Archive for the ‘Personal Growth’ Category

Fitness Vision or Workout Routine

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 by Angela

Since grammar school, I was a workout fanatic. I worked out all the time. I played sports and wanted to be involved in active activities. I couldn’t stand being on the beach unless I was doing something. It was really more of a frenzy and fanatic lifestyle. I was doing it more to avoid certain things in my life and to not gain weight. They were all reactive reasons rather than for a higher purpose.

Don’t get me wrong- it was a better choice to be active and engaged than a lot of things I could have chosen. The only problem was it wasn’t fulfilling. I was just trying to get through the workout- didn’t really experience it all. After I graduated college, I continued being committed to working out, however I started making fitness goals. I started running and doing races. I was striving towards improving my times. I tried new things. I learned how to swim again to be able to do a triathlon. So, now I was focused on positive outcomes and goals. Better step, but still unfulfilling to what I was hoping for.

I did some work with Judith Wright and her Soft Addictions work and The One Decision. I began to understand what it meant to have a vision for my body- a higher purpose. My vision includes that I am a fit and healthy woman. My body is flexible and strong. I enjoy experiencing my body in all ways. It was from this that then the goals for running, working out, lifting weights started to have more meaning. I would use my vision to help me get started on the days I didn’t want to. I used my vision to decide the choice of workout that was important for me. I got more creative. I had more workout partners to be engaged with while I was working out. I would notice my breathing, feel my muscles, think through ideas, and have feelings when I worked out now. I was more alive and enjoying working out as something more not just something I had to do. Having a vision in all areas my life has helped provide me with more meaning, purpose and connection in my life and a greater reason to keep working out.

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Dealing with Aging Parents

Friday, October 2nd, 2009 by Angela

We recently put my Mom who is 82 into a nursing home. Her diagnosis is vascular dementia. From the research, they say she would have up to 5 years and would probably die from a heart related condition like a stroke or a heart attack. It has been difficult knowing she ready to die. Right now, she is still capable of understanding and making decisions. Thus, we got her funeral arrangements in line and other wishes she has so we can’t fight about it as a family later and only honor her requests. 

I visit her more now that she lives closer. We had a challenging relationship over the years. Over the past several years, we have expressed all our feelings to each other. Today, we are closer than ever and have a greater appreciation for each other as well. The fighting over the years, the truth telling on both our parts, I believe created a more intimate relationship. 

During our visits, I have told her I want her to die in peace. It has been a wonderful process for me with my mom to be reviewing her life. I have enjoyed knowing her more and sharing with her about my feelings about my experience of her. It has been healing for both of us. I have been supporting her with coming to terms with her life and how she lived. She is expressing more feelings. I am experiencing her in transforming her life. She is ready to die and that saddens me. I am challenging her to have a purpose in these final years rather than just waiting.

I know when my mom dies, I will be sad, yet I will also be happy for knowing we will feel nothing but love for each other and hopefully my mom will feel less shame and regret about her life. I can say this has been only possible because of the personal growth work I have done over the years at the Wright Leadership Institute. It has been by my decision to be honest with her and her with me and talking about all the “unconventional” feelings and judgments that most families would say you shouldn’t say to each other. This has created more closeness than I ever thought I would have.

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Don’t ask. Don’t tell.

Thursday, October 1st, 2009 by Dan

I just got an assignment in my transformations lab at the Wright Leadership Institute – asking inappropriate questions. Say what?

See, in my family, we never asked any questions at all.  In fact we didn’t communicate in the extreme.  My folks didn’t tell many stories about their childhoods and growing up. We didn’t talk about what happened during our day at school. We didn’t share a lot of personal information with one another. We kept secrets. As kids, we learned that asking questions was somehow intrusive. Don’t ask, don’t tell was the unspoken policy. For a long time, I call this “respecting others boundaries.”

Recently I’ve come to see how this so-called respect has actually distanced me from others and kept me from experiencing true intimacy. So now I’m experimenting with pushing those boundaries, being outrageously curious, and asking the unspoken question. I’m learning to be impertinent. And I’m also learning that others want to share themselves, and that they open up to genuine curiosity. I’m learning how to be nourished by and intimate with others.

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“Sacred Travel” to a Park

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 by Angela

It was a average day and it looked like rain. I had several errands to run before work and didn’t have much time. My son who is 2 really wanted to go to the park. I scheduled out the morning and worked it out to have about an hour to get to and from the park and have maybe 45 mins to play there and then I would go straight to work.

