Pickleball as an FGO

 Pickleball is my new passion. I have never played a team sport or seen myself as an athlete. I was in High School before Title 9 mandated equal opportunity sports for girls. Our sports options were cheerleaders or Pom Pom girls,  neither of which I had any interest in. My family all skied and I grew up from age 11 skiing every weekend. I chose my first college because they had skiing for PE.  I skied for fifty years and stopped after I broke my leg. Lately my exercise activities have been  running, biking and hiking. I usually run and bike alone and hike either alone or with one other friend. Learning and teaching yoga have been foundational in my life. Playing a team sport was not even on my radar.

The idea of trying pickleball came to me because I heard that many seniors really enjoyed it. A close friend had started playing and loved it. I thought, Why not? I’ll check it out. 

Being a beginner at anything is so challenging. Being an awful beginner is even more challenging. Some people seemed to catch on much easier than me. I always felt like the worst one. Most people I played with through local meetups and rec centers were kind and some were helpful. One place I played at, I learned that many of the people played at one of the women’s private pickleball court. I screwed up my courage and asked if they were open to taking new people. The owner of the court said, “Maybe when you are better.” I was crushed. I almost quit and somehow I kept going. I knew by then that it was so valuable to me to stick with pickleball because I really enjoyed it and it gave me an amazing opportunity to work with my inner critic. I understand now that some people who have been playing for a while don’t want to be slowed down by a beginner. I try to be patient and generous with people who are just learning and it is a stretch sometimes.

I have a very harsh inner critic and pickleball has allowed me to watch it operate in its full glory. I soon learned that saying “You Suck” to myself wasn’t at all helpful and spiraled me into playing worse. The more I was mean to myself, the worse I played. Then as I kept playing and became aware of how berating myself affected my game, I started saying, “ Don’t do that to yourself or You don’t need to do that to yourself” about the criticism. That was basically criticizing myself for criticizing myself. That didn’t work either. 

Accepting myself as I am has been a lifelong challenge in almost all areas of my life. Pickleball is an arena to practice my skills at the game and  to practice my self-compassion. I started saying “I love you” to myself after all the shots I wasn’t pleased with, as an exercise in self-compassion. Now, when I say that to myself I mostly believe it. 

I now play two or three times a week. It’s very satisfying to me to notice that practicing really does lead to progress. I’ve also progressed with how I treat myself during the games.

It’s easier to be kind to myself.  I notice the kinder I can be, the more I enjoy myself and the better I play. I now try to remember to say I love you after all of my shots even the ones I feel good about. I have varying results with my games. I can still fall into being frustrated and impatient and feeling badly about myself for how I am playing. I am a slow learner and I guess I still have to be reminded over and over how uncomfortable criticizing myself is and how badly it affects my game. I think the concept of self-acceptance and compassion has been spilling over from pickleball and my meditation practice into more of my life.

What if I’m actually not a loser? What if it was courageous of me to start playing pickleball as a rank beginner and keep practicing and getting better? I am still sometimes the worst one playing. At least I think so. Sometimes I can tell I am getting better. Sometimes I get feedback from others about a good shot or a good serve. I am surprised and pleased.

Although I am very competitive, it has been important to me to acknowledge both my teammate and the opposing teammates for good shots. I think my positively acknowledging the other team has modeled it for others. I think I have been able to influence the energy to be more collaborative and more positive. I try to remember that pickle ball is fun. That’s mostly why I love it. It’s fun to play hard and have a satisfying game. What if any game could be a satisfying game if I let it? 

Today I also practiced focusing on three things I feel good about how I played after a day of not playing as well as I would have liked. That seemed like a good practice. Yesterday I was on cloud nine because I thought I played great. I’d like to learn to embrace the ebb and flow and recognize that it would be possible to move beyond good bad right wrong. What if being present with what is, is even available in pickle ball? And in life. I’m going to begin next game to recognize when I am being present with my body and the other players and the flow of the game and acknowledge myself for that. Who knows what heights that will lead me to with my game?

One of my friends who plays pickleball has said it is her intention to celebrate every shot as a learning opportunity. A worthwhile goal, in my opinion. What if this could be true of life? That we are moving through life to acknowledge the opportunity to learn and grow. All of it is an opportunity to learn and grow. Even learning to work with a harsh inner critic is an opportunity to learn and grow. One of my clients calls challenges that life presents FGOs. It stands for F##king growth opportunity. That makes me smile whenever I think of it. I salute pickleball as my newest FGO. I look forward to continue to grow in my skill in the game and in my sweetness to myself. 

