Love. Life. Practice.

with Gray Miller

18 May 2012
1 Comment

“All in…”

…even if you’re not playing with a full deck.

That phrase came up in a a workshop brainstorming session about intimacy and vulnerability. It speaks to one of the more difficult aspects of love: the courage to admit you do.

Archetypes to the Rescue!

There’s a movie I love – I won’t mention it by name, since I’m about to deliver spoilers – where the protagonist’s goal is to win a poker game. Now, I’m a lousy poker player, barely understand the rules, but one part of it that catches my attention is the idea of “all in.” It means that the player is betting everything they have on their winning hand.

The protagonist in the movie plays well, then things get a little dicey, and finally, to suspenseful music, he says “All in.” Everyone around the table exchanges significant looks. The sidekick whispers to the love interest “I hope he knows what he’s doing…” The cards are slowly revealed, one by one…

And he loses.

Big time. Totally busted. Falls flat on his face. His career is over, he has not gotten the girl, has not saved democracy, and worst of all he has to watch the Big Evil Guy gloat across the table.

I enjoy those kinds of moments in movies – “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” – but I like that one most of all. Because unlike the ones where the hero miraculously cracks the computer code, nails the dance solo, wrestles the parachute away from the bad guy in midair – that particular poker game shows what you really risk when you go “all in.”

You risk failure.

What Does This Have to Do With Love?

I’ve found in my work both on myself and with others that often the hardest part of love is not finding it, not keeping it, not even defining it. People seem to know what they love. It resonates somewhere deep inside when they see it – whether it’s a person, a place, an act. It’s that thing that you do that, when you’re done, you think why don’t I do that more often?

The answer, I believe, is courage. People have a hard time admitting what they love, because often what they love is not in line with who they think they are, or (more likely) who they think they should be. Nice girls don’t want that kind of thing. Good men get married and settle down. My parents/children will be disappointed if I don’t act “responsibly.”

All of these are rationalizations that keep us from having to admit that we love. Even if we try and admit it, we tend to hedge bets, often “justly”: Oh, we’re just friends. We’re just dating. It’s just a casual thing. I’m just playing around with it, seeing if I like it. When we know full well that “it” consumes our every waking moment. But that would make us…insane, right? What would people think?

Or we do some socially acceptable token version of commitment, like changing a facebook status or clicking the little “like” button. Don’t get me wrong, I hope you “like” this post – but if you really liked it, if you really let yourself be “all in” with your reactions and thoughts, you’d do more than a thumbs up. More than a comment. You’d write your own essay, you’d create a song, you’d learn to play poker, something big.

When you’re “all-in”, you tend to do things in what Havi calls “A Grand Fashion.”

The secret is: when you do things big, it’s harder to be scared of them. It’s just so ridiculously over-the-top that it becomes easy, and even if you are heading towards those inevitable rocks you can’t help a giggling “WHEEEEEEEE!!” all the way down.

That’s what I’m trying to keep in mind over the next few weeks as I travel and relationships deepen and change. I’m going to fight the fear of how I’ve fallen on my face going “all in ” before, and focus on the simple joy of being “all in” just for the sake of itself.

To do anything else, I think, would simply be cheating yourself out of love. And what’s the point in that?

Posted in Love
16 May 2012

Rock On

Every once in a while I’m taken by what I call “Talking Heads Syndrome.” That is, I find myself behind the wheel of a large automobile, and I realize This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife.

How did I get here?

“It’s all about choices, Neo…”

I can pick out a few different key moments in my life where I zigged when I could have zagged, when a minor decision I made blossomed into huge other instances. Sometimes these seemed like unusual decisions, risky ones; sometimes they seemed like the “smart” thing to do.

  • When I refused to lie about being sexually active while student at Brigham Young University.
  • When I proposed to my pregnant girlfriend and made the commitment to have a family.
  • When I told the recruiter I didn’t want a desk job in the Marines, “Put me in the infantry!”
  • When I got up the guts to ask a pretty artist on a date at a summer fair in Wisconsin.
  • When I chose to work for myself instead of a company like Sony.
  • When I volunteered as an audiovisual support tech at a relationship conference, and came away thinking I could teach better than that…
  • When I wasted taxpayer’s money at my job by websurfing about Open Space Technology.
  • When I blew my savings on a ticket to spend a weekend with author Spider Robinson on Gambier Island.

Most choices? Not this easy.

The importance of some of these may seem obvious to you. Others may make you scratch your head and say “What’s the big deal?” But that’s the point, you see: the significance of them is only evident from the perspective of both time and experience. Certainly I didn’t realize the significance of the things that would follow from any of those.

You had to be there, basically, and even if you were, that’s no guarantee you’ll correctly assess the situation. There was a time when I sat behind a woman in a college class and thought Wow, we have nothing in common and a few years later she was standing with me at my wedding as my Best Woman (I had a Best Man, too).

There have also been times that I looked around and said Yes, this is my life, this is how I will spend the rest of my days and a few years later there is literally nothing left of that world. It has, to quote Stephen King’s Gunslinger, moved on.

It makes me think there are no guarantees in life. Except, maybe, rocks.

Leap, and the Rocks Will Appear

…what do you mean that’s not how the saying goes?

I know that as a personal life philosopher I’m supposed to say something about a metaphorical net, or sprouting wings and learning to fly or some of that nonsense.

