MEADOW MUFFIN MOMENT WEEK 3 1/15/15 to 1/21/15

Meditations for Women who Do too Much

 

 

January 15
"Make good use of bad rubbish."
Elizabeth Beresford

Elizabeth has a lot of wisdom here. If your life resembles a garbage dump, it is up to you to sort through it all, turn it over as if it were soil, and plant flowers. Think of all the stink as a natural fertilizer. When we get stuck in our minds with the never ending rehashing of past events and experiences, we are the ones who suffer as the negative energy plays havoc on our health.

January 16
"Learning moment by moment to be free in our minds and hearts, we make freedom possible for everyone the world over."
Sonia Johnson

Freedom begins from within. Being addicted to doing too much is not really any different than any other addition. If it has control over our lives and the behaviors can send your health into a downhill spiral, than we are not free and have lost our minds and hearts. Being aware and taking necessary steps to deal with any addiction affects and sets an example for others that freedom is a possible dream.

January 17
"To achieve, you need thought...You have to know what you are doing and that's real power."
Ayn Rand

Have you ever been told that you "think too much" and that is half your problem? There is nothing wrong with thinking. It's the way we do it. As a society, we have come to believe that we must be logical, rational and calculating, and to not let intuition and awareness effect our thought processes and decision making. We have to realize that our brain is a great gift, and we need to use all of it. True thought begins when we have synergy with all thought processes.

January 18
"Love the moment, and the energy of that moment will spread beyond all boundaries."
Corita Kent

Writing to-do lists to keep track of our goals for the day is fine and necessary so as not to get overwhelmed. The problem lies when we get so caught up in what needs to come next that we never really get anything out of what we are doing at the moment and lose our sense of presence. There is truth to the phrase "live in the present, because to be present in the present really is a present."

January 19
"People who try to boss themselves always want (however kindly) to boss other people. They always think they know best and are so stern and resolute about it they are not very open to new and better ideas."
Brenda Uelalnd

The Golden Rule states to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But if in your controlling behavior, you do unto others as you do unto yourself, everyone loses.
If your core form of functioning is to get the job done, than you just may lose all patience with any other ways than your own in getting those jobs done. That kind of thinking usually results in being hard to work with as people become turned off with our lack of being a team player.

January 20
"She was a 'what if' personality and because of that she never really happened."
Anne Wilson Schaef

Stop "iffing" and start living. Many people do this. They torture themselves with doubting every decision they make with the "what if" I'd done it this way or said this instead or chose that. We cannot cover all the bases to ensure a certain outcome. To live like that is only an illusion of control and can be paralyzing. We cannot control the past, present and future.

January 21
"The liar in her terror wants to fill up the void with anything. Her lies are a denial of her fear; a way of maintaining control."
Adrienne Rich

There is nothing wrong with feeling fear. It is human to feel fear sometimes. The problem is when our lives are ruled by fear but we are in denial about it. It is such a relief to just admit our fears, accept the fact that to live with an illusion of control over everything turns us into liars about who we are until we just may question our very sanity.


To read the previous weeks' posts:
Week 1 January 1 - January 7
Week 2 January 8 - January 14

MEADOW MUFFIN MOMENT WEEK 2 1/14/2015

Only week two and already I am late getting the post written.

Meditations For Women Who Do Too Much by Anne Wilson Schaef

January 8, 2015
"Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry."
Gloria Steinem

Success demands sacrifice, focus and often the need to put work before everything else. As women this constant battle of where our priorities lie can be very draining. Women have learned how to play the game in a man's world by not letting on just how hard it is to juggle job and family. Very often the man would go off to work and not have to worry about home because his wife was there to hold down the fort. Many successful men must admit they couldn't have achieved what they have if their focus was constantly interrupted with the distractions of home and family. Now that women are trying to achieve the same goals they are finding they don't like the person they have become.

January 9, 2015
"Anger as soon is fed is dead
'Tis starving makes it fat."
Emily Dickinson

Anger is not the problem. What we do with it is. If there is one thing that infuriates women is the craving for respect and not feeling appreciated. We too often push those feelings down again and again until the moment where we explode and usually harm those we love the most. Then when we do have our meltdowns we get even angrier when people don't seem to "get it" and hold that outburst against us. We have to realize that anger is a very normal feeling and there is nothing wrong with that. Anger is harmful when it is held in and starved. We have to find safe outlets for our anger and be aware that it can be our friend by hinting to us that something is wrong.

January 10, 2015
"I don't give myself credit for what I do get done because I have so many projects hanging fire that I haven't done."
Chris

We have to stop with the seeing the glass as half-empty rather than half-full. If we put our to-do list down on paper and check them off we can see how much we really did get done in a day. There is always going to be something else added to our plate. Realizing that and feeling accomplished will help us sleep better.

