I was thinking, Okay, okay, BP is going to clean this up. Obama will take care of this. Okay, we’ll be okay. They’ll get out the Dawn dish soap and clean the birds.

And then I heard that this sort of thing happens in the Niger Delta every year.  EVERY YEAR! And then, I heard that while we spill about 100 million gallons a year,  we use 2.73 billion A DAY.

We’re screwing this planet and we’re not even kissing it. 

How do I fix that?

I’m just floored by how small and inconsequential I feel as a person, because usually I feel powerful and courageous.

This is the part of my blog post where I whip out the Camel of Sad or the Treefrog of Loneliness or something, right? (Okay, there is something about the Treefrog of Loneliness that’s really working for me)

Not Today

Today, I want to tell you about how I’m using intuition to soothe my furrowed brow. Intuition is best for the contemplation of the hard. Intuition, the internal search and recognition of answers, is most useful when the questions are most difficult.

This morning, after an early call, I went back to bed. I laid in my bed as my sweetheart, two dogs and a cat slept softly around me.

I closed my eyes, and I asked Why?
And in front of me, I saw God on a patchwork ocean. Waves of water rolled behind him. He was in a wooden boat.
God: This happened here so you could see. This is a chance to change things.
Me: Why are you on the ocean?
God: I am always on the ocean.
Me:I’m staying in bed today. I’m avoiding everyone.
God: Okay. You do that.
Me: God, if you want me to be an optimist, you need a different method.
God: I made you optimistic, it’s your nature. Cut the crap.

That’s Intuition?

At it’s most distilled point, intuition is simply closing your eyes, taking a breath and asking a question and getting an answer. That’s it.If you do it enough, if you practice a little daily, answers come.

You don’t have to talk to God. You can talk to anyone.

With intuition, you will still have pain. You will still have hopelessness. But you will have a doorway to understanding and clarity. And a Moose to hold it for you.

What say you? How are you handling the sad?

I feel like I’m writing things like “Transplant your own liver in 5 easy steps!”

But, there’s so much to say.  And I want to get it out and then talk about it.

Thank you for reading this, and talking with me about it, and finding value sometimes, and tolerating my words when the value is hard to see (or maybe not there at all. or only slightly formed, embryonic, looking like head goo).

Gah! Emotions

One of my friends, Juanita, commented that she often will feel an emotion and say “Why am I feeling that? That’s stupid!”.

Why do we do this?

When are our feelings ever stupid?

I would venture that our feelings are never stupid.

Misplaced, misdirected, untimely, annoying, frustrating, distracting?

Yes.  They can be all of those things.

But also-

Signposts.  Direction.  Alarm Bells.  Nuances.  A pinch.

Don’t Be a Prisoner

For the first 32 years of my life, I was a prisoner of my emotions.  When I felt bad, I felt bad.  When I felt bitchy, I was a bitch! Oh the Drama!

It didn’t occur to me that I could do something about this.

My emotions were an ever-changing river and me and all my loved ones were stuck on the raft.

Then one day, my therapist, a really smart guy named Jim Thrower suggested that I ask a few questions whenever a difficult emotion came up.

They were:

1. Am I hungry?

2. Do I need some sleep?

3. Do I need to exercise?

4. Do I need to go to the bathroom?

5.  If the answers so far are “NO”, then ask  why am I feeling this? What is this emotion trying to tell me? What should I do about it?

Looking at this list, it seems so obvious.

Mistaking our physical needs for emotions

How out of touch does somebody have to be to mistake hunger for anger?

And yet, there’d be times when I’d be ready to blow my top and realize that it was 6 pm and all I’d had to eat that day was a snickers bar.

So, first comment I’d like to make is that if you don’t do this… If you don’t take time to nurture, then you really gotta do that.

Put reminders in your calendar to eat, to go to the gym.  Try going to bed for 3 nights in a row before 10 pm.

Overwhelming, out-of-nowhere emotions can be dietary.

Feed me a piece of cheesecake, wait 12 hours, and then see what happens.  Dairy and sugar turn me into a bitter, evil person.

