You are here: Home / Archives for awake

While Recovering…

January 4, 2009 By 1 Comment


Since I’m still recovering from my recent surgery, I thought I’d repeat a post from January 3, 2007 — called “Alive and Awake”:

I have a little shorthand I use to describe some people. I started with “deeply unconscious”. Then I shifted to: “lacking insight into themselves and how they function in the world.” Both of these phrases were my feeble attempts to get at a larger issue – how to describe people who have no interest in (and in fact run screaming from the very idea of) personal awareness, openness and growth.

(You know who you are.)

Recently, I was running errands and had Oprah & Friends playing on my XM radio. I have to admit it: I have an Oprah crush. Sure, she’s got Steadman, and I’m not gay. But still.

I love her.

And I love her Friends. So the other day, I was listening to Dr. Robin Smith, author of Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages, when my girl Dr. Robin said something that caught my ear. She said, “It’s time for you to step up and be a grown-up. It’s time for you to be alive and awake.”

Ka-thunk. That was it! Alive and awake! I want my friends to be alive and awake. I want my family to be alive and awake. I want my clients to be alive and awake. I want to be alive and awake.

Why would anyone want to be anything other than alive and awake? What’s the opposite there – unaware and asleep? Hmmmn. Guess if you’re unaware or asleep, you’re kinda safe. You’re insulated from feeling anything or having the scary possibility of anything in your life changing. You sleepwalk through your life, numbed to all experience.

Is that the way to live?

I’ve always wondered what babies think when they fall asleep in their car seat and wake up in their crib. Do they think, “Whoa! Weren’t we just going to the grocery store? How’d I get here?”

Maybe that’s what happens for some people at mid-life. They begin to wake up and think, “Whoa! How’d I get here?” And if they’d been awake and experiencing their 20s and 30s, maybe they’d have a partial clue.

Being alive and awake is a lot of work. The major spiritual traditions suggest that coming awake is our soul’s lifework. It was the Buddha, wasn’t it, who experienced enlightenment and became The Awakened One?

I love the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Leading me to believe that if you never seek, you will never find. If you aren’t alive enough to seek enlightenment – asking who you are and why you are here – you’ll never be awakened.

There is an element of pain and suffering to being alive and awake that you certainly don’t have to face when you’re unaware and asleep. When you’re alive and awake you consciously open yourself to good and bad, happiness and pain, light and dark. Would the easier way be to lead a life of only the former and none of the latter?

That ain’t gonna happen, is it?

As writer Jack Kornfeld has said, you can’t live full time in a blissful state. Even the most enlightened person has to do the laundry from time to time.

Alive and awake is about balance. Think about balance for a moment: bakers add a little salt into a dessert recipe to enhance the sweetness of the treat. Balloonists add a load to their lighter-than-air craft so they can control ascent and descent. Opposites attract.

Continuing the homey aphorisms, it’s said that into every life a little rain must fall. And where would we be in a world without a little rain? Well, we’d have drought. Which would bring on famine. Then death.

Perhaps being unaware and asleep is the way some people try to avoid death. Funny, isn’t it? You go through life insulating yourself from experiences because you’re afraid of death, and guess what? You die anyway.

Because we all do.

How much better, then, to fully live until you die? How much better to turn your face up to the rain and lick the drops as they fall into your life? How much better it would be to live sensing everything, feeling everything, knowing as much as you can. How much better it would be to be alive and awake.

What a great New Year’s Resolution, huh?

Filed Under: Happier Living, Managing Change Tagged With: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Authentically You

March 18, 2007 By Leave a Comment


There was a time in my life when I said “yes” when I meant “no”, and “no” when I meant “yes”. Looking back, I realize I did it because that’s what I thought people wanted from me. And I wanted to be the person folks wanted me to be.

I said “yes” so often that my friend Fran gave me a t-shirt which read “Stop Me Before I Volunteer Again” which I wore to the next PTA meeting. I happened to be the PTA President at the time. Excellent team building message, don’t you think?

I said “yes” because saying “no” might have meant someone would be unhappy with me. It made no nevermind if I was unhappy. My own need to be liked was more important than my need to be happy.

And I was not happy. Because I was not allowing myself to be authentically Michele. I was allowing others to determine who I might be. Power, power — who’s got the power? It was anybody but me.

I just re-read a book I’ve learned so much from: The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists by Eleanor Payson. The approach Payson takes in this book — what living with, working with, or being raised by a narcissist does to a person’s self-esteem, coping mechanisms and future relationships — is insightful. But I got something new from my recent re-read — the idea of self-reflection as an indicator of emotional and mental health.

