Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

suffering

Cleaning a Closet

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I cleaned out a closet the other day. “Yes,” you’re saying to yourself, “she lives such a glamorous life.” So true.

I cleaned out a walk-in closet in preparation for a much needed paint job. It’s been nine years since the closet was empty, let alone painted. It’s past time for a thorough overhaul.

As I toted yet another armful of hanging clothes out, it occurred to me that I have way too much stuff. I was carrying junk I don’t wear and don’t even like too much, and I was carrying too much of it. And it wasn’t just clothes. What were my high school yearbooks doing in there? Baby toys? (My kids are teens.) Two dozen books, a broken video camera, three shoeboxes full of photos, and assorted suitcases? In my clothes closet?

As I plopped the detritus of the closet into its Temporary Storage Area, I decided that the only things going back in the closet are things I really want in there.

Things I use.

Things I like.

Things that make me feel happy.

Thank goodness for paint jobs. Without this upcoming one, I wouldn’t have taken the time to take a hard look at my stuff, dust the shelves and give the corners a good vacuuming.

Then it hit me: there’s plenty of stuff to clean out of other closets. Like the closet between my ears. There’s plenty of junk in there that’s outdated, that I don’t like, and that doesn’t make me particularly happy.

How about you? Is now the time to get rid of the excess stuff you’ve accumulated — to streamline your life and your thoughts so you can be your best self?

Maybe you have an outdated idea about yourself — and it’s holding you back. I worked with a woman recently who views herself as a struggling young homemaker, although her home is paid off, there is money in the bank and her kids are ready to go to college. Seeing herself as struggling feels comfortable, controllable and somehow appropriate. It’s the way she’s defined herself. It’s her comfort zone. Not a happy comfort zone, but a comfort zone nonetheless.

She needs to clean out that closet.

Whether you’re literally or figuratively ready to clean out a closet, now’s the time. Examine everything that comes out of your closet — does it fit? Is it in good shape? Does it bring out the best in you? Do you like it? If your answer is “yes”, keep it. If the answer is “no”, give it away.

Letting go of that which holds us back or weighs us down, allows space to open for us to grow and start something new. It’s time to clean closets.

Finding Joy

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Are you happy? Is there joy in your life?

It is so hard for some folks to find joy. Maybe they think they aren’t entitled, or they have the feeling that it’s somehow inappropriate. It’s as if once you become a grown up you must put your shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone keeping a stiff upper lip, and suffer through the rest of your life. Happiness is for the indolent or the indulgent. It’s silent suffering for the rest of us.

Ah, the good old Puritan Work Ethic.

I am here to tell you that it is possible to have both work and joy. It’s possible to have a balance between the two, in a perfect Joy/Work ratio. If you don’t have enough joy in your life, your Joy/Work ratio might be out of balance. Here are just a few things you can do today to right the scales.

  1. Figure out what brings you joy. Do you know how many people have to think about what brings them joy? Plenty, that’s how many. So take a little inventory. Do you find joy with people, or with things? In certain places? With certain aromas? When do you feel joy? As long as it’s legal and doesn’t hurt anyone else, you are good to go.
  1. Be conscious of opportunities for joy. The Buddhists practice “mindfulness”, which includes being aware of one’s surroundings and interactions. In my own life, I realized I got great joy out of the way light plays on living plants and trees. So, I take time to look at the backlit leaves of the red maple outside my office window. I find myself driving or walking and noting the color of tulips, or the pink of the dogwood, or the earthy brown of a moldering tree. And I feel very, very joyful. Be aware of what brings you to that place of joy and be mindful of opportunities to express it.
  1. Make time for joy. Once you figure out what brings you true joy, whether it’s having deep conversations with friends, or watching a baseball fly out of the park, fair, on a summer afternoon, or digging in the dirt, or painting, or yoga, or love – make time for it. Don’t put off your joy until tomorrow, you Puritan you. Tomorrow, as we have all learned by now, may not come the way we think it will.
  1. Express gratitude. It’s been said that it’s impossible to feel both sad and grateful at the same time. Remind yourself just how grateful you are. Then, tell people you value them, journal your grateful thoughts, live in a perpetual state of gratitude. Joy will ensue.

When I was a child, I was enamored of a Hanna-Barbera show – the animated “Gulliver’s Travels.” One of the Lilliputians was a rotund little doom-and-gloom guy whose stock catch-phrase was “We’re doomed. We’ll never make it.” Although I’ve been know to have used this exact catchphrase myself from time to time, I’ve come to figure out that predicting doom usually insures it. I now avoid such predictions at all costs, and seek out the joy in a situation.

There is almost always some joy, somewhere. Real joy is so… joyful. It’s that unbearable lightness of being. It’s like bubbles in good champagne. It’s in a baby’s belly laugh. Dare I say it? Joy is happiness, distilled in a moment.

Yep, I used the H-word. Happiness. Don’t be frightened of the idea of being happy. Happiness is good. Happiness can change your life.

