I’m writing from Portland, Oregon today, about as far away from my home in Nova Scotia as I can physically get in N. America. I’m here attending a Life Mission workshop with my teachers and fellow students from The Way of the Heart, and these weekends are always a great opportunity to take a look around my life and see if I’m doing what I really want to be doing and, if not, how can I do more of that.

Sometimes, looking at my life like this can bring up a moment or two of regret or remorse and this time it was a pretty deep one. So I’ve been reflecting on how any kind of evaluating that we do in our life can bring up moments of seeing something clearly, maybe for the first time, and wishing that it had been different. At these moments, it’s so very tempting to dive into hours of self-judgment, criticism, self-pity and just general moping and feeling crappy about it all. (Hours, heck, sometimes days or weeks!)

And I’ve come to see that how we handle these moments makes the most enormous difference to the quality of our lives and to our ability to learn from our mistakes.

These moments can be hard on us emotionally and they tend to bring up a bunch of old stuff relating to how our mistakes were handled by our parents and early caregivers. But it’s really, really worth learning a beautiful and empowering way of dealing with remorse and regret so we can approach our learning and growth in a gentle way. And that allows us to get excited about trying new things that we might make mistakes at.

My moment came in the Las Vegas airport, when I decided to download my email. I received a message from someone who had been expecting something from me and hadn’t received it, (as it turns out she actually did have it already but didn’t know it.) At that moment, I had a revealing look at a pattern in my life that was all about keeping me feeling “busy” and not allowing me to put my heart’s most important things first.

The realization was actually so quick and went so deep that I didn’t even read the whole message. And I definitely didn’t have the space I needed, sitting in the airport food court, to process it fully. I finished my meal and tried to find a space somewhere away from the Muzak to just breathe.

It wasn’t until I was on the plane, with my face turned toward the window and nowhere else to go that I was finally able to just let myself feel the regret.

As it washed over me, I realized that I actually wanted it. I wanted to feel it so that I would want to change the pattern that created it. And I realized that I wanted to stay focused on the other people that my pattern was affecting, those I wanted to serve  fully, more than I wanted it to be about me.

And it was that caring that kept me out of the self-pity.

Oh, not entirely, mind you. I’ll admit to a short wallow. But I didn’t stay there. And before long, I started moving out of the remorse and into thinking constructively about what was actually creating the pattern and what I might want to do about it.

And I’ve noticed that this is what naturally happens when we manage to stay focused on what’s most important to us, instead of letting the feeling just take over completely.

So here are the steps that I use to deal with regret without getting stuck in it.

1) Breathe, slowly and fully (this can be harder than it sounds at the moment of remorse!)

2) Allow yourself to actually feel it, to whatever degree you can.

3) Have gentle compassion for yourself – be as kind as you can. (it feels icky enough without us making it feel worse!)

4) Notice that your regret means that you really do care about this.

5) Recognize and feel your caring about it.

6) Remember WHY you care about it.

7) Try to catch yourself in any self-criticism or judgment and remind yourself that what happened is simply about what you did and doesn’t change who you really ARE.

8 ) Remind yourself that you have the power to change this.

9) Allow yourself the space and time to process your regret.

10) Get constructive about changing things as soon as you’re ready. (This step is a great antidote to the icky feeling!)

11) Resist the urge to totally overcompensate for feeling badly about it by telling yourself you have to make some kind of huge impossible changes. Take small do-able steps to address or change what happened.

12) Congratulate yourself for how well you handled it and how you learned from it and how you’ll be OK with the next big “learning” moment.

I’m looking forward to finding a new way myself this weekend and I hope this might offer you a new way to handle your moments of regret.

I’d love to hear your comments about this below. How have you handled regret in the past? What helps you with it? What do you find gets in the way?

You might also like these:

1. The Curse of “You should know better”
2. The Aha Moment on Self-Judgment and Abundance
3. What’s Colouring Your World?

First I have to say that this is on my Top 5 Most Hated Phrases list, so I”m not going to pull any punches about it.

It’s one of those phrases that we hear as children and by the time our parents have stopped saying it, we’ve usually internalized it and we take over saying it to ourselves.

I heard this phrase a lot growing up and, in hindsight, it created a dynamic in my life where
there was NO such thing as an enjoyable learning curve.

So, this is a phrase I try NEVER to use on myself or anyone else.

I had a major insight about this pattern a few years back when I was planning an event and feeling a little out of my depth with it.

All of a sudden it hit me that I didn’t feel any permission to use the event as a way to learn. I realized that I was expecting myself to fully know how to do it already!

But why should I already know it?

I looked at how crazy it was to be expecting myself to already know how to do something I had never done before.

I started hunting for where this pattern of expectation came from and it wasn’t long before I heard this phrase ringing in my ears -
“you should know better”.

Now, in all fairness, I know my parents didn’t use this phrase with the intention of creating all this expectation in me.

It’s usually used when a child is displaying a behaviour that they’ve already been told is not approved of.

