My daughter’s soccer team played in a tournament this weekend. They played two games on Saturday and then a third Sunday morning. Depending on points scored and all that, they would or wouldn’t have played in the final championship game Sunday afternoon.
As soon as the first game started, the other team outplayed them. They had a great strategy and passed to one another and our girls just sort of did what they could but lost by 5. It wasn’t a great start to the tournament. Our team won the 2nd and the 3rd and ended up playing the 4th and final game. It was against the same team that defeated them. This time it was different - even though our girls played the same team just a day earlier, it was as though a different team showed up. They looked so good and they remembered their own strategies and plays. They lost but could hold their heads up when they left that field. They are champions.
Today made me think about the fact that every day I can decide which one of me is going to show up - not in a schizophrenic way - but what attitude am I going to display. Am I going to be defeated by this recession and just give up? Nope - to me that is epic failure. Every day I am going to decide to be that team that I watched today. The one who knew they were facing tremendous odds against a team that initially stomped them by a lot. But they showed up to face them again and they weren’t deterred by the odds. They weren’t deterred by the fact that they just lost by five. They did what they were supposed to do -the next right thing. They got out there, they listened to their coach, they played by the rules and they got 2nd place in a tournament where lots of teams didn’t get anything. You know what? Second place is good enough.
I’m a big believer in attitude being everything - if you don’t believe me, just read some of my earlier posts. But watching this team today reinforced that believing in yourself and maintaining a positive attitude can make all the difference in the world. I’m going to remember that this week as I go on interviews and network. I’m going to remember that if I don’t believe in myself nobody else will either. I’m going to keep the faith and remember that ultimately the final score doesn’t matter. What matters is the journey that gets me there. Peace!
I’m probably the last person who should be writing about feeding the soul lately. It’s been a tumultuous time in that crazy game of life and I find myself sighing a lot lately. One of the things; however, that I love about the soul is that it is connected to the mind. What the mind thinks, the soul feels so to speak. So if I can think about forgiving myself and starting over, the soul will start to compensate.
The other day I needed some ‘soul food’ rather badly. Things are sketchy (as usual) within the economy, the job search, and the weather. The rain has been relentless and it has derogatorily affected my mood…and so has the fact that many of my friends and I are still searching for jobs. It’s easy to be soulful and content when things are going well and even when things go sour for just a little while. But let things spiral for weeks on end and – whew- suddenly the chin weighs a thousand pounds and keeping it up is virtually impossible.
So off I went in search of healing and I went to the one place I knew would provide comfort – the Benedictine Abbey in Richmond.is a small adoration chapel where one can sit in relative silence and reflect on life without fear of interruption. It’s a place of devotion and a place of prayer.
The chapel is a special place to me – I pilgrimage there once a year on Christmas Day to consider the past and contemplate the future. I make plans and make right with God. It gets me off to a good start for the year to come. But this year, I gave it up. This year I had a sudden change in plans. My children, who were supposed to go out of town with their dad on Christmas afternoon as they do every year, ended up being at home with me. We went to walk dogs at the SPCA instead. I figured that it would be equally good for my soul to help out the animals on a day where workers and volunteers would be minimal. Boy, it might have been good for the animals but for me…not so much.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time with the dogs and the cats. It was pretty quiet compared to normal there and the animals loved getting some attention. But my soul needed attention too and I only do it once a year so I really missed the spiritual connection that came with taking an hour to sit still and reflect.
So here I am five months later, making my way again to the place I missed going on Christmas. On my way over to the Abbey that morning, I started creating a mental list of reasons why I should be doing something other than going there. I had laundry to do, I had groceries to buy, library books to return, and just in general – there was stuff that needed attention. How could I take time for myself when I could be…when I should be… doing something else?
When I arrived, I found I couldn’t pray. My only option was to just sit in silence and contemplate what I was doing to myself by not taking time to feed my soul. And not taking the time wasn’t the only factor, forgetting how to feed myself spiritually, through quiet contemplation, through music, books and art, was becoming a really big issue too.