Dr. Jon Haidt, noted researcher at the University of Virginia and author of The Happiness Hypothesis, suggests that the H-word can be rendered in the following formula: H = S + C + V. “S” is your set point – whether you see the glass half empty or half full. “C” stands for the conditions of your life – a long commute, a disability, poverty. “V” covers your voluntary activities, or those things you choose to do: to volunteer, to take a class, to make changes in your life.

To make the quickest jump in H, you can focus on your C and your V. But to dramatically shift the texture and tenor of your life, attack your S. Learning to see the glass as half full, regardless of the circumstances, will profoundly raise your H.

Unabashedly welcome joy into your life. It’ll make you happy.

Thinner Peace

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A few weeks ago I wrote about Being Perfect. One of the common ways many of us strive for perfection is in our weight or body shape. We think: If only I could lose 10-20-30-40 pounds, then life would be perfect. Truth? If you did lose 10-20-30-40 pounds, you’d just be skinner… with the same old problems.

This pursuit of perfection is endless — and those of us in pursuit often pay a high emotional and psychological toll. It’s like this: we weigh too much, so we can never be enough. That is a stuck mindset. It’s a limiting place. It’s no fun. It really hurts.

It’s time for the anguish and suffering to stop.

It’s time for Thinner Peace.

Among the clatter of competing weight loss approaches, arrives leading life coach, author, O Magazine columnist and friend of mine, Dr. Martha Beck. In The Four Day Win: End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace, Martha provides a funny, thoughtful, erudite, practical approach to losing and maintaining your best body size. It’s a diet book for all of us who think diet is a four-letter word.

Even if you don’t usually buy diet books, don’t you think you’d love a book with chapters like “Eat Whatever The Hell You Want”, “How To Stop Eating When You Can’t Stop Eating” and “How Not To Be A Big Fat Liar”?

What I love about this book is that Martha gives a thorough, intelligent explanation of how the mind works (would you expect anything less from a gal with three degrees from Harvard?) — and bases her approach on cutting edge research. She tells you not only “how” – but gets you to understand the all important “why”. You’ll find out how traditional diet programs based on deprivation, willpower and suffering work on our minds and help us stay heavy.

Martha undertook this work in as a consultant to Jenny Craig, to help them better understand the psychological aspects of weight loss. Her key finding, after working with plenty of Jenny Craig clients as well as her own private coaching clients, is this: when you set up a famine situation in your brain, you are undermining your ability to lose weight. Psychologically, when you say, “I cannot have even one cookie. If I have a cookie, I will be bad. I will have no willpower and be a loser if I eat just one cookie. Nope, no cookies for me!” – you actually program yourself to only think about what you’re missing: cookies. And if you have the opportunity, you’ll satisfy your cookie famine with a cookie binge.

I know that where I put my attention will grow more central to my life. Martha’s approach plays on the same idea. If you focus on what you can’t do, can’t eat, can’t be, you’ll be stuck there and won’t even be aware of what you can do, can eat or can be.

Martha suggests that we have three aspects of our consciousness: the impulsive overeater in all of us is our Wild Child; the Dictator is the punishing, judgmental part. To really achieve Thinner Peace, you have to take the third way — you have to be The Watcher. The Watcher expresses loving kindness toward the recklessness of the Wild Child as well as the demands of the Dictator, but asks “why” frequently. Why does the Wild Child want the ice cream sundae? Why is the Dictator punishing me for having a french fry? It’s the Watcher who is forgiving, self-loving and self-nurturing. And in charge.

For most people, this shift away from having the Wild Child or Dictator rule the roost is a significant move. The reason your diet has not worked in the past is because you’ve been ruled by impulse or guilt. You have eaten to soothe your emotions. But under the Watcher, you can be in a loving, caring, responsible position. And the Watcher helps you lose weight because you are free to just be – and eat when your body tells you you’re hungry. If you’re sad, the Watcher will notice that and turn your attention to lifting your mood with something other than food.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the book, and a good indication of why I gush about Martha Beck: “Almost all of us assume there’s only one way to lose weight: by willpower, by white-knuckle resistance, by forcing the body with an aggressive, adversarial, disciplinarian mind. This can be achieved sometimes, though not often. Maintaining it long-term? I don’t think it can be done. I’ve seen numerous clients deploy incredible discipline, using their Dictator selves to trap, dominate, and starve their Wild Child selves. Losing weight this way is as draining as keeping a violent criminal pinned to the floor with sheer force. But even if you manage to do it, you can’t hold your own Wild Child in a hammerlock for the rest of your life. The minute you get tired, distracted or sick, the Dictator loses control, and the Wild Child goes into a feeding frenzy.

“That’s the whole reason I wrote this book. Simply going on a diet program, without changing your mental set, causes backlash and weight gain. This is an inevitable reality, based on the way our brains and bodies are designed. But if you use 4-day win techniques to become a Watcher and bring yourself to Thinner Peace, your brain changes, as well as your body. Weight loss happens without backlash or resistance.”

Thinner Peace. Count me in. Because it’s time for the war to stop.

Forgiveness

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I was a guest speaker at a book club the other night – reviewing the best of parenting, relationship and personal growth books – when I was asked, “What about forgiveness?” In response, I talked about the ideas in Dr. Janis Abrahms Spring’s book How Can I Forgive You?, but as I drove home I felt unsatisfied with my response. It wasn’t complete enough.

