From Lantzilla via Flickr.

One hopes to never get disappointing or shocking news, but life is difficult. We’re often dealt more than we think we can handle and are seldom equipped with the right tools to do so. At least, that’s been my experience. We can spend a lot of time spinning our wheels and engaging in unhelpful activities. All we really want after a while is to move on. Here’s how I deal with the first stages of a crisis and get to a place where I can begin actually dealing with the problem.

Note: For those who read my blog, you know that I underwent a surgery I thought would put an end to this year’s health problems. Last week I got word that it didn’t and that I could be in for a longer process than I thought. While it’s not serious, it’s emotionally stressful. I went through all kinds of emotions and wrote all kinds of blog posts. Finally, I realized the only advice I could rightfully give is how to survive the first days of shock and how to move out of it, because that’s what I wanted to read.

Let it out.
It’s natural to be upset, disappointed, angry, frustrated and/or shocked. I was all of these things. I spent pretty much the first four hours oscillating between anger and tears. I always know I’m going to go through this, so I just let it come. This isn’t a stage to short-cut. It will come out sooner or later, and it’s been my experience that later is worse.

Make the space to regroup.
You can’t just jump back into life and work like nothing’s going on, as tempting as it is. In my case, I got my bad news at the end of the day so I took the following day off. I needed the opportunity to get enough sleep, move at a natural pace through my morning and deal with any leftover emotions from the previous day.

Fill up your cup.
While I’m not religious, I believe that we all have a spiritual aspect to ourselves. I tend to think that we have spiritual reservoirs in which we make deposits and withdrawals. After a big withdrawal, it’s necessary to make some deposits. I call this “filling up my cup.” I spend time with family, watch a funny movie (laughter is a high-dollar deposit in my book), read meditation books, and hang around people who I think really have the life thing figured out. I always walk away from them feeling like they’ve rubbed off a little bit.

Process. Process. And process some more.
Emotions are flying, stress hormones abound. I’ve never been able to get a hold on a single sensible idea for more than 10 minutes when something like this happens. After every emotion possible has run out, then start processing them. Examine each emotion individually. There’s usually more than one factor playing into your emotional state. For me, anxiety over my job and leftover emotions from my past were showing up around the real problem. Separate your emotions out, deal with the ones you need to. I can toss out the job anxiety and regrets from my past. They don’t need to be here right now. It’s much easier to deal with one thing at a time.

Research. Ask questions.
Research does not equal Googling your condition. Good lord, no. If you want to send yourself to the padded cell, go for it. Find a legitimate source and start researching your options. Talk to a professional in the field and ask questions. It took me 5 days to ask my doctor what the heck all this meant. From there, I could start researching.

There’s a comfort in knowing. Fear of getting an answer we don’t want to hear can keep us from asking. It doesn’t make the answer any less true, unfortunately. Knowing exactly where I’m at allows me to figure out where I’m going. Think about it: if you asked me for directions to my house, my first question would be “where are you coming from?”

Make a battle plan.
I like the phrase “battle plan” because it suggests you are planning for a fight. And that connotes that you aren’t about to give up and let life steamroll you. This makes me feel empowered, as opposed to overpowered.

Start with the things that you can control. For me, it’s exercise, diet, and stress levels. So my battle plan pertains to those things. If you set yourself up to battle something you can’t control, you will lose in so many ways.

Detail your battle plan on paper. In what ways are you going to attack your situation? What are the things that can take a back seat in your life for a while? Who can you trust for good support? In my case, I write down my diet, my exercise schedule, and how I’m going to reduce stress. It’s important to write it down because at some point you’ll say either “I’ve got this down, I don’t need help” or “screw it, it’s not working anyway.” Been there, done that. It doesn’t work. If you’ve got it, you’ll forget it, and if you think it’s not working, then you should reevaluate, not throw it away.

Make a plan for when you lose your head again. You will probably become an emotional mess again at some point, so write down the process by which you got out of it this time (like this post!) so you can refer to it later. Write down the things that made you feel better (family, funny movies, coffee with friends) and the things that didn’t (isolating, eating comfort food, imagining the worst). When you are emotionally stressed, it’s easier to follow some self-tested steps than trying to figure it out all over again.

A friend of mine says that if you aren’t moving forward, you’re moving backward. At the very least, remember to keep moving forward.