I began to think about Mother Teresa who attended mass every single day while ministering to the poor in Calcutta. She knew the benefits of receiving communion and the daily blessings from the priests. She knew how important this was to her soul; therefore, she stopped everything and went. She put nothing else before this even though she might have been thinking her time might be better served tending to the poor and hungry. But I think she valued her soul enough to know that she needed to make it a priority in her life if she was going to be able to show up and help those in need every day.
In the event of an airline emergency, you are told to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before attending to a child. That makes sense because if we don’t, we couldn’t possibly help the child or anyone else. I can’t be of service to anyone if I am spiritually or emotionally bankrupt. Taking the time to feed my soul through contemplation, through prayer, through books, music, nature, art or through human contact will give me the energy to rise above a crisis and the strength to move forward toward what I am supposed to be doing next. It’s a gift I should give myself once a day, not once a year.
More than one person mentioned the fact that I haven’t updated this blog in a few weeks. I blamed it on the fact that I’ve been really busy with, well, you know…stuff. But the truth is, I’ve been ‘stuck’. And it’s tough to write or do just about anything when you get stuck. You know that place – where the “I should” meets the “I can’t” and all you want to do is play Mafia Wars and forget about searching for a job, cleaning up the house, taking care of your soul. Note: Mafia Wars does nothing for the soul.
So I’ve been thinking, okay really obsessing, on this blog and my writing and what I should be doing and that further exacerbated the 'stuckicity' I was experiencing. I got some great advice the other day about writing just a short blog to keep it updated. That helped because it took the pressure off of feeling that I had to write some big dissertation. Once the pressure was off, I could move forward. So I’ve created a list of things that I can do to become unstuck and figured that would make a good enough blog for today. Here they are:
1. Talk to someone else – getting advice from someone else helps because sometimes when you’re stuck, you are in it too deep and someone objective can look at things from another angle. This might help you to see things you wouldn’t see otherwise. This goes for asking God or the Universe for help too – and don’t forget to say ‘thanks’ when you get what you need.
2. Take a break – getting outside, either in the yard or on a walk, really helps. My problem is that I don’t do it when I need to. I’ll stay inside staring at the computer screen waiting for some sort of divine inspiration or for more energy in my Mafia queue so I can attack. So I have to make myself get outside regularly because I know this helps me tremendously.
3. Reading something inspirational helps me to get out of that quagmire that won’t allow me to move forward. Spiritual books are at the top of my list. Since I wrote a review just the other day, I have a stack of them sitting here and it helps me to refer to them for motivation. In case you need some inspiration yourself – here is a link to the book review: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1690949/spiritual_book_review_ten_books_that.html?cat=38
4. Don’t just do something; sit there…well, almost. Meditating is really good for my soul but to be honest, I have a terribly tough time sitting in meditation. What is supposed to be a calming and relaxing experience actually causes me anxiety. But, sometimes being stuck mentally causes symptoms to occur physically like headaches, neck aches and general aches, so I do combine meditation with some really basic yoga moves. That helps me to feel better physically; hence I can move forward mentally. I do a yoga pose and then just breathe for 30 seconds. Yoga fans are probably thinking – um, that’s what yoga is – poses and breathing but I call it meditation. Whatever it is, it works for me.
5. What you focus on grows. If you water and feed a flower in your garden, it will most likely grow. I say most likely because my gardening experiences are usually hit or miss. But you get the point – nurture it, spend time with it, focus on it and it will grow. That works with problems too; albeit in a detrimental way. Focusing and obsessing on something can make it bigger than it is. Get your mind off the issue that’s keeping you stuck. Do something else – whether it is one of the things I mentioned earlier or just something as simple as cleaning the house – inspiration comes from strange places at times.
There are lots of ways that we can get out of our own way – books, music, prayer, and nature are just a few ways that pop into my mind. The idea is to accept that you are stuck but then try to find ways to get your mind off the sticky problem. Free yourself and your mind by doing something else and before you know it, you’ve come unstuck and your problem is solved. The proof is in the fact that I actually wrote something today.