Don’t get me wrong. Dr. Spring’s book is terrific, providing a workable framework for moving to forgiveness. It’s practical, it’s pragmatic and it’s well-written. The book was not my problem. I was glad I had mentioned such a useful book.

No, my problem was – no surprise for this “words girl” – the semantics of the word “forgiveness”. What is it? What does it mean? We hear about forgiveness from pulpits and pop culture all the time. Why, it’s a gift we give ourselves! It’s the right thing to do! Forgiving is a sign of our spiritual development and piety!

Forgiveness has become such a ubiquitous word, in fact, that perhaps it’s lost its potency. I bump into someone in a crowded store and I say, “Excuse me.” Am I asking forgiveness for my offense? Many of us say “sorry” almost as often as we say “uhm”. Do we seek forgiveness each time we blurt it out? Teens say, “My bad” and their buds say, “No problem.” Is that a forgiveness exchange?

What does “forgiveness” mean?

As I drove home, pondering, this definition popped into my head:

“Forgiveness is when the hurt you’ve suffered no longer drives your decision-making, nor defines who you are. “

Here’s an example: Tom’s wife left him for another man. Tom was devastated. For the first few months, he was among the walking wounded and would tell the story of his betrayal to anyone who’d listen. And some who didn’t want to listen. His mind was filled with thoughts of retribution, retaliation and revenge. Nearly every thought he had, nearly every course of action, was directed by his wife’s affair and their subsequent divorce. And women? Pffffft. Since his wife had betrayed him and she was a woman, then all women were capable of betrayal and should be avoided. Women were not to be trusted. No one was to be trusted.

He was not in a place of forgiveness.

Over time, though, he began to add different activities to his schedule. He got into mountain biking, planned outings with friends and explored his beliefs. He recommitted himself to his work, and got a promotion. He gingerly made friendships, then dates, with women. Gradually, his decisions were based on his life now, not his life then. He no longer needed to tell the story of his wife’s affair to people – because it no longer seemed that relevant. If you asked him, he’d say, “I’m Tom. I’m a 45 year old engineer who likes mountain biking, wine and hanging with friends. Oh, and I’m divorced.”

He had arrived at the place of forgiveness.

That doesn’t mean his wife’s affair had no impact on Tom’s life. It did. Forgiveness didn’t mean Tom pretended he wasn’t hurt. He was. It doesn’t mean it was OK for Tom’s wife to have had an affair. It wasn’t. What happened in his marriage became a part of the accumulated experiences of Tom’s life – just not the key, defining part of his life.

Forgiveness meant that Tom was no longer driven or defined by his hurt.

In many cases, one person hurts another person and they stay in a relationship. The hurt may be big or it may be small. But it’s a hurt and the only way forward is through forgiveness. This mutual forgiveness benefits both parties.

We’ve seen how a hurt person’s path to forgiveness helped him. In an ongoing relationship, forgiveness is a huge relief for the injuring party, too. She knows that she’s not going to “have to pay for this for the rest of my life” since his decisions are not going to be solely based on the hurt (“I’m only doing this because you lied to me twenty-five years ago.”). And she knows he’s not going to forever define her by having hurt him (“You know I can’t trust you because you lied to me that time twenty-five years ago.”). But to get to forgiveness she has do her part. She has to acknowledge that he’s been hurt, she has to work to help him recover, and she has to promise not to willfully repeat the injury in the future.

Sometimes the person who needs forgiveness is you. Many people, for instance, carry shame and guilt over a failed marriage, or a lost job, or a blown diet. “If only I had…If only I had been…If only I hadn’t…” is a constant refrain. Yet, this song is an oldie. It has a good beat, and you can dance to it. But it’s the same old song and dance. Singing it keeps us firmly in the past. When where we’ve got to live is in the now.

Forgiving ourselves – acknowledging what happened, how it impacted us then and now – and moving to the point where our perceived shortcomings no longer fuel our decision-making or define who we are, is the key to living in the present. And living happily. This may require therapy to understand how we hurt ourselves in the past and to work through the issues so that we don’t continue to hurt ourselves in the future.

Viktor Frankl, noted psychiatrist and author of the classic Man’s Search for Meaning, founded an innovative school of psychology called “logotherapy”, which holds that if people have meaning and conscience in their lives then they are more apt to be successful. This idea underpins much of modern psychological thought and took mental health into new and productive areas.

Now for the reveal. Frankl developed his theories while imprisoned in Auschwitz. Man’s Search for Meaning details the suffering, deprivation and humiliation the men and women in the camp endured. It was unlike anything most of us have seen. No one should experience such inhumanity.

Although Frankl’s experience in Auschwitz birthed the most significant work of his life, Frankl didn’t appear to define himself by the time in the camp – rather, he defined himself by his work, his life.

He became bigger than what he had suffered.

And that’s the promise of forgiveness. You can become bigger than your hurt. With forgiveness you can leave the wound in the past and be your best self. And you can start right now.