It is all about slowing down, taking time for yourself and establishing new habits that will last a lifetime.
Theme – Breaking the Chain of Pain
Physical, mental, and emotional pain - the concept of ways to dis-identify from these patterns.
In what ways have you moved beyond seeing "pain" as yours?
Have you noticed that by simply bringing awareness to the pain, it shifts, or lifts completely?
Emotionally I like the concept of embracing the idea that the pain that is being directed towards someone is often not about them, but more about the person responsible for dishing it out. People hurt people often from a sense of guilt or because they themselves have been hurt, which although will never make it right to make other suffer, it does explain why someone might feel that is the only way they can deal with issues.
As I constantly tell people in my writing groups, especially the ones that have inferiority complexes about the rejection of their work, or not getting anywhere in competitions or not being selected for publication … it has more to do with the criteria that things are assessed on than the quality of their writing. If the piece submitted does not tick all the required boxes for the specific benchmarks, then it doesn’t matter how good it is it will be rejected. The trick is to keep submitting it and pursue other avenues. However, as with a lot of good advice I quite often fail to listen to it myself or take heed.
I suffer from the misplaced idea of ‘why-bother’ because nothing ever goes the way I want it to … so why waste my time trying. But I still try, then lose heart when I get rejections. What I have to learn to do is to shrug-off the negative stuff and only concentrate on the things that go well. To acknowledge the pain of rejection (as are as my writing is concerned anyway) but not let it get any kind of grip on future exploits.
In what ways have you noticed that there is an invisible connective tissue that binds us all?
My writing group is a diverse group of mixed ages, abilities, interests, physical and mental concerns and backgrounds, as such we often think very differently from each other. That said I am always surprised by just how many co-incidences occur. Many times, I have set out the topic and exercises for the workshop to find that people in the group share things on those very topics, things that have been working on but have no idea as to the subject of the day. The more we get to know each other and the more comfortable we are being in each other’s company the more this seems to be happening.
So, the main thing I have got from this week is an acknowledgment that I too often sweat-the-small-stuff … lose my temper far too quickly, expect everything (and everyone) to live up to my standard – to strive for everything to be perfect and not settle for a ‘that-will-do’ outcome.
What I need to do is to learn to live by the phrase ‘Close enough for jazz’ .
Meaning that it is sufficient to suit the purpose(s) at hand without needing to be perfect.