Now- onto the emotions part.

The Emotions Part

Let’s say that you do that. You’re good at asking the questions, and eating, sleeping, exercising and keeping yourself regular.

And here comes a difficult emotion.

Let’s get out some baskets.  Do you need a basket? You’ll need three of them.

Here’s one:

Our baskets, for this experience, are virtual.

But, if you really like this basket, and want to buy it, you can click on the picture and buy it, and support women artisans in Rwanda.

Your Three Baskets

Okay. You’ve got your three baskets-

You are going to label these baskets this way:

1. Not my emotion

2. I need to resolve this

4. This is just part of where I am now

Not My Emotion

The not my emotion basket is a really good one.  It is especially good when we work or live around people who are going through a hard time.  The cranky co-worker, the moody teenager.

If somebody harumphs through your space and a few minutes later you are upset, it could be that you just have their residual energy stuck on you.

Literally.

Our emotions stick to what’s around us.

Our anger can really stink up a joint.

So, ask the question, ‘Is this MY emotion?”  and if you feel a “No,”  float back to you, then relax and let it go. It’s not yours to feel.

Some people need more help than just identifying.

If the energy is really stuck on you and it isn’t yours-

1.  Take a bath with a 1/2 cup of kosher or sea salt and some cut up limes.

2. Feel where you feel the emotion in your body, and then pretend that the emotion is a dust bunny or cotton candy. Draw the emotion out with your fingers and then flick it at the ground.

3.  Command the emotion to leave you.  Say, “Feelings I’m feeling that are not mine, go in the ground where you’ll be fine.”  Imagine the emotion jumping off you and running down into the ground.

For The Other Baskets

Okay, so the emotion is really yours.

Take a moment to feel the emotion in its entirety.

Don’t hold back from it.

This takes courage.

You have to feel it. Feel your emotion’s very nature, because the clues are in the details like a good oyster.

(If you live outside the Northern Pacific Rim, you may have never had a really really good oyster. I feel your pain. Just go with me here, take my word for it.  )

When you eat a good oyster,  you will find that there are many flavors inherent in said oyster.  It can taste: lemony, briney, winey, like the sea.  It can have a hint of mushroom or berry or sand.

A feeling can be that way too.  You can feel frustration tinged with ironic humor.  You can feel sadness tinted with appreciation.  It’s rare to feel one thing, completely.

Feel it. Feel it. Feel it.

Once you feel it, it may blow away like a little bit of ash.

Or, it may still linger long enough for you to describe it.

Taste that emotion and then describe it (out loud, to a friend, in your head, whatever). You can talk about the quality of the pain, the strength of the confusion, the intensity of the emotion, the memories it brings up.

Then, it is time to decide if you need to do something with the emotion. Is this emotion a call to action or part of the process?

Ask yourself that very question. Do I need to do something?

It’s your life. You will probably know.

If you don’t know, that’s okay.  It’ll come around again if you need it to (I hope you don’t hear ominous music as I say this).

I Need to Resolve This

When your emotion appears, and you realize that you need to resolve the issue behind the emotion, it can feel like you’ve come upon a full mousetrap.  Gross. Get it out now.

I think it can be useful to think this through.  To not go spinning into the first answer that presents itself.

Because logic with emotion gets a little wonky.

It comes up with answers like this:

My wife and I aren’t getting along right now, so we’re going to have a baby.

This semester really sucked. I am not cut out for this school thing.

I am going to do this super-amazing thing that I never cared about until right now.

Yeah.  See, after we feel the emotion, there can be a void before the answer.

I fill this void with movies. Sometimes with yoga. Sometimes noodles.

So wait, and then when you feel a little more clear, plan, think through, take small steps.  Leave that junk on the road behind you.

This is Just Part of Where I Am Now

Sad days happen.  Hard days happen. Not every emotion is a clarion call. Some of them just happen because life is difficult. An emotion can be a step that honors your journey.  It can be a place that says I am here now. This is part of the progression.

Tell me: Did this help?

What questions come to mind?

Today, we’re talking about handling our feelings without hurting others.

