Rejection is protection!

What?Rejection is protection! How can that be?  This is a saying in 12-step programs.  When someone rejects you, or your proposal, it is actually a sort of "whew...dodged that bullet!" because even though you wanted "it" or wanted a relationship with this person, your IDEA of what you would actually receive in the bargain was just that:  YOUR IDEA.  Not the reality of what would occur.This is one of the hardest passages of adulthood.  Recognizing that the voice inside our head, the strategic mind that tells us what it thinks is good and bad, is actually not what is wisest in us.  There is another voice, "that small still voice within" that knows more but often scares that strategic mind and so it shuts that voice down.  I have a long time friend, going on 3 decades.  She is a recovering alcoholic.  She told me once that first time she tried a 12 step program it didn't work.  The step (maybe first?) that asks you to surrender to your higher power?  Well, she really believed that "She was her higher power".  And I don't blame her.  First of all she might be the most competent person I know, and I know so many, that this is actually a huge complement.  Second, she grew up where there was no reason to trust any adult around her and every reason to assume she was the only person that was for her.  The only person she could trust and the only person who would protect her, was herself.But when she said it ("I always thought I was my higher power.")  my first thought was "She is just like me."  I too find it easier to trust my idea of what should happen instead of trusting "life" or "God" or even that small still voice deep within me that whispers, maybe it is better this way.  My strategic mind hates that voice.  It doubles down on its list of why things should be the way it thinks they should.For most of us our idea about a job, a marriage, really any endeavor we wish for ourselves never materializes that way.  It is always something different.  Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but always different.  So silly me, why do I really think I know what is best?  So, picture me raising my right hand and swearing:  "When the "no" comes, on any front, I resolve to recall all the times a "yes" made me unhappy and say "I probably just dodged a bullet, and I don't know why yet."  Care to join me?  

"There's that feeling you get when you see something that you don't understand..."

"There's that feeling you get when you see something that you don't understand the origin of ... wonderment."The Brooklyn artist Swoon was quoted as saying this in the New York Times and when I read it so many things came together for me.

• Why adults and adolescents love small children.
• Why it can be difficult for us as adults, to be curious in the face of the unknown.  The uncertain.
• And why poetry so often appeals to us, especially at the most difficult times in our lives.

I think most of us "smart and savvy" (and maybe a bit world weary) adults do just the opposite of wonderment in the face of what we don't understand.  We don't get curious, we don't allow ourselves to be drawn toward the unknown, instead we just shut down and/or armor up.  We assume something negative and turn away.  What poetry does (think Robin Williams in the Apple commercial) is usher us into a larger world where wonderment is more easily accessible.  It helps us make or see things whole, including our own difficulties and our own lives.Of course, I realize there is real danger in the world.  My goodness look at the front page of any newspaper around the world.  Death and disease are everywhere.  On a large scale the world is beautiful and terrifying.  All the more reason for us to seize moments of wonderment.  But to grab hold of them we most notice them first. Let's start by looking close to home, people we know or situations at work.  When a colleague or loved one says something that I don't understand the origin of what do I do?  Too often I tell a story, make meaning based on my past experience and the culture I am part of ... but what might happen if instead I go to "wonderment".  To wonder and awe as in ..."that makes no sense to me, I wonder what s/he is seeing or experiencing that I am not."  Can you sense, that in that moment we are drawn in, we are drawn closer, just like a child to the first doodle bug they see? We all have this capacity.  We were born with it.  But it gets covered over with our preference or our habits of predict and control.  For just today, instead of making meaning, good or bad, in the face of something or someone we don't understand, why not try wonderment, real open hearted interest and curiosity about what we don't know?  Let's enter our beginner's mind or "don't know mind" and see what happens.   

Maintaining order rather than correcting disorder is the ultimate principle of wisdom. Nei Jing

So, how does one do this?  What does this look like in action? Here is an exercise to test drive this wisdom.  (I believe Nei Jing is a Chinese text written in  2nd century BC)1. Bring to mind a situation that is disturbing you for any reason.  Then, pause, take 3 deep breaths and ask yourself, what most deeply matters to me here, or how can I use this situation as leverage to create what I most love in my life and work?Immediately you are in a different place.  You are not in "problem focus" or "disorder focus" but you are in possibility focus or emergent order focus,  or as The Power of TED would say "Creator mode".  This shift in your thinking and feeling creates the space for you to go onto the 2nd step.2. Next, ask yourself, "what can you be deeply grateful for right now, in this situation that is troubling you?"  I know!  Crazy!  But do it.  And then ask yourself "What is working?  Where is there harmony already present?  How might this thing you don't want...actually be carrying within it the seeds for the order, harmony and well-being you do want?"  This of course is a challenging step, but stay with it, you will surprise yourself.3. Now from this place, from this deep well of gratitude and wisdom, choose your actions.  Your choices are much more likely to be proactive instead of reactive.   You are more likely to experience a sense of peace and well-being as compared with the feeling you get when you get to take something off the list!  Problem solving/correcting disorder mode is taking stuff off the list.  It may feel good in the moment, but often it comes from a place that is surface or reactive it will be back on the list in no time at all.  When that happens it is easy to end up feeling defeated and even victimized by the situation and that tempts you to correct disorder (problem focus) which leads to the same failed results.  But only over and over again! Einstein once said:  "You can't solve a problem at the same level of thinking that created it."  The choice to maintain order, or said another way, to focus on emergent order or what you are trying to create, is the new level of thinking Einstein was talking aboutTry it and see what happens!     

