The transient nature of appearance

Every morning when I get up, I go to the living room window and check out the view. I have a nice view of Mount Parnitha and every day I observe the mountain to be different: Two days ago, the fog gave it a mysterious air. Yesterday, the sun was emphasizing its shape . Today the heavy rain made it invisible. Another day, the clouds or the snow make it seem so different.

If each day something as static as a mountain can give a different impression and still in our consciousness it is always there, always the same, then what about people? We have our own storms, our sunny days, our fogs that can come and go… does this alter who we are? How hard is it to give someone the benefit of the doubt because of a rainy day? 

Working It Out

Lately, problems (challenges, as we call them wickedly) have made my stress levels hit red. As a result my mind got engaged in a non-productive inner dialogue so I needed to urgently do something to shut the thing down. I immediately found an activity that keeps all irrelevant thoughts out: climbing! It worked perfectly. A couple of hours with only the worry of where and how to put your hands and feet. At some point the instructor suggested that I repeat something. I simply replied “No, I’ll pass; I am actually very lazy and avoid effort”. He looked at me surprised. All the people there go precisely to work hard on improving their climbing skills.

Later the same day I started thinking of an “old friend” if I can call him that. Our relationship was over because “it needed so much work”. So, I wondered. What is it that makes people work so hard training, sweating, spending hours challenging and improving their physical skills, but, when it comes to relationships “it’s too much work”?

I was lazy as an athlete too, and I never missed a good opportunity to skip training or part of it. I suspect this is the main reason I do almost everything well from the beginning. I am too lazy to practice again and again. On the other hand, when it comes to people and relationships, when it comes to my emotional / social skills, I never give up. I endure, I practice, I fight. And so I thought all people did. Until I heard that “it’s so much work”…

What is the criteria of what is worth working on and what is not? How can we so easily focus our efforts on something like climbing a wall or building the perfect fit body, but avoid any inconvenience to explore at least the potential of a relationship? What makes spending our energy on conquering that wall more important than spending it in making someone smile? And why is it considered an effort in the first place?

Even at bowling (another activity I tried for stopping the inner chatter), we have 10 shots for each game. The game is not decided by just one shot. Every player has the fair amount of 10 attempts. Yet in relationships and especially in love, most people won’t give more than one. Either you have a strike or you’re out of the game.

When is comes to relationships my endurance is endless and so are the shots I am willing to make. I take my chances, I make mistakes (too many I would say), I will not be able to have a strike from the beginning, but, hey, if I believe that it is worthy, if I see the potential, I am not lazy at all. 

Trust

I have a problem: I trust others easily. I have a strength: I can trust others. What is the fine line that defines when a characteristic is not longer a quality, but becomes a problem? How do I know how much trust is too much trust?

These last two weeks I was involved in some business transactions and as always I wasn’t very thorough with the details of the agreements. I trusted that the other side wouldn’t fool me. As you can see, I operate from this “every one is innocent until proven guilty” place. For me EVERYONE is trustworthy until proven otherwise.

Ok, on both occasions they were proven otherwise. They fooled me and I was really angry. Especially in the first instance, I was so angry I was about to call a friend who rarely trusts anyone and tell him “I wish I were more like you. This would never have happened to you!”

Then, the anger passed. I couldn’t give up trust and become a suspicious resentful me. What had I really lost? Some money? Big deal. I remembered my most important truth: giving up on trust carries more risks than being fooled. I may trust easily and maybe too much, but this brings me opportunities. It brings opportunities to others too. When I was working with children I trusted them to be more than the nasty, incompetent little brats the other teachers saw. I trusted they were smart, talented little treasures, and what do you know? They were!

Trust brings opportunities to my clients and to my friends. It brings me the opportunity to have a deeper connection with people, by simply trusting them.

Pat Obuchowski, a fellow coach, posted a couple of days ago her daily Mantra: “Want to build trust? Be more vulnerable.” Walter Anderson wrote that “We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone – but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.” I say it takes courage to trust. Just like every time we let ourselves be vulnerable to others. And although the temptations and excuses to stop trusting are too many, the rewards of trusting are priceless. So, how do we skip the temptations? Maybe trust is like love. Having it is not enough; we need to keep feeding it so that it won’t fade.

I have a strength: I dare to trust others J

The Thin Book of Trust; An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work

In search of the perfect gift

This week is a friend’s birthday. I spent all day searching for the perfect gift. But what do you get to someone who has everything? Hmm…

Picking gifts is one of my favorite rituals. It doesn’t really require knowing the other very well. What it does require is understanding the other very well. Sense what will be the thing that will bring the big smile on their face. After all, isn’t this what gifts are all about? Bringing happiness, bringing joy, bringing big smiles?

What to buy to someone who has everything, or so it seems?

My dear T,

I wish you Courage. I wish Courage to go after life’s greatest adventure: Love.

I wish you Daring. I wish the Daring to believe in your dreams and their “compatibility”, and dare to live them.

I wish you Boldness. I wish you the Boldness to let your vulnerable part shine.