As the morning progressed, things were moving along and of course you don’t plan for the little detours that happen. The time was getting tighter. I looked at the clock and I have 35 minutes to go to the park. My mind went back and forth- go, not go. I had all the reasons in the world to not go- not enough time, it probably will rain, etc. 

Suddenly, I remember what I had learned from Judith Wright over the years on the sacred travel trips and pilgrimages she leads each year. We would be in a different city and we would have a small window of time. She would have us go into a museum and see one specific painting she read about or go into a temple and pray and meditate or wherever she would have us go. We would take in the awe and wonderment of that place in a short period of time realizing you don’t really need that much time to have a great experience yet I know I tell myself all the time that I need more time to do it. 

With that memory, I said we are going to the park. I cruised there with my son in the baby jogger, me in my work attire and computer bag. We got to the park and I set my timer for 22 minutes. I told my son we only have a small time to play and let’s go. He had a blast in those 22 minutes. He went up and down the slide several times, hung from the monkey bars. He even met a little friend who lives close to where I work and I met her mom. We all connected in a short period of time. I felt I had a pilgrimage moment at a park.

I am grateful for the lessons I have learned on the trips Judith Wright has lead. I have learned how to experience life more fully and it has transformed how I travel and how I take “mini” trips every day.

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We Are Liars.

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 by Abby

How many times have you lied today?

I’m betting you’re probably lying to yourself right now about that number. Most lying is unconscious and the best liars actually believe what they are saying!

Here’s the truth about lying…

  • We are lied to 200 times per day – (meaning one untruth every 5-8 minutes!)
  • We deceive 30 people per week
  • We lie in 30-38% of our interactions
  • College students lie in 50% of conversations with their mothers
  • 10,000,000 people lie to the IRS each year (No shock there….)
  • 80% lie on their resumes * 70% of all doctors lie to insurance companies
  • 100% of dating couples surveyed lied to each other in about a 1/3 of their conversations

http://www.geocities.com/changes1611/sins22lies2.html

Yikes. Looks like we are so focused on maintaining our fake personas and false perceptions of ourselves that not only will we lie to others but we’ll even lie to ourselves.

Honestly, I was never a person who put a high value on the truth. I was more a sweep it under the rug, avoid the problem kind of girl. When I came to the Wright Institute (www.wrightliving.com) where they put this huge value on the truth I disregarded what they said—why not lie? It seemed to make for an easier life—less problems, less fights, and people seemed to like me a lot more when I lied.

But…I was a liar. As I started to really look at the cost of my lies I saw the lost relationships and the loss of my own direction and purpose. How can I know who I am if all I do is lie?

I haven’t changed over night and I’m not saying I don’t lie anymore but I have begun to make a conscious effort to tell those harder truths—and the truth is that rather than worrying about what others want me to do, say, or be I’m slowly getting my own voice back and remembering who I am.

As they say, “The truth will set you free…”

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Deciding to be less of a crank!

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 by Angela

I attended Judith Wright’s Soft Addiction Solution training weekend this past weekend. It was a lot of fun. I was able to have a sense of humor about my soft addictions. The humor also allowed me to have all my feelings. I felt sad as I discovered the lost opportunities I had because of engaging in soft addictions. With the context Judith set, my sadness didn’t bring me down into despair or victimhood but it gave me hope.

It was easy to want to take the next steps. Breaking it down to look at one step at a time to be able to be more genuinely me started to seem doable. I had given up caffeine for over 8 years now and pop naturally was eliminated from there. This time, I am ready to look at the more challenging soft addiction for me that she referred to as the mood addictions. I am pretty darn cranky most of the time.

I was able to understand more about the physiological reaction and the looped thinking. I understand how my brain has come to crave my mood addicted state. I can be a grumpy son of a gun and it has cost me many relationships and I want that to stop. However, with her data, her compassion, her 8 key skills, I feel I am on the way to a better start than I ever have been. I am starting with just simply saying hi as I see people and if I know them to use their name rather than quickly walking by because I have to get somewhere. You can link here for more information about her work.

 http://www.softaddictions.com/

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Maturation, a friendly concept for food lovers

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 by Jillian

I have been either on a diet, absolutely NOT on a diet, or thinking about what diet I should go on since I was in fourth grade. As sad as that is, I know I’m not alone, yet what a seriously crazy way to live. It’s odd that there is so much obesity, and the answer is to diet or maybe have plastic surgery, but it doesn’t really work. There is something clearly so wrong this is picture.