Navigating a relationship crossroad

My partner and I are at a crossroads in our relationship. We’ve been together for almost a year. We are very different people and want some of the same things. The crossroad we are navigating is “Can we accept who the other is without trying to change them? Can we each be ourselves without pretending or abdicating ourselves or hiding out in what’s comfortable and honor our relationship at the same time? What would a relationship based on true acceptance of ourselves and each other look like? Could we enjoy ourselves together more and find more common ground? 

I have had little experience with real acceptance in a romantic relationship before. When I have been in a relationship with a man, I have spent a lot of time in judgement, preoccupied and distracted, even if I only have voiced some of what I am judging the other person about. Ultimately, I am judging myself for doing it wrong by choosing the wrong person again. In the past, my preoccupation with judgement has lead to resentment and being critical on my part, and withdrawal on my partners part. I have hidden a great deal of what I want and need from myself and the other person and been afraid to give voice to my needs.

My current partner and I have been more honest and more accepting than I have experienced before. We each bring up what we need to clear with each other regularly and both experience feeling closer out of clearing conflict. We are both skilled at deep listening and being genuinely curious about the other’s take. We also practice eye gazing when we first get together, to connect on a deeper level without words. In a few minutes the energy can shift and we can move toward more awareness that we are connected on a deeper level that feels safe and easefull. In this energy we are both aware that we are all one. All of this is precious to me.

I have always wanted to experience a long term committed relationship and that dream has alluded me. My longest relationship was for ten years with my daughter’s father over thirty years ago. I have many women friends who are in several decades long relationships, some for forty or fifty years. Other people have seemed to master the art of accepting another person for who they are. The ones who have learned to chose each other in the midst of it all, are the ones with seemingly happy marriages. The ones who continue focusing on what’s wrong seem terribly unhappy.

What does acceptance look like? Can I be curious about acceptance enough to hang in there and see what happens? Can he? There is enough good in our relationship to make it worthwhile for both of us to continue to grow and learn together. There are also some very real challenges we face with how differently we each live our lives and what is important to each of us. Can we allow ourselves to enjoy each other more and find more common ground? Can we find a balance with what we each enjoy doing alone and with others and spending more time together? Is seeing each other twice a week and living in two separate houses working? It is now. What if all there is is now? 

What if in this moment I have enough of what I want?  I could continue to ask to be present and explore with curiosity what is available when both of us are choosing each other. I appreciate that we are both willing to embrace each other and our questions.

I’d like to continue to show up for myself and what I am feeling in my body. I’d like to continue to notice my judgements of myself and of him. I’d like to give intentional airtime to focusing on what is good between us. I’d like to be aware that I have decades of experience being accepting of my close friends and clients. Maybe, I’ll trust myself in knowing I am in the process of applying my wisdom about acceptance with friends and clients, where it is easy for me, to a romantic relationship.

It is true that each of us will celebrate the other whatever the outcome of this passage is. I treasure that. 

Pleasure

 Tonight I hung out, ate popcorn and watched a movie. I really enjoyed the movie and being with myself. Sometimes it is challenging for me to spend time doing things that seem frivolous or with out purpose.

This year I have the intention to open to pleasure. Pleasure kind of scares me. I feel so out of control.

As long as I am practicing  all of my disciplines and being the queen of self care my life feels manageable.

I think for some people, who tend more toward inactivity, more discipline is a worthy intention. For me I notice sometimes that doing all of my disciplines every day can get kind of compulsive and even tyrannical. I miss out on the sweetness of life.  My new discipline is to be more spontaneous.

This week several activities I usually do haven’t worked out. I have had more time to do whatever I want and to even see what that is. What if playing solitaire isn’t a moral crime?

Tomorrow morning the yoga class I usually attend got changed to virtual because of Covid. This class doesn’t really work for me to do virtually with my hearing challenges. I have a lot of options. I don’t work until 1:00. Usually I would plan out the morning tonight. Instead my plan is to wake up and see what I feel like doing. What if I want to sleep in instead of doing yoga and meditation? What if I want to eat when I’m hungry and not let my intermittent fasting window decide when I eat? What if enjoying myself is my new frontier? 