But we hardly ever take something in fully the first time  – it usually takes repetition to really get it down pat. And the phrase is usually just an expression of the parent’s frustration in the moment with the behaviour itself – and not some statement about the child’s inadequate learning.

But what it created in me was a world where there was no such thing as learning something “in the right time”. Everything was always learned too late, because “I should already know better”.

So now that I’ve seen through this pattern in my world and where it came from, I’m really working on allowing myself the freedom and permission to not know things yet and to actually enjoy learning them!

What a concept!

And I’ve stopped using “you should know better” inside my own head as a way to torment myself for not being further along than I am right now.

(And this gets right to the heart of what Garrison Keillor was saying about too high expectations in the last post.)

So if I could send my fully understanding “now-brain” back into the body of my 5 year old self, this is what I would say to “you should know better” :

Actually, I shouldn’t know better. I haven’t totally learned this yet and I’m working on it and that’s OK with me. I’ll know more soon, thank you very much.

I would love to see the look on any parent’s face, hearing that come out of a 5 year old child!

But for now, if this freaked-out-expectation comes upon me while I’m learning something new, I take the opportunity to make it a teaching moment for my 5 year-old self and I let her know all about our new way to learn.

Has this phrase or expectation played out in your life? I’d love to hear about how you took it. And if you never heard this as a child, I would love to hear from you what’s it like to grow up without that!

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You might also like these:

1. Learning From Remorse Without Having a Self Pity Festival
2. Are you making it safe enough to succeed?

I’ve been watching a particularly subtle but aggressive form of resistance in myself over the last week or so.

It’s the dreaded “I don’t feel like it” fog. Do you ever get that?

I’ve been studying it for a while now and I’ve come to the conclusion that it  starts at the crossroads of deep caring and emotional need.

Today we’re going to talk about the caring in Part I, and I’ll show you what I mean about the need in Part II.

So why would caring about something lead to not wanting to do it?

When we care a lot about what we’re doing, we don’t want to put any negative energy or emotions into it. We don’t want to “mess it up”.

I think more and more of us are understanding that the energy we put into things matters and that it actually is felt by others when our creations go out into the world.

And this applies just as much to stuff no one will ever see, like practicing our music at home. The key is – we want it to be GOOD.

So when I sit down at my computer to write a blog post, and I just had a snarky exchange with my husband, well, I don’t want to put any of THAT in my writing. I’m just sure you’ll all feel it!

So in order to put my best work out into the world and share the “right” kind of energy, I’ll be kind to everyone and keep my snarky energy to myself and wait until I’m feeling better to do this. (Which is probably why I didn’t post for 3 weeks!)

So this is really a loving impulse….until your resistance gets a hold of it!

The minute you set up a standard around an action that says you only want to put “good” energy into it, and therefore you’ll do it only when you feel  “good”, you leave the door wide open for your resistance.

Because now, all it has to do to stop you from doing something, is make sure you don’t feel “good”.

And we have to remember that our unconscious safety brain, where our resistance comes from, has control of our thoughts and emotions first, before our conscious brain has anything to say about it. So if your resistance thinks your next action might take you a little out of your comfort zone, it just pulls up a little negative emotion and Voila – action thwarted!

So how do we get around this?

Have you ever watched a child change emotions in about 2 seconds? They can be in full out tantrum one second and then in total wonder over something that caught their eye in the next.

We all have the ability to do that. I was once given an assignment by my teacher to conjure up the states of joy, sadness, fear, anger, grief, anxiety – as many different ones as I could think of in just a few minutes. (She dared us to do it, actually, and I’m always spurred on by a good dare!) And it worked. I had WAY more conscious control over my emotional states than I ever imagined.

I remembered that exercise this past week, watching the “I don’t feel like it” fog roll in and out. So I made a big decision…

I decided that from now on I’m going to choose the state that matches my task, instead of choosing the task that matches my state.

Read that again.

Choose the state that matches your task, instead of choosing the task that matches your state.

When this dawned on me, I realized that I didn’t have to be held prisoner by whatever energy or emotion I happen to be in. So from now on, I choose what I feel like. Or at least that’s what I’m aiming for.

Want to try it with me?….I dare you!

And leave a comment below to let me know how it goes or tell us how your states are affecting what you do in your day.

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You might also like these:

1. The Myth of “I don’t feel like it” (Part 2)
2. What’s Colouring Your World?
3. Secret Fuel to Overthrow Temptation

Rainbowfest by Manicho

First of all, I want to thank all of you who are tuning in to these posts.

I find it really makes a difference to be blogging to actual people and not just into anonymous cyberspace.

And one of the side effects of this seems to be that I’m coming up with a LOT more ideas of things to post about…ideas that will really expand the scope of this blog.

A part of me wants to worry about whether it will all fit together cohesively, whether I’ll have to change the tag line, whether it will all come across as just too weird. But I’ve also been inspired recently just go ahead and be all of my “freaky self”, with the idea that the world isn’t going to be changed by those who “fit”, and that leaves the rest of us to do it.  = >

So I’m going to explore all these expanding ideas and we’ll find out where it takes us.