I sat next to my mom on the beach and considered how similar we were in regards to career drive and ambition. It was Mother’s Day, and I was five days post-surgery. We were sitting on the seawall because I wouldn’t make it up and down the stairs to the sand. Technically I wasn’t supposed to even be walking yet, but I needed to get out of the apartment.

I buried my feet in the sand and thought about what she was suggesting. “All I’m saying, Holly,” she said, “is that you might want to take it a little easy. Maybe you just slow down this year. Don’t make any big changes. Don’t move, don’t change jobs, don’t start any companies, don’t take on anything extra besides work. Just be for a while.”

Who wouldn’t want to be told to do less, I wondered. Who wouldn’t want the opportunity to be lazy? And there it was. Right there. Lazy. Kicking ass at a full-time professional job, being in a wonderful committed relationship, writing two blogs, and founding a professional organization is lazy? I’ve always pushed myself to be more, better, faster. If I wasn’t the only person doing it, I’d better be the youngest person doing it. If younger people were doing it, I was doing more.

I’ve been teetering back and forth on whether or not the women in my family have bodies that are just not equipped to handle stress, or if we put an extraordinary amount of stress on ourselves which affects our bodies. Two of my aunts have battled cancer, breast and brain. My mother was emitted to the E.R. with chest pains for the first time at 42. The pre-cancerous cells my surgery and biopsy had revealed were most likely the result of stress, my doctor warned me in her office.

I had my first nervous breakdown as a high school junior. I was working part-time, volunteering in an at-risk school, going to school full-time, taking 4 Advanced Placement courses, and taking a night class at the local college. I crumpled like a ball in the living room when my mom scolded me over the laundry. It didn’t really slow me down though. By my senior year I was going to the local college full-time in place of high school classes, with the same extracurricular schedule. Who was I if not all those things – a star student, an impressive application/ resume, a good employee, a girl on the make?

So maybe that’s why I wasn’t surprised when my doctor eyed my chart after the second round of biopsies and said that the past three months of low-stress living hadn’t made a difference. Hadn’t I spent most of those three months stressing out about how to maintain my immense checklist of “low-stress” things to do? Wasn’t it only the last few weeks where I let myself go to whatever the results were, left it in Something Larger’s hands?

One painful, frightening surgery later (which I had um, postponed by a month so I could launch a professional organization), I sat next to my equally driven mother and took her words of advice. She knew. She was still pushing and climbing at 50. “It’s always there,” she said of ambition. “It’ll be there in a year.”

Who am I if not a ladder-climbing employee, a twenty-something entrepreneur, a moonlighting freelancer, The Person in Town Who Knows About That, a woman on the make?

I guess I’m a woman taking it easy.

Tempering my ambition and drive is something I’ve got to figure out in my life, otherwise this thing, this cancer is just going to keep coming up. And the risks are just too great to ignore.

And while I made up my mind on the beach that day, it wasn’t until today I had to act on it. I turned down a $500/mo. freelance gig. And it was in a type of work that I love and have wanted to do more of. I even initially agreed, but backed out after a long talk with my boyfriend and lots of prayerful contemplation this weekend. It was probably one of the hardest things, besides the surgery, I’ve had to do this year.

My greatest fear in giving up this year to maintaining the life I already have is that I will miss out on something, some opportunity, some chance, some big life-changing event. Then I realize that I just went through the life-changing event. I came head-to-head with so many fears over the six months I endured biopsies, waiting periods, immune system boosters, and surgery. In the end, if I don’t learn how to slow down and enjoy what I’ve built, I’ll miss out on so much more.

Last week I underwent a surgery I had been hoping to avoid. It was a dark cloud hanging over my head for 6 months. It started with a test, a biopsy, an ineffective attempt to rev up my immune system and a surgery.

The past 6 months have been an emotional rollercoaster as I faced the possibility of cancer and potentially damaging my child-bearing abilities. I had an amazing amount of support, not only from my loved ones and friends, but also from my friends in the blogosphere.

Let me say first that there is no wrong way to support a friend. But a health crisis can send a person into an emotional tailspin of anger, fear and loneliness. Here are a few things I learned along the way.

Don’t say: Lots of people go through it.
When I heard this (which was often since lots of women do have this surgery), it made my feelings seem insignificant. While it is soothing to some degree to know that you’re not going into completely uncharted medical territory, it is the first time for you and it shouldn’t be trivialized.

