The Shift Diaries

Yesterday, I felt very anxious, and to alleviate that feeling, I started packing. This action was somewhat distracting for a while, but as time passed, I noticed that I was generating unsettling signals of fear, anxiousness, and tension, over and over and over. I tried simply noticing, acknowledging, and accepting the fear, which did help to dissipate the signal in the moment, but it was like trying to mop up an oil spill without dealing with the source. Within moments, I’d feel that signal jangling through my body again.

By nighttime, I was getting tired of all this fear. I don’t want to go through the next month or so this way. But what to do about it?

I thought about how much of my anxiety comes from not being able to “predict the future” the way I seem to think I can if I have a big pile of money available. When I had money, it seemed that I could just buy my way out of challenges – hire people to help me, pay for interim solutions if things didn’t work exactly as I’d wanted them to, just buy whatever it seemed I needed. (more…)

Getting ready to move is triggering plenty of unsettling automatic responses, which is making me highly aware of how little my intellectual command of Shift concepts applies to getting through an actual day comfortably. On that subject, today I got a nice e-mail from someone who read the Shift Diary entry where I talked about my writing issues. He said:

I wouldn’t worry about whether or not you get too many comments on your blog.  Just relax and know that those who need to get information will find it there when they need it.  That seems to be how things really work.  I would also think that perhaps Elias would say to you  that any entries you put into your blog are most efficiently done if you have no expectation of anyone reading it.  Just share the information that you wish to share. Those who need it will find it.

I replied: I agree with you wholeheartedly. If I were completely in the present with my attention totally on myself, and filled with trust and self-acceptance, and capable of stopping automatic responses before I even triggered them (and able to leap tall buildings with a single bound – why not that, too?), then I wouldn’t worry about anything. (more…)

I’m getting ready to relocate back to Santa Fe, and I was wondering what that would do to blogging, since the actual logistics of moving are preoccupying me. Besides, I told myself, maybe no one is even looking at the damned blog. But someone sent me an e-mail about reading the Shift Diaries (Hi Bob!), which renewed my interest in this direction. So, I’ll be blogging about this move, I’m sure.

Before I start this entry, I’ll put this request into the ethers: I’m looking for a house-sitting or caretaking position in Santa Fe, a place to land until I can find more permanent quarters there. Or if anyone knows of a nice place to rent, let me know. I have excellent local references! (more…)

Over the past day or so, I’ve gotten back to clarity about my focus for writing the Shift Diaries. I remembered that I wanted them to be a way to collect Shift-related information that interests me and helps me be clear and feel good – FOR ME. I wanted to put out there all the helpful hints, tips, tricks, and methods I want to remember to use, and my thoughts about what works and doesn’t work when I’m trying to apply information about this Shifty way of living – FOR ME. I wanted it all to be FOR ME — what I like, what I think is fun, what I find interesting and useful. I assumed that others would like that, too, but I so quickly fell into, “There’s an audience, so you can’t do this in the loose, spontaneous, jumping all over the place style that you use to talk with Anne in your e-mails.” (more…)

Anne K. and I have exchanged a few communications today about dealing with conflict. One conflict I’m experiencing is related to creating the entries for the Shift Diaries. I announced they would be imperfect, but I notice whenever I work on an entry, I trigger my belief that they must be perfect. They’re being made public, after all. What will people think if they aren’t PERFECTLY written?!?!?!?

This conflict makes writing for the blog (how I HATE that word) a chore, which is not what I intended. So, how to allow my natural energy to flow in a free and fun way without opposing it with expressed beliefs about the importance of looking good in public? How do I allow my natural energy to flow when an automatic response is galloping away with me?

As usual, it’s very easy to parrot the concept, “I simply need to accept that whatever I do is FINE!” Implementing that concept is not so easy. (more…)

About 30 years ago, when I was approximately 28, I was having a day of illness where I felt so bad I’d gotten back into bed. I was awake. It was a beautiful afternoon. Suddenly this pops into my mind, “What would happen if someone came and took all my makeup? Would I be okay without it?”

Now, something about the way the question was posed made it clear that I’d have to do without makeup. It was not as though it would be gone from my house, but I’d be able to head down to the store, bare-faced, and replace it. This seemed an odd thing to consider (as far as I was concerned, I required makeup to feel presentable), but I reflected a moment or two on that question, and decided,”I guess I’d be okay.”

More questions like the first came steadily. It was sort of as though someone asked me, and I was replying, but it was also sort of as though I asked these questions of myself. Except that these were not questions I would ever have thought to ask myself. (more…)

After days of laboring over:

• Changes to my website
• Writing and rewriting my contact page (what an opportunity for discounting and comparison!)
• Writing and rewriting the intro for the Shift Diaries (ditto)
• Editing and re-editing the e-mail that is the first entry
• Deciding to put the Shift Diaries in a blog instead of making it pages in my website (oh, yes, children, there are geeky differences
• Doing a lot of reading to get up to speed on blogs (I now hate the word ‘blog’ even more than I did before I decided to have one of my own.)
• Installing and configuring the blog
• Researching blog specific configuration issues that would only matter to a control freak geek (that would be me)
• Giving up, reluctantly, on that level of control due to losing some essential functionality (I think it’s essential–nothing is really clear at this point)
• Worrying that I haven’t put enough planning into the blog, since I have no experience in blogging that would provide a basis for any real planning
• Practicing wrangling the blog and posting to the blog
• Wondering how much more I need to know/configure before turning this loose on the world

I finally took a deep breath and published my altered website complete with links to the Shift Diaries blog. Whew! (more…)

This is a long, pivotal piece of experience sharing, so I’m going to link to the page on my website, where I put it because it was easier to format than it is when writing in this clunky little blog editor.

How I quickly altered my reality by genuinely appreciating

The story starts like this:

Before I begin, let me say that my reality altered quickly once I genuinely appreciated my current circumstance. Really quickly—like in a month or two there was a major shift. AND it took me about three years of the most painful misery, struggle, and practice to move myself from almost constant discounting to genuine appreciation. AND I still wasn’t appreciating myself, although I did manage to genuinely appreciate a specific aspect of my current situation.