I hesitate to write about my children, because I want their words to be their own.

And yet, I think I can pinpoint the moment I stopped falling apart in front of  my children.

When I was 23 and my son was not-quite-3.  I found myself failing all of my courses at college.

I found that my little fledging restaurant had gone under (when a co-owner absconded with our wee, but sustainable profits).

I found that my short marriage was over.

I had saved up my tears for months, whispering the mantra of  It will get better. It will get better.

I remember sitting on the floor of our living room and wondering about all of the tiny decisions that had placed me here, with no money, and now, no husband.

I started to cry.  I started to cry a lot.  My not-quite-3-year-old noticed me. His eyes were concerned and full of love. He walked over and put his arms around me.

It’s okay, mama, He said.

I looked at my fuzzy duck.  He had no idea.  He had no way of knowing how bad things were. He only knew that he could comfort me.  I saw in his eyes a sense of fear and responsibility that no toddler should have to handle.

It took me back to a time, as a child, where I was in the same situation with my mother.

This is a very common problem in the domestic sphere of life.  We fall apart in front of our children. Children should never feel responsible for the emotions of their parents.

I scraped it together,  waited until he took his nap, and then I cried.  And I picked myself up and did what I needed to do to make our lives work.

This is what happens when you are really emotional in front of your children.

***

This is an obvious example.  Everybody knows that it’s not good to sob uncontrollably in front of your 3-year-old.

What about spouses?

What about older children?

What about colleagues at work?

It’s a fallacy to think that we are all going to be shiny, happy people all of the time.

I want to be authentic, but authentic me is not always pretty or funny or kind.  Sometimes authentic me is snarly.

Do I have a right to be snarly around others?

What about sad?

Is it good for us to experience the extent of each other’s suffering?

When does my suffering become your burden?

Here are my thoughts- and I’m looking forward to hearing yours-

A good tantrum is like a decadent dessert

It’s all right to have it once or twice a year, but if you are partaking weekly or even daily, your anger is taking its toll.

You are responsible for your feelings

They are yours.

Perhaps somebody was a jerk and contributed to them, but they are yours now.

This is (like everything else) a mixed bag.  You get to feel your feelings.  You get to learn from them. They are mostly useful to you.  You get to decide what you do about them when you are done.

This also means that you can’t say, You made me feel this way.  Because that’s not a true or helpful statement.

You can say, I feel bad because  I asked you if these pants made my butt look fat and you said, ‘it’s not the pants.”

See the difference there? What you feel is what you feel when you feel it.  It is yours.

Don’t Mistake a Feeling Threshold for someone caring or not caring about you

What is a feeling threshold?

It’s the extent that someone can observe someone else’s feelings without feeling the need to react and/or run away.

High Threshold:   People can cry in front of me.  People can lose their little minds in many different ways, and I can take it without taking on their pain.

Low Threshold: I know a car dealer who knocks a few thousand dollars off the price of a car if a woman cries in front of him.  His feeling threshold is pretty low.

A person’s feeling threshold has little to do with how much they care about you.

We are given a physical barometer to react to anyone that is expressing their pain.  It resonates with us.  Just because there is resonance doesn’t mean that people care.  Just because people don’t react doesn’t mean that they don’t care.

Sometimes we are so caught up in our own drama that we confuse the two.

A friend told me this story.

She was upset at her husband.  He had missed an important event where she was to give a speech.

Later, at home,  she told him how upset she was.

When she burst into tears, he left the room.

She yelled, You don’t care! You don’t care!

and he said, I’m getting you a kleenex.

The only way to know if someone cares about you is how they react in the longer run.  You have to have a few arguments, discussions, tear-filled moments before you can integrate the threshold with their feelings.

Understanding the threshold is key

My sweetheart totally gets it when I say, I really need things to be like this. or Could we work on this?

He needs a quiet calm voice.  He is like a deer in the woods.  I need to approach him quietly and peacefully.

When I do that,  our relationship works.

This man does not respond to hysteria.  Or shouting.  Or swearing.  Or vegetables being chopped ferociously.