I’ve been reading the book “Food Swings” by Dr. Meltzer http://www.amazon.com/Food-Swings-Life-Changing-Connection-Well-Being/dp/1569246823 and things that I am currently learning and have known for a while clicked in place. The past three months I had made a conscious decision and declaration to transform my relationship with food, and so have been applying neuroscientific concepts to my eating patterns, examining my habits, and reading about the development of psychological coping responses (Anna Freud’s mature vs. immature responses).

Dr. Meltzer wrote about the Mommy – Daddy diet, or, the foods and ways that we were trained to eat as children. By trained, I mean that these ways of eating are HARD-WIRED into our brains and it takes huge conscious intention and coaching to RE-WIRE our brains. The Mommy – Daddy diet is immature, it is from our childhood, we need to grow up and make different sorts of food choices and have different reasons for eating than we did as children. I ate for soothing, comfort, reward, and for control.

Now, I’m all grown up, and, well, have been doing the same thing to my own dismay! So, I have started rewiring my brain to make mature decisions. It is totally awesome. I have been thinking entirely different about the my patterns and reasons for eating. It’s lunchtime – do I go to the nasty Flamingo greasy grill for a patty melt and fries? Well, I used to when I was feeling angry for not having a break and wanting to reward myself for a long work morning. But, wait, when I think about it, it is so not a reward as I always feel bad about myself after I eat that food, resentful that I had it, and in a slump from the grease and carb overload. So, I walk on by to the Fox and Obel and get a deliciously prepared salmon burger with sweet potatoes in a lovely environment with a friend. That is a break. The added bonus is the food is better and makes me happier, the food lover that I am! And when I want chocolate, my old pattern would be to acknowledge that chocolate will make me fat so I shouldn’t have it (as my parents might have told me), so I buy it anyway and gulp it down quickly in a sort of odd hiding manner. Now I have learned about the benefits of chocolate that is not processed and how it affects the brain (see the Food Swings book), and so I buy a high quality piece and enjoy it and notice the effects in my brain and it enters my body. Yum! Chocolate!

Oh, and the other cool thing is that my clothes are looser…but since it’s more immature to obsess about the number on the scale, I’ve chosen to not weigh myself and just enjoy what I’m learning!

Has anyone else made a shift like this, or want to make a shift like this?

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a Growth Spurt for mom!

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 by Barb

My son just turned nine months old and the last nine months has been such a big growth spurt – not just for him, but for me! Yesterday I just went to my second music class with him. I cried after his first class – not because anything bad happened and not because I was so moved by his musical genius.

Here’s how it went. About a dozen moms, dads, or couples circle around with our little darlings on our laps as the group leader takes a quick inventory of babies names and ages and launches right into the first introductory song where we’re all singing together incorporating each baby’s name.

My mind is off to the races. Will he….. interact with the other babies? Shake the shaker? Interact with me? Have fun? Will he love music and his mom and think fondly back on these memories for the rest of his life? Oh, look at that girl over there she can hold a beat already and bounces to the music and looks really happy. My child is crawling away and looking out the window. They must have trained her better with music since she was born. They were probably playing Baby Mozart. I meant to get those things and play them but I never did. In fact, I bet they have music going on in the house all the time. I should have played classical while he was in the womb. In fact, we never did read to him in the womb either. The neighbors did that with the newspaper. They will probably have a smarter child because of it. I hope I haven’t ruined his chances to be a genius.

The leader takes off on another song with hand puppets where she interacts with each baby one by one. Oh, she’s coming this way and he’s not paying attention. Those other kids are smiling or laughing. Maybe he’s going to be socially maladjusted because he hasn’t been exposed to other kids as much. What if I made a mistake having a nanny instead of daycare. Here she comes, come on Brian, come on. Smile at her. Do all that giggle cute stuff you do when you are home with me. Ok so he’s staring off into space and not even making eye contact. How can I let them know that actually he is the cutest baby in the world, that people comment about it all the time, that I fully expected him to be the class darling, that he must just be having an off day…..

Thank God for support and for my personal growth training at the Wright Leadership Institute. On the drive home, talking through all of this with a friend, I realize that I just had a lot of projection going on with my son. I was projecting on to him all of my little kid fears and disappoints.

He was just doing his thing in a new environment and checking it all out. I, on the other hand, was right back at the first day of kindergarten wanting to be liked, to make new friends, to be recognized, to feel special, and to belong. I was upset that the “teacher” didn’t ask my name, ask me to talk, have us introduce ourselves to each other, etc. In reality I’m a grown up kid still afraid of introducing myself to people, making friends, and facing rejection. Class #2 came and went yesterday and I’m proud to say that I took the initiative to introduce myself, ask people about themselves, and even offered to exchange information with one of the moms. I’m excited to see what the next part of my growth spurt will look like!

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