Friday, November 14, 2008

Progress

I am making progress with handling the stress of feeling out of control. I had a great opportunity yesterday. Qwest screwed up my phone bill and I called to rectify that. I was passed on to four different people and sent to Verizon and back. The entire process took an hour and a half. The worst part was that every time I was put on hold a recording of this guy extolling the virtues of Qwest
babbled into my ears. One of the customer service women I talked to told me she couldn't shut him off and that they had to listen to it all day long too. At first I was really angry that it was taking so long and that I was being passed along again and again with noone having the authority to figure out what I was asking for. By the time we got to the decision making layer we were both put on hold for twenty more minutes. I was gnashing my teeth until I realized that I had no control over how long it would take or what the outcome would be. I started holding the phone away from my ear, trusting that I would know when the person came back, and reading my new issue of Yoga Journal. The first article was about dealing with fear. It suggested you move out of the story that the fear was telling you(you are going to spend the entire afternoon on the phone with these people and nothing will get resolved) to the sensation of the fear in the body. This was a familiar sensation. I was aware of a tightness in my chest and stomach and difficulty breathing. I remembered the day before when I was afraid of missing the plane and revved up into my story and how awful it was physically and mentally. This time I chose to be with myself and experience what was going on inside me. As I brought my attention to my experience I could step back a little and witness what was going on. As I breathed the charge attached to the feelings began to release.The tension lessened. I let go of feeling like a victum and of my attachment to the outcome. I realized that just the day before I was thinking I wanted more time to learn some new things about yoga to enliven my classes. Although the form wasn't fitting my pictures here was my opportunity.During this phone call I had the chance to read most of the magazine. I learned about poses to deal with stress, poses to do in the winter,and an explanation of bridge pose that I found very useful.As I was passed on I explained to the new person how long I had been waiting and how frustrating it was and how I didn't want to take it out on them. They were all sympathetic and apologetic. Finally the last person I dealt with was able to solve the problem. By that time I was amused and enjoying myself.I got off of the phone feeling like it was actually a positive experience because of how I had handled it. It's funny how anything can be used to support the part of us that knows that everything will be OK or the part that wants to let us know how awful everything is. Consciously choosing to disallow my critical ego to run the show by being present with what was going on in my body, felt great. It doesn't even matter how much what I am bringing my attention to sucks, it's the act of consciously choosing to be with what is that begins the healing.I got to see how different it is to be with myself than to freak myself out with worst case scenario stories as I had the day before. This is progress. Can you bring to mind a time when you were willing to be with yourself as a compassionate witness in the face of suffering? Would you be willing to acknowledge yourself for both doing that and noticing it again now?

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