Poppycock.

It’s all about rocks. If you leap, that’s one of the first things you’ll see. Great big rocks underneath you, heading towards you at a high velocity.

Some People Even LIKE Rocks

Thing is, even when you weren’t leaping, there were still rocks all over the place. Underfoot. In your shoe. Rolling down a hill. Hidden in that field where you were sowing, hoping to reap the fruits etc.

Hey, if you wanna play the metaphor game, I can put rocks in anywhere.

Rocks are a fact of life.

But the nice thing about rocks is that they don’t care. They don’t care if you go “splat” after you leap, or if you land nimbly on your toes and leap nimbly from crag to crag with the balletic grace of a billy goat. You can reach out to that cliff face that you’ve just leaped off of and grab hold, finding crevices and nodules and all manner of interesting places to stick your hands and feet for support.

I took a lot of leaps in my life, some which I didn’t even realize. Nor did I realize that there were rocks underneath until far too late. I think, though, that the more you realize there are rocks, that there are going to be rocks, and that the rocks don’t actually have it in for you…the more you can start to enjoy the climb, the leap, the polishing, the hot stone massages.

Life? It rocks.

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Posted in Life | Leave a Comment
15 May 2012

Dirty Yoga Redux

This is a bonus post, since I now have some Dirty Yoga to report:

My first real day of practicing Dirty Yoga happened on one of the worst days possible. Namely, it has been unbelievably gorgeous here in Seattle, and I really wanted to be outside. Unfortunately, my flat is anything but – we’re located on a hill worthy of San Francisco, so level places to lay out my mat were not very prevalent.

I settled for opening the back door and singing “Aquarius” (Leeeeeettttt the Sunshiiiine…Leeetttttt the Sun. Shine. In.). And then I went to work.

Most of the beginning went fine – I was very mindful of Jess’s email, and tried to make sure my face wasn’t contorting, etc. I’m not sure I actually tried any less to get my body into the poses (variations rooted in a plank-downward dog-upward dog asana, in case you’re wondering) but I did try to keep my face calm and serene. When I did find myself at one point making a face, it was a good cue to check my body and pull back a little.

The session lasts about 35 minutes, and is divided into roughly four equal parts. In between each part is an “inspirational” quotation (like “Sleep is the best meditation“). But there’s no music, no beaches, no gongs – just Jess, in shorts and a t-shirt, showing how to do the poses.

The main problem for me and my umbilical hernia seems to be the “twist” section of the workout. However, again, I was mindful of his words, and instead of putting my elbow on the outside of my knee and forcing my body to turn, I just…turned. And that seemed to be enough.

I did have a minor technical difficulty, in that the video suddenly quit just before I did the last sequence of twist poses. It may have just been my iPhone browser. I was able to log back on and fast-forward to the proper part fairly quickly, though. It is really nice to have the clear voice and high-contrast video on the iPhone, though, because it makes for an easy way to put the image of the instructor somewhere you can see it, even while in the poses.

One day done!

Posted in Practice | Leave a Comment
14 May 2012
1 Comment

The Life and Death of Practice

I’m starting to lose my faith in habits.

The conventional wisdom is that anything you do for twenty-one days in a row becomes a habit, and therefore becomes far easier to do – in fact, it becomes harder to not-do whatever that practice is.

Venting About the Con

Conventional wisdom also trumpets a variety of strategies for making habits, such as Charles Duhigg’s three step method in The Power of Habit:

  1. Cue – the trigger that lets your mind (all levels, from forebrain to lizard brain) know that it’s time for the habit to happen.
  2. Routine – the series of actions that proceed from the cue. Opening the journal, picking up the pen, writing the first thing that comes to mind. Pulling out the yoga mat, clicking on the Dirty Yoga shortcut on your iPhone, chanting “Om-Om-Om” just because it’s silly. Whatever, this is the meat of the habit.
  3. Reward – the benefit you get from having done the routine. This may be endorphins, may be the satisfaction of seeing another couple of pages filled with spindly handwriting, may be as simple as “Well, now I know what I’m going to blog about today.” Whatever it is, you feel good about what happened, and that makes you more eager to have it happen again.
What can I say, I think I’m doing it wrong.

Mea Culpa

There are a few practices that I’ve been working on, as part of the larger “Project Home.” One of those is the idea of morning rituals, which are supposed to look something like this:

  1. Sit - Do zazen for fifteen minutes first thing in the morning. The trigger is getting out of bed; the routine is setting my timer for fifteen minutes; the reward is a quarter hour where nothing is expected of me but to sit there. The silence and lack of pressure can be amazingly luxurious.
  2. Write – Not this journaling, not the various other writings for publication, but just writing longhand in my own personal journal. Triggered by the alarm of my sitting timer, with the routine of getting my coffee prepared and sitting somewhere like my dining room with a nice view of Queen Anne Hill across the lake. The reward is that I get breakfast at the end, plus coffee is supposed to be inextricably linked, and hey, that includes chemical addiction to the power of habit!
  3. Exercise – Trying to find some time every day to get away from the computer, to get into my body and use it. The trigger has been a specific time mid-afternoon in between working on video for various clients; the routine has been something like Insanity or Dirty Yoga; the reward is sweaty clothes and endorphins and friends I haven’t seen in a while saying “Wow, you’re looking trim!“
Here’s the thing: all of these have been done for twenty-one days in a row. Or more. And yet, for the past couple of weeks, at least, I’ve been scattered in terms of doing them. Somehow I fell out of the habit, and it went back to being a practice – that is, something I had to force myself to do.

