Any management plan must build in the possibility of failure and reversals at every step. Allan Savory emphasizes this throughout his book, Holistic Management. No matter how carefully we define our whole and holistic context, we will always miss something and/or be ignorant of something. The only certainty in life is that it will be uncertain, at least at times. Holistic management planning is not about perfection, and it’s not a destination. It’s a dynamic practice that remains both focused and resilient.
For me, that includes planning for fatigue and discouragement, and this week in particular I’ve been reminded of that.
We’ve experienced a series of financial hits over the last six months. At the same time, I’ve been fortunate enough to pick up extra hours at work, which gives me a little more income. However, working more hours means I have less time to write and be present in my personal and private life. The pandemic ebbs, at least for the moment, but still threatens and limits us. The nation’s political stress seems to go on and on, in the headlines, on social media, and in the community.
Much of the work I do for my holistic management planning is invisible to anyone but me. The SEO and support work behind the scenes for this blog, continuing to publish weekly posts, working on my books, and continuing my search for the right editor, agent, and/or publisher are actions I take doggedly; they rarely result in any discernible (to me) effect, except an occasional rejection – and that’s when I have any response at all!
None of this produces any income … yet.
I frequently wonder what it’s all for, why the writing matters so much to me, and if this is the way I’ll spend the rest of my life.
I heard this week an author and teacher I’ve followed for years has lymphoma. She’s been an inspiration to me, and when I heard the news I wanted to sit down and cry. My reaction made me realize how important a person we’ve never met can be, especially those we view as successes in the ways we want to succeed.
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The news also reminded me life is always changing. No matter how stuck we feel and invisible change can be, it’s there, moving us forward inch by inch.
Forward to where? I ask myself, disheartened.
Who knows? Just forward.
I won’t always feel the way I do today. Fatigue and discouragement ebb and flow, along with everything else. I’ve lived long enough to be sure of that. Savory’s approach to management planning makes sense to me for many reasons, but planning for failure is one of the biggest.
C.S. Lewis said, “Failures, repeated failures are fingerposts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.”
The fact is, life is full of failure, and the gift of failure is learning. We make a choice and act. Things happen in response to our action. We say, well, that happened, and decide whether we like or dislike the consequences. Some choices that seemed like a great idea at the time wind up in the What Was I Thinking File of Shame. We make adjustments, make different choices, try to figure out a new approach.
When I’m feeling less blah I might even reframe rejections and this feeling of trying to lift a mountain I have no hope of moving as successes.
Not today, though. Today I’m just tired and discouraged. I’m not living a holistically managed life. The only progress I seem to be making is backward. Financially, I can’t seem to move out of reaction to proaction.
During times like these, what I hang onto is the fact that giving up is the final failure. If I stop working toward what I want, I’ll never get there. Trying to achieve goals and dreams is always going to feel like this at times. Delays and reversals are part of the process and need to be figured into our plans.
All those rejections? Part of the plan.
All those financial setbacks? Part of the plan.
This week’s post? Part of the plan.
All these sticky, messy feelings? Part of the plan.
This post has been simmering in the back of my mind for some while. I’ve taken my time approaching it because it seems to be something of a landmine for some people.
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In simplest terms, to be grateful is to be thankful.
It’s easy to be thankful for the things we enjoy and that make us happy. Thankfulness can also be a matter of routine or ritual, as in the case of saying grace before meals, or a display of good manners, like thanking a service person.
Those are the smiling, kindly faces of gratitude.
But gratitude can also wear the aspect of a hag, and then we’re in darker, grittier territory.
Part of the experience of life and relationship includes pain and trauma, there’s no getting around it. We all have a haunted cellar in our soul in which we have suffered. Sadly, many people live in that cellar, picking their scabs, reopening their wounds, and competing with others to win the Most Victimized and Best Haunted Cellar awards.
I’m not suggesting our feelings of disillusionment, pain, rage, fear, shame, betrayal and self-pity are wrong or inappropriate, nor am I victim blaming or shaming, taking some kind of high moral ground, or minimizing the tragic challenges and traumatic experiences we face in life.
Our inevitable wounds are not the point. The point is what we choose to do with them. Do we heal them or not?
It’s important to acknowledge some people don’t want to heal. Some find the payoff for chronic bleeding too seductive to want to stop it. I don’t understand this, but I know it’s so, and I respect that choice.
We can be a motionless victim or we can practice gratitude and allow it to sweep us forward. We can’t do both.
If we do want to heal, we have to give up blame. This is a big thing to let go of, and some will choose not to. Again, that’s a choice I can understand and respect. It’s also a dead end. If we insist on holding tight to our blame, we’ve cut ourselves off from the possibility of full healing. As long as we blame others or ourselves, we’re refusing to acknowledge our own responsibility and power.
Blame and responsibility are not the same thing. When I say responsibility, I don’t mean we’re necessarily responsible for our trauma. I mean our responsibility for how we handle it, and our responsibility for our feelings. Taking responsibility for our lives is empowering. Blame leads us into an endless loop of victimhood and/or self-hatred.
We can use addiction, compulsion, and other self-destructive behaviors to numb, distract, or forget our wounds, but none of those coping mechanisms help us reclaim our power.
Healing takes time and patience. Sometimes it takes years, or even decades. There is no shortcut around our feelings. We often need support. Healing can be a messy, exhausting, ugly, extremely vulnerable business.
