Comfort Zone — Stretch — Risk — Die

These are the concentric circles Rhonda Britten talks about in this section.

1. Stretch: taking an action that you’ve avoided but that isn’t necessarily hard
2. Risk: Most actions that will actually change my life will fit here. Possibility of rejection and failure. Takes courage to accomplish. Might get hurt. Might feel foolish. Self-confidence comes from taking risks, so she’s suggesting it’s worth it to take risks.
3. Die: Seems like it would bring ALL the stuff to the surface and be really, really scary. As if part of us would die if we did that thing. Doing it feels like you will never be the same on the other side…which is a good thing…and also can be scary.

“Unresolved issues become a burden on our well being.”

Seriously. I’ve been living with this one for several years with some unfinished projects and loose ends that just have NOT been tied up properly. They haunt me regularly and I feel shame, guilt and embarrassment about them. It’s awful.

Activity

Area of life that would have to change in order for me to be more true to myself: Definitely my business stuff.

5 Stretches I could take in my work/business:

1. Start at the beginning of Mark’s book and go through the exercises one at a time so I can start developing a relationship with my business again. Basically, take myself back to Heart of Business school.
2. Start using The Business Oasis for my accountability with myself and keeping myself honest with my tasks as well as the exercises from the book that I’m doing.
3. Update the order page for this particular program and print it out so I *see* it in reality and know what I’m working on.
4. Create a big mind map on a poster with my current projects and the vision for my business so I *see* it also.
5. Spend time working in the studio tomorrow and getting familiar with that space.

5 Risks I Could Take In My Business

1. Let the list know that I’m making a new video for them. Do it and give it to them. (Does feel risky!)
2. Create a survey for one of my lists I haven’t written to in a while and get back in touch with them.
3. Create a video for that list based on their survey results and then give it to them.
4. Respond to some of the emails that I’ve been avoiding responding to. (Yuck! I don’t want to.)
5. Asking the members in one of my programs what we can do to make things better.

5 Actions That If I Did Them, Would Feel So Scary It’d Be Like A Part of Me Was Dying

1. Writing to the people who bought the book.
2. Giving myself 2 weeks to finish the manual and making it happen.
3. Holding myself to doing 3 hours total of focused content/writing work a day. Each day I don’t do it, I give $50 to a cause I don’t believe in.
4. Calling everyone who bought the book and having an individual conversation with each person. Being me and open and honest and seeing how I could help and what I can do to make things right between us.
5. Taking a vacation and getting out of town without my laptop for at least 3 days.

Today, Stretch, Risk, or Die

If you stretched each day, how would your life change?

I’d be getting more and more confidence in what I was able to do. I’d see I was capable of more than I thought I was. I’d be growing.

What stretch, risk, or die must you take in order to change your life?

Definitely these things in business. Business is where all the leverage in my life is happening right now. It’s related to all aspects of my life. My personal life, health, entertainment, etc. I’m seeing it all hinging around business. That’s where the work needs to be done.

What stretch, risk or die have you ignored that’s stopping you from being true to yourself?

Definitely the manual. I’ve been humiliated about the status of that project. The way I’ve hid from people. Avoided people. It’s been awful. Ashamed to let anyone know that I have anything else going on in my life besides that particular project. As if I should only be working on it until it’s done…and that people are hating me for doing other things in my life than finishing that project. It’s been such a source of soreness and pain and regret. Deep regret. Deep shame. Really I can’t believe I’ve been carrying this for so long. I just haven’t been able to get out from under it yet. This chapter is helping me look at it…and it’s been coming up in my mind more and more for me to think about lately.

Which stretch, risk, or die do you want to avoid at all costs?

