like in the world. Either or both. Perhaps some of the things we think aren't acceptable in ourselves are things we need to learn to actually appreciate. Boundaries are often one of those things. The more we learn to set boundaries with people or institutions that have been viewed as having a major right to control our lives, the more we are likely to appreciate the minor chords. OR those that used to sound unpleasant. Some of the notes we hear will not sound just right for the circumstances we are experiencing. Nor for the beliefs that we have about life or various issues. They will clash with how we believe things “should” sound. In music, we call that a “purposeful discord.” Students of music actually have to let the ear mature to allow some discordant sounds to be incorporated into musical rightness. The music-maker chooses to include the unpleasant sound in the music so that people can hear it and notice how it stands out against the tones that are otherwise beautiful. Chooses to include it, rather than keep it out of the music. That sometimes freaks out some of my inexperienced students the first few times they encounter a purposeful discord. They are just sure that they've made a mistake. Or perhaps that the writer or publisher of the music did. Ironically, without noticing the discord, we aren’t able to even realize when we’ve found beautiful music. It’s the same in life. Sometimes by experiencing the most bizarre--though it would have been preferable not to have had that experience--we find that we are awakened and able to see things that we might never have noticed without that experience. What are the sounds or feelings you want to experience more? How is your life arranged when you feel or hear the more “beautiful chords?” What (notice, I didn’t say “who”) is keeping you from hearing the major chords in your life, the ones that resonate with a beauty that works for you?
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Wed 10/10/2007 8:26 AM CDT
Wed 10/10/2007
Inspiration from Spiritual Song
Topic: music
Some of you were robbed of the joy of many hymns you once treasured. These may not work for you anymore--either because of the triggers or because you no longer have a belief system that embraces the words of some hymns. It’s important to find new songs that inspire you. One such song, for me, is “The Summons” by John Bell. It has a soothing Scottish melody. Yet it’s the words, filled with tons of questions, that challenge me. Today I leave you with one of the questions. We’ll pick up on this question next time. Will you love the “you” you hide? That’s what it asks. This one question raises many other little questions. Sleep on it please.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Wed 10/10/2007 8:20 AM CDT
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