Do say: Here’s the contact information for someone who has gone through it.
I can’t count how many times people told me they knew someone who had the same surgery and how she was fine. But that didn’t lessen my fears. Great. Someone, somewhere has come out OK. Doesn’t help.

A few days before my surgery, a woman called me and said that she’d had the same surgery, although it had been 20-someodd years since. She told me exactly what she went through, from beginning to the end. That was the first time I felt comfortable.

So much of what we fear as humans is simply the unknown. The more firsthand information I acquired, the more at ease I felt. After my surgery, a few more women stepped forward and said they’d had it also. I wished that they had done so earlier.

Don’t say: There are people who’ve gone through worse.
I heard this a few times, and when I did, it made feel like total crap. Not only was I (still) facing surgery, but here I am feeling sorry for myself while children in Africa are dying of hunger and disease. Thanks for the helping of guilt – it goes great with my anxiety and fear.

Do say: Let me share my experience going through something worse.
Unless you’re the person who has gone through something worse, I wouldn’t touch this one. If you can’t offer sympathy, don’t offer guilt in its place. If you have faced a bigger challenge, then please share your experience.

An older gentleman friend of mine faced (and beat) cancer three times. Another girlfriend beat a brain tumor. Two of my aunts have in recent years survived breast and brain cancer. Having watched these people walk through their ordeals with grace and talked to them about their fears, where they found strength and courage, and how they coped, were invaluable lessons.

Don’t say: Keep your chin up.
The thing about clichés is that we don’t hear their meanings anymore. Our mind sort of glosses over them because we’ve heard them so much. Besides, who wants to keep their metaphorical chin up when they feel a punch coming?

Do say: Keep your shoulders back.
This is a challenge you’re facing, and you should be in full-on attack mode. It was hard to feel self-pity, sadness, fear, or weakness when I remembered to physically round my shoulders back and down. It made me feel strong, powerful, like I was ready for a fight. It’s sort of like the moment a runner laces her shoes up – her body is ready for the run. By keeping my shoulders back, I was ready to face my challenges head-on.

Don’t say: Don’t worry.
I know this is what people say when they’re searching for the right thing to say and it just isn’t coming. People who love us desperately want to see us feeling better, faster. And it seems like anytime someone said this to me, they were willing it with all their might to take the worry away from me. But someone in a crisis is going to worry. I felt like people were trying to shut me up sometimes, like closing their eyes to an ugly house in the neighborhood.

Do say: Tell me what you’re worried about.
I realize that my loved ones don’t want to think about the worst-case scenarios anymore than I do, but I needed to talk about what I was worried about. Would it be cancer? What if I can’t have children? What if something goes wrong in the surgery?

One of my tricks for beating fear is naming the monster. I ask myself what the worst-case scenario outcome is. That usually takes the fangs off a fear. I needed to be able to do that with someone close to me, to get it off my chest. My moods were so effected by my fears, that I would burst into tears at the breakfast table. “Don’t worry” ain’t gonna fix that. Talking it through will.

Don’t say: Everything will be fine.
This is a lot like “don’t worry” in that I think people say it when they have nothing else to say. I usually just sort of shook my head in agreement or mumbled a thank-you. It just doesn’t really say anything.

Do say: I’m praying for you, or I’m holding you in my thoughts.
While “you’re in my prayers/thoughts” sounds kind of clichéd, this is probably one of the things that warmed my heart the most and actually made me feel better when people said it. It told me that they cared, were thinking about me, and were offering to do the one thing they could actually do – pray for my well-being or send “good vibes” my way.

Even when I was an atheist, I welcomed people’s prayers in a crisis. I took a class in college about the mind-body connection and read about studies in which cancer patients who had an assigned prayer group praying for them survived at higher rates than control groups that did not have a prayer group. I believe in the power of lots of people sending positive thoughts and wishes for you into the universe.

My rollercoaster ended on Monday when my doctor declared me cancer-free. If I can learn to remove the stress in my life, I’ll (hopefully) never have to face it again. But that’s another post…

Photo courtesy My Lyn via Flickr.

It seems to be the nature of life that every now and then we are handed more than we think we can handle. Whether it’s one big thing or several small ones stacking up, everybody reaches their breaking point at some time or another. In those moments, we often just don’t know what to do with ourselves. We’re overwhelmed with emotion, with the weight of so much to deal with at once.

We know that eventually this will all pass, that the emotions will subside given time, but what is to be done right now? Isn’t there anything that can be done immediately?

