Sneak Up On Your Dreams

One of the most difficult things about achieving goals and therefore changing things in your life, is the mistakes that have to be made to learn.  I hate making mistakes.  I’m no spring chicken either and I feel like maybe I should have learned enough to not keep messing up.  That’s not the case, though.  Doing something new basically requires mistakes.  I have become a bit more generous with myself as I’ve gotten older and realized that mistakes are just learning experiences and I’m not necessarily an idiot just because I did not predict and prevent everything that could go wrong.  I often find that if I focus on my fear of making a mistake I can keep myself from ever getting started.

You must start.  Go blindly into that dark night, as long as you just go.  We all must move forward even when we know we’re exposing ourselves to looking like complete idiots and making mistakes that will cause us to spend extra time, energy or money.

Taking the safe route of doing things the way that others have already done them may feel a bit more comfortable, but may not get you where you want to go.  Even people taking the safe route may not be going where they want to, but they figure it’s, at least, an easier path to get there.

Take the safe, easier route sometimes.  Don’t make life too hard, but also don’t give up what you want just because the way to get there isn’t clear.  Mistakes pave the path to new routes.  Mistakes feel bad because we were taught they were wrong when we were kids, but perhaps we should have been told that they’re just a way to learn.  When you’re trying to go somewhere new and different remember that your path will be paved by mistakes and be grateful that they give you something to walk on.

I’m sorry I haven’t posted in so long. This post helps explains why:

When I quit my job in June I thought that my seemingly stress related symptoms, anxiety, sadness, tiredness, irritability and insomnia would disappear, but the symptoms didn’t go away. I figured that I just needed a few months of rest so I put very few expectations on myself and waited. After three months, though, the symptoms were still strong and I felt blocked. I felt like I couldn’t take my life any further than I had because I was always exhausted and unmotivated.

I’m generally very good at motivating myself, even when I don’t want to do things, but I was feeling like I wanted to listen to my body more and not push myself to do as much as I used to.  I started to feel for a while that I couldn’t do anything. I hypothesized that I might be mentally ill or have some kind of hormonal issue.  I felt like I was just going to have to take some time off from making any more of my dreams come true.

When I was feeling somewhat hopeless, though, I realized that I have written about methods of getting unstuck and I was stuck.  I needed to take a step back and work on these issues the way I would work to deal with any other obstacle I encountered.   I needed to make a plan and perhaps think creatively to deal with this obstacle.

First, I needed to stay aware of the fact that this truly was an issue and it wasn’t just going to go away with rest.  Second, I needed to put some energy into figuring out what was wrong.  Often obstacles stand in our way while we try to peer around them and pretend they aren’t there.  When we pretend we don’t see them or that they’ll fade away, we can’t really deal with them.  I decided that I was going to take the time and energy needed to deal with my physical issues and put most everything else on hold.

Third, I took data.  I’m a huge proponent of data.  Microsoft Excel was designed with me in mind.  I feel like I can see things so much more objectively when they’re turned into observations and even numbers.  I first created a simple spreadsheet with the dates at the top and I would just write a little narrative of how I felt that day in a box.  I couldn’t tell much from that so after I did that for a while I added another spreadsheet, which took the clearest symptoms I noticed, about 6 of them and put them at the top of a spreadsheet and put the dates on the side. I would then put a number between 0and 5 in the box for each symptom every day, related to how much I was feeling that symptom that day.  I also added a column for which day of my cycle (period) I was on to see if maybe this was hormonal.  I quickly saw that there was no real pattern to my symptoms.  They didn’t go up and down with my cycle or much of anything else.  That led me to believe that perhaps food was the problem.

I eat different things every day so maybe food was causing a problem.  I had previously found that I would be very tired from wheat and dairy so I tried removing those and seeing if that improved the rest of my symptoms.  They did!  I now had far more information than I did before. I had a good idea of what wasn’t the problem and an idea of what was.

Avoiding wheat and dairy forever is certainly possible, but I also felt like it meant that something was having trouble in my body.  My preferred method of dealing with any physical issue I have is homeopathy.  I’ve used homeopathy for 23 years and it has always been able to make me feel better.  I went to my homeopath and was started on a remedy.  I am still waiting to see how it affects me.  In the meantime I’m eating wheat and dairy-free and continuing to pay attention to what my body is saying to me.

Please don’t get stuck peering around and over your obstacles waiting for them to disappear on their own.  I was working so hard for so many years to get what I wanted that I wasn’t able to take time and figure out what was making my life so difficult.  When you feel stuck by anything don’t think that paying attention to it will make it worse.  If something is stopping you then things are already bad.  Go through the steps of recognizing your obstacles, committing to dealing with them, taking data and designing creative solutions.

I still have a ways to go.  I don’t feel great yet.  I still may not have all of this figured out.  I will continue to take data until I’m rarely bothered by these symptoms again.  I do feel more in control of my life and my body and my dreams, though, now that I am interacting with my obstacles and negotiating workable solutions.