His feeling threshold is very sensitive.  He can’t respond if he is feeling over-run by my emotions.

Think about the people in your life.  Does  your emotional style fit theirs?

Sometimes people need commentary and/or direction

If my kids come home and I am chopping a potato in a particularly aggressive way, I might say, I’m a little mad right now. It’s not your fault.  I just need you to get your homework done and to keep your music down.

The it’s not your fault is key when working with children.  Because kids believe that they are responsible for everything.

It’s also good to put a time on it.  I expect to feel better by suppertime.

Sweethearts need commentary and direction too.

I am really pissed off about this situation that has nothing to do with you and I don’t require your advice at this time.

or

When I am able to have a civil conversation about the state of our finances, I’ll let you know. I don’t want to scream at you for bringing home a jet-ski when we live in the desert.

Also at work:

I’m frustrated with how that meeting went. I don’t think the client understands that we can’t bend the space/time continuum. I appreciated your comment about realistic expectations.  Perhaps later when I’ve calmed down, we can talk about next steps.

See that? You identified the feeling.  You placed it in context to space and time and then you put forward what you wanted to do next.

This is the beauty of your feelings being YOUR FEELINGS.  You get to decide how and with whom you want to experience them.

When you give someone the right to experience your feelings, you can honor them and not burden them.

For example, I was recently helping out a friend who was very upset. She is going through a hard time.  I just listened.  She told me a story of remarkable sadness and beauty.  It helped me understand her better, to see the place she came from.

Then she said, Thank you for listening.  I didn’t need anything but for someone to listen to me and tell me that I wasn’t crazy for feeling bad about something from long ago.

I said, You’re welcome.

Notice she didn’t ask me to fix anything in her life.

Never give the responsibility of your feelings over to somebody else.

I always feel honored to talk with someone who is processing an emotion. This is tangibly different than someone who is dumping their emotions on me.  It feels different.

I know a person who dumps on me every single time I see her.  Her life is so awful.  Her life is SO AWFUL! She puts it on others in the whiniest, most annoying way possible.  This is irritating because I cannot fix her life. I cannot resolve the issues that she is having because I am not her.

Tomorrow- How can my emotions be helpful to my process of living and not just things that make me feel bad?

Wow! Did you read all this?  If you got to here, could you leave me a comment? It’ll be like your flag on top of a summit.

Tell me: What are your feelings about feelings?

Was part 2 hard for you?

Impossible?

For many, it is.

Sit still and feel something?  Sigh.

And he never did guess, in her cast iron dress, she was burning beyond recognition.

- Shawn Colvin

Do you feel so angry inside, and yet you want others to believe that certainly, life is swell, and you are okay and not one of those crazy hysterical types? Do you feel a smouldering rage?  Do you feel misunderstood?

I’m talking to you with the perfect house, the clean kids, the sweet husband.  And also you, who are not hiding your feelings so well.

Safely Handling the Uglies

Are you burning on the inside, beyond recognition?

Would you like to defuse the bomb ticking inside you?

How do we do that?

When we ask the question, How do I safely handle my emotions?

perhaps we are asking,

How do I get through my feelings without hurting myself?

How do I feel what I feel without hurting my loved ones and wrecking my relationships?

How can my emotions be helpful to my process of living and not just things that make me feel bad?

Good Questions

Let’s take the first one today.

How can I get through my feelings without hurting myself?

Are you afraid to be caught up in your emotions?

What if the pain never stops?

That would be really bad.  Also, quite unlikely.  The universe has never been a straight line about anything. What would be the purpose of perpetual suffering?

Whatever you feel, the divine feels too.  And I have it on personal authority that they are just not into the pain.

Feel the Emotion

You have to feel the emotion for it to become useful. Otherwise, it is just like a piece of food in your teeth.  It rubs and hurts, and is good for nobody.

Consciously Handling the Emotion

When I am feeling anger or rage or sadness come upon me, I make a date with myself.  Sometimes I can put it off for the weekend, other times, I’m not so lucky.

Depending on the emotion, I mark out an hour or a day to feel it. For example: Tuesday.  I spent most of Tuesday feeling out the corners of my existential funk.