The past few weeks have been difficult for me. I’m going through a break-up, my company laid off 10 percent of our workforce, and I’m oh-so impatiently awaiting medical test results. It seems like when it rains, it pours.

I’m doing everything there is to do – I keep myself busy, surround myself with friends and loved ones, try to extract what I’ve learned about myself, journal, pour myself into work and imagine a bright future. But I have too many moments when I just can’t do anything but burst into tears. The heartbreak is too great; the weight of everything is too much.

I went through very similar emotions when I first got sober. It was all so overwhelming, and when the loneliness became too much to bear I turned to a story a mentor told me. (Everything good I know I learned from someone much wiser than me!)

When she was having a particularly difficult time, she called her mentor and asked her what she ought to do. She was hysterical and went on and on about what she ought to do.

The woman on the other end of the line asked her calmly, “Are your dishes done?”

“What?” the distraught woman asked.

“Are your dishes clean?” the other woman repeated.

“No.”

“Go do your dishes and call me when you’ve finished.” She hung up the phone.

The woman did her dishes and called her mentor back.

“Do you feel better?” the woman asked.

“No,” the distraught woman replied.

“Is your laundry done?” the woman asked.

“No.”

“Go do your laundry and call me when you’ve finished.” She hung up the phone.

This went on for half the day. She did her dishes and laundry, swept and mopped, and dusted. At the end of it, the distraught woman looked around her clean house, finally calm.

The point? Sometimes there’s nothing that can be, or even should be done about the pain in our lives. Someone recently told me, “Holly, the only way is through.” Another wise person once told me that sometimes you just have to stand. There’s nothing to be done about the pain in our lives but to endure it until it passes.

None of us want to experience pain; it’s part of our biological make-up. We avoid pain because it is unpleasant. It is sometimes necessary, however, in order to grow. It’s been my experience that periods of pain directly precede periods of growth. There’s a correlation there. When we avoid it, when we try to cover it up, we often go too far. We’ll develop hardened hearts, character disorders, neuroses, or addictions.

When we can’t do anything to make the pain in our lives dissipate or even pass more quickly, the best thing we can do is to focus on what we can control – our physical environment. I sat in my ridiculously messy car yesterday and decided it was time to clean it. You see, I can’t do anything to fix my emotional messes right now. I have to go through them. But I need to do something, and what I can do is make my environment clean, calm and put-together, even if the rest of me isn’t.

“Doing the spiritual dishes,” as my friend calls it, is a way to distract us temporarily from discomfort and pain, as well as to improve our physical environment. A clean home or apartment will lend some much needed calm to a disquieted mind, whereas a disheveled physical environment will feed negatively into an already chaotic mental environment.

How do you get through the tough periods in life? What are your “spiritual dishes?”

Photo by quinn.anya via Flickr.

I used to be afraid of flying. Deathly afraid. Dear-god-I-might-throw-open-the-emergency-exit-before-takeoff, let-me-out-of-this-thing afraid.

It’s been 18 months since I’ve last flown. Before that, I got tanked to get on a plane. We’re talking lots of booze and pills to make it possible. Like, where-am-I-again drunk. Obviously, I don’t have that luxury anymore. And because I value my sobriety, I don’t have the luxury of taking a sweet little anti-anxiety pill any more either. That option went down with the ship.

So, I had to deal with my fear like a normal messed-up person. I went to therapy. My therapist told me something wonderful and amazing and completely rational.

Lean into your fear.

He told me when I was sitting on that flight and I got nervous to take a deep breath, take my left hand, put it on my right hand and pat it reassuringly. Then, he said, physically and mentally lean into your fear.

It worked.

Well, along with a few EMDR sessions. I don’t want to discount that. It was a combination of techniques that got me through this. But it got me thinking about fear, a common thread I’ve come to find in my problems in sobriety. I drank to cover up my fear, and without the drink, the majority of discomfort in my life comes from trying to avoid fear and other negative emotions.

But this isn’t just a common trait among alcoholics, I’ve found. I was just talking to a friend earlier who is in a lot of fear over a big decision in her life. And my life coach just published a post on Brazen Careerist about overcoming your fear to literally rock your life.

As young people, in particular, we’re learning how to recognize our fears and overcome them. This is one such way to do just that. Instead of running away from the things that frighten you, instead of avoiding the uncomfortable situation, instead of not looking into the unknown, lean into your fear.