Again, it’s the manual. I feel like I’ve lost all sense of relationship with those people and they dislike me and distrust me. I feel as though my word means nothing to them because I’ve changed my mind so many times and said so many things that haven’t been true. That haven’t come to be. Why would they even care what I have to say. Why do they even want to hear from me any more? And even if I did say something that was true for me or heartfelt or honest…why would they care? They’ve seen me do that before. They know I say things and then stuff doesn’t happen. I feel totally lost in my relationship with them. Like I can never make it right. Dang. That’s some heavy shit to be carrying around. But there it is. My die has to do with dealing with this old book project.  A project that has brought me so much stress and physical illness over the last couple of years. It’s daunting to even think about it. That’s why I haven’t been.

I see that’s also why I’m going to need to make it a super priority. The degree to which that project is killing me…is TOO MUCH. I can’t let that keep happening to me. I need to take care of myself and my life and my projects. I need to get on top of this thing. I need to show myself that I am strong enough to do it. I can move beyond the pain that started all the stress around the manual in the first place. I am bigger than that.

I know how to complete this manual. I know how to make it a beautiful thing. I know how to get right with my customers. I know how to move forward and make stuff happen. It has to do with my die. It has to do with getting this project out TOMORROW and working on it for at least 50 minutes. It’s totally something I can do. I will do it. That’s my new commitment. And if I feel like chickening out tomorrow, I’m going to reread this post and remind myself that I’m a bad ass and I can do whatever I set my mind to. I can even pull out an old project folder and reaquaint myself with it for 50 minutes on Thursday. That’s what I’m doing.

Big inhale. I can do it!

May 09 (Happy Face Day.)

June 2009 (Painful face Day.)

I’ve been going through a lot of body transformation over the last few months. Most of them I’ve loved.

Well, this most recent picture here doesn’t show a health transformation that I intended to have happen. Yet it did happen, so lemme tell you what’s going on…

Here’s what I’ve been experiencing in the most recent picture: June 30, 2009

• Blisters on my lips
• Ulcers on my tongue
• Rawness on the roof of my mouth
• Ulcers on my gums
• Ulcers inside my lips
• Ulcers inside my cheeks
• Terrible bad breath (Can you imagine with all those sores in there?)
• Ulcers on the punching bag thing in the back of my throat that I keep forgetting the name of.
• Seriously painful swallowing
• Red, itchy eyelids
• Red, itchy sores on both of my upper arms (And a few individual ones scattered around my legs)

It all started late Friday night when I thought, “Hmmm. Maybe I had too much acidic salad dressing tonight.” It was the first sign of having a little bump inside my lower lip. But it wasn’t anything alarming at that point.

When I woke up Saturday morning there were pronounced pus-filled bubble blisters around the inside of my lips in several places. It was slightly difficult to swallow.

I was bummed. And scared.

See, back in late Sept/ early Oct. 07, I was in the hospital for almost 3 weeks with a freak outbreak of Crohn’s like symptoms. I had the mouth ulcers, I had the painful swallowing, I had diarreaha, (wow, I spelled that right the first time. I think I’m ready for the spelling bee.) And I was vomiting. I wasn’t able to eat. And I was only getting in very limited liquids.

But in that situation I didn’t go to the hospital right away because I didn’t know that there was something terribly wrong going on inside my body. I just thought I had a weird flu and that it was going to pass soon enough.

It wasn’t getting anywhere near better though, so I finally went to the ER for the first time in my life by choice. (Only other time was in 4th grade w/a broken wrist and 7th grade w/a broken collar bone.) But I’d never been to the ER as an adult and certainly not because I was so sick that I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I was admitted that night and didn’t come out for almost 3 weeks. Turns out my intestines were seriously bleeding and had ulcers scattered all throughout them. My stomach didn’t have any ulcers. Just everything else did. They were even talking about taking out a portion of my colon in surgery because it was so decrepit and gnarly with ulcers.

