Throat Chakra: Strangle with Care

Friendships between women are exhilarating, transformational, messy, necessary, life-giving and sometimes devastating. This past week, I made the decision to leave a friendship. Over the years, I felt less and less authentic. My emotional and physical health began to suffer – but I put myself second so I wouldn’t hurt her. Well, I did hurt her. But I’d hurt myself much more.

In dealing with my decision, I found a very interesting passage online about the throat chakra:

The throat chakra is the fifth chakra in the body’s energy system, and its purpose is to act as the voice that is able to speak your authentic truth. This chakra provides clarity between what is right and wrong for you. It helps to form the authentic truth in your belief system, and it enables you to be assertive in expressing that truth to others.

My first reaction to this passage was “Oh no! Someone’s had their hands wrapped around my throat chakra because I haven’t been able to speak my truth!”

Those hands were my own. Thank goodness, I loosened my grip before passing out.

In comforting me, my sister left me with this wonderful and fitting imagery. A garden choked over with weeds takes hard (sometimes painful) work to clear. But only by doing that hard work and preparing the soil will you know what new growth can occur.

I’m glad it’s finally spring. What kind of emotional and physical clearing are you doing this time of year?

I'm Not Really an Extrovert, I Just Play One on TV

I’ve taken several personality/work styles tests over the past 20 years, including the well-known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Most recently, my employer had us take a test from Emergenetics. My results held no surprises for me:

• Low on the social and expressive scales (I prefer one-on-one time to big parties; I prefer to work in solitude)
• High on the structural and analytical (I meet and beat deadlines, I like lists and rules and order)

Several co-workers said my scores had to be wrong. (“You’re such an extrovert! You’re so creative!”) I never think these types of tests are wrong, or good/bad. I think they say more about our comfort level than about how we act and interact in our work and personal lives.

It’s the same with right brain/left brain theory. It’s no surprise that I “test out” as more left brain (more logical, critical thinker; retains information through words and symbols).

I think we possess characteristics from all personality and work types. We must choose when, where and with whom we show these traits. My hope is that we don’t pigeon-hole or stereotype anyone based on these tests. I believe we benefit immensely when we stretch ourselves and our comfort levels, and that it can make us better at what we do for a living and in our leisure time.

For example:

• Mary is an accountant by day but is learning to play bass guitar at night.
• Fred is a graphic designer who enjoys skateboarding.
• Christina is a cyclist who teaches yoga.

I’m a writer/editor by profession but I love to decorate cakes and prepare gourmet meals. I feel I use a completely different part of my brain when designing beautiful cakes or following new recipes than when I write fiction. I think writing makes me a better cake designer and chef; and that my culinary skills help me be a better writer.

Do you stretch beyond your personality and work “types”? How does that work out for you?

A Sussie a Day...

My head is swimming from all the big ideas I picked up from speakers during my company’s annual meeting in mid-February. Themes from the talks are sure to come up in future blog posts but today I’m going to write about humor. (Mostly because I am in a humorless mood today!)

I’m not talking about one’s ability to tell a good joke, or put on a lampshade and become the life of the party. I’m talking about one’s openness to joy, laughter and lightheartedness even when the world seems to be crumbling down around you.

Peter McLaughlin, a management consultant for Fortune 500 companies, listed humor as one of four requirements of a successful executive or organization (the other three points being energy, positive emotions and happiness). I’d venture to say all four are interconnected.

So, despite heavy workloads and stressful work environments, McLaughlin stated that employers who put a high priority on humor and laughter had more effective and productive employees.

Let me share two examples: one work-related and one personal.

When I was in my early 30s, I ran the publishing division of a large nonprofit in Washington, DC. My boss would regularly bring staff to tears with her shouting, changing moods and unrealistic expectations. The three managers who worked for her (myself included) had to work hard not to let her negativity trickle down to our own staffs. On an especially tough day, I bought each of the women who worked for me a roll of Lifesavers candies. The levity it created buoyed us (sorry for the pun) the rest of the week.

My sister, Tessa, has been one of my greatest teachers when it comes to finding joy on a daily basis. She is known for her “sussies” or surprises — little gifts she gives to people to make them smile. She once told me she tucks a sussie into each room of her home. Whenever Tessa catches a glimpse of one, it reminds her to smile. It may be a funny photo next to her computer, or a goofy looking stuffed animal on a bookshelf. The photo to the right is a sussie that Tessa gave me. This silly looking fairy hangs above the toilet in my guest bathroom — and has brought smiles to many visitors.

Do you look for joy on a daily basis? What shape does it take? Do you think humor is an important part of your workplace?