I wish you Bravery. I wish you the Bravery to have a fearless life. 
Love, K

Big Lessons

My little niece is doing her homework. She has to calculate how many bananas 7 little monkeys will eat if they eat 3 bananas each. There is the easy and fast way to do this: 7 monkeys x 3 bananas and there you go. That’s not my niece’s way though. To my surprise, she starts painting the seven little monkeys and below each one their three bananas. My surprise then becomes bigger when I see that she is actually very good at painting them.

Yes, there is the easy and fast way to solve a problem and get the job done. And then, there is the fun way. What if it takes longer? The result will eventually be the same yet reached in a much more creative way J

Big lesson from a little person. 

Parachutes

For me the expression “falling in love” has a totally literal meaning, as this is what I do: I completely let myself fall. And not only in love but in all kinds of relationships. I throw myself into the job I am doing, into the new hobby, and into the new people in my life.

It goes with out saying that most of the times the landing is not as gentle as expected. Of course I crash and then I have to recover and then I fall again, and crash again, and the same over and over…

So, 2 years ago I said to my coach: “Listen, Nicole, I need to find my parachute. I cannot help falling, so at least I should have a parachute!” And that was my assignment for the next two years. Yep, it wasn’t so easy to find. In my quest, I went skydiving last year. I needed to see how it would feel physically to surrender completely – with the safety of the parachute – and at the same time tick one more things off my bucket list.

It was a dead end… After landing the frustration was great. It was so much fun until the parachute opened! So, no solution there. And so I kept searching and thinking.

Then, one morning I woke up and I emailed Nicole: “I got it!!! I know what my parachute is: ME! I am my parachute!” I think I was even more excited by my discovery than Archimedes when he run through the streets naked crying “Eureka!”.

I was my parachute. It was up to me not to crash. I had all the knowledge, the skills, the brains not to let myself crash again.

So, I thought. I forgot the willingness to use them or the spirit and the mentality to do so. You see, for me having any kind of relationship with anyone and anything, involves a level (a very high level) of trust, passion and surrender. I offer myself to whatever and whoever it may be. No reservations, no precautions, nothing. Fully open, honest, to any romantic, friendly or professional relationship. That means I found out with the first chance in practice that this parachute wasn’t working, because I was just not using it. Frustration and back to the quest.

Until last evening driving back home, fast as usual. My quest was over, I had found my answer: I didn’t need any parachute. I didn’t want any parachute.

No life can be lived with protections and precautions. At least no life as I perceive it. The parachute means fear. It feeds the fear. How can I experience everything that is there if I slow myself down? Why should I want to slow down in the first place? Falling is great. Falling is amazing. Falling is life. I fall because I decide to live my life and not hide from it. Because I choose to love even with the risk of being hurt. But, if I don’t let myself be exposed to this risk, how else shall I even have a chance for love?

Not everybody will love us, not everybody will catch us, not everybody will fall with us. But you know something? If they do, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.

After all, with the knowledge now of so many crashes, there is no bad landing. There is only learning and growing, once we decide to see beyond the pain. And that’s what I choose. 

Incompatible Dreams

Two days ago a friend of mine told me that not all dreams are compatible. That we can have, for example, two dreams that are totally incompatible one with another, and that is ok. Hearing that, both my mind and my spirit impulsively revolted at the idea.

Since I was a child, my dream was to live in a boat. As close to the sea as possible, yet attached to land and always ready to sail for any destination the wind should take me. Soon I became aware of another dream of mine: to have my own garden. Now that was an incompatible dream according to my friend. I obviously could not have a garden on my boat. So, what do I choose? Should I sacrifice one dream for the other?

The solution for me is easy. One day I would have my boat, my second home. I would live in a regular house, if lucky with my own garden, if not with a shared one and big verandas for my plants and then I would have my boat to spend as much time as possible, to sail away as possible.

To my understanding the solution is never giving up on one of the “incompatible” dreams. I do not believe in incompatible dreams in the first place. It is our perception that gives them this stamp. And once they are stamped as that, then it is ok not to pursue them anymore. If we say that what we dream of is incompatible, that’s what it is. If we say – as my father keeps telling me – that everything is possible, then no dream will be incompatible anymore. All it takes is to think outside of the box. To be more precise, other people’s boxes, those who “educate” us in what is compatible and what not. How much to dream and how much to pursue. What makes sense and what not.

I have many dreams. I have never stopped dreaming. Occasionally I catch myself doubting my strength to go after them; my ability to achieve them; my worthiness to live them. I may question my self, but I have never questioned my dreams or the possibility that they are all compatible, no matter how contradictory they sound.

 George Bernard Shaw wrote:

“You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’”

It is the fact that some dreams have never been combined to the understanding of people that makes them seem incompatible. Our world is full of great things that never were until someone came and acted from that “why not?” point of view.

Funnily enough, the dreams that were torturing my friend, were the exact dreams that another man I know is living. Ok, with a lot of help from his soul mate, who also never saw them as incompatible.  Maybe, all it takes is to ignore what we have been taught to be compatible and expected. Maybe all it takes is to find the other soul that will partner with our dreams. 

I will keep with my own dreams. I never judge them, criticize or approve them as unrealistic, unachievable, or incompatible one with another. I just accept them as they are. After all they are my dreams and they only need to make sense to me.