Not quite to this point. But close...

I’d get up and check email instead of sitting – or oversleep (as I did this morning) and decide I really didn’t have time to sit. I’d get my coffee, and think that if I was going to get to my desk and working in time (I aim for 8am every day) I’d need to eat breakfast – because breakfast is important, right? And who’s going to really notice if I don’t journal? Nobody, including myself, reads it anyway.

Usually it’s one or two out of three – some kind of exercise, or sitting and not journaling, or journaling and exercising but not sitting. But it’s a scattered practice, and certainly nothing about it is routine. In spite of having done things for twenty-one days or more, it’s so easy to just ignore the call to practice and let the rest of my day carry me past it for another day.
There is, of course, the resolve to go to bed earlier the next night, so that I can be more rested in the morning and more able, theoretically, to simply fall back into practice. However, at the end of the day, the not-so-constructive habit of another episode of MI:5 on NetFlix keeps me up past midnight, and…the cycle continues.

Until the Discomfort…

The problem is that the consequences are only negative in the long term. They are subtle. I have been more irritable, stressed, and tired the last couple of weeks. I’ve been feeling frustrated with a lack of connection to the place I call “home”, and the constant undercurrent of anxiety about finances tends to bubble to the surface more easily than usual.

On the other hand there is an immediate reward in checking email instead of sitting: I’m connected! I’m taking action! And there’s no painful self-reflection or hazardous epiphanies! I don’t have to write about emotions and such, I can just dive into Work and feel like a good midwestern-work-ethic-raised man.

Or there’s some kind of rationalization or justification. You may have noticed (or maybe not, since nobody called me on it) that there weren’t any “Dirty Yoga Updates” on any of my blog posts last week. That’s because when was doing it, I noticed that it was aggravating my umbilical hernia. That can’t be good, I thought, and sent an email off to Jess & Susi (the Dirty Yogis) asking them what they thought.

The advice he gave me – specifically about the yoga – is pretty obviously analogous to the entire difficulty of what’s been going on. After being very open about what he couldn’t, ethically, counsel me on (i.e., a medical condition described in email), Jess added:

…it’s been my experience that guys (especially when they are new to yoga) ALWAYS work harder than they need to. Guys grunt and shake. Even if their faces are contorted in agony and they’ve stopped breathing, they’ll keep going. Sitting something out doesn’t seem to be an option…common sense tells you that you can’t be one of these guys, Gray. Do what you can do and then modify what you need to – nothing should be going “pop”. Know your limits – before you go pop – and work within them.

Turns out this isn't the recommended gear for Dirty Yoga.

Yep, that’s right, I was trying to “win” at yoga. In fact, it was a little disconcerting, as if the screen on my iPhone was actually a two-way camera. I did, in fact, grunt and contort, and it’s a good thing my practice space in my bedroom is so small, so that when I tilted out of balance I could reach out and grab a wall or a bed before I hit the floor.

Leo Babauta talks about it in his How to Fail at Habits post, of which I can identify a few different ways that I had sabotaged my own practice. You should check it out; you might see something that looks familiar.

Picking Up the Practice

What do you do? Well, yes, there are some things that you can do to change the practices if they really aren’t working. However, I’m not certain that it has to be more than a change in attitude. This morning, as I mentioned, I overslept. I went right upstairs and was making coffee, plotting my work day, when I just stopped.

I thought about the past few weeks. I thought about what I hadn’t been doing. I thought about how un-centered I’d felt, and I sighed, put down the coffee cup, grabbed a mat and went to sit outside for fifteen minutes. The flowers in my backyard are amazingly fragrant.

I then made some coffee, opened my journal, and wrote a couple of pages. There were some cracks and crumbling noises as some old defense mechanisms gave way under the pressure of self-awareness. It wasn’t as much painful as it was startling.

Breakfast, shower…I didn’t get to my desk until about 8:30. But I came here with a reward of feeling centered, prepared, and ready to write this post. It may not be a habit yet, but the act of practicing has its own reward, and by focusing on that, perhaps it will eventually reach the level of habit.

Day one, and we start again.

Posted in Practice
11 May 2012
3 Comments

The Keeper of the Lost

Welcome! So glad to see you, finally. I’ve been expecting you. Here, have some wine – it’s a wonderful German red, “Dornfelder Rheinhesen“, and I’ve been saving it with some of this cheddar for just this occasion.

Wisconsin? No, no, this is actually Scottish cheddar, from the Isle of Bute. Too sharp? Sorry about that, perhaps you’d like a little cookie instead. Oh, I love that look of surprise on your face! Yes, that’s an authentic Keebler Elves Magic Middle. Takes you way back, doesn’t it?

Just scoot those papers to the side, have a seat. Let me see, that would be the ending of the Drood manuscript, I’ll just file it over here with the rest of the Victoriana. You know, a lot of people think that I would have more things from the past than the present, but that’s really not the case. Oh, no, not at all. It’s a matter of scale, you see: while the past does go back quite a ways, there were just fewer people losing things and fewer things to lose. Now, just the amount of email that gets eaten every day fills up terabytes of storage. Some lovely messages in there, love, hate, sorrow, grief, lust, really an amazing gamut of human emotion. Kind of like my own personal Post Secret, if you can imagine.