Busy Bee, Just Be

I’m in that weird space between books – meaning I’ve finished writing one and don’t feel like starting another just yet. The manuscript is now out with a few beta readers and then the revision process will begin.

I think this ebb and flow of energy and creativity is something we all experience. We put in time and effort toward a goal – all hands on deck, so to speak – and it’s natural to feel low energy when the goal is accomplished.

It’s also natural to feel like we’re being lazy if we don’t jump right back in and DO something.

Alas, it’s the human BEING versus human DOING dilemma. The state of just being can feel unnatural because we’ve been wired (taught?) to go-go-go from morning to night. Busy, busy, busy bees, buzz, buzz, buzzing around.

So…Mondays are my dedicated ‘writing day.’ I didn’t write today – at least not fiction. I slept in, had coffee, watched the snow, baked Valentines cookies, had tea with a friend and read a book. Nothing I did had anything to do with productivity or accomplishment! Hurrah!

I even managed to ignore my work emails for most of the day.

My wish for each of you this week is to take a break from doing – at least for an hour – and just be in the moment. If we practice, maybe it will start to feel natural.

Little Bites of Self-Care Easy to Swallow

We writers – and I suspect all creative types – tend to get down on ourselves a lot. A couple (or a dozen) rejections arrive in the email box and it’s “I’m crap! How did I think I could write and sell a novel? Are my thighs getting bigger?”

Back in December I blogged about showing ourselves some tenderness. And this blog has a similar theme: self-care. And more precisely, internal self-care.

A good friend gave me a book titled The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present In the Life You’ve Got.
After I read a few pages, I immediately bought a copy for my sister and my brother. The messages were that powerful (dare I say life-changing). Each day’s “meditation” is short, sweet and filled with wisdom we already have but sometimes forget or ignore.

At about the same time, I found a great web site called Tiny Buddha: Simple Wisdom for Complex Lives. The tidbits of inspiration come from people like you and me. The site is divided into sections like happiness and fun; meaning and passion; change and challenges; mindfulness and peace; letting go, etc. The success of the site had led to a book of the same title. And it’s fantastic.

My spiritual journey of self-care has been a long one – filled with curbs and potholes mostly of my own making.

That's why I’m so thankful for the lessons these books impart. Won’t you join me for a little bite? I swear you’ll want to savor it over and over again.

What constitutes self-care for YOU? And how do you remember to take care of yourself?

Where Everybody Knows Your Name (and Your Business)

I’ve been in Texas all week visiting my sister and her family. She lives in Glen Rose, a town of 2,100 people. It’s the kind of town where the pharmacist knows my sister by name; the kind of town that turns out in full force for the opening of the new school gymnasium; the kind of town where gift shop owners on the square encourage shoppers to visit their competition.

Glen Rose is double the population of the town where I grew up; a town I dreamt of escaping my whole childhood. And boy, did I. I went to a state university of 50,000 students. I’ve lived in cities with populations in the millions.

And yet, I ended up living in a small town myself. And although it’s 10 times larger than my sister’s community, it gives me the things I took for granted as a child and the things my sister experiences daily.

My pharmacist knows me by name – which is tough with a name like Mikulencak. I’m likely to see 10 or more people I know just by walking down main street. I have a main street! My office building’s landlord cut my rent in half just so I’d stay in her building.

I’m confident that even big city dwellers find this sense of community in little pockets of their bustling cities.

What about YOUR town (city) makes it home for you?

Try a Little Tenderness in 2012

My goal in 2011 was to blog once a week. You can see from the posts listed at the left that I did not achieve that goal. I didn’t even make it to two posts in December. On this bright, sunny New Year’s Day morning, I have vowed to let it go. No guilt. No regret.

Which brings me to the word of the year: compassion. Consider it my one resolution for 2012.

A dear friend used to remind me that we seem to have a limitless capacity for compassion – but for others. We rarely have this level of compassion for ouselves. When I speak of ‘compassion,’ I’m referring to its less-used definition: tenderness.

The world is a hard place to begin with, and we tend to make it harder by living with regret, guilt, judgment, self-doubt, anger. When we make a mistake or fail to live up to someone’s (our own?) expectations, we should try a little tenderness. (Hey, that’d make a great song. Oh, it’s already
one. First recorded in 1932 and re-recorded hundreds of times since then. Good job. We need the message to sink in.)

In its most simple form, compassion (tenderness) is the act of just letting it go. Acknowledge the pain or sadness or regret or failure and then say to yourself, “Self, you deserve a break. Let’s move on from this.”

Rarely do we make our deepest inner struggles and fears and doubts known to our friends and family. So, it’s not realistic to hope or assume someone will show us compassion when we need it most. We have to do that for ourselves.