Get on the airplane and face the fear. You’ll overcome it.

Take the leap and move to a foreign country. You’ll never regret it.

Ask your boss for a raise. You’ll thank yourself.

Have the conversation you’ve been afraid of. You’ll be a better person for it.

Take a deep breath. Pat your own hand reassuringly.

Lean into the fear.

Once you’ve looked into it, it will vanish. And you’ll see it for all it is – fear.

As a friend of mine says, kiss that monster on the nose.

I won’t be writing as much about love and relationships as I have been lately. I do, however, want to explain why because I am very committed to being open and honest with you guys. While it didn’t take me long to make this decision, it was a difficult one. My readers have told me repeatedly that they enjoy my relationship posts the most and that made it difficult, because I want to give you what you like to read.

That said, two big things came up yesterday, aided by one little comment on another blog. One is that I have entered weekly counseling. If you read this blog regularly, then you know I’ve been in a funk. And since I’ve always been completely honest with you all, you seem to know me, and you’ve been asking if I’m OK. After a few months of trying different things (exercise, diet, time alone, time together, on meds, off meds, relaxing), I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t fix this one on my own.

A major part of my counseling centers around what it is that makes a strong, independent, intelligent young woman like myself turn into a weak, self-doubting nervous wreck in relationships. Call me crazy, but I think I need to give myself some privacy to work out these issues. My counselor has also asked me to keep the content of my sessions between him and me. Besides, I really don’t think you’ll want any relationship advice from the likes of me.

Also, Date #4 has been an avid reader since we first got together. The freedom I have enjoyed thus far in letting my writing roam far and wide through my relationship-related thoughts has lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. At this point in my relationship, I think it’s time to back off for both our sakes. I have to admit that there are posts I have would have a hard time dealing with if I were in his shoes.

A special thanks to Dad’s House here. The author responded in his own comment section on writing about relationships while they are ongoing: “In fact, I don’t blog about any relationships while I’m in them, out of respect to the other person.” It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that I was being disrespectful to Date #4 by broadcasting my joys, fears, and issues regarding our relationship to the world. Like I said, I’m not sure you want to take relationship advice from me.

Now, don’t think that I’m being secretive. I am happy to answer any questions you might have, love-related or otherwise, via email. Those of you who have emailed with me know I’m an open book. And this isn’t to say I won’t ever blog about love, my relationship, etc. I will, but only when I can be as open and honest as you are used to me being and can offer you something valuable without hurting anyone in the process.

Hey, maybe I’ve achieved some work/love balance after all.

Photo by dimi15 via Flickr.

In an earlier post, I announced that I would begin a new accountability regime: posting my goals and my progress toward them to this blog once a month. Several of you, both readers and fellow bloggers, expressed interest in doing the same. I’m inviting everyone to participate who would like to post something similar on their blogs. Email me your blog entries and I’ll post them links to them here as well.

Without any further ado, I give you my first Hold Me Accountable post.

Physical
This is probably the area where I’ve lost the most steam as of late. It is also the one that I would like to get back on track with the most. When I treat my body well, it treats me well. Everything else runs so much more smoothly in my life when I feel good physically. There are three components to my physical goals: exercise, diet and overall health.

Exercise
I took up running in late December last year. I put running down around the beginning of May. I had been training for a relay marathon and once it was over, so was the training. I need a goal in order to stay motivated in my running, even though I love it. I know I’m going to feel good after a run (phenomenal, actually), but the motivation I need is when I really don’t feel like waking up early and lacing up my shoes. So, I’m going to sign up for a half-marathon. I’m confident I can do it if I start training now. I’ll do short runs on Mondays, hard runs on Wednesdays, cross-train on Saturdays and long runs on Sundays.
Goals: Sign up for half-marathon in October; beginning training schedule.

Diet
I don’t mean diet in the sense that I’m trying to lose weight. I’m not. I simply want to give my body good fuel, not crap. The main threat to my diet is the vending machines at work. If I forget (or am too lazy) to make my lunch, I’m known to eat a lunch of chips and soda. Blech. I’ve already begun to make dinner at night and bring leftovers to work. Note: This helps financial goals as well – double-plus bonus! I’m also really bad about keeping my refrigerator at home stocked. When it’s full, not only do I eat better and save money on eating out, but it gives me an odd sense of fulfillment. Hmm.
Goals: Cut out soda, vending machine snacks; bring healthy lunches and snacks to work; keep home fridge stocked.