Once I took a whole weekend to myself, and cried and raged at a rented cottage in rural Oregon. I was grieving a dying relationship.  I came away feeling strong and positive and better.

The weekend to yourself is a good luxury, but even an hour on a hiking trail or at the batting cages can be good.

There are lots of us who cry in our car.

I like dealing with my emotions outside my home.  I think that’s because I live with 3 boys, a partner, 3 dogs and 3 cats. There’s no way that I’m having the emotion by myself here.

But if I lived alone, I think the getting out and feeling it option would still prevail. I don’t want my bed to be a nest of tears.

Sharing/Burdening

There is a fine line between sharing your pain and burdening others with your pain.  I’m a private person. There are few who see me suffer (unless they read my blog).  I don’t like the idea of burdening others.

But, it’s not always wrong or bad to do so.  Sometimes your pain can illuminate the lives of others.  Sometimes I like to be there for my friends. That’s what friendship is.

Bearing Witness

You don’t have to feel it alone.

You can also go to a friend and say, I need to feel something and I don’t feel safe. Will you bear witness for me?

The rules to Bearing Witness are very clear.  Tell your friend the rules.

They are:

1. No advice.

2. No saying “Get over yourself”.

3. No saying  ”It’s going to be okay.”

Your friend sits and comforts.  You see and feel the pain. You let your friend your comfort you.  And then when you are done, say  I’m done.

Then the advice can come, as needed. Or not.

Don’t Be Sorry

Often, when I am working with a client, the tears will come.  And invariably they will say, “I’m sorry!”, as if crying were some mortal sin.  It’s not.  It’s okay to cry in front of one another, as long as we are over the age of 12.

The pain will go away. It will turn into an answer.  You will not be stuck in the feeling forever.  I promise.

Emotions are like Babies

They need our attention at the most inconvenient times.  If you take the time to feel them, and don’t let them pile up like the laundry and overdue library books,  they won’t be so urgently thrust upon you.

Talk to me- what do you do to face the difficult emotions?

Tomorrow- How do I feel what I feel without hurting my loved ones and wrecking important relationships?

Did you feel one thing? Or many?  Was it hard to distill it to one emotion?

Life is Jumbled.

Not only do we multi-task,  I’d venture that we multi-emotion.  We find a way to feel angry at our spouse and also blissed at the cat at the same time.  How do we do this? Is this a sign of our current age?

We like our emotions to be like our movies and our meals.  We like them predictable.  We like them to be on time.  We like them to be over in 90 minutes, tops.

Emotions Don’t Work That Way

It’d be great if they did. It’d be great if we could say, “Let’s pencil this sadness in on Wednesday at 8 am.”

It’d be great if we could order our emotions up like a pizza. “I’d like the joy with a sprinkle of ha-ha and an extra layer of irony.”

If we could do that, we’d feel things the same way we eat.

We’d have a lot more of the tasty emotions and very few of those difficult, but good for you ones.

What We Often Try to Do

We try to put our emotions off until a more convenient time.  If we are sad, we busy ourselves.  Sometimes this works.  But often it doesn’t.

Would you try something with me this weekend?

Make a date with yourself .  Take an hour to sit alone in your bedroom, or find a comfortable place outside.  Sit down.  Ask…How do I feel? And then feel it.

Feel the emotion until it subsides.  This could take an hour.

If an hour has gone by and you still feel the emotion as strongly as you did, turn your focus to another thing.  And then try this again another day.  Let’s not wear ourselves out.

You can write about it or record yourself too, after you truly feel it (but not during. I just want you to feel during this exercise.)

Sometimes this is scary.

Of course it is.

A perfectly acceptable cheat: bring some yarn to unknot or some laundry to fold.  Something you do with your hands that doesn’t require thought.

What if I am going to feel something really bad?

Then have your pit crew waiting in the wings with something to comfort you when you are done.  Nothing wrong with that.

What if I feel great?

Yay you! That’s even better. What’s better than an hour of just feeling great?

The Expected Outcome

Emotions are there for a reason.  When you truly feel an emotion, it often subsides, or it changes into something more obviously useful.