It’s not like there is no pleasure in my life. Rather it is not what I have focused on. I have focused on growing and learning and I have grown and learned a lot. I think it is time now to begin to shift my focus to include exploring what feels good to me rather than what is missing in myself and in my life.

I feel excited. What if I let go of my usual all or nothing MO and began to explore what feels good in the midst of practicing my disciplines? What if what changed was the idea that I need to keep active and always doing something to be OK? What if embracing slowing down would give me a chance to better accept myself and my life as it is and to be curious. 

Ah, curiosity. What if I could be more often curious and less often  judgemental? What if curiosity would open my heart? What if I could even be curious about being judgemental? What if Self-Compassion involved asking ,what’s this like for me? instead of Why? 

There are a lot of sad and scary things happening in the world right now. The climate emergency is looming, Our political system seems to be stagnated with partisan politics. Hateful things are happening every day. Covid 19 is rapidly spreading right now. All of this is true and its easy to meet it all with despair and  numbness.

Somehow focusing on pleasure seems even more important right now, in the midst of these very challenging times. If I am aware of when I am enjoying myself I have more access to being present with what I am doing. Being more present allows me to think more clearly and have better access to all of my feelings. Better access to all of my feelings and clearer thinking allows me to feel more alive. Feeling more alive allows me to let go of going through the motions and doing things to get them over with so I can  move on to the next thing. I want to practice savoring moments more.

My adventure is deeper awareness and taking the time to notice what  feels good and what doesn’t and giving myself the option to chose differently or continue.

Right now, I am done writing. Thank you for listening. What role does pleasure play in your life?

Two Rivers

 Tonight in a class a woman shared about a dream she had with two rivers. One was turbulent with rushing water and pieces of debris being dragged along with the current. The water was unsettled and muddy.

The other river was calm and clear and flowed along serenely. The person sharing was in a situation with an unknown outcome. She decided to pause and consider that the two different rivers represented a choice. Her choice wasn’t about which course of action to follow in her decision. Her choice was about which river to choose about her reaction to the decision making process. Would she choose to be in turmoil or serenity about the outcome of her dilemma? She chose to be accepting of  whatever the outcome was, knowing she would be OK either way. The calm river to her was the river of letting go of anxiety about the outcome of her situation- trusting that whatever happened would be what happened.

I got to use the pausing and two rivers concept right after the class. In a new relationship I was feeling neglected. I paused and considered two rivers: The turbulent one was taking the other person’s busyness personally and withdrawing.  I knew the other person being temporarily unavailable had nothing to do with me. In the past that hasn’t stopped me from making up a story that I am being abandoned and reacting with anger, either by accusing or withdrawing. When I paused I could see both rivers. The calm river flowed by. It represented trusting my knowing rather than my story. What if I chose the calm river this time? I knew I could be compassionate with myself about my discomfort. I could show up for myself and  reassure myself about feeling hurt. I could comfort myself about feeling sad instead of getting mad and believing my old story. I could then be supportive of the other person completing their current stressful report and offer encouragement to keep going because they were almost done. 

I chose the calm river. What a good feeling to deeply know that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Pausing before the two rivers was a powerful way to chose anew.

My favorite quote, which I’ve mentioned before,  is by Victor Frankl.

 Freedom is the pause between stimulus and response. 

Reacting with anger or withdrawing in response to imagined abandonment is a patterned response with a lot of history for me. Pausing at the stimulus, which is whatever another is doing that triggers me into my habitual response, allows me to sooth myself and show up for myself about what I am feeling. I can comfort the little girl inside me who felt abandoned by my emotionally unavailable Dad, and let her experience her hurt and anger. I can let her know that she didn’t do anything wrong. I can reassure her that her father was acting distracted and withdrawn because that’s what he did with his own pain. It had nothing to do with her. I could even go back in time to advocate for her with my Dad and let him know that withdrawing emotionally was an unacceptable way to treat a little girl. I could let him know I was taking her home with me where she could be loved in the way she deserved to be. Then I could hold her and let her cry. In this way I could create the shift to begin to heal the past in the present. It’s also important to acknowledge ourselves for choosing the calm river and doing things differently when we do. 

Consider pausing and thinking about those two rivers when you are faced with a dilemma or find yourself poised to react in a habitual way. I think it will even be helpful to me after I’ve reacted in a habitual way and chose the turbulent river, to consider what the calm river might have been. Hopefully I can be accepting of what is and forgiving with myself about reacting habitually. Acceptance and forgiveness allows me to be kinder to myself. Kindness and compassion can help create the spaciousness needed to chose a healthier option in the future. Pausing at the banks of  those two rivers can be an  opportunity to create change that comes from acceptance. That kind of change feels healthy and sustainable to me.