Health
You’ve heard me complain about my sinus infections ad nauseum, I know. I bought a neti pot (for nasal irrigation) because I heard from many, many sources that it works wonders. I’ve been too chicken to try it, even though I feel confident it will help. I’ve been battling some serious fatigue, probably due to sinus infections and not exercising, which is added incentive for the workout routine. Finally, it’s been about 3 years (!) since I’ve been to the dentist. Yikes.
Goals: Use neti pot three times a week for one month; see dentist.

Relationships
My biggest issue with my relationships right now is that I’m spending an awful lot of time with a certain someone instead of spending some time with myself, my friends and my family. This was fine and well in the budding stages of the relationship, but now that things have settled down a bit I desperately need to hook back up with my friends and fam.
Goals: Hang out with my three best friends for some serious QT at least once this month; visit my aunt and my grandmother.

Career
For now, thing seem to be going really well with my 8-5 job. I’m relatively focused and my recent annual performance evaluation was stellar (including a raise!). Guess where nothing is happening? That’s right – my business. uSavvy, my IT consultancy, has one client, no actual tax ID number, nothing, plus a website that’s just sitting there, all designed and hosted and not actually up. Include my blog in here, and I haven’t been posting as regularly as I would like, which is about 3-4 times per week.
Goals: Obtain tax ID number and sole proprietor status; open bank account; finish site buildout and get online; buy business cards; write business plan; blog 3-4 times per week.

Financial
I have two areas I’m currently working on financially. I’ve got terrible credit (hey, I drank heavily during those pivotal post-college years), and practically no savings… OK, no savings if you aren’t counting that $50 in my ING Orange savings account. I started the ball rolling on this one yesterday though. My pay increase will show up in my next paycheck and instead of rejoicing at the extra money, I already set up an autodraft for the increase amount to pay down my credit card. I also have an autodraft set up for a student loan I am rehabilitating, as well as one for $50 per paycheck to my savings account. Once the credit card is paid down, I will up my savings autodraft to include the amount from the pay increase. The problem with my savings account is that I almost always tap into it. I’m a little more solid financially right now, so my goal is not to do that.
Goals: Pay off credit card in 2.5 months; continue savings without touching it.

Spirituality
I don’t talk about my spirituality very much on this blog, even though it’s a big part of my life. The truth is that I’ve been a little disappointed in my spirituality lately… or my lack thereof. I’m not a churchgoer, that’s just not for me. However, I do pray and meditate. I include my sobriety as part of this picture because the way I stay sober is to work a spiritual program. I go to three or four 12-step meetings every week, but I’d like to start branching out a little more into more groups besides my home group, particularly to this one young people’s group. I’d also like to try to meditate in the mornings, even if it’s just for a short time period.
Goals: Attend one non-home group 12-step meeting per week; meditate twice a week.

General
Finally, this part relates to my overall life goals, mood and emotions. I’d say lately I’ve been in a funk. Definitely in a funk. It’s not enough for me to focus on my short-term goals, so I need to keep my long-term goals on the burners, too. I really would like to move to a larger city. I would like to either advance to the next level of my career in research or I would like to take my business full-time. I would like to be a less selfish person on a day-to-day basis. The other day I realized at the end of the day that I was the only person I had thought about all day. That sucks. And I’m guessing that it probably also makes me a pretty obnoxious person to deal with.
Goal
s: Mostly just to keep my larger life goals top-of-mind; try to think of other people and how I affect them throughout my day.

I will keep you all up-to-date with my progress on a monthly basis, at the very least. I hope that some of you will jump in and participate. It would be really great to have a community of people who are all holding each other accountable, encouraging one another and learning what works and what doesn’t in real time, wouldn’t it?

Related articles:
Got goals? Hold yourself accountable
How baby steps became a huge deal
Stand up and be accounted
How I change my habits

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I’m having a little accountability issue. As in, I have none. I have a lot of goals, not just in my career, but also in my personal life, my finances and my health. As I’ve struggled to regain my footing after falling in love, I’ve come to find my real issue is now that I simply lack the motivation to accomplish on a day-to-day basis, and that daily action is critical to the fulfillment of larger goals.