Please Hesitate to Fix It

Don’t feel it for two seconds and then pop up with the answer.   Be patient with all that is in your heart (thanks Mr. Rilke!).

Tell me about it

I want to hear about how making time for emotions helps.  Or doesn’t help.

Work is a little like Lord of the Flies.

You take perfectly nice people, put them in a stressful environment and the aggressive ones tend to win.

For the past 130 years, this mentality has been the norm.

It’s called progress, people.  Or at least that’s what they tell us.

Our Energetic Systems Know the Score

In a hostile environment, in a place that doesn’t feel like we can grow, we leave.

We stop remaining present.

Energetically, this is very interesting.

Your system  stops taking in so much junk. And you, energetically, go to a different place.

Your energetic system doesn’t leave, but your energetic consciousness does.

You are not there.

Signs that you aren’t there:

You can’t remember what you said in any conversation. The details slip around in your head.

You look at the clock and it’s 2o minutes later than the last time and you haven’t really moved.

Everything takes forever to do.

Electronic equipment gets way harder to use. The copy machine starts acting like a real asshole.

Why Does This Happen?

Not being present is our body and minds’ energetic answer to soul-sucking boredom and pain.  It’s the wrong answer, but a natural one.  We used to use this to enable us to plow a field for 12 hours without losing our minds.

Let’s find a way to be present at work that doesn’t hurt.

Being present is good. Being solidly aware makes your job easier. And instead of avoiding all that pain, you can consciously let it go by you.

Here are two ideas for bringing presence to your workplace.

Change your Environment to Match your True Nature

If you have a cubicle or office that you can decorate, great. Get natural lighting, and shut off the flourescents if you can. Bring in artwork that sings to you. Bring in pictures of the people and animals in your life.

This changes your mood considerably.

What if there is a company policy against such things?

Then you need to be creative.  Put a picture in your pen drawer. Put a picture on your computer screen.  Put pictures or names on your person.  Search Etsy for personalized jewelry.  Or get a locket.

Making your environment your own makes it easier to be present, which makes it easier to work. You feel safer. You are reminded of the unique fabulousness of you. You are reminded of who you care about so much to work this sucky job.

Practice Filling The Bowl

Here’s the easiest way to bring presence to your life.  It also reduces anxiety.  It’s a tiny meditation that you can do anywhere.  It’s called Filling the Bowl.

Find your hipbones.

Find your tailbone.

Imagine the space between these.

This is your sacred bowl. This is the sacrum. This is the home of your first chakra.

Close your eyes, and imagine your bowl.

Examine and imagine your bowl in its entirety. What is it made out of? You might even be able to feel it. Imagine the inside. Imagine the outside.

You might find words written on it.  Or pictures on it. It’s your bowl. It can look like anything you want.

Then Fill It.

Try putting apples in your bowl.  Then empty it and try feathers. Try filling it with flowers.  Try filling with warm chocolate syrup.

You can fill your bowl with whatever you want.

This technique relaxes you and brings you back into your body, which makes it easier to work.

Try it.

And Tell Me- How do you stay present at work? And also…what’s in your bowl?

Tomorrow- The Bubble- keeping the energetic vampires at bay..

It’s especially hard to imagine saying that when you have to support your children.

Those little grunts costs upwards of $250,000 each to raise to adulthood.  A-ha! This is why I don’t have my sailboat.

So, your job is killing you and yet you have mouths to feed.

I need to say one quick thing: if your job makes you a really bad parent, then you need to quit your job.  You know who you are.

For everybody else

if you have to keep your job because you have a family that depends on you, then we need to make this work.

I’m going to suggest a few difficult changes. Changes your family may not immediately care for.  But, in the not too long run, you’ll be happier for it, and so will they.

I’m not heartless. I have kids.  These ideas work really well. But they may sound a little harsh.  I have been there. I have made each one of these mistakes (especially mistake #1).

