changing things up

I've written about this before - if people want things to change, they have to do things differently. Or to put this in addiction terminology as I understand it, "If nothing ever changes, then nothing ever changes."

Sometimes, I am fairly stunned by how fast I can see this in others, and not in myself. Then, of course, I kick myself for being a judgmental ijit. I'm sure we are all masters of seeing ourselves in other people, of casting the first stone, but people, I have aim.

I've also talked about the fact that I'm someone who requires some professional supervision from time to time - I have a trainer, saw a dietician for awhile, and see a therapist about once a month. And yet, I hate help. So, while I'm pretty broke at this point, I'm also aware that keeping my head on straight, working from my strengths, and making sure I can walk into my next job with all of that up and running is a clear priority. This means I still go see my therapist.

Now, I'm not in the habit of paying people and then ignoring them. Maybe it happened that the dietician suggested adding spaghetti squash and cottage cheese to my diet, and I only did one of those. (Because, ewwww, the texture of some things just cannot be overlooked.) Maybe it happened one week last year where I logged workouts that didn't happen because I just couldn't tell my trainer and deal with his disappointment on top of my own. And maybe it happens from time to time that I question the method behind his madness. (But it's only happened once that he's told me to do an exercise, and I've tried and then just said to him, "I don't think I can.")

Therapy is the same but different. As a grown up, I can say honestly that I choose therapy not because I feel broken or concerned or depressed, but because I know the value of being able to analyze myself. And because from my cognitive psych research background (important note: this is NOT the same as having a professional background in clinical psych) I am deeply aware that it's hard to research oneself. All jokes about research = me-search aside figuring yourself out and making friends with yourself seems like maybe the best thing any person can do. And doing it alone means the research will be flawed. I explained it this way to someone yesterday,"Nobody asks you to talk about the mechanics of your own gallbladder by intuiting it. Why do we assume we can self-report on our own minds and brains?"

So, I don't assume I can do that with complete fidelity and perspective. And because my therapist is very upfront about his own biases, and because he works uber-hard to make sure we are understanding each other and asking the right questions, I feel comfortable presuming he is a good choice for an extra set of eyes and ears on the scene.

To me, it seems like it would be wasteful and stupid and ignorant and rude to pay him and then neglect what he has to say. Instead, I often choose to tell him when I'm questioning his suggestion. I just lay it out there.

This is all to say, I was fairly surprised today to find myself listening intently to what he was advocating, agreeing with so much of it, and then leaning so hard away from it. Hmmmm.

But here's the thing. I'm structured, and I do the things I do to stay comfortable. But that doesn't mean I am always doing what is best for me. That, if anything, was the very best definition of the meaning of the title of this blog when I started it . . that there could be a disconnect between doing the "right things, or the things I thought I was "supposed" to do and my feeling of satisfaction from them. Comfort can denote contentedness, but it can also denote stagnation. If I'm all about growing and changing, and honesty, and self-assessment and analysis then I should have the integrity to say that I sometimes . . . settle. Much less in the last three months than ever before, but three months weighed against 30 some years may not stack up just yet. I'm sure this is true for a lot of people, but my tendency to make decisions quickly, but then immediately try to pull the dust down all at once into something resembling order means that I'm not always looking at all of the information carefully with a focused view on what's GOOD for me. I'm busy running around trying to keep my corner of the world neat and tidy - it often feels like a full time job.

And here is the other thing - what I really believe is that we are very sophisticated, wet computers. We may not understand exactly how that computer gets programmed, and when I was in grad school I was very busy trying to understand a specific competence of the computer, and what parts of it were "hardware" and what parts were "software." But, I do believe that changing the output can often be traced back to changing the input.

If I want a different life from how things were in the fall, and I do - I need to be willing to put different things into it. If I want a job that respects me as a human being, that allows me to feel productive, satisfied, challenged, and supported to succeed, I need to be clear about that. If I want to have more success in balancing work and life, I need to feed myself with different expectations about that, and what it's ok to ask for. If I want things to be different, I need to be ok with things being different. Importantly, this means doing things differently than I have, feeding myself differently literally and metaphorically, and releasing myself from old patterns just because they are habit.

I won't lie. What's on the table here from today's session is pretty radical. On the other hand, the changes I'm hoping to make are pretty far reaching too. Viewed in that way, it actually starts to look promising and hopeful that I have had a "sabbatical" from working for two months. I can't say it's been a vacation, since it's been very, very hard to try and be this productive, this hopeful, and this focused without, well, a focal point. But it does mean that how and when this happened created an opportunity for me step away from external expectations and to know myself based on my own standards, my own principles, my own expectations. I want to live in that world where I create the right things for myself.

So that means not discarding taking big leaps of faith, considering different jobs than I did 5 years ago, eating differently, exercising differently, using my time differently, listening differently, drawing boundaries differently, and making decisions differently. Where normally I might go with my first emotional reaction to some of the things that have been proposed to me this week, I also have to remember that I would never let an introspective self-analysis of my gallbladder make a decision for me. And so, it might be worth considering the person I pay to help me see myself better might have a point.

Well, very thoughtful indeed today, readers and a pledge to try for some more concrete posts in days to come.