There’s a lot from the hospital stay that I don’t remember because I was so fatigued and was receiving serious drugs to help me with the pain my body was in. Perhaps I’ll recall some of those memories here to share with you when I’m feeling particularly brave. But for now I just wanted to give you the back story of why the mouth sores this weekend caused me to be scared and bummed. I didn’t want to go through that again and I was worried that it might be the onset of something similar, ya know?

So after waking up with the sores in my mouth on Saturday morning, and kinda toughing it out through the day with worry and rest…I went to the ER at 6pm. I wasn’t going to take any chances of this situation getting like it was in 2007.

The was crazy busy. My Sweet Bee even saw someone in there on a gurney with their leg chopped off waiting for them to sew it closed. Good thing I had my head focused on the nurse in front of me. I was intent on making it to my little curtain room repeating my Ho’oponopono mantra as peacefully as I could. There was a lot of suffering going on in that emergency room, that’s for sure.

We pulled the curtains tight and I got into my little back-opening nightie they gave me. I was glad I wore my cheetah print panties from Victoria’s Secret because, Hello!? Who says you have to wear granny panties if you’re in the hospital? It was really for my scared inner child that I wore them anyway because it made it more like we were going to a party.

Dr. Hunt, my ER doc ordered a cat scan done of my belly because I had felt a bit of cramping in that area. Not a good sign since I’d had a history of Crohn’s. So I drank some grape-flavored drink that had a bunch of iodine in it. Had to sign a waiver before I could drink it. Apparently some people are seriously allergic to it.

Then when I was wheeled into the Cat Scan room by this young guy Orlando, I received more iodine directly through my IV. It was warm and made me feel like I was peeing on myself. Good thing I really wasn’t. I didn’t bring a change of cheetah print panties with me.

The iodine was for contrast so that they could see what was going on in the belly area. Results came back that there was nothing inflamed in there.  Hooray! That was really good news.

I also swished some Viscous Lidocaine – terribly nasty flavored goo that numbed my mouth sores and my throat so I could be in less pain. Helped with the mouth sores. Made my throat feel even more closed up and I started getting scared about not being able to breathe, but I kept being able to anyway.

Had .5 mg of a pain drug called Dilauded. Wow. This stuff is powerful. From having like no food in my body for a couple of days to having that pumped into my body was like a tidal wave of feeling flooding my body. Fortunately it felt good instead of terrible. And it definitely calmed my anxiety. I was able to relax and doze off with my eye mask on a little bit.

End result of ER trip:

• Abdominal pain – Uncertain Cause
• Rx for Gross Goo to numb oral area.
• Super cute young nurse with long eye lashes and stylish glasses who made me smile
• Got an IV of saline to help hydrate me
• No inflammation in belly area Yay!

So now it’s Wednesday morning…what’s happened since then?

• It’s gotten more difficult to swallow.
• My body ached from head to toe like I had a terrible flu.
• I sobbed for like 20 minutes straight, slobbering into a towel.
• I went to my GI doc (all about the guts) and he wasn’t so encouraged.
• Received Rx for Prednisone, a heavy steroid that will relieve the swelling in my mouth, and probably make my face swell up instead as one of the side effects. Puffy Predinsone face. It happens. And since it’s not painful, it’s way better than puffy lips and inside of the mouth.

Yadda yadda…This is all the stuff on the outside. The physical stuff.

What’s really fascinating (and what I’m choosing to put my attention on as much as I can) is the emotional internal stuff. The stuff going on with my feelings, my subconscious, and my relationship with myself that are making this physical stuff have a fertile place to come and freak out.

Maybe I can share some of that with you later. This is plenty for now. I just took my 2 a.m Prednisone pills with a couple of sips of water and my mouth is burning. It’s really uncomfortable to drink, swallow, talk. So I’ll be mostly quiet today. Writing when I feel up to it. Open to receiving your love in whatever form it may show up.

My Sweet Bee and my 2 lovely neighbors are taking excellent care of me and I am so loved.

Okay. I unfollowed like 300 people on Twitter on Saturday.