And socks! Don’t get me started on socks. The invention of the dryer was like a tsunami of cotton and rayon around here. It’s a little known secret, but I’m actually one of the primary suppliers of Sock Dreams. It’s a nice little arrangement, and you know how those Portland folks are about recycling.

Yes, while the quantity has gone up, unfortunately the quality of lost things hasn’t been commensurate. I do find the occasional gem. Take a look at this – it was a prototype for an iPad killer that Microsoft was just about to launch, perfect for the creative types. Mr. Jobs had other ideas, though, I’m afraid, and so I’ve got it. You use the stylus, there, that’s it. Yes, the menus are pretty neat, aren’t they?

Oh, take your time – actually, you can have some of mine. The amount of time people lose these days is mind-boggling.

I know, that’s strange, isn’t it? The one thing there is neither more of or less of, no matter who or where you are. Ah, but what you’re doing - that has changed quite a bit. One word can pretty much explain why so much time has shown up here lately: Facebook.

Yes, it used to be two words. Looks like we lost one. Trust me, you don’t want to know which one. I have it around here somewhere.

My favorite thing? Oh, that’s easy. It’s not tangible, though, it’s just something that I keep. Well, witness would be a better word. I go to concerts, you see, and it’s different for me than anyone else. I get to hear all the notes that weren’t played, the words that weren’t sung. All the small chances and ornaments and risky expressions that the musicians aren’t quite courageous enough to put out there: I hear them. Sometimes it’s so beautiful, I weep. I feel bad for the audience, for what they don’t get to hear, for what they settle for. I suppose they can’t really miss what they never knew they could have had.

It’s the musicians who really suffer. They hear the notes even before I do, and they feel that sense of I could have as they play. They just have to play on. I’ve noticed over time, though that some performers just learn to ignore the possible, while others manage, more and more, to change it into the present. Honestly, I get a little sad with the latter. I mean, I’m glad for them, and the audience certainly loves it, but it means I don’t get to go to their concerts as often.

Certainly, the bathroom, it’s just down the hall, second door on your left. No, no, your other left, don’t open that door it’s -

Oh, dear. Let me help you back to the chair. That room is quite upsetting. Don’t worry, your heart will stop hurting in a few minutes. What was it? Do you really want to know?

Very well, then. It’s where I keep the opportunities. You know, the unleaped chasms, the unopened doors, the unsaid, the unexpressed. I’ll be honest, that’s a room I don’t enjoy going in very much. There’s so much in there these days. Again, it’s a sign of the times. The global community, the information age, the sheer amount of knowledge available. The biggest thing in there is this big huge tangled ball of self-awareness, just sulking in the corner. Oh, you saw it? Ah. Well, no, why it looked familiar I really couldn’t say.

That’s not my job.

Please, don’t be sad. I really don’t have that much from you, less than you think. Let me be clear: there’s a huge difference between something being lost and something being given. Just because you don’t have a thing doesn’t mean it’s misplaced. It’s like Stephen Wright said: You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

Yes, it all just comes back to awareness. If you know why you made that choice, then none of what you didn’t choose ends up here with me. It just becomes someone else’s.

The root of the problem, I think, is that people think that It’s too scary is a valid reason for making a choice.

It’s not. Nothing is inherently scary. You are just scared of some things. Like those lost notes, some people learn to ignore that fact and make their choice, because it’s too much trouble to dig down and figure out the why.

And that’s when something else ends up here. I’m the Keeper of the Lost.

You? Well, my friend, while I said I was expecting you, I’m afraid I don’t exactly know why you’re here.

But I’m sure you’ll find out.

 

Posted in Love
09 May 2012

The $100 StartUp Life

All the bad days have two things in common: You know the right thing to do, but you let somebody talk you out of doing it.
- Tom Bihn as quoted by Chris Guillebeau, The $100 Startup

And you say to yourself, this is not my beautiful house…this is not my beautiful wife.
And you wonder to yourself: How did I get here?
- The Talking Heads

Jumping Headfirst

C'mon in, the...bracken's fine?

There are a lot of ways that I can say I got here. But one in particular stands out a day after Chris Guillebeau launched The $100 Startup. The book resonates with me, because once upon a time, I was a $100 startup.

Coming out of college I had a diverse set of skills. Moves of a Dancer, Eyes of a Designer, Technophilia of a Geek read my business card, and it was hard to figure out how to market that. My skills lay in video, sound, movement, theater, web and CD-ROM design, and I had clients in every one of those fields. So what did I call myself? Web designer? Theater Tech? Something weird like Experience Designer or some scifi term like Shaper (from Spider Robinson’s Stardance books, in case you’re wondering).

One thing was sure: I knew I didn’t want to go to work for some of the big corporations that my fellow graduates had migrated to, and I also was in over my head. While talking with my attorney-and-best-friend-from-high-school, he suggested that I “might want to look into an LLC.” That is, in case you’re wondering, a Limited Liability Company. It basically creates an entity besides yourself that is in charge of bank accounts, copyrights, taxes, a layer of separation between you as individual and your work. You also get to do fun things like create a Board of Directors with your daughters on it, and dream about corporate letterheads and the like.

