Thursday, June 26, 2008

Feelings, chapter 3 - Partnertship

Partnership is not a feeling - it's a word.... a noun.... but it involves and generates a large array of feelings.

Ask yourself this: what does "partnership" really mean to you?

To me the first thing that pops up is the word "Part". A partner takes part in something with me. There are silent partners and non silent partners, there are business partners and life partners and so on but, what characterizes all of them is that that they are all part of something with someone else.

However, there is a huge difference between being part of something and taking part in something.

For me a true partner is one who takes an active part in what we are supposed to be doing together. I realized, throughout my life, that most people don't pay much attention to this difference. Many people believe that you can also be an inactive partner, perhaps contributing a minor effort (if any) to a project, putting your name on it and voila! you are a "partner". This is why, even as a child at school I always avoided doing projects in a "team". I always ended up being the one that does the work while the others got the grades...

This difference of "being" a part and "taking" part is the difference between a helper and an annex, between active and passive, it is what makes a team really work well together and a project really succeed.

I believe it is important to comprehend and remember it because whether the project is finishing a task at work or family life with your spouse this is exactly what will make it succeed or fail in the long run - are you taking part in your own life? Are you fully and actively participating in your own life?

Next time you feel frustrated, unhappy, scared... try to think of the situation you are in and see if you are taking an active part in it, or perhaps there are other people involved who are not pitching in, not taking an active part....

To be continuted...

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Cat memories and loving

Many people think cats do not "show love as dogs" or that they are "not loyal"
They also think cats (or animals at all for that matter) do not have a good memory or at least "memory" in the sense we, humans, refer to it....

take a look at this and then... go to the nearest shelter and adopt a kitty :)

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Feelings - the sequal (or: "Today I'm Feeling....")

I was going to write about my feelings yesterday but never had the chance. Mainly I as confused, but that's passed and now I am ok.

Today, however, I am feeling: disappointed. Now, I bet you thought I was going to start my whole "getting back in synch with my feelings" thing with ...Love. It would be the natrual, common, conventional choice, wouldn't it? that one little feeling (or big, depending on how you look at it and what you feel right now) that gives us all a great deal of trouble! But unconventional me is going to talk about my disappointment.

Disappointment can often be misleading. You can be disappointed but think you're sad, or angry, or despaired... you can be disappointed with yourself but project it on others. It is not at all a simple feeling to have or deal with.

Yesterday, as I said, I felt confused. I thought I was angry with a specific person, someone from my past. Truth is I am not angry with that person and never was - I was disappointed in him. I expected more and different things from him and he failed to deliver.

But then I started wondering: has he really "failed"? Is it not possible that I projected unto this person expectations that stem from some ideal picture or fantasy I weaved in the darkest corners of my mind, and simply expected himt o know what I wanted from him?

Yes, of course it is possible. Not only that, but it is also probable. I tend to be somewhat of a dreamer and fantasize and wish for things that cannot happen in reality, or at least in my given reality. In that sense that person hasn't failed. He was simply being himself, and i am the one who failed to see him as he truly was and to accept him as he truly was.

It is now time to be disappointed in myself for my poor handling of some situations with this particular person. So the feeling hasn't changed, it just shifted focus.

I'm still processing this one. It gets mixed with other forms and focal points of disappointment that I am experiencing today about myself and some of the people around me in the present.

Right now it is a very burning sensation that makes my mood swing from being very combatant and fisety one moment to being paralyzed and depressed the next (and no I am not bi-polar. One doesn't have to be bi-polar to experience such mood swings and/or feelings).

Friday, June 13, 2008

Feelings - are you in synch with yours?

Ok... I admit this sounds like a total cliché (yes I laughed too when I first thought about "getting back in touch with my feelings") but bear with me for a moment while I try to explain what I am doing here.
This post is the result of a conversation I had with my coach, Michal, yesterday.
The issue is this: I am a very sensitive person (water sign - cancer - what did you expect? :-p) and yet I keep my feelings and thoughts towards others bottled up inside. Many of us do. How many times have you been angry with someone or disappointed but never said a word? I am guessing most of the readers would at this point smile to themselves and nod.... yes, it's happened to all of us, hasn't it?
We're soooooo good at holding complete arguments in our minds, we say to the other person everything we want to and how they make us feel and what we are experiencing...and we are soooo good at imagining and guessing what the other person would then answer us and we prepare our counter answer in advance. Oh yes, we're the world's best debaters/talker/conversationalists.... in the safety of our minds.
But when it comes to going out there and actually vocalizing what we feel, what we think, we avoid that like a fire. Usually we are afraid of the conflict that might arise, or afraid of rejection, or of the way we will be perceived by others.... but what happens then is that this feeling stays bottled up inside us and no - the inner talk does not resolve it, does not "process" it. If anything it "over processes" it - we keep running the scenarios over and over in our minds, we repeat the argument or speech so many times we know it by heart, we start dreaming about it (even if we don't remember it) and soon enough, we are relating to the other person, in our actions and daily interactions, as we would in the argument, often without the other person even realizing he or she have upset us in some way. This can also happen with "good" feelings such as love and passion and not just with the "bad" ones (anger, sadness etc.). Sometimes we love someone and we're afraid to tell them....
You know what happens next, don't you? We erupt at some point, just like a big old volcano. We blow up so hard - spewing out everything we've bottled up inside and burning and burying everything and everyone in our path of destruction.
Can you imagine how many such "over processed" feelings you are carrying inside you at any given moment? Can you count the number of people you feel them towards (just imagine current and past lovers, friends you've lost touch with, past colleagues...)? Can you even begin to realize how much energetic "garbage" you are holding inside you?
So when my coach and I spoke about getting in touch with my feelings again, befriending them, I at first thought "oh no.... that old cliché" but then I started thinking about it and the first thing that came to my mind is - write! write about those feelings, write TO those feelings... I bet Michal didn't expect me to do it on a public blog though :-D
So I shall try to befriend my emotions and feelings, see what they're about, try to remind myself why they showed up and why I never let them out and who knows, I might even come up with a technique to ventilate them once a while without my volcano erupting :)