A website helped me unfollow a bunch at once (I don’t remember the link for it) then I did the rest manually over the course of the day…a few here, a few there.

Funny thing? I probably unfollowed the guy who I was following who told me about the site that would help me start unfollowing people.

Reasons I unfollowed people (in no particular order):

• I didn’t like your avatar. Avatars are like pictures hanging on my wall at home, so if yours wasn’t something I liked looking at, I unfollowed purely for decorative reasons.
• You don’t @reply to people or to me.
• You mostly or only tweet quotes.
• You mostly or only tweet RTs (re-tweets from other people.)
• You mostly or only tweet article titles and blog post titles. Can you tell from those 4 that I prefer having conversations now?
• You tweet with a lot of symbols like hearts, stars, music notes, or create wave patterns with slashes and dots (somehow). See above reason about decorative issues.
• Other random reasons like “just because I felt like it.”
• You say things that I’m not interested in.
• If I felt blah or yucky in any way after reading your tweet.

Yeah, that about sums it up. Especially the last two. I’m now choosing to create a Twitter stream that supports me in feeling encouraged, empowered, and inspired. Oh, and happy.

I didn’t have the awareness before, but now I actually value my Twitter stream. It’s a beautiful thing and I want to nurture and take care of myself and the people who follow me. It’s all about the Twitter stream.

So if I think you’re saying some cool things and I think it’ll be fun talking with you and sharing and learning together…and your avatar is something I’d like to hang on my wall, or at least put on my fridge as a magnet, we’ll keep getting along just fine and we’ll play in my Twitter stream together.

If not, well, I’ll probably unfollow you as a way to take care of myself and enjoy my life more. It’s not personal. After all – it’s because of me that I followed you in the first place.

So if you’ll excuse me, I might just quietly back out of your room and close the door behind me. That’s what an unfollow is.

Now…

Some cool stuff has been happening after unfollowing so many people…

• I enjoy Twitter more. I used to go to Twitter on the web and see all these tweets that were like nosiy subject lines in my inbox. I ignored them and actually felt agitated looking at all the stuff in my Twitter stream. Most of them were from people I had never talked to, and didn’t necessarily want to talk to, and it was not a friendly feeling place. Now when I get on Twitter I see more of what I want to see. Granted, it’s Saturday night so it’s different than 2pm on Tuesday afternoon, but at least I’m getting a head start while the traffic is slower.
• I am taking control of my input. Ya know how it’s said that we’re a combination of the 5 people we hang out with the most? Well, I made a list of some of the top people I hang out with, then realized that when I’m on Twitter, I’m “hanging out” with all the people in my Twitter stream. There are some people that I am/was following who I would not choose to have influencing me. So I’m intentionally choosing what types of vibes and messages show up in my Twitter stream and deselecting others.
• Twitter is like a newsletter list. When I’m thinking about what to send to my newsletter lists, I actually think about it. Whatever I send to my subscribers is intentional and it has the people on my newsletter list in mind. I used to see all this busy NOISE on my Twitter stream so I would come and kinda blast something into the crowd without really thinking about who was on the receiving end. It was like I was talking to nobody in a way. Now I have more of an awareness that I’m actually speaking to people when I tweet things and it’s not just talking to nobody. Might be a no-brainer to you, but I wasn’t seeing it.
• I was a big stereo-typer. So I used to have a bunch of different topics I would follow on Twitter. Marketers, Business Owners, Vegans, Vegetarians, Parents, Celebrities, Raw Foodists, Artists, Fitness Coaches, Life Coaches, Triathletes…lots of stuff. And often times  I followed people based on whether those types of words were in their profiles.  I was acting under the (very silly) assumption that if someone was a tri-athelete, or a business owner, that’d I’d actually enjoy what they were writing in their Tweets because we had at least that one thing in common. This was not what happened. There’s way more to picking people to follow on Twitter than just scanning for keywords in their bios. Instead of reading bios, I’ve now learned to read their Tweet stream to see what kind of stuff they post. Do I want that stuff showing up in my Tweet stream? Because if I follow them, it will!
• It’s OK to be discerning. There are people on other social media things like Facebook and MySpace that I would not want to hang out with. I wouldn’t want to read their page. I wouldn’t want to see what songs they’re listening to. I prefer not seeing their wallpaper choices. So here was the insight: Just because I’m cool and I’m on Twitter, doesn’t mean that everyone on Twitter is cool to the point of it being fun and enjoyable to hang out with them. I don’t have to hang out with everyone on Twitter. It’s totally okay. And I no longer agree with the notion that having a lot of followers or following a lot of people on Twitter is for everyone.
• I feel more friendly. By removing some of the “noise” that was distracting me, I get to bring more of myself to my time on Twitter.  I feel more open and available for reaching out to people I’m following who say interesting things and I can *actually* build relationships. Which brings me to the next cool thing…
• I finally get it. I’ve been on Twitter since December 2008…so about 6 months at the time of this writing. And so far, it’s just been a cool new thing – but I hadn’t really started building strong relationships with people. I saw Twitter as a break in my day, a place to be a voyeur, a place to kinda tap into the mainstream, a place to do research, to promote things, to collect followers, to hear the news that most people are interested in, and learn about other people. But it actually took me starting this blog (and sharing myself and my life) in order for me to go back to Twitter and actually understand the whole “build relationships” aspect of Twitter