Sounded great to me, the more I read about it. So I paid the fee – around $100, if I remember right – filled out the forms online and poof I was suddenly the Director of a Corporation! I called my lawyer friend up. “OK, so I registered the LLC,” I said. “Now what?”

This was pre-facepalm and headdesk memes, but I think my friend managed to do both simultaneously. He’s been very careful, since then, in recommending I “look into” things.

Playing at Being Grown Up

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I had no idea what I was doing. What followed – well, what has followed, since it’s still putatively in existence – was a series of triumphs and failures and struggles. At one time I had rooms full of expensive equipment, multiple cameras, pro sound gear, the latest programs and an office in my house with two desks and extra tables to hire contractors (aka my friends) to help with proofreading, transcribing, or whatever else needed to be done. I had trips to see my accountant, I had proposals and tax summaries and write-offs and depreciations…and I didn’t understand a blessed bit of it.

I didn’t have the guidelines, worksheets, examples and warnings that are between the covers of the $100 Startup. Instead, I did what any young person with little experience and big dreams and multiple children does: I did the best I could. The dirty little secret that it took me years to figure out was simply this: So does everyone else. Some of us are just better at pretending – to ourselves and to others – that we actually know what’s going on. That our plans of execution actually execute our plans. The reality is that the results – whether good or bad – only seem like they were inevitable because they were what actually happened. If something else had happened, we’d point to it and say “Oh, yeah, I saw that coming.”

Success in Spite of Yourself

Was it good enough? Well, I guess that depends on your point of view. I can say “Still in business, 14 years later!” because I am still doing some of that work, for a more select clientele and with vastly scaled-down expectations. But I’ve also incurred debt, had to sell off most of my equipment to pay rent, and left more than a few clients disappointed and angry because I overextended myself. Unlike the people and companies profiled in the book, I’m still not making $50-$60k doing my passion. Heck, sometimes I can’t afford tortillas to go with the can of beans in my otherwise-bare cabinet.

But success. I have succeeded. I am, as Morpheus would have put it in the Matrix, STILL HERE. I am getting close to my 100th blog post on this, my most recent project, and I’ve got Very Special Somethings waiting in the wings to surprise you with come July. I have friends all over the world, with more trips to visit them and make new ones planned. I have days that are filled with interesting, challenging, and meaningful work, and if that means that sometimes I go tortillaless, it’s really kind of a small price to pay.

I wish I could say I was brave when I chose to take the road less traveled in my career. The truth is, I was clueless and reckless. I still have the urge to apologize to my kids for the hand-to-mouth existence they grew up with. But now, in a far less secure job market, the idea of working for yourself doesn’t seem quite as crazy. The realization of if not now, when? and If not me, who? in regards to your passion has become more urgent.

Unlike me, you can read something like The $100 Startup (or just visit the resources at 100startup.com) and at least have some idea of what might be waiting for you when you take that leap. Whatever kind of leap it is – a new career, a new home, a new relationship – it’s going to be scary.

But it’s also going to be worth it. Who needs tortillas, anyway?

Posted in Life | Leave a Comment
07 May 2012

A Dirty Yoga Practice

I’m not sure where I found it first – perhaps the august people at Art of Manliness – but I really enjoyed surfing through the Dirty Yoga site. Admittedly, I have a weakness for all things retro (I’d be 100% steampunkified if I could afford it) but more than that I have a weakness for straight talk.

Dirty Yoga Co. makes a virtue of that. It’s not “dirty” in any puerile sense (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but it’s dirty as in “quick and dirty.” As in: I have to wait half an hour for my computer to crunch that video into usable form, let’s throw out the yoga mat and do some asanas. No beaches, no glissandoes, no oiled bodies in spandex tights. Just a regular guy doing regular yoga.

Asana? I Barely KNOW Ya!

Kalaripayattu. (This was not me. In case you're wondering.)

I should come clean here: I don’t like yoga. I’ve done it on and off for years, both in studios, at University, at artist’s retreats, and most consistently via a Rodney Yee DVD that I’ve had for about a decade. Never found one I enjoyed (unless you count an intensive on kaluripayat that I took for a year as part of my dance degree, but that’s to yoga what kung fu is to tai chi).

On the other hand, I couldn’t deny that I did enjoy the effects of yoga on my body. I’ve got some wear and tear on my knees and other areas from military and dance practices, so things like running and high-intensity cardio will often leave me sore for days. Yoga, on the other hand, always left me feeling limber, relaxed, and calm…which might be the problem.

I like adrenaline. I like overcoming obstacles. I like the feeling of having “won“. In fact, I fell right into the sort-of tongue-in-cheek marketing of “Man-Yoga“, which states that one of the reasons men don’t try it is simply “Men don’t know how to win at yoga.”

But there is another compelling advantage of yoga for me: it doesn’t require a lot of room or a lot of equipment. Heck, technically a mat is a luxury, and if I’m alone, naked yoga saves on laundry. I can do yoga on the road, in a field, wherever.

I just don’t like it. I got bored easily. My monkey-brain wanted distraction. So I’ve never been able to establish a really consistent yoga practice.

Yogaccountability

When I offered to try out the Dirty Yoga Co site for a month (and review it), the crew there were very friendly and very straightforward. I’d talked about my past experience with things like the Insanity workouts, and they were quick to stress: Dirty Yoga is a maintainenance program, not a get-fit-quick or lose-weight program. It’s just an easy, convenient way to do something that’s good for you.