"What will you do, God...?"

 From the great poet Ranier Maria Rilke...“What will you do, God, when I die?I am your pitcher (when I shatter?)I am your drink (when I go bitter?)I, your garment; I, your craft.Without me what reason have you?..."

It is true, for each of us.  We are a little piece of God.  A particular expression of the Infinite and if we pull back on that expression, when we judge that expression, we judge Divine, we doubt.  We think we know best, but the part of us that is doing that thinking is the protective system called the ego or strategic mind.  This part of us is on the defense.  But if,  instead of listening to it, we turn the other direction, we do and be what we love, we wholeheartedly move toward what we love, then we give God full reign.  AND we “feel” like God…big "G" not small.  Feeling like a small "g" god, is grandiosity and hubris.  It may feel good in the moment but it is what Jungians might call being caught in an "inflation".BUT if instead we  know, we actually experience ourselves as a particular expression of the divine, then we want to kneel and kiss the ground.  We do not feel certain or powerful.  We feel awe.  We feel wonder.   We feel humility.  We feel like,“really, really? I get to be and do this?  Oh goodness," or "'Beam me up Scottie'.   When what you love, loves you back!”What if that is the secret?  The really big well kept secret? What if that is God?   What you love?  Don’t settle for god, it’s like trying to live on only cake, or only adrenalin.  It ends up leaving you empty, literally and figuratively.  The ultimate high that drops you to the ultimate low.  BUT there is another path, literally that puts allows you to move to another level.Einstein said, “you can’t solve the problem at the level of thinking that created it”  so instead of HIGH and then LOW and then HIGH…etc. how about something that is not in between, or in the middle of those two, but rather of an entirely different order?   That order is akin to the wonder and joy we felt as children, or on Christmas morning, or when watching a doodle bug curl into itself, or the first time we realize we are riding our bike without training wheels.  That feeling the Infinite's way of giving us a green light to keep going in that direction.  The direction of what we love.  What if it is really that simply?  And those doubting and critical thoughts?  Well, they never enlarge us.  They never call us to become someone we can truly admire.  Instead they call us to play it safe.  To stay separate and to protect and cling to what we have.  They call us to distrust not only others but ourselves and ultimately our destinies.If like Rilke, above I truly trust the little piece of stardust that is me...well, then paradoxically I quit judging myself and focusing on myself and whether or not I am good enough. What I do instead, is simply go out and express my little piece of heaven.  Just like the old song said..."this little light of mine...I'm gonna let it shine..."[audio m4a="http://www.nancywonders.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/03-This-Little-Light-of-Mine.m4a"][/audio]   

They're really saying I love you...

They’re really saying “I love you”…Everyone who has heard this song loves it.  It is a song of wonder and joy.  A song of seeing deeply to the heart of what is happening.  Yes, on one level that person that just reached out and said “Hi” or “What’s up?”  or “How’s it going?” is following a customary greeting practice when we meet someone.  But what Louis Armstrong knew, is that this was only the surface of the interaction.  At the heart of the greeting was “I love you”,  a desire for connection and community; an example of caring and kindness.I can almost hear your smart minds going, “How can s/he know that?” Or maybe it is saying “That is a sweet idea but really? Come on.”   Here is what I know for sure:  we are all a mess of different feelings and motivations and intentions.  We are everything.  None of us purely good or bad.  That’s what makes us so interesting … and impossible to predict!  For me it doesn’t matter if the idea that someone is reaching out to me is accurate or not.  When I choose to see a greeting as a request for contact and connection, my better angels take over, I become someone I admire.  AND the world becomes a little  brighter, softer and filled with wonder!   Just like the song says.So, where can you shift your seeing and hearing just enough to hear "They're really saying "I love you"?  Often it is only those smart minds of ours that cover over our experiences of wonder and joy with the mind's need for predictability and control.  Predictability and control are fine for machines and schedules but they can hurt living things, like relationships.  The choice is ours moment by moment.  This new year, I apprentice myself to wonder and joy.   To turn my dial to the frequency of ..."they're really saying, I love you"  I so hope you will join me.