People with a character disorder, such as narcissism, are incapable of self-reflection. I also think people who are sleep-walking through their lives often avoid self-reflection or self-observation because they are afraid of waking up and living fully. Maybe they are afraid of being authentically themselves.

I am here to tell you that self-reflection is the path to authentic living. When you know who you are, how you feel and what you like — not what others want you to be, feel or like — and you live it, that’s authenticity, baby.

There’s an index card on my computer monitor. On it are scratched three simple questions. For me, they are the heart of my own self-reflection.

  1. Why have I drawn this experience to me at this time?
  2. What is this experience trying to teach me?
  3. How can I use this situation to help me be a better person?

I refer to this card so often that these three questions have become my intuitive framework, especially when I am tempted to say “yes” when I really want to say “no”. The opportunity to say “no”, and mean it, often comes to me when I need to remember to keep my boundaries intact. Sometimes, it comes as a chance to help maintain my priorities — and not take responsibility for executing yours. I’ve learned that when I focus on executing other people’s priorities, it’s frequently at the expense of my own.

Every single time I say “no” when I want to say “no”, I reinforce that I am a Self worth being. All by myself. Regardless of whether you like me and my answer to your request, or not. When I stand up for myself, I am standing for my own authentic Me. That is a shift from my old way of being, and it feels really good. It feels like I am expressing my true self.

And, boy howdy, I become a better person when I only say “yes” when I mean “yes”. I do a better job. I’m not overcommitted. I’m more focused. I say “yes” because I really and truly want to do what’s asked of me. Believe me, if I say “yes”, you are going to see and feel my passion.

Being authentically me means that I honor my choices, and I honor my abilities. I’m living my passions. I’m feeling all my feelings. And expressing them. And when I’m authentically me, I make space for you to be authentically you. How? Because it’s perfectly OK with me if you are mad, happy, sad, silly, loving, offbeat, generous, hurt, wacky or meditative. Because I’m all those things, too.

Filed Under: Authenticity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

The Way of Transition

March 4, 2007 By Leave a Comment


The seasons are changing. I can see it outside my window. There are little buds on the Japanese maple. Tulip tips are pushing up through the ground. There’s a light, warm quality to the breeze – it’s bringing spring.

I love spring. Since I can remember, spring has meant happiness. Sure, it’s my birthday in a few weeks and the kid in me loves that. But the soon-to-be 47 year old grown-up in me has a different reason for joy.

I give a class on Managing Transition. Did you know that each transition begins with an ending? Odd, but so. We end a job, or a relationship, or an old way of being. Then we enter what writer William Bridges calls The Neutral Zone. I like to think of it as the Gray Period.

In my class, I liken the Gray Period to winter. Trees look dead. Grass looks dead. It’s cold. People hunker down. There’s a certain bleak stillness to winter. But inside those lifeless looking trees and plants, plenty is going on. Within each dormant tree are the tiny little beginnings of buds waiting to burst forth.

And so it is, too, with people in transition. They endure an ending which may bring grief, change, uncertainty, immobilization. Then they hunker down in a bleak stillness, seemingly doing nothing… but inside, if they could peek, so much is growing, changing and shifting. Inside, there’s a new beginning.

The new beginning is as inevitable as Spring. A renewal. A new start. A new optimism.

When people in transition tell me there’s no hope, I usually challenge them. Saying there’s no hope is like telling me there’s no Spring! Honey, just as sure as having a birthday, there’s always a Spring.

Certainly, March can come in like a lion or a lamb – it’s an unpredictable month. And transition is equally unpredictable. One can never know the look and shape of a new beginning, nor can we know how it will impact our lives. And perhaps that’s what people who voice “no hope” are trying to address. It’s not that there’s no hope – it’s just that there’s no control.

Control is such an overrated thing. I have a book on my desk (which I’ve not yet read), called A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman which posits that disorder can spark creativity. On the book jacket (which I have read), it says, “Though it flies in the face of almost universally accepted wisdom, moderately disorganized people, institutions, and systems frequently turn out to be more efficient, more resilient, more creative, and in general more effective than highly organized ones…”

In my work I’ve found that those who approach the Gray Period with a certain level of uncertainty, disorder and, most importantly, openness, have a better opportunity to find a novel or creative approach which often sparks their new beginning.