That appealed to me, actually. Kind of like the goal of this site, which is not to solve all your problems and bring you peace and happiness forever after, but rather to simply help make things a little better, a little happier.

I assured them that I wasn’t expecting to suddenly reach enlightenment either in tems of consciousness or weight gain. I’m also going to be doing other exercises like running and weightlifting (something which, to my surprise, I do enjoy. Maybe because I feel like I’m winning…). But by publicly reviewing their site and also monitoring the effects on my body and mind, I’m also following one of the techniques that is very successful for forming habits: public accountability.

I haven’t actually started the “practice” yet, but I have done a couple of the sessions. You get three new ones per week, plus a couple of short “core strength” and “stretching” sessions. The full yoga sessions are a little more than 1/2 hour.

My plan is to do one every day that I write a post – Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’ll leave a little paragraph at the end of each post just to say what it felt like, what stuck out. If you don’t see that paragraph – call me out on it. Email me (gray at lovelifepractice dot com) and ask me “WTF?”

Then again, maybe seeing that little paragraph will also nudge you, just a bit, to do your own practice for physical health, whatever that may be.

Can I Recommend Yoga?

Warrior 3 (note: this is not me, either)

So far I can. Dirty Yoga, in fact. I find I still dislike doing the poses…but the instructor is just so affable and straightforward about it, it feels ok. He often says things like “No big deal…” about poses that have always felt like a big deal to me before (like Warrior 3). That kind of simple reassurance goes a long way in just making it a yoga practice, not an attempt at emulating a yogic karmic event.

They are also supremely focused. No set at all – just the instructor against a white screen, talking through the poses and demonstrating them (occasionally he stops and says “And now you’re going to go into chataranga…now up to down dog…” while he’s just sitting there, but all the poses are adequately demonstrated). I laughed out loud a few times, when he’d say something like “So, my students hate this pose…but we’re going to do it anyway.”

Basically, it’s a yoga teacher who just wants to show you how to do some yoga, on a site that works well to keep it simple. Take a look at a sample of the kind of teaching at their “Dirty Yoga Tips” page, but stay tuned: I’ll be letting you know how my own practice goes as we travel through the month of May.

Posted in Practice | Leave a Comment
04 May 2012
1 Comment

Value, Cherish, Devote

val·ue: to regard or esteem highly: He values her friendship.

cher·ish: to cling fondly or inveterately to: to cherish a memory.

de·vo·te: profoundly dedicate; consecrate

After many declarations of “I’m not going to use the cheap blogging trick of using the dictionary for content,” I’m now going to use the dictionary for content.

However, it’s a necessity born out of caution. I want to get this right. A long while ago these words started floating around in my mind, sort of dancing there saying Hey, we’re important! The differences between us are significant! The draft of this post has sat in my computer for well over a month, looking at me with big googly Write me! eyes.

Have you ever tried to deal with the guilt that big googly idea eyes can instill? Leads to insomnia, discomfiture, and the shakes. Plus you begin to lose your eyebrows.

So I guess I’ll write it.

What’s the Diff?

In my mind, before I got the definitions, I had already separated the three words mainly based on the relationship of the individual to the object of the verb. To value someone or something was the furthest remove, to award something importance and attention based on its utility. In some way that which is valued improves your life. Perhaps it makes it more beautiful; perhaps it makes some task easier or does it for you altogether. Perhaps it conveys status, or changes how people see you.

But it’s very separate from you, and the relationship is more with the service it provides rather than it’s intrinsic existence. I value the opportunity I’ve been given this month to review the Dirty Yoga Co, but it remains to be seen how much I’ll value it at the end of my free month. They value my willingness to review their product, but I suspect they will value me even more if I’m willing to pay their subscription fees (and frankly, they’re so reasonable I think it’s likely). But if I’m not, I don’t think it will be especially onerous on either party. We’ll part ways, having valued the experience of our interaction.

Cherish is the Word

When you cherish something, the connection goes beyond the utility of a thing and into its actual existence. I have a cigar lighter, for example, that is kind of a pain. The flame is not very intense, it doesn’t have a very large fuel tank and so requires frequent filling, and there are any number of torches and matches that would light my sticks more efficiently and stylishly.

Know what? I don’t care. The lighter was a gift to me from someone significant, and every time I hold it, whether I’m making flame or not, I get a flashback of what was good about that relationship, about the lessons learned and the joys shared and more. I cherish that lighter because of the fact that it exists, not because of what it does for me. It takes a little more time to light the cigars, it may take a flick or two before there’s a steady flame, but because I cherish it, it’s worth the trouble.

It could even be argued that because it takes a little extra work, I am being changed by the act of cherishing. Learning a bit more patience, perhaps. Taking better care of my things (it’s a very small lighter, and traveling as much as I do, it’s a miracle it’s not lost). At the same time, it is not intrinsically necessary to my own identity. If I did lose it, I would be sad…and I would start looking for some other cool lighter.

The Devoted

Before I ever looked up those definitions, I had this instinctual idea that devotion was the one of the three which was the most complicated. I felt that the thing about devotion was that it incorporated both value and cherish…but it took the investment beyond the simple existence of something else. Instead, with the act of devotion, that which you are devoted to becomes intrinsic to your own existence.

