our inner sun, getting it done, and other power thoughts

hi friends. tonite i am thinking about personal power. how hard it has been to come by, what it takes to cultivate it, and what to do when you lose it. lets start with what personal power means to me. i think it means lots of things to lots of people but to me it means the ability to be unapologetically myself. to not say i am sorry without really thinking about what that means. to feel comfortable in my space in the world. to be able to do what i really want in this world and not be stuck in fear and over thinking.

listening to the third chakra meditation on the chopra center website i heard this: "so often we bury things that we should have planted." i just love this because it really speaks to what i have been thinking about. how do i manifest my dreams, instead of just writing about them. how do i become the k that i have recovered. perhaps this all sounds super abstract but it really isnt.

let me explain...we spend so much time in recovery talking, thinking, processing. eventually we have to go out into our worlds and be this new person. keep in mind this is no easy or graceful task. it is hard and maybe more then hard it is messy. one step forward, two back, one forward, one back, two forward, one back, one forward, one forward, one forward, one back...and so on. i remember in early recovering just thinking that it was all forward. only later did i realize that sometimes we move back and then forward again and, if we are smart and lucky, we learn something when we go back. perhaps that is the entire point of going back. to figure out why the heck we're back and not forward.

behind all of this thinking is my strong desire to be more assertive. i want to be assertive but still be me--in other words--i dont want to trade my overall niceness for personal power. i want both. i want to be both strong and sensitive, both humble and powerful. and i actually believe it is possible for all of us to get to this place. the trick for me is continuing to believe in myself and working on it. my new job requires me to do be much more directive and so i am continually challenged to tell people what to do in a way that we both can respect and that works. it is a process since i hate being bossy and am not really into one size fits all rules, but i know that structure is important, that personal responsibility is important, and that there is a way to hold people accountable that empowers them.

so here i am. working away at learning how to fill up my space in the room. at really owning who i am. at not shrinking but blossoming. it is hard. i get scared and want to hide. i doubt myself and want to fade back. i compare myself and feel...different. but then i realize that i am not the only one who feels this way. maybe we all do. we all want to be our best selves and struggle to learn how to do that. we work on discovering who we are and then we working on actually being that person in a world that constantly challenges us to be like other people. the joke being that we are all the other people.

tonite, i'd like to challenge us all to start being the people that we are recovering. i'm in. are you? xxk

hemingway, work, and something nice for myself today

hi fellow friends, so happy to be here with you. this holiday season has been so busy it has been predictably hard to find time to think and therefore i found i have/had little to say. until today. i have been given the simple but good advice to do something nice for myself each day. i admit that this simple act has been hard for me. i know there are a million annoying reasons why i am like this but suffice to say it is a total effort to do something nice for myself each day...the current me would rather wait for someone else to do it for me or, even better, develop a resentment when they dont and continue to feel my own weird version of victimized. codependency really blows. not profound words i know, but true words. codependency has been big on my mind lately and finding the balance between myself and other people might be the struggle of my life or at least my thirties.

how i often i find myself not taking care of myself and then sort of being the martyr when i do things for everyone else. also this year i returned to some old...control issues...that i've not dealt with in ten years. i am being gentle with myself htough and just working thru it. one day at a time. boy am i grateful for recovery. i soemtimes wonder how the rest of the world knows what to do when they have a problem. that might be funny.

anyway, today my nice thing for myself was writing this. the amount that writing feeds my soul and enriches my life cannot be understated. and i've returned to reading really good books again and find that they are like an old friend that i forgot about and yet always can depend on. so now when i am at work and bored, i read some hemingway, not some dsm textbook or addiction study and i find myself thinking differently. seeing the art and beauty in the world and not just the addiction and the dysfunction. seeing the beauty in the reality of this mysterious, banal, tedious, and then mind blowing life might be what it is all about.

whoever you are reading out there. i hope you are doing one nice thing for yourself everyday too. i hope we all try to do this. i forgive us in advance for not getting it exactly right...xxk