Strength

There's a small voice inside of me I have yet to fully explore.  The one on the opposite shoulder of the voice who reminds me how small and insignificant I am.  That voice I'm intimate with.  He's held me back for years and imposed limits on my dreams and abilities.  This is the voice who whispers into my ear and lets me know I'm not enough.  That I'm too heavy, too insignificant, and says "that's not you" and "you can't do that."

Time to step it up a little.  It's time to dig deep and find those parts of me I haven't yet been privy to.  To explore the other voice even though it's still just a whisper in the face of my rage, hate, and pain.
In a life that has known so much darkness it's scary to first be setting my sights on the light.  But the light beckons me today, more than it ever has before.  Maybe you can hear your light calling you?  I believe there are moments in all of our lives where the light calls us to expand and the crack letting it in opens just a little more.

Often it's difficult to know why the light is calling me or what it is I'm called to do.  One thing is for certain though, there's something bigger, better, and brighter meant for you.  There are realms of beauty, ability, and strength you have yet to discover.

Finding new abilities can be scary because they seem to call me to do more.  This fear can either stop me and keep me from my call or drive me to take more risks and go big or go home.  I aim for the latter.  To feel the fear and do it anyway.

I'm reminded of the 4 masculine archetypes as explained by Carl Jung.  He explains them as all the energies that live in each of us (though we all tap into these energies differently). They empower me and concentrating on them gives me strength to step into my call.

I am a Warrior.  My blood boils with the strength of the man God has made me.  I set boundaries and protect those I care for.  I get the job done and maintain a level of separation from emotion when I need to.  My warrior helps me aim for my goals with vigilance and keep my eye on the prize.

I am a Magician.  My magician is the part of me that understands and makes choices.  He allows me to tell my warrior what needs to be done and how to go about it.  My magician figures out my life and contains the wisdom I need to move forward, make change in my life, and navigate the world around me.

I am a Lover.  My energy is loving and accepting and I can feel those around me.  I use words like, "I feel" and "I love you," and resonate with life and my surroundings.  Emotions create my world and my experience and I recognize them enough to allow them to guide me.

I am a King.  I harness the powerful energy of my warrior, my magician, and my lover to bless those around me.  To bring peace and serenity to my realm.  My energy empowers others and allows them to find and connect to their inner King as well.

Just like in you, there is a power within me I have yet to fully harness.    A power that will continue to surprise me, strengthen me and strengthen those around me.  It is a me I sometimes fear.  I fear what I'm meant to accomplish and who I'm truly meant to be.  Yet with all the passion and wisdom I possess, I know this soul has been entrusted to me and that I can command all it has to offer in a way only I can.  It's mine for a reason and with it I am meant to discover who I really am and to continue figuring me out.

What an incredible adventure! Thanks for taking it with me.  
   



To see my last post:
http://figuringmeoutintime.blogspot.co.il/2016/08/habits.html

Habits

Old habits die hard.  Heard it?  There's a reason it's true.  Practically across the board, whether it's a positive or a negative habit, they're generally pretty hard to get over. 

We develop our habits for survival.  Not because we need the drink, the cigarette, or to read the paper in order to survive, but because they seemingly provide us with some necessary want or need we carry close to our heart.

There are other habits I've developed along my way.  Let's take creating safety for example (though the same would be true for connection, acceptance, being respected, being me, or countless other desires).  While the desire for safety may be a basic human need, I've developed character traits and behaviors throughout my life in order to keep myself safe.  Maybe it's the shyness.  The reluctance to share feelings or ideas.  It could be why I avoided the park as a kid and chose video games instead.  All in the pursuit of safety.

As an adult, it's  interesting to see these patterns showing up over and over again.  They show up as reluctance to share my ideas at work or even to tell my spouse how I'm truly feeling.  In the face of these situations my persona or facade go up creating a wall and I feel fear as my inner world feels invaded or violated even by seemingly the simplest of events.  My body may tense and I feel my face constrict as I try to hide what I'm feeling from showing.  I tell myself it isn't safe to wear my feelings on my sleeve.  All in the interest of maintaining my habit.  I may grab a cigarette in order to create that moment of calm.  In my calmness I want some time to myself.  There I find safety and peace.  All this...  The persona, the wall, the cigarette or drink, finding myself alone, in service of keeping myself safe in the old ways that used to work for me.