When you devote yourself, it changes who you are. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – change is not inherently good or bad, it simply is, after all – but it’s rarely comfortable. It’s usually scary, because you don’t really know for sure who that new you will be. That definition above talks about not just dedication, but profound dedication. Not just focus, but an all-encompassing focus.

It also uses another $10 word, and when I looked up the definition of that word everything about these ideas went click and it all came together:

consecrate: making a solemn commitment of your life or your time to some cherished purpose (to a service or a goal)

There it is: you find a purpose, a person, a role, an idea that has value. The more you explore the value, the more you begin to cherish. The use becomes less important than the joy that is.

The more you cherish, the more it changes you. Eventually, the separation between you and the cherished disappears…and you realize you’ve become devoted. If the cherished disappeared from your life, it would change everything.

Scary

Now that I’ve made you feel all gooshy, I’m going to throw the bucket of ice water. The problem with these three concepts, at least for me, is that they are instinctual, not deliberate. When I have tried to devote myself to something because I thought I should, it doesn’t work. The things which change me, which alter the fundamental nature of who I am, are rarely the things I choose.

A good example is my role as a father. It can’t be denied that the moment my daughter Ashlei came into the world, I changed. I was a young man; suddenly I was a young father. As the years went on, I became a single father with four beautiful daughters, and yes, I believe I was devoted to them.

Occasionally people would express admiration for the fact that I had custody of my children, that I took an active role in their lives and did whatever was necessary to provide for them. They found it unusual that a man would stick around after a divorce, much less take custody of four infant children.

I never really understood those compliments. Yes, I know that the weekend father is a more common thing in our culture. I can’t judge that. I know that I shouldn’t be admired for “choosing” to take care of them. It was never a choice. I never said “Hmm, should I stay? Or is that too much trouble?” I was their father*. That was that. I was devoted, and as hard as it was – and make no mistake, it got miserable – there was never a choice involved.

On the other hand, I’ve tried to become devoted to other things, like “making money” and “yoga”, but at best I’ve been able to value them. Maybe Dirty Yoga Co can help with the latter, at least.

The moral of the story, I guess, is: enjoy the act of cherishing, and what it does for you. Be mindful of the things you value.

But be careful of devotion. That’s some strong stuff.

 

 

* By the way, I still am.

 

Posted in Love and tagged
02 May 2012
2 Comments

The Samurai & the Strawberry

Today I woke to nothing but good news.

A positive, caring text message from my personal assistant. An email sharing the joy of an evening well-spent by a friend in Ann Arbor (illustrated, no less). A request from a major news network for an interview about my work. Another query from some business associates in Hawaii wondering if I’d be interested in a trip down there to facilitate an Open Space on Oahu.

It’s kind of freaking me out.

Practical tools to make hard times happier. Even the subtitle of this blog is evidence of my philosophy of life: things are difficult, but with work and practice you can make them a little better. Notice I never say I’m going to show you how to be happy; I never say “here’s the solution.”

At most I say This is kind of interesting; maybe it’ll work?

When I’m faced with nothing but good news, quite frankly I freak the [BLEEP] out.

The Samurai and the Strawberry

"Doo-dee-doo-dee-doo, just walkin' along like a samurai do..."

Let me tell you my favoritest story in the whole world:

Once upon a time a samurai was walking along a cliff near a deep river, whistling a warrior-like tune and generally minding his own business. Suddenly his keen senses detected movement to his right – a tiger! A giant, ferocious tiger with sharp teeth and razor claws was bounding towards him, obviously intent on having samurai tartare for lunch.

There was nowhere for the samurai to run. He took the only option he could think of, and leaped off the cliff, noticing as he did a branch sticking out from the side. “Aha!” he cried with his samurai voice and reached out to grab the branch on his way down. Securing his grip, he grinned merrily up at the slavering tiger, drooling down with a frustrated growl from the edge of the cliff.

Looking down, the samurai began to try to figure out how to climb down the cliff…and realized his samurai reflexes might not have been as good as he thought. There were no other branches, no real handholds, and a very long, long drop down to the river. Worse, at the bottom of that long, long drop he could see several alligators gathering, looking up at him with an expression of hungry anticipation remarkably similar to that of the tiger above.

This was all very distressing, not the least because tigers and alligators are not even native to Japan. However, the samurai didn’t really have the time to deal with inconsistent fauna, since right about then a couple of cliff rodents with sharp incisors (CRWSI’s, for those who get the reference) crawled out of a hole near the branch he was clinging to and began gnawing at the root. They had, as noted, remarkably sharp incisors, and it looked like the alligators would be dining in relatively short order.

Just then the samurai’s keen senses noticed one other thing. Next to him, growing out of a tiny crack in the wall, was a wild strawberry plant, and hanging there was the ripest, reddest, juiciest strawberry he’d ever seen.

Without hesitation he reached over, plucked the strawberry, and took a big juicy bite.

“What a delicious strawberry!” he shouted.

The end.

Enjoy

If the story irritates you, good. I’m glad to be able to share the misery, because it drove me nuts for years. I loved the story, for some reason, but I didn’t get it.

I think I’m starting to. And when I find myself freaking out about the fact that suddenly I seem to have broken through the tangled forest of my life into a patch of delicious wild strawberries, I take a deep breath, reach out, and just enjoy them. There may be more brambles in my future, the tigers still come at night with their voices loud as thunder, and I live in Seattle, so it’s likely to rain soon.