I imagine you’ve got some thoughts on Twitter and following and unfollowing…or being followed or being unfollowed. What’s coming up for you?

So I’ve had this new blog for 3 days and already I’ve managed to: (in no particular order)

• Get lots of great welcomes and celebrations
• Talk about abortion, cookies, and mice all in one post.
• Refresh my page frantically like a rat trying to get more cocaine
• Question what my “voice” is and how I want it to come out
• Feel excited about showing up in my life and being seen for who and what I actually am
• Post a picture of a baby laying face down its crib in a not-so-comfy looking position
• Ruin my productivity by blogging in the prime hours of my work day
• Feel confused about how to name the categories on my blog – then decide it’s just lame
• Compare myself to some very well-established bloggers and feel stupid and wrong
• Consider quitting the whole thing and setting a little bomb to my Word Press account

Quite an eventful 3 little days for this blog, eh?

And a lot of stuff coming up for me…

Confession: I feel a little like Doogie House, MD right now. (Blast from the 80′s)

So I just took a deep breath and I’m going to take a look at some of this stuff that’s been coming up. Especially the comparision piece of it because that’s something that creates a lot of pain in my life no matter what topic it’s around.

One of the things I’ve been noticing is how my stuck stuff is really just a collection of other thoughts and words and pictures in my mind that have all jumbled together in a terrible math equation that means that ________ + __________ = yuck.

So me doing something new + comparing myself to others = yuck.

That’s one equation.

Me doing something new + not getting results that I want = yuck.

Me blogging + not getting comments = yuck.

Me putting myself out there + nobody writing back = yuck.

So I’ve got stuff around each of the components:

• Doing new things
• Comparing myself to others
• Blogging
• Putting myself out there
• Expectations not being met
• Not getting comments
• Nobody writing back

These are the pieces of my equation that, when combined in certain ways, make my life miserable. It’s not an intentional thing. It’s just what happens with the way these things are arranged in my subsconscious and the meaning I’ve given to each of them.