Used to.

However, like stated earlier, old habits die hard.  While these may have been necessary and served me at some earlier time, today they don't.  They hold me back and keep me from getting my raise.  They prevent closeness with my spouse.  My habits hold me back from asking for what I need.  My facade puts on that smile when really I'm feeling sad.  My behaviors find the quick temporary fixes for what I'm looking for and don't create a space for me to fully show up.

It may be more difficult to let down the security blanket of my persona than to drop any vice I've every picked up.  It's become my way of being.  My modus operandi.

So I try stepping out into the light and exposing myself without the protective way of being.  Without the wall.  Without the habit.  I feel the fear and I do it anyway in the interest of getting what I really want.  Safety.  Not safety in seclusion or isolation but safety within relationship.  Or course I won't find it everywhere I seek it, but if I don't seek it, I won't find it anywhere.

I may need to grieve. There's a reason I've held on to these habits for so long.  As much as they may hurt me today, once they served me and my habit has been a comforting friend for a long time.  So mourning and grieving the old way may be in order.

Old habits die hard.  Until they do I have so much to learn from them.  For now I know I'm on the right track.

Check out my last post: http://figuringmeoutintime.blogspot.co.il/2016/05/beyond-good-enough.html

Beyond Good Enough

There's this horizon people seem to be traveling toward.  I know I have been.  A mystical destination just beyond the horizon where things will be bigger, better, safer, warmer, and more enlightened.  Many spend their lives trying to peruse what's in this place and many never seem to make it, living their lives feeling both disappointed and like a disappointment. 



The place I speak of it the elusive state of "Good Enough."  The problem, as I've come to understand it for myself, is the thought that "good enough" is somewhere other than here.  The horizon is an imaginary line that recedes as you approach it.  If I go after my dreams as if they're somewhere other than here, that's the beginning of my issue. 

It's important for me to have goals and for them to require pushing myself in order to get to where I can reach them.  But if I'm striving for something outside of myself and there's no clear end game so I know I've arrived, it very well may continue to be that horizon that dissipates more and more as long as I continue to approach it.

As long as I'm here, I know I've got work to do.  As a human being I'm inherently flawed and doomed to remain imperfect until the time I leave this world.  So I'm aware.  I'm aware there is more I can be doing and that I am meant to grow.  To grow in my wisdom.  My production.  Love.  Faith.  Contribution.  There's more and there probably always will be.  But who is to say I haven't arrived?  Clearly I know I can be more, but still... 

Maybe the longer I pursue, "good enough" as if it's something I need to reach, the longer I'll keep myself from getting there?  Maybe "good enough" is right here?  Could it be, today, right here, right now, I am "good enough"?

As long as I believed I wasn't good enough it perpetuated itself.  The thought continued to hold me back and get me down.  Over time, I realized I'm here for a purpose (at least that's my belief).  So whether I'm sad, angry, depressed, successful, fired, or accomplishing, "good enough" is right here with me.  And it's this belief which is going to drive me forward.  Again, "good enough" doesn't mean I'm done or I've arrived.  It's a function of acceptance.  This is where I am right now and where I'm meant to be.  Here, right now, if I think I'm not good enough, chances are I might stay here for awhile.  But when I remember I am "Good enough," I'm driven to move forward and/or make a change.  I'm compelled to use the cards I've been dealt to better myself and others.  When I'm there in my element of peace with what it, it's when I can shine, and my light can manifest itself in the world.

So right now, right here, were I am with all of my imperfections and those things I'm not proud of, I am "good enough!"  With this recognition I will take the lemons of my circumstances and turn them into the lemonade of my reality.  I will no longer try to approach the receding horizon.  I am the horizon.  And living there, I am beyond "good enough."

Vulnerability: My Greatest Teacher

I've read that inner strength can be measured in the capacity to be there for others even while one is going through his own inner turmoil.  It must be true cause I think I saw it in a meme on the internet.  But while there may be truth to this, I'm thinking it's only true for some.  For others however it's so much easier to lose themselves in other peoples' problems, all the while avoiding their own and struggling in silence.  For these men, real growth and strength is in reaching out for the help they themselves need.

