Don't Squeeze the Bunny!

I know we've discussed my recovering perfectionism, but I'm not sure if we've hit on my overwhelming desire for control (at all times) yet. Perfectionism and control go together like peanut butter and chocolate (and can be just as dangerous, though arguably less fattening). So, I would say I spend a fair amount of my time trying to control my need for perfectionism and control (see what just happened there??).

I would like to argue (with myself, apparently), that a little bit of control can be a good thing. It helps me stay focused, decide what I want in life, and set goals to achieve all of these things I want.

Now, I don't know if you've known many therapists, but we are crazy about goals. There's purpose in this; if we don't know where clients want to end up, we can't really help get them there. Goals help fulfill a sense of control over therapy.

Thus, when you're a therapist and a recovering perfectionist/controlaholic, goals are the coolest.

Goals: Cooler than a frozen waterfall. 

About two weeks ago, I had a (fairly important) presentation* that determined quite a bit about the next 9 months of my life. Needless to say, I was a bit stressed that week. The morning of the presentation, I picked up two of my Deepak Chopra books I have lying around, and opened one up to him explaining the Law of Detachment. He says,

"In order to acquire anything in the physical universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it. This doesn't mean you give up the intention to create your desire. You don't give up the intention, and you don't give up the desire. You give up your attachment to the result." 

Oddly enough, (well, not that odd after what we discussed in this post) I picked up the second book and happened to open it on the very same idea. Simply stated in Christine-ese**, you:

 1) Create your goal,
 2) Give up your attachment to the outcome, and
 3) Let God/the Universe handle the details.

Now, please refer to the beginning of this post when I explained my intense desire for control. Unfortunately, Point two above does not say, "Freak out and focus so much on the goal and outcome and don't think about anything else." Oh no. Point two is saying "Relax, and know that you'll be okay regardless of how things turn out." Point three goes beyond and says, "Oh, and while you're relaxing, the Powers that Be will figure out the details. You don't have to."

Have you ever met a control freak who lets somebody else figure out the details of something very important?!?

I didn't think so.

Take a note from the ceramic cat on the fire escape. Just chill.

I was chatting with a lovely lady the other day and she mentioned that in all areas of her life but one, she was doing really well. It turns out that in this one area, she had a very clear, outlined goal, and spent most of her waking hours thinking about how she was going to achieve it.

(Have you ever met someone who really really really wanted to find a significant other, and spent hours thinking about being in a relationship, planning out their perfect spouse, going on endless dates, etc...only they don't have any success in finding someone? Eventually, this person decides that they will never find a partner, accepts their fate as a singleton, and changes their focus to their own needs. Before you know it, after this paradigm shift takes place [aka the person decided they would be fine even if they never find a partner], they happen to randomly meet someone, fall in love, and live happily ever after.)

It was the same kind of thing for this lady. In the other areas of her life that were going well, she relinquished control and decided that whatever happened would happen, and she was going to be great no matter what. After a few months of this attitude, things fell right into place and were great!  This last thing, however, she couldn't let go.

For some reason, the three points that we talked about earlier jumped in my head during this conversation, and I imagined a small child with a little bunny rabbit. Now, children aren't always the most gentle with little animals...often when you're around a child with a  bunny (dog, cat, bird, lizard, whatever), you'll hear their parents saying, "Gentle...gentle....gentle!!!" Inevitably, the child will hold on to the bunny SO tightly it will want to leave. The tighter the child squeezes, the more the bunny wants to go.

Oddly enough, I don't have any pictures of bunnies in my files. In lieu of a bunny picture, here is me trying to make friends with a peacock. Same principle - the more I tried to be friends, the less he was interested. 

Now, picture that one big goal you have as a sweet, soft little bunny rabbit (Clear explanations of the metaphor I'm going for will be in parentheses and italics) You're holding Bunny, giving Bunny soft, gentle caresses, (Point One: you have established your goal) but you sense that Bunny doesn't want to be held anymore (You are not getting what you want related to said goal). Your immediate reaction is to hold Bunny tighter (Goal is not happening soon enough!). Eventually Bunny's eyes start bulging (You're getting stressed, more and more of your energy is being focused on not getting the goal) and if you don't stop soon, worse things are going to happen than Bunny hopping out of your hands (Your focus on the goal is making things worse in your life, not better! Plus, you're not any closer to achieving your goal than when you started!) 