But in the meantime…these are some really good strawberries.

I highly recommend you try some.

Posted in Life
30 Apr 2012

Practice vs. Habit

The sweet dark...

Last night I got back from a ten-day trip. As I was unpacking, I smiled as I unloaded a tiny tin of tea (with a spoon-shaped diffuser) that I’d been gifted. It is going to fit in perfectly with my plan for the next 18 days, to wean myself off the coffee habit. I’m not the most voracious coffee drinker I know, but I definitely have a chemical dependency on the caffeine. With some time at home before my next trip it’s a good time to endure the headaches and irritability and fatigue and break the coffee habit.

That tin of tea was going to be a “step down”. It’s not that I’m giving up coffee, I’m giving up the addiction. After all, moderation in all things, and I can point to studies that show that I shouldn’t stop drinking coffee. You may remember that I linked my coffee to my journaling habit, as well – so if I mess with the one, what would happen to the other?

Also, notice the past tense that began that paragraph?

Sometime You Use the Force, Sometimes the Force Uses You

Habit is a force. Like most forces, it is not inherently good or bad – it is all in the way it is used.

I tried to give myself a treat this morning by sleeping in. Silly boy, three hours jet lag is just enough to foil that plan, but at least I lolled in bed and read until my 7:30 wakeup.

I rolled out of bed, feeling a bit rushed, so I decided to combine breakfast and morning coffee instead of journaling. I muzzily worked the espresso machine in the kitchen, but it’s been a while, so the pull was a little slow, and I made a mental note to check with a barista friend of mine about how to fix that.

I looked at the mail that had arrived in my absence as I ate a bowl of oatmeal and cranberries, sipping the Americano. At 8:20 I grabbed my computer, the bubbling idea of today’s blog post urgently telling me it needed to hit the screen now. Across the room, I caught sight of the little tin of tea.

I looked at the tea.

I looked at the cup of coffee next to me.

I remembered that whole “decaffienate” idea.

Whups.

Same Story, Different Cast

It’s pretty obvious what happened. My practice of slowing down to make coffee in the morning became a habit, not a practice.

What’s the difference? Paying attention. If I say I’m going to “practice” guitar, and I sit down and play “Jack & Diane” (the first song I ever learned) for an hour, it’s not really going to improve my technique unless I’m paying attention to it, trying something different, changing chords, styles, finger techniques. Pushing myself.

That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with playing the same song for an hour. That can be fun, cathartic, or just entertaining. To be an effective practice, though, you have to think of your intent. If you’re not paying attention to the practice and just going through the motions you are robbing yourself of one limited and entirely nonrenewable resource: Time.

So what is the purpose of your practice? Maintenance? Improvement? Change? Whatever it is, if you don’t pay attention to it, you might find yourself (hypothetically, of course) on an airplane flying across the country, weary from ten days of intensely passionate work.

A Hypothetical Notebook

You pull out an old notebook, something that has been in storage for years. A journal, perhaps, with only a few entries in the beginning, from four or five years ago. A time of great personal upheaval, and like any good journal, it is your voice talking about your concerns and troubles and problems.

As you sit there and read the journal, you might recognize so many of the same themes, the same issues, the same problems – sometimes the same wording. The places may be different, the people’s names have changed – but overall, you may get the impression that you’ve made absolutely no progress whatsoever, in spite of moving, writing, meditating, exercising, studying, in spite of everything it’s the same damn problems filling your mind now as then.

A hypothetical situation, of course. But there’s nothing hypothetical about how it makes you feel: like crap. It feels like you’ve been wasting time. You may think of Buckaroo Banzai’s philosophy: Remember, no matter where you go, there you are. You may begin to realize that can be something of a curse.

Accentuating the Positive

When something goes right,
Y’know it’s likely to lose me,
It’s apt to confuse me,
Because it’s such an unusual sight…
-Paul Simon, Something So Right

Possibly there’s a good side to a practice becoming a habit. Incremental change is a powerful thing, and there can be some changes that happen so subtly and slowly that you don’t realize it until it comes up and slaps you in the face.

Case in point: this morning, as I was reading the aforementioned mail with the insidiously prevalent coffee, I had three items:

  • A shiny new copy of Chris Guillebeau’s upcoming book the $100 StartUp, sent to me to review prior to the launch on May 8th.
  • My copy of a signed contract for a foreword I’ve been asked to write for an upcoming anthology from an editor I’ve admired for years.
  • A hand-written letter on fancy stationery from a person with whom I’ve been tentatively dipping my toe into a very deep pool of emotional involvement.

None of which was a huge surprise (except the letter, but even that wasn’t a shock, just unexpected).

And then as I sat there, looking through these items, I realized what wasn’t there. No junk mail. No bills. No overdraft notices. No school fee notices, or angry letters from unhappy clients. I had a book that an author I admired wanted me to review. I was being asked by an editor to not just write a story, but to invite the readers into the room. I had a letter that represented a huge step past the fear of love towards…something that wasn’t fear.

All of this had happened because of small changes – small habits, like this blog – that I did, even when I didn’t wanna. There had been a qualitative change in my life, and it hadn’t come as a surprise.

Sometimes, I guess, the good stuff is so subtle you just sort of miss it, unless you’re paying attention.

Maybe I need to practice that…

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