It has been over a year since I started Ralph Carlson Blog. Over that time I have tried some things and made some adjustments and changes in my schedule and the topics for the posts. It is very much still a work in progress. Some of the posts are worth bringing back once in a while so, from time to time, I like to select a few posts to highlight in a a review for new readers or long time readers who may have missed them.
Todays selection begins with The Comfort Zone, that happy place where everything seems so warm and fuzzy that it is hard to start anything new. Of course, one of the big reasons why you stay in the Comfort Zone in the first place is your fear of Messing up and until you Show Up, nothing is possible. Neither do you want to procrastinate about moving forward to your goals but I have found that sometimes procrastination can be a good thing. Before you take any of this advice too seriously,
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This has been an eventful week. What I mean is that so far there have been more events than normal. When I have weeks like that I am stressed. I don’t like stress. So, of course, the higher number of events is seldom scheduled from my action. It comes from indirect activity of mine or because of somebody else.
Maybe not
This is a problem. I can handle these events. I am resourceful and resilient and the events are never so complex and difficult as they seem in my fantasies. To protect myself from stress, I don’t schedule my calendar full of activities and when my calendar is not full, I waste time on non-essential activities. I miss working up to my full capabilities and the path to my goals is longer than it needs to be.
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Looking back on my life, I find that much of the time I was waiting for something to happen. It might be a person. It might be an event. It might be a vision. But it was like being stuck in mud with the only hope of getting out being some outside force. It seems incredible that I accepted this limitation. I don;t mean that I was a passive slug never getting out of my comfort zone. I went to college. Excelled in some things. Was adequate in others. But the things I did were within the conventions that ruled my life. I was always hoping for some outside force to take me somewhere new- somewhere exiting.
I don’t know where that model for living comes from. I guess it is one I formed from watching people in my life. Certainly we get the idea that chance or luck is somehow important in determining how things turn out from our culture. People hope for some kind of intervention to take their existence from marginal or ordinary to special. They buy lottery tickets. They imagine a long lost rich relative leaving them an inheritance. Many of the plots for movies or TV shows are built around some fantastic intervention in the lives of ordinary people that takes them on an unexpected adventure. Nowhere do you see the idea that you are the one. Is it the creeping nanny state controlling and limiting more and more of life that sets us up to be dependent?
For myself, It makes me sad when I think about all that time waiting. What was I thinking? Why was I so passive and inert? What made me so dependent in my thinking and actions? I don’t know. I wasn’t the only one. And there were a few daring souls who made their lives into glorious, or at least interesting adventures. What is the difference that made them take those risks and soar? What made them think that they were in charge? And what made me know that I was not?
Now I understand just what a handicap that mindset has been for me. All around me I was attributing the success of others who were taking responsibility for their lives to luck or chance while waiting passively for my bit of good fortune. All that time wasted makes me sick. Considering that I have achieved some success in my life, can I even imagine what I might have been able to do if I had just acted. Now I realize that I am the most important force in my life. I can cramp that force so that it can only operate in reactive mode or I can release it to be the dynamic and powerful engine that can take me anywhere. My engine is running but only I can decide whether to stay in neutral or shift into drive. If I stay in neutral, I can be pushed in any direction by any outside force. If I shift into drive, then I decide where I go and how fast I want to get there.
I often heard as I grew up people say that you can be anything you want to be in America. Somehow, there is a disconnect between the talk- “You can be anything you want to be.” and the walk- “Don’t make a fool of yourself.” That makes most of us wimpish about facing life. That is how it worked for me.
How different would my life be today if instead of waiting for outside forces to sweep through my life and get me moving in whatever direction they were going, I had become that force. Is it too late? I hope not. Anybody out there relate? Share your thoughts with me.
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I heard this last weekend from some people who have made big changes in their lives. It points up that I continue to tolerate that which I claim I want to change.
Here is the back story.
Seven years ago, I took a well-paying job to supplement my retirement income. My rational at the time was that over 5 to 10 years, I would be able to afford to retire a second time and maintain my lifestyle while enjoying being ‘job-optional’. The two incomes leave us pretty comfortable and the job is tolerable and therein lies the rub. I am comfortable with this situation and not motivated to do what is necessary to make this a temporary situation.
I have with fits and starts revved up my efforts and then allowed them to fall back to maintenance mode. There is no continuing urgency backing up my commitment to this program and so here I am, no closer to my claimed goal than I was seven years ago.
So the problem here is that I can tolerate my job and the things that it keeps me from doing. Recently, the powers that be around work have done some things that should make me intolerant. Over my working years (too many to count) I have developed an ability to adjust to the unacceptable and I have to stop myself from this and let myself get angry and intolerant.
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