I know I personally grew up with a do-it-yourself mentality being taught I was strong as a bull and meant to know how to take care of business on my own.  Those beliefs kept me very secluded for a long time thinking that asking others for help was weakness.  I used those beliefs as a security blanket to avoid doing things when there was a chance of failure.  In essence, it was in keeping myself strong that I remained weak and closed.  In not letting others in that I maintained the bravado of the strong one.

Then something changed.  Men, who I didn't ask to be there for me, were.   They pushed me into the limelight and it was in my deepest fear of asking for help and what that would mean where I found my greatest teacher.  Vulnerability.  It is my willingness to be broken and flawed...  It is my willingness to be seen as broken and flawed that makes me strong.

I still think I need to be strong in those old ways sometimes.  I still carry fear of going down there, needing and asking for help. But that prison of my mind no longer holds me back the way it once did. It's in knowing, for me, real strength is in showing up fully as myself that I am free.  

Clearly it's not right for me to lean on everyone.  It's not even safe.  There are people who would use my vulnerability against me or take my brokenness to mean something it doesn't.  But there are also safe men.  Good men who will be there for me unconditionally.   Even those who will love me more when they learn I am flawed, just as they are.

I pride myself on my path to being one of these men.  A vulnerable man who can openly make space for others to be broken and flawed along with me.  A safe space for those who also want to be strong in this way.  Thank you to those who have been mine.

Keep on being awesome!

-Eric

Coming Out of the Closet

The pessimist sees the glass as half empty.  The optimist as half full.  The realist recognizes he's got a half a glass to drink and the opportunist drinks it while everyone else ponders the present situation.

I'd like to say I've stayed away from them all, but there's one four letter word I've always carefully avoided.  It's caused me tremendous fear and has made my heart twist in knots.  I've avoided it because of all it's connotations and what I thought it would do to my life.  If this word were to escape my lips, the terror is, it would change my whole being.  My outlook on life would need to be different and I would be forever... Someone else.  *Shudder*  The thought of it still gives me some anxiety and I wonder if still, even today, it's best left unsaid.  How can I be me, the me I've come to accept and love, if I allow this word to become part of my vernacular?

Hope.  Such a small and seemingly simple word I've kept at bay for as long as I can remember.  HOPE. In retrospect it seems so silly and yet at the same time, I still utter the word with a hint of fear.  Can I really be the same me as I've always been, yet be hopeful?

Some call me a pessimist.  I've always preferred "realist-with-melancholy-tendencies," but pessimist has worked for me. It's allowed me to stay really comfortable.  But I've realized I've been hiding, even from myself who I really am with concern I'd need to become an outgoing, extroverted, smiley-smiley, life of the party, optimist.  Blech!  Not that there's anything wrong with people who are like that, it's just not me.  (Please oh please don't say I'll be writing again in a year saying it IS me!?)

But it's time I come out of my closet and face the light. I seem to be an optimist.  Hmmmm.  Not only that but I'm hopeful things will be ok.  They'll get better and some of them may even be really good.  I can both feel my body tighten up as I share and feel the relief of letting that out at the same time. 

I can both maintain the me some, including myself have come to know and love and integrate hope into my being.  Me, the "realist-with-melancholy-tendencies," being hopeful.  For better or worse, it's the hard times that brought it out of me.  I realized one day I'm just not the "everything is horrible, we're all gonna die someday anyway" kinda guy I thought I was.  I was able to look at a situation and say to myself, "wow, this stinks.  But I believe it'll get better."  Right there, hope smacked me in the face and I couldn't ignore it any longer.

Another learning experience.  Another glimpse into figuring me out.  But I've learned (again) that labeling myself and boxing me in isn't the answer.  I am the pessimist.  And the optimist.  The realist and sometimes the opportunist.  Yet I still get to be the hilarious "realist-with-melancholy-tendencies."  Whatever it is, I am me.  Today, dropping the fear of hope, I feel freer.