Thank you for listening.

 Andrea

Motorcycle helmets and vaccinations

 Last week I had a rude awakening. On a dating site I had two conversations with two men I considered to be intelligent,  aware people who weren’t getting vaccinated. I expressed curiosity to both of them about where they were coming from. I told one of them that I didn’t know anyone who hadn’t been vaccinated and had thought previously that people who were choosing not to get vaccinated were from the far right of the political spectrum. Neither of these people fit my stereotype. This person after telling me that he didn’t believe in big pharma and that the government wasn’t to be trusted, said that he didn’t know anyone who was vaccinated. He also said that it didn’t feel good to him to put this vaccine into his body and that he would trust that he wouldn’t get COVID or that he would have a mild case. I was glad I got the chance to be curious and learn. 

I remember when I felt like I was healthy and strong and took great care of myself and would never get COVID,  before I got COVID. COVID was my teacher. It taught me to honor the process by which it moved through my body by doing little else besides sleeping for ten days. It taught me to be open to getting a vaccine. I knew clearly the experience of having COVID, although I would say I had a medium case, avoiding hospitalization and death, was not something I was willing to repeat. I was convinced that the science on the effects of the vaccine in no way compared to the effects of having COVID. 

We are all in this together. This virus affects all of us. I read the other day about the difference between motorcycle helmets and a pandemic. If a person chooses not to wear a motorcycle helmet because he feels it interferes with his personal  freedom only his own head gets bashed in in the event of an accident. With COVID we are all interconnected and it seems to me that worrying about infringement of individual preferences is superceeded by large numbers of people dying from this virus. I believe vaccinations have been proven to slow the spread of the virus.

My vision is that over the course of the next few months there will be a realization that we all need to pull together to heal the planet from this virus. The earth is telling us we need to pay attention. What if how we deal with vaccinations is a trial run for how we deal with climate change? I am hoping for people in this country who have decided not to be vaccinated to change their minds in large numbers so we can collectively bring the numbers down of people dying from COVID and begin the larger job of living together in a way that honors Mother Earth and each other. 

Thank you for listening. 

Introspection

 Introspection

Introspection is alive and well within me

Like a little ant crawling on my skin

Easy to ignore for more important pursuits.

Until a sleepless night reminds me

That I have been avoiding myself.

“If you won’t listen to me when you are awake

I will get through to you at 3am.”

I listen.

I vow I no longer need to injure myself 

Or get sick to slow down

And pay attention to myself.

Being with the experience of mad, sad, scared and glad 

In my body

Opens the wellspring of joy beneath.

In this way I can show up for myself gratefully

And avoid the universe’s escalating reminders of neglect

A gentle tap

A little nudge

A slap

A punch

The cosmic two by four.

Dating at 71

Dating at 71 

I speak my truth from my heart with more courage and consistency.

I am more curious and less judgmental.

I am more willing to set healthy boundaries and keep them.

I am less desperate to be in a relationship and more content with being alone.

I am more aware of losing myself in the search and better able to breathe and return to my body in the present moment.

I am enjoying getting to know people more and learning discernment about what I want and don’t want.

I am less polite and more direct.

I am more aware of the importance of being compassionate and kind and treating people respectfully.

I take rejection less personally and can practice self compassion and comfort myself more easily when I do take rejection personally.

I know that we are all one and that because we are all connected how I treat others is how I want to be treated.

I am listening more and talking less.

I value silence and stillness and have less need to fill pauses.

I am more confident of my own worth and beauty and of what I have to offer.

I am learning to be more playful and have more fun.

I am learning that less is more and that more isn’t always better. 

I am less urgent and more patient and can work with my tendency to jump in too fast and honor the cadence of going slow and trusting what feels right.

I am aware of my old unmet needs in my relationship with my father growing up and willing to see my present triggers as past hurts and work on them. 

It is easier to get support from trusted friends and resource people and be real about being mad sad scared and glad. 

I am grateful to be more willing to let go of the outcome and show up for myself with whatever I am experiencing. 

Even though dating at 71 is challenging I am learning a lot and appreciate the opportunity to connect with other fellow human beings who are both different and the same as me.