Here’s how to make this work:

1. Stop spending money as an apology to your kids.

Children can be bought off.  Children are really good at getting things when you don’t have time to give them time.  And when you get caught in this trap, you have to keep your job, because jeans now cost $200 (the person who prices jeans at $200 has a special place in hell, am I right?).

$200 for jeans? NO WAY.

I like Michelle Singletary’s 21 day financial fast, because it helps you see where you are spending your money, and it’s a great way to see how many times you feel the need to buy your kid something to get the whining and the guilt to stop.

2. Stop taking work home.

This step is very hard for people. If you don’t have the option to take work home, suddenly your family comes into focus.  You also do a better job deciding what to work on at work.  You have to prioritize if you can’t take it home.

Another way we take home work is when we bitch about our jobs at the dinner table.  Set an egg timer, get your complaining out and then talk about something else.

2a. Bring back the dinner table.  Stop eating in front of the TV.

3.  Tweets, texts and phone calls do not happen from 6-9 pm.

Get out a board game.  My kids love board games.  They also love texting.  Our rule is that it needs to be somebody’s grandma or somebody had better be dying for us to text during board game night.  My kids are 12, 19 and 21.  So, it’s no mean feat.

4. Don’t schedule up the weekend.

Maybe your kids have one activity on the weekend. Not four.  Okay? Same with you.

5. Make your children earn their keep.

Even a 7-year-old can fold socks.  You were not made to pick up after everybody.

What does any of this have to do with keeping/loving my job?

Balance,grasshopper, balance.

It’s a lot easier to work when your home life is normal and you feel connected to the people you love.  It’s harder to work when you just feel resentment and/or annoyance by your family.

It’s normal to feel resentment when you work at Soul-Suck, inc.

Families are not always easy.

One of these things needs to work well. Then, you’ll feel better about work.

You’ll feel like you’re working towards something great. It won’t feel like such a sacrifice.

And your kids won’t grow up into spoiled brats. And that’s awesome.

Tomorrow, We finally start talking about Stopping the Soul Suck At Work…

I’m under the desk with the door shut to my office and tears are streaming down my face.

I’m choking as I try to keep the tears back.

I hear one of my colleagues call my name and knock on my door.

“Bridget?”  He opens the door and I hold my breath. I hold completely still. Another colleague says, ‘Huh, she’s not here.”

The door closes again.  I wait and then when I’m sure that I’m really alone, I start to sob.

The worst part:  I have no idea why I am crying.

This post is for you…

This post is for those of you who are hiding under your desk crying and not sure why. This post is for those of you who are suffering from workplace soul-suck.

You started your job with enthusiasm. Maybe you’re in a field you actually like.  And every morning you wake up and you feel like you are dying inside.

You Are

You are dying inside.  When you do work that does not sustain you,  it slowly erodes your mind, body and soul.

If you have nothing outside your career to sustain you, this erosion occurs more quickly.

And then you kick yourself, right?

You say, What’s wrong with me?

There’s people out there who would kill for my job.

Why am I so sensitive?

Why can’t I just get up and do this?

So, let’s start with stopping our guilt and anger towards ourselves.

It doesn’t help to beat yourself up when something doesn’t sing to you.

That’s a learned reaction, the beating up.  That’s your mother or your teacher or someone yelling at you to be grateful. Life could be worse.

And where does beating yourself up get you? You feel terribly sad and guilty and alone and you don’t want to do your job anymore.

Let’s stop killing ourselves.

This is a week of stopping the soul suck. This is the week of nonjudgmental love.

We’re going to start with strengthening ourselves, so that it doesn’t hurt so much to go to our jobs.

We’re going to confront the workplace energy vampires.

We”ll bring clarity to our workplace.

Then we’ll make work our bitch.  Okay, we’ll make it our own.

And then we’ll spread our wings and fly.

All in a Week?

Let’s get the ideas out there, and see where it goes.

First- What to Do if your Job is Dead

I was born an intense, stubborn little creature. There were way too many emotions wrapped up in my little body.

The hardest one to control was anger.

I’d try to be patient, and then I’d feel this teakettle heat up and up and up and then I’d blow my stack.

And then I’d get punished for it.  I had a temper and I didn’t know what to do with it.