Now for the colours…

(And by the way, you’ll notice the British spelling of “colours” above, which is because I’m in Canada and I’m rather fierce about our way of spelling, so I never change it even though every spell check on my computer says it’s wrong….So there.)

In the past few days something tangible has shifted inside and I”m suddenly aware of certain ways I have of responding to the world that I had never seen quite so clearly before.

The other day my husband called from work, which is just up the road from our house, and asked me to swing by and put his golf clubs in the trunk of his car outside his workplace so he could go to the driving range after his shift.

Not a huge deal, since I was on my way out anyway. But I managed to respond with a fair degree of annoyance.

I watched myself curiously in this state and, in the few days since, I’ve seen myself respond this way over and over again. Sometimes it’s more obvious and sometimes I just hide it really well and sometimes it’s not as big a reaction because I’m telling the story that it’s not as big an annoyance.

And then I realized that this way of responding is colouring my whole world!

It’s as though I’m a fish and this annoyance is my “ocean” that I breathe and swim around in all day not even realizing that I’m in it.

It’s like I’m saying all the time to myself that life is a series of annoying intrusions into my “flow”, whatever that happens to be in the moment.

And I wonder what kind of effect that’s having on the possibility of attracting opportunities and other good things into my world?

If I’m skulking around, sighing and rolling my eyes over everything unexpected that shows up in my day, I’m not really imagining that good things are right around the corner or that I would even enjoy them when they got here!

So I think it’s time to choose a different “colour” for my day.

And I’m taking my inspiration here from my wonderful yoga teacher, Maryse Thuot, who keeps encouraging us to smile into every pose. That feels like a much more gentle and joyful response to life than annoyance at everything.

I’ve been trying this on in the last couple of days. Especially at home where, let’s face it, it’s pretty easy to get into a pattern of annoyance with the people we live with everyday.

And I have to say that it is making a definite difference. When I manage to catch myself and smile instead of cringe, I’ve noticed that my energy doesn’t get drained by the “ugh” feeling I used to have. And I’m moving from one activity to another more easily.

And now I’m starting to look around to see what other patterns might be a part of my “ocean” and question those too!

So what’s colouring your world?

What are the responses, emotions, and reactions that run through your day so constantly that you don’t even notice them anymore?

And what colour would you like it to be?

I’d love to hear your comments on this. Feel free to share them below.

You might also like these:

1. When Fear Makes Our World Smaller

I’ve been really focused on a couple of major writing projects these days. And maybe it’s just the fact that I’m at my computer all day, but I’ve also been doing a lot more reading online, clicking links and just generally exploring as I love to do.

I’ve been watching how I’m walking the line between reading just enough stuff out there to keep me motivated for my own work vs letting the exploring cross the line into “avoiding writing” territory. A few avoidance moments, but not too many to throw me off track completely, so I’ll go with it.

And today, I got into some really cool and interesting stuff about designing online learning programs at ‘Teaching Sells.com‘. Seemed more motivational than avoidance, and I was definitely getting pretty fired up about new possibilities for sharing with people.

I stopped to make lunch, my head starting to swirl with new visions,product ideas, ways to create support & community, and suddenly it struck me…

I’ve done this before!

I could immediately think of several times when I’ve been tightly focused on my website, or an e-book or improving something current, and I’ve been “exploring” and suddenly found myself in ‘Visionary’ mode, all inspired and looking down the road at a future full of possibilities.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever done Marcus Buckingham’s Strength’s Finder, but one of my top strengths is ‘Ideation’, the process of coming up with new ideas.

I LOVE this part!

I get all excited, I grab a pen and paper, or open a new Word doc and start writing frantically, capturing as much as I can of the vision while I have it.

And, to my credit, a lot of my current stuff is coming from re-visiting writing I did years ago in just such a state. (Fortunately, I’ve kept absolutely everything!)

But what I can suddenly see with jolting clarity, is how many times I’ve turfed the current project I was tightly focused on for the excitement of the new idea and vision.

I’d say it’s been a crap shoot over time, a 50/50 chance, that I would actually get back to what I was working on and finish it completely.

And, when I REALLY look at this pattern (Yikes!) I realize that there were whole areas of expertise that I was ready to share that I threw out the window just before they were ready.

OK, breathe. Now breathe compassion to the horrified part of me.

I know that all the things I’ve ever worked on were stepping stones to what I’m doing now, and I still have all the writing I did on them, so all is not lost.

But what I think I really lost was the opportunity to experience success with each one of those. To bring them to fruition and know the sweetness of the completion and the harvest.

And I think I missed out on a way of seeing myself in the light of those successes that would have me in a different place in my life now.

And then, of course, with compassion, I know I’m in the exact right place right now, and I do have a deep feeling that couldn’t have claimed this new way of seeing myself any earlier that I have.

We get it when we get it. And not a moment before.

But now, please excuse me while I get back to my writing!

How about you? Does being a visionary every get in your way?
Join in the dialogue below.

You might also like these:

1. Resistance is Your Soul’s Compass
2. How to Become Immune to Your Resistance
3. Learning From Remorse Without Having a Self Pity Festival