So, after that weird and visual metaphor, the aforementioned lady and I discussed that the more she focused on her goal, the more it became like her squeezing the life out of poor Bunny.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else? It certainly hit home for me. I have no problem letting go of the little things in life, but the big things, the Goals (with a capital G) I have in place that are part of how I identify myself and that are big pieces of my "Life Plan" - those are harder to let go. And I tend to squeeze the crap out of Bunny with those.

Thus, in order to avoid being hypocritical and give advice that I don't take, I have been working on my own Big Goals, and have been practicing letting them go. So, I will remind myself on a daily basis, "Don't squeeze the bunny!" and just allow things to fall into place as they always do (when I stop trying to control things).

As always, I'd love to hear your own experiences with letting go, and would appreciate any hints/tips/tricks you feel like sharing for (me!!) others in the same boat.

I am so grateful that you took the time to read this, and I hope you have an incredible day :)



*The presentation went very well, thank you! 
**This is a very unique language that can be difficult to translate at times. It is rarely consistent but often spoken in a very  high pitched voice. 

GET EXCITED!

Yesterday evening Greg pulled into the driveway, and as soon as the dogs heard the garage door go up, they went nuts.  The dogs were barking and excitedly running around the house, and were ready to greet him with love and kisses the moment he walked through the door. This is certainly not a new phenomenon, and occurs every time someone arrives home.

The inspirations for this post, certainly excited about something!

In fact, the more I thought about it, these two pups get super excited for a lot of stuff. Actually, everything. For example (interpretation of dog response is in italics): What, a tiny dog treat that probably tastes like cardboard?! FREAK OUT YAY! The neighbor is walking down the sidewalk? OH MY GOODNESS! We get to go for a walk!? HOLY COW!! Someone is stopping by? SOOO EXCITING! 

And, typical for my (undiagnosed ADHD) brain, my train of thought went in a million different directions after this, briefly stopping at my experiences at work. As I've probably mentioned before, I work as a medical family therapist at a primary care clinic (mostly pediatrics). After the kids see the doctor, they get a sucker and a sticker at checkout. You would be amazed at how darn exciting getting a sugar-free sucker and the cartoon sticker of their choice is. It is so entertaining!

In fact, I think kids and pets have this excitement thing nailed down. There is an unrefined sense of joy and pleasure that we grown ups have lost somewhere along the way. Spend an afternoon with a kid (especially if they are between 2 and 5 years old) and everything is exciting.

I took this out of one of the children's therapy games I use at work...I thought it was a little racy for my pediatric population, but it incidentally works perfectly as a magnet on my fridge.

So, being the true social scientist I am, I started brainstorming what little things I get kid-and-dog-caliber-excited about:

1. Although I try to make healthy eating a priority in my life, I have a soft spot in my heart for ice cream. I don't know why, but the thought of getting a Dairy Queen Blizzard turns me into a kid heading to Disney World. Greg and I were driving around town the other day when he pointed out a building site and said, "Oh, they're putting in a Dairy Queen there." (We don't have a DQ within 45 miles of our house at the present moment). After my passionate reaction, he said, "I've never seen you that excited before!" and I said, "About ice cream?" And he said, "Nope. About anything." I hope he's kidding about that.

2. I love anything sparkly. This doesn't have to be diamond jewelry related (though oh em gee that is a good way to make my high pitched voice squeal even higher), anything sparkly will do. I don't necessarily own a lot of things that sparkle, but I really enjoy glittery things. A two year old came in the office this week with glittery pink Toms (in 2 year old size!!) and they melted my heart. I have a few canisters of glitter around the house and I really like to just look at them. Like a bird distracted by shiny things.

3. I think television is a fantastic little invention. Greg and I don't have cable, so we don't always have the pick of the litter when it comes to programming. However, sometimes through Amazon Prime or Netflix or whatever, we'll stumble across a new series that we really like. I honestly get so pumped when we snuggle up to a few new (at least to us) episodes of a good show. Current favorites are Arrested Development, The League, Mad Men, and The Newsroom. Love it! 

4. I love my little house, she has such a calm, lovely personality of her own. She also had a gorgeous garden that I have managed to (almost) completely ruin in the two years we've lived here. However, thanks to my husband's heroic efforts (when he isn't actually helping save real lives at work), we have a little garden of our own. It is so fascinating to me to see a flower blooming that we (read: he) grew. I mean, seriously! When is the last time you really looked at a flower? Each and every one is such an amazing miracle. AND SO PRETTY!