I felt like people didn’t get me, and as I got older, I realized that if they didn’t get me, at least if they were boys, I could beat them up.

This was also frowned upon.

Nobody explained to me that my intensity needed a direction.  Or perhaps they did and I don’t remember.

I was told to be nice.

Be Nice is an important lesson. And fierce little girls were under-appreciated in my rural community.

The Bitch of Corporate America

Fast forward 25 years. When I was 32, I was working in corporate america as an IT product manager. I had a product that did $32M in sales a year. I had a lot of pressure on me.

I just said what I thought. I was really good at my job. I was REALLY REALLY GOOD.  I was whip smart and I brought in a lot of money for that company.

I was also a bull in a china shop that rubbed people the wrong way.

It didn’t take long for me to run into trouble.

My VP actually said, You know, your ideas are fine, and if you were a guy, you could say them the way you say them, but coming out of your mouth, you sound like a bitch.

I was put on probation at my job. I lost a $20,000 relocation bonus.  It sucked.

Again, the message was Be Nice (but somehow also be effective).

I didn’t know how to talk so people would listen.

I didn’t know how to channel my ferocity.

I also didn’t know quite how to tell that company that I was done with them.

Fired!

I got depressed. I went to work and surfed the internet for 9 months. I stopped working on all of my projects and they finally fired me.

That hurt. A lot.  It hurt to not be listened to. It hurt to be misunderstood. And it hurt to be told that despite my brilliance, I was not a fit.

Don’t get me wrong. I deserved to be fired after 9 months of ineffectiveness.  Their and my lack of knowledge about how to handle intensity in female leaders caused a problem that could not be fixed. And that’s sad.

Fired Again!

Then I tried corporate America again. I tried working for another company, and this time, I stopped being ferocious at all.  I was very kind and loving and only somewhat effective. I made pretty ads and brought in a lot of leads, but I didn’t show any leadership.  I was lovingly let go after about a year and a half.

Power + Pretty = What?

Our culture likes powerful women in a pretty package.  There are aspects of feminine power that are vastly under-appreciated in corporate culture. That’s a fact.

As women, we must find our own peace with this. We must reject the aspects of this system that are harmful. We must teach where we can. We must not become bitter.

It took me another four years to get right with ferocity.

It took a lot of sitting zazen and walking on country roads and trying out my fierce intrapersonal skills.  It took living with a loving, non-confrontational man to learn how to speak softly when softly is required.

Here’s the lessons I learned:

1. It’s okay to be intense and to care. Ferocity is fine.

2. Intense listening is as important as intense speaking.

3. Gender should have nothing to do with it. If it does, that’s an opportunity to teach someone about the strength of women (don’t do it by whacking them upside the head).

4. If someone misunderstands you, don’t take it to heart.  Look for an opportunity to clarify if it matters to you and to the project you’re working on.

5. You were made fierce for a reason.

6. Sometimes these interactions are going to hurt. So you must love yourself before, during and after.  You must be ready for battle.

7.  Fighting a problem isn’t always about fighting a person. Try to separate where possible.

Tomorrow- Meeting your fierce self.

And to make matters worse, you’ve died and been buried, and then somebody dug you up and took a few of your fingers and your tooth.

So, that sucks, Galileo.  That is really a bummer, especially for just agreeing with that Copernicus guy, who is really kind of a self-absorbed jerk.

Where’s the Justice?

Where’s the Justice, Galileo? I mean, especially after you invented the telescope.

Here’s what you do, buddy.

You haunt people. For years. You especially haunt museum curators.  And anonymous people that might have your fingers in a jar.

You use your intuition to ask, “Who’s descendant is going to sell my fingers at auction?”

Then you follow them around, making them speculate on the meaning of life.  Also, get folk duos to sing about you and make videos about reincarnation.

Then, when your fingers are found, and sold to a guy that donates them to a museum, make sure that your middle finger looks extra creepy by itself in that old jar.

Galileo's Finger, courtesy of the AP

Hey, Galileo- You’re welcome. I’m here for you.  And thanks for all your hard work.