January 11, 2015
"People change and forget to tell each other."
Lillian Hellman

The only constant is change. It is an illusion that there will be a time when we will get our lives in order and it will stay that way! The only way we can grow and become is through change. When those dearest to us make that step we have to be happy for them and not feel left behind or personally attacked.

January 12, 2015
"To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else."
Bernadette Devlin

Sometimes we become very dramatic with our lives and believe that if we are to get what we want, we have to give up a lot of what makes us who we are. How often do we finally have an open slate of a day ahead to do anything we want and just wonder what happened to that person who used to have so many interests. It is never too late to re-examine our choices. We always have choices.

January 13, 2015
"And beyond even self-doubt no writer can justify ruthlessness for the sake of his work, because being human to the fullest possible extent is what his work demands of him."
May Sarton

Often told that to make it in the world we cannot be soft, but rather we need to be ruthless and harden our shell. This attitude does not often come naturally for a woman, and to achieve the success she wants, she just may pay the price of forgetting who she really is. We cannot lose touch with our humanness, our morality and spirituality. We have to unbury ourselves from the layers that make up that shell.

January 14, 2015
"Why indeed must 'God' be a noun? Why not a verb...the most active and dynamic of all?"
Mary Daly

Some of us were raised with the notion that God is something or someone who is a mega-controller. What if we saw God as a process of the universe and that we are part of that process. We can be part of that process by being who we are and not who we think we should be or who others think we should be. If God is a process and I am a process, we have something in common with which to begin.

Read the Meadow Muffin Moments from week 1, 1-1-15 to 1-7-15

MEADOW MUFFIN MOMENT 1/7/15

Being every New Year usually starts with our good intentions for change in hopes for a better year ahead, our best bet for that to happen is to start with ourselves.


My thoughtful daughter-in-law gave me a little gem of a book,
Meditations For Women Who Do Too Much by Anne Wilson Schaef

Not wanting it to sit on the shelf with so many others I collect with every good intention of reading, I aim to gather these daily meditations and weekly get a post written about these daily thoughts.

January 1
Anne begins the year by reminding us to avoid the temptation to think we have to "get caught up" and "close out" the old year. In doing so, we're already setting ourselves up for unrealistic expectations in how much we can cram into a day. We have to stop trying to always "get it right" and learn that it's ok to give ourselves a break and just live, one day at a time.

January 2
"We are powerless over our workaholism and our busyness, and our lives have become unmanageable."
This isn't saying we are weak or powerless as a person. It is saying perhaps we need to be willing to realize we can be powerless over our busyness and something has got to give.

January 3
"So at an early age I witnessed the fact that work was of the first importance, and that it justified rather inhuman behavior."  Mary Sarton

Many of us have such trouble having power over our busyness because that work attitude has been ingrained into us since childhood. We value ourselves by how much we can get done, as if we need to convince ourselves and others that we are worth our very existence. Work before play has been the model many of us followed by witnessing how our families lived their lives. The problem is that the work never gets done, we get tired, we get older, and we get bitter.

January 4
"Time heals all heels."  Jane Ace

People who work too much tend to lose the ability to laugh at themselves and with others. They tend to feel so pressured with all that is going on that they take things personally and view a little poking as a put down. Good humor is very healing for both ourselves and for others. We need to be healers rather than heels. We all have it, it doesn't die, it just gets buried.

January 5
"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"  Chicken Little

Crisis, deadlines and pressure can become so "normal" that we can actually become a little bored when life settles down. To live any other way than with the "this too shall pass" attitude is too exhausting for our mental and physical health. Adrenaline isn't meant to be coursing through our bodies all the time. It is ok to multitask, it is not ok to feel drained all the time.

January 6
"We live in a system built on illusions and when we put forth our own perceptions, we're told we don't understand reality. When reality is illusion and illusion is reality, it's no wonder we feel crazy.
 Anne Wilson Schaef

We live in a society where there is an illusion of control, an illusion of perfectionism, and an illusion of objectivity. When we participate in any of these illusions, we are deceiving ourselves, and when we deceive ourselves, we lose ourselves. Denial is very strong in our society and the "truth speakers" out there are usually not very supported. Perhaps that is why those who shy away from the norm so often feel out of sync and just don't feel they fit in.

January 7
"Changes (in life) are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation."  Gail Sheehy

Change can be a bit scary. Many people put forth a lot of energy trying to keep things from changing. The attitude that "it has always been this way therefore there is no need for things to be any different" is not going to help us grow as human beings. Having order and control in one's life is fine, but to become so rigid about anything different is to become stagnant. Lillian Smith says, "When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, then it is time to die." Life is like a stream. To resist going with the flow either saps a lot of your energy or has you standing on the bank watching it pass you by.