Another little miracle. Awww! I also think my husband gets the photo credit for this one. 

5. Two words: Crayola crayons. There is little more exciting in the world than a brand new yellow box of Crayolas. (I can smell them now!) I don't think I need to expand on this, but seeing as I am closer to 30 than any other major age benchmark, I've come to terms with the fact this is not something I will grow out of. Nor should I. 

6. Snail mail. Lately, I have been uber-blessed with a ton of hand-written letters and cards out of the blue. How exciting is it to check the mail and see a real card?? Even more exciting? An unexpected package! I will try to make an effort to send out more random letters and packages, I think it's a pretty universal thing to get excited about, right?


These came to mind right away, and my challenge to myself (and YOU) is to try and find a few little things every day that really make me excited (happy, joyful, etc). I have a feeling that if we spent a little bit more time on finding the excitement in everyday life, we'd feel a lot more magical :)

Have an amazing weekend! As usual, I'd love to hear about what little things get you excited - comment below if you have some suggestions for the rest of us to look for :)

Christine

What's Your Sign?

The comedian Bill Engvall (name drop alert: I totally met him at a charity golf outing a few years back, he's actually very nice) has a tagline that he often uses in his routine where he says, “Here’s your sign.”

I can't explain the look on his face, but that is definitely Bill Engvall.

He usually (read: always) means this in a not-so-complimentary (but usually funny) way, as in people should be handed signs when they do something stupid. I, however, would like to take a little bit of a different approach to the whole sign situation.

A sign of awesomeness.

I tend to lean towards the “life is magical” end of conceptualizing the world, and with that mindset comes a tendency to look for, well, magical things.  The best of these little reminders that magic does exist tend to come in quirky, silly ways. Let me tell you about a few that come to mind:

The man that bought my parent’s last house had a thing for Rod Stewart songs (I also have a nerdy love for Mr. Stewart) . As it turns out, after he and his wife walked out of their first look at the house, they got in the car and a Rod Stewart song was playing on the radio. At that moment he knew that my parent's house was the house for them.

On a similar note, a girlfriend of mine told me the other day that on her first date with her now-husband, her go-to “I’m on the right track” song started playing, despite the fact that the genre of the song was not at all congruent with the music usually played at their date venue. She knew right away that it meant something great was in store for their relationship.

Obviously, the story of how I met my husband (just in case you missed it) was full of signs that we were meant to be together…but you’ve already heard that story. However, when I first met my husband, my dog Mabel was spending the summer with my parents until I could sell my condo. Because of this, Greg and I had dated for several months before he had ever met her. Now, my sweet little pup had developed a certain (and dramatic)...let’s say…aversion…to men (with very few exceptions). I hadn’t mentioned this to Greg, and though my parents and I never mentioned it to each other, we were all anxiously awaiting to see her reaction to him. When Greg walked through the front door, Mabel went right up to him, nuzzled, and they were instant best friends. To this day, they are inseparable. Another sign!

Man and dog. I sometimes get a little jealous of their relationship.

A few weeks ago I was talking to someone who had recently lost his mother. He told me a story of how she would always give him a $20 bill when they saw each other, even if she couldn’t afford it or if he didn’t really need it. One day, as he was thinking of her, he opened up his wallet and tucked in it was (you guessed it!) a $20 bill.   That, along with a few other similar signs, gave him the peace he needed to know that she was still very much with him.

I was shopping the other day and had a random thought about a family member who passed away years ago. I left the changing room I was in, picked out more clothes, and returned to the (very same) changing room a few minutes later. As I opened the door to hang up my potential purchases, I looked down to see a penny on the floor, dated with the year of his birth. Bam. Sign.  

A sign that our Chinese food was only the start of a great evening.

Some of you naysayers might be thinking, “But Christine, those are just all coincidences…those things could just happen to anybody at any time, no big deal.” My response to you would be: you are absolutely right. Songs play on the radio, dogs like some people and not others, we all find money stuffed away in different places at one time or the other. Pennies fall out of pockets every day.  

However…what if there’s more to it?

What if these silly little things really are signs, designed to encourage us and show us that we’re doing the right thing, on the right path? I know that for me, life is much more enjoyable when I decide to see things as signs instead of just coincidences. Things seem more special, more magical, and give me a sense of peace that I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

Now, a special task for my readers - I want to hear about the signs that you've been given - post a comment below about any of your own experiences or stories. I am so excited to hear about the magic you've experienced in your life :)

Have a wonderful day!