I know one thing to be true when it comes to setting goals and achieving them: the most surefire method is to chip away at it one step at a time. Daily action is necessary. If you want to train to run a marathon, you’ve got to actually put your shoes on and go for a run. If you want to pay off your credit cards, you cannot charge anything to them today. I prefer to live one day at a time this way. When I start to use the word “tomorrow,” I get myself into a world of trouble. I won’t accomplish much with “I’ll run tomorrow” or “I’ll stop using my credit card tomorrow.” This method of goal procrastination will leave you stranded. You just need to start.

Enter accountability. Now that you’ve decided to go through with the daily action method you could use a little reinforcement. I used to get this through Guy I Was Seeing. Though we’re still friends, I don’t get to talk to him as much as I used to. Read more about what an accountability partner can do for you here.

What happens if you can’t find an accountability partner or group? Or if you’re the only one who ever does anything in said partnership/group? I’m not sure, but I’m taking a stab with my blog. Yep, you guys are now my accountability partners. I find it hard to make excuses to you all… mostly because my lame excuses look really bad in print. That, and I’ve sworn to be as honest and as transparent as possible.

I know I won’t meet all of my goals 100 percent of the time, but the nice thing about accountability partners is not the negative pressure – it’s the positive pressure. It’s reassuring to think you guys know what my goals are, what I’m doing to get there, and that you get to see the results when I do what I say and when I don’t. It might be corny and a little arrogant, but for some reason I have the feeling that you guys have my back.

All mushiness aside, my monthly accountability posts will basically have a “where I’m at” theme. I’ll review my goals, what I’ve done, what I haven’t done and what I plan to do. The areas in which I will be accountable are broad: physical (exercise, health, diet), relationships (family, significant other, friends), career (job, entrepreneurship), financial (credit, savings), spirituality (meditation, sobriety), general (emotion, mood, life goals).

I realize that not everyone wants to read about me, me, me, but my hope is that my transparency in these things will allow people to see what really works… and what really doesn’t. I’ll be posting the first one tomorrow.

How do you stay accountable? How do you reach your goals, little and big?

When I met Date #4, I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I was simply mixing a little business with pleasure when my online dating research yielded a surprising result – a dateable, attractive man with whom I was compatible. My life was run at a hectic, but efficient and highly effective pace. There simply wasn’t a whole lot of room. I liked it that way.

Things started slowly. I told him I wasn’t looking for anything serious, that I was, ahem, very busy and important. No time for a relationship, not looking for that sort of thing. He said he understood, respected my priorities, etc.

Then I fell in love with him.

The “serious” thing needed revising, obviously. As two people are apt to do when they find they enjoy one another’s company, we spent a lot of time together. 

A lot.

I stopped running. I stopped blogging as regularly. I stopped doing laundry and grocery shopping. I was deep in Cloud Cuckoo Land, as I like to call it. That place where newly formed couples spend way too long looking into each other’s eyes, sleeping really late on weekends, and having lots and lots of hot monkey sex. 

As much as I knew this was going to happen, I couldn’t stop it. Perhaps I didn’t want to stop it. What the hell? Falling in love is fantastic. Why skip all the fun stuff and move straight into routine? 

Incorporating Date #4 into my life isn’t the same as making a new friend or having a relative move into town. This is someone that I hope to have a meaningful relationship with. Anyone who has been in a relationship for a period of time knows that it takes time to get to know someone. I liked Date #4 and I wanted to learn about him – that takes time. Granted, you can take your time getting to know someone, but I tend to be an extremist with a “good” button instead of an “easy” button. If it makes me feel good or happy, I’ll slam that damn button till it’s broke. Luckily, I didn’t do that here.

Armed with a little bit of knowledge of myself and my habits, I tried to resist Cloud Cuckoo Land, but it was simply too alluring. GIWS and I had managed to see each other only once a week, twice tops, throughout the few months we dated. I tried to do this again, but to no avail.

When I got sick (again), my frustration reared its head. I had gained 5 lbs. I was completely out of racing shape. I’d been eating entire meals out of the vending machines at work. Thanks to my fourth sinus infection this year, I was waylaid and unable to stay awake long enough to do anything other than go to work. I reached my breaking point when my libido disappeared. WTF?!

A week later, I got better and I got some perspective. Date #4 and I have been together for only two months. I realized that I could maintain my old schedule and kick him out of my life or I could find a new routine. That period of everything going to hell was just a slash-and-burn method of prepping the soil for a new life. One that involves the man that I love and all the activities I love.