So let’s take the first one: Doing New Things

Here’s the dump of everything negative that comes up when I think about doing new things:

• It’s scary.
• I shouldn’t do it.
• Better to stick with things I know.
• I need to be safe.
• I don’t know what to do.
• I’m not going to be good at it.
• People will make fun of me.
• I’m not good enough.
• I’ll make a mistake.
• I need to excel.
• I hope I can do it.
• I’m nervous
• I doubt myself.
• I’m a loser
• I don’t deserve friends (This is where it starts bottoming out.)
• I’ll be alone
• People will talk about me behind my back.
• I am shameful.
• Curl up in a corner and die

Phew. Giving myself some love for following that out to the yuckiest of the yuck. So those are the parts of the equation that basically show that in my mind, on some level, doing new things = curl up in a corner and die. That’s the fear that my mind sees…so no wonder “stuff” is coming up here with this new blog.

So I’m going to work with this pattern (that’s all this is – one big huge pattern) and give myself something new to experience. I’m going to rewrite my sentences from the bottom up into something new and empowered.

This part is powerful because I’m bypassing the rational mind and speaking just to the subconscious part of my mind which doesn’t know the difference between past or future. It thinks everything it’s thinking about is thinking right now. So I’m speaking to that part of the mind that has been scaring itself with those other stories and I’m sharing some empowered things with it.

Starting with: curl up in a corner and die…and going up the list.

• I am proud to stand up and I am alive!
• I am proud of me!
• I am loved!
• I have lots of friends!
• I am worthy and I am good!
• I am awesome!
• I believe in me!
• I am confident!
• I know I can do it!
• I am already whole and good!
• I do a great job!
• I am awesome!
• I am respected and I am inspiring!
• I create great things!
• I know exactly what to do!
• I am already safe and secure!
• Doing new things is fun!
• I love doing new things!
• Doing new things feels good and I like it!

Okay…another deep breath. Taking in all the new things and realizing that I feel much better now after focusing on these stories. Which are also all true. I just haven’t been paying attention to them as much. So getting reconnected with those is awesome.

And…since I’m all about feeling empowered and realizing where I’m in control of my life instead of feeling like a victim to it, I’m choosing to create some new ways of doing things with my blog that support me in feeling empowered in my whole life. That’s my new intention here. And the #1 thing it’s going to involve is no blogging until it’s dark. Then I’ll have fun after the sun goes down.

If this blog were a “real room” like the Emerald Green & Timid Lilac room I had when I was 15…

This entry would represent me – totally coming in and flopping down on the bed with a big pillow pulled to my chest and burying my face in the sheets.

I feel like doing a belly flop on my bed and burying my face in the sheets until I fall fast asleep.

So, what brought me to want to plop face first into my bed?

Some thoughts like:

• I spent too much time on my new blog today.
• I did something wrong.
• That’s why I didn’t get comments.
• I shouldn’t have started this blog.
• I’m lame.

Basically I experienced a swooshing of doubt today. Doubt about whether I’m doing the right thing with showing up out loud again. Doubt about whether I’m strong enough. Whether I have enough to share. Whether it’s of interest to anyone – or everyone is so crazy-bizzy that they don’t have time or room in their lives for yet ANOTHER blog to read. And who cares what this one voice in California has to say anyway?

Is the doubt recognizable?

Confession: I had a blog a few years ago and was very active with it – and felt amazingly free and open with my life – until some less-than-lovely experiences came up and they left a seriously bad taste in my mouth about being in the spotlight and letting my goodness shine through. Ugh.

At least I’m recognizing that that’s part of the issue going on here. Seems to be coming up so I can heal it and move on. Kinda like my friend Andrea who told me that after she did a skydive and the parachute didn’t open all the way, after she healed up from her non-critical injuries, she immediately got back up in the plane and did it again so that she wouldn’t continue to be terrified by it.

Apparently blogging is one of those things that I gotta get back into to heal some old stuff and show myself that I’m strong enough and can do it and that it’s okay to be *out there* and sharing myself fully.

Since I’m bringing my awareness and self-introspection to my blogging, I see that it will (once again) be healing and growth-promoting and all that good stuff that helps me stay connected with the best version of myself. So this is good.

Ahhh. Deep sigh.

Now I’ll go get horizontal with a slightly lighter heart…