On an episode of The Simpsons, Homer was, once again, out of a job. His daughter Lisa was going through the want ads, looking for a job for her dad. “Dad, here’s one,” she said. “Wanted: a technical supervisor.” “Oh, Lisa,” Homer whined. “I could never do that job. I’m not a technical supervisor, I’m a supervising technician!”

The Gray Period is a time for seeing connections – to see how a technical supervisor can become a supervising technician. How an at-home mom can become a business owner. How a lawyer can become a non-profit executive. How an engineer can become a clergywoman. How a suddenly motherless woman can learn to nurture herself. How down-sizing, or divorce, or even death, can be the best thing that ever happened to you.

And that’s where I find joy. I utterly embrace transition in all its messy splendor. I welcome it for the hope it engenders in me. Because I know that for every ending, there is a new beginning. Every. Single. Time. It may not feel possible in the middle of your own personal Gray Period, but, believe me, Spring is there — just waiting to burst forth.

How will you know when your Gray Period has ended? My friend, when you feel the warm breeze blowing across your face, and see the trees bud, and tulip tops poking up, you will know. You have a new start. You have Spring. Even if your new beginning comes in a month other than March.

Filed Under: Career Coaching, Managing Change Tagged With: , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Alive and Awake

January 3, 2007 By Leave a Comment


I have a little shorthand I use to describe some people. I started with “deeply unconscious”. Then I shifted to: “lacking insight into themselves and how they function in the world.” Both of these phrases were my feeble attempts to get at a larger issue – how to describe people who have no interest in (and in fact run screaming from the very idea of) personal awareness, openness and growth.

(You know who you are.)

Recently, I was running errands and had Oprah & Friends playing on my XM radio. I have to admit it: I have an Oprah crush. Sure, she’s got Steadman, and I’m not gay. But still.

I love her.

And I love her Friends. So the other day, I was listening to Dr. Robin Smith, author of Lies At The Altar, when my girl Dr. Robin said something that caught my ear. She said, “It’s time for you to step up and be a grown-up. It’s time for you to be alive and awake.”

Ka-thunk. That was it! Alive and awake! I want my friends to be alive and awake. I want my family to be alive and awake. I want my clients to be alive and awake. I want to be alive and awake.

Why would anyone want to be anything other than alive and awake? What’s the opposite there – unaware and asleep? Hmmmn. Guess if you’re unaware or asleep, you’re kinda safe. You’re insulated from feeling anything or having the scary possibility of anything in your life changing. You sleepwalk through your life, numbed to all experience.

Is that the way to live?

I’ve always wondered what babies think when they fall asleep in their car seat and wake up in their crib. Do they think, “Whoa! Weren’t we just going to the grocery store? How’d I get here?”

Maybe that’s what happens for some people at mid-life. They begin to wake up and think, “Whoa! How’d I get here?” And if they’d been awake and experiencing their 20s and 30s, maybe they’d have a partial clue.

Being alive and awake is a lot of work. The major spiritual traditions suggest that coming awake is our soul’s lifework. It was the Buddha, wasn’t it, who experienced enlightenment and became The Awakened One?

I love the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Leading me to believe that if you never seek, you will never find. If you aren’t alive enough to seek enlightenment – asking who you are and why you are here – you’ll never be awakened.

There is an element of pain and suffering to being alive and awake that you certainly don’t have to face when you’re unaware and asleep. When you’re alive and awake you consciously open yourself to good and bad, happiness and pain, light and dark. Would the easier way be to lead a life of only the former and none of the latter?

That ain’t gonna happen, is it?

As writer Jack Kornfeld has said, you can’t live full time in a blissful state. Even the most enlightened person has to do the laundry from time to time.

Alive and awake is about balance. Think about balance for a moment: bakers add a little salt into a dessert recipe to enhance the sweetness of the treat. Balloonists add a load to their lighter-than-air craft so they can control ascent and descent. Opposites attract.

Continuing the homey aphorisms, it’s said that into every life a little rain must fall. And where would we be in a world without a little rain? Well, we’d have drought. Which would bring on famine. Then death.

Perhaps being unaware and asleep is the way some people try to avoid death. Funny, isn’t it? You go through life insulating yourself from experiences because you’re afraid of death, and guess what? You die anyway.

Because we all do.

How much better, then, to fully live until you die? How much better to turn your face up to the rain and lick the drops as they fall into your life? How much better it would be to live sensing everything, feeling everything, knowing as much as you can. How much better it would be to be alive and awake.

What a great New Year’s Resolution, huh?

Filed Under: Authenticity, Clarity, Getting Unstuck Tagged With: , , , , , Leave a Comment