What I ended up having to do was first explain to him what was going on in my head. He understood and didn’t take it personally at all, which was essential for me to feel comfortable moving forward. I explained to him that there are a lot of things I enjoy doing that I haven’t been doing lately, and that I need a routine or schedule in order to make it all fit into my life.

I looked at my schedule, needs and priorities. I looked at his schedule, needs and priorities. He has two dogs, so he can’t stay over too often. I live out of the way of my work and his house, so I have to bring all my stuff for work if I’m staying over. It made more sense to do all that if I were staying two nights in a row. For both of our sanity and respect of personal space, I decided two nights apart would be good for us. Thus, a schedule emerged. I would stay with him Wednesdays and Thursdays, and he would stay with me on Tuesdays and Fridays. Sundays and Mondays we had off, and Saturdays I left to whim (even I don’t try to plan everything).

I make sure to bring my running shoes to his place and try to take the dogs out with me. I also run on the evenings we’re not seeing each other. The beginning of the week can be overwhelming for me, so that’s why I picked those two days to spend apart. It gives me the time to work on my blog, get my clothes ready for the week, and to generally spend time with myself, which I think is important in any relationship.

Once I identified the problem and communicated that to him, I was able to then ask, what now? How can I have both – him and my old life? Planning the nights was a great first step. It allows me to plan what will need to happen and when. The other stuff is simply up to me. Once I finished the relay marathon I had spent months training for in May, I had a hard time staying motivated, so I signed up for a race on July 4 and started looking for more to keep me running.

Maybe this is easy for some people to figure out, but I was really happy being single. My life was happy and whole when I met Date #4, so much in fact that if it weren’t for my sister’s sage advice to not let opportunities pass me by, I probably wouldn’t have made the leap.

I’m glad that I did, but that period of transition can be tough. I think it’s important to be honest with yourself, to communicate your frustration without laying any blame, and to get into the solution. Dwelling in the problem while I was sick yielded nothing but a depressing blog post (sorry!). Once I decided to try a solution, I was already feeling like my old self and it didn’t take long to get back on track.

Oh, and my libido came back. Thank god.

[Photo credit: Evan Romine]

I’m staring back at my reflection wearily. I’ve just finished washing my face for bed when I realize why I’m so tired of looking at myself in the mirror every night. It smacks me it comes back so suddenly. This is what you looked like before you got a grip, I remember.

There’s a lack of color here. There’s been a lack of color since… since… when did it fade? Somewhere around falling in love and completing my relay marathon only a month ago. I used that week after the race to “reward myself.” I let myself eat poorly and slack off on my training… way off. As in, didn’t do it all.

That week has yawned into a month.

I can feel the little roll at tummy when I slump in my bad posture. It isn’t just that my face has lost color and that I have probably put on two or three pounds. I haven’t been sleeping enough, not what I call a healthful amount. I haven’t been going to enough meetings and I can feel that my spiritual well-being is affected. I’ve been eating entire meals out of the vending machine at work.

This isn’t the dark cloud of grief that rolled overhead back at the beginning of April. This is laziness. Knowing how to pick myself up and not being willing to do the work to bring that about. In my 12-step program, we say that when the pain is enough, we will act.

Luckily my threshold for pain has become amazingly low. Tonight, one glance in the mirror does the trick. I’m tired of being lazy, I assert to my innermost self. This sucks. Let’s quit this shit and get on with the rest of it.

I could go on and on as to why this has happened – work has been slow and uninspiring, a new relationship needs attention, there are things to do besides train for races that are months away. Excuses. Excuses I’ve been willing to make and accept because I am lazy and unmotivated. So here I am. Out of racing shape, pallid faced with an upset stomach and three pounds heavier. I’ve even been reduced to participating in pointless blog commenting, something I usually have enough serenity to not get involved in.

This one is all on me. I’ve written before about accountability partners and the wonders they can work for helping you to stay motivated. That’s fine and well, unless you stop calling them… especially when you want to avoid being, er… accountable.

In the past I could spend an entire blog post on how I’m going to pull my shit together, exactly what I’ll do and in what order to get things back on track, reassure you the reader that I am indeed doing it. And then promptly sit on my ass for two more weeks before I finally follow through. I won’t do that here. I’m not sure when my motivation will come back to me or when exactly I’ll decide that it’s been enough.

I think I just did though.