Healing, like relationship, is a crucible, a dark womb in which we transform our wounds into scars. Gratitude is one of the agents of that transformation, but it can’t show up until we’ve begun to actively work through our feelings.
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Gratitude and forgiveness are often hand in hand. Note I did not say forgetfulness, but forgiveness. Scars are permanent reminders of our journey, but they need not be a matter of shame. We can choose to view them as medals of honor. We can choose to relate to others out of the empowerment and wisdom our scars represent rather than the wounds that caused them.
In every experience there is something to learn. We learn about ourselves. We learn about others. We learn about the way the world works. We learn about power. Learning makes us bigger, stronger, wiser, more effective, and more powerful in our lives. If what we learned is bitterness, we’re still blaming. We haven’t taken enough time, or found the right support, or finished the journey from wound to scar. Bitterness does not grow gratitude. It’s not empowering. It makes us small and shrivels our hearts.
We can’t control what other people do, but we can choose to see those who hurt us as teachers, learn the lesson, graduate, and be grateful. We can look back on the most uncomfortable experiences in our lives as the most meaningful and growthful.
Our culture encourages us to be dissatisfied with our lives as they are. We’re trained from childhood in longing and envy rather than in gratitude. The truth is if we can’t be thankful for what we have right now, this minute, we won’t be thankful for more money, a different body, a different job or house or car.
Thankfulness is acceptance of whatever our circumstances are in the now, even if they’re difficult and we need to change them. Especially if they’re difficult and we need to change them. If our lives aren’t working and we know it, we can be grateful for accepting what is (we’re miserable) and take advantage of the opportunity to learn to manage our power in such a way that we can make positive change. Misery is highly motivating.
So often we have an ideal in our heads, or a set of expectations, that keeps us reaching for more, or different. The practice of gratitude requires us to settle down and take a good long look at what we have, what we are, and where we are. What is there to learn? What can we be grateful for? Expectations are devoid of gratitude, because they don’t reflect reality.
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Gratitude takes strength and courage, especially during dark times of pain, fear, and despair. It’s also one of the most powerful choices we can make. It leads us into the light. It comforts our raw feelings. It keeps us focused on joy, and the simple gifts in each day.
In seeking gratitude, we go deeper than we’ve gone before, far beyond the fact of our wounding. We reclaim our power, not over what happens to us, but how we use such events and circumstances to water and feed our best selves. To feel gratitude is to come fully into peaceful alignment with our lives, whatever they have been, whatever they are now, whatever they might be.
I ran into a great question a few weeks ago: “What gives you courage?” I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
Courage, the ability to do something frightening or having strength in spite of pain or grief, is not the absence of fear. If we have no fear we have no need of courage.
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Fear, in my experience, is multifaceted. My most private fears are about my own wholeness and worth. Then, there’s the fear of external forces, like a coward with a gun in the supermarket; the judgement or criticism of a loved one; or a personal loss, injury or illness.
Yet another kind of fear is one I suspect many of us feel right now, a sort of ill-defined psychic shadow, a general feeling of insecurity about the state of our world and the future. I try not to give it too much attention, but it’s always there, like a thin cloud between me and the sun. I know the only place I have power is right here, right now, in this moment, and I’m glad I’m typing at the keyboard rather than staring out the window and wondering what tragedy or catastrophe will be brought to my attention next and where it will all end.
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Is that a kind of courage, staying intentional in the moment and managing our own power?
Perhaps.
So, what keeps us going in times like these, in spite of our fear?
Oddly, the first thing I thought of was a poem I read as a teenager. All these years I’ve kept it and thought about the wagon wheel that did not break, the faithful dog, the innocent child. I’ve long forgotten where I came across it and I don’t know who wrote it.
Journal Note Long Ago
Crossing the wilderness or the sea I take with me nobody who is afraid nor do I want with me the memory of a man or woman who is afraid.
I am afraid enough myself now—there are shadows and ghosts enough now—in the meshes of my corpuscles—and so I must not ask others to go.
I keep the memory of a dog who was never afraid, a wagon whose wheels lasted, a child who had not lived long enough to know the meaning of the words Yesterday and Tomorrow.
The second thing that comes to mind about the source of my own courage also seems peculiar, but on second thought it might be a way of talking about faith. If and when I am able to identify The Right Thing To Do in any circumstance, fear ceases to have any power over me. I certainly feel it, and sometimes it seems I’ll be ground into oblivion by it, but as long as I’ve breath and a pulse I will do what I believe is right, come what may.
This is a trait fanatics and zealots of every stripe share with me, a fact which makes me pause and shudder. There is a difference, though, between a suicide bomber or the aforesaid coward with a gun and me. I don’t pretend to know what’s right for others, only myself. I’m not interested in having power over other people, forcing my ideology on those around me or taking out my frustrations on others.
My sense of The Right Thing To Do always involves my integrity and intuition, and is not weakened by the judgements and criticisms of those around me. My integrity and intuition are my own. Only I can maintain them. Without them, I am nothing.
When people talk about faith, I generally think of religion, which can be a staunch support for courage as well as a powerful motivator. However, most religions I’m familiar with require submission to a so-called higher authority, either human and/or sacred text (the author of which is frequently unclear and the original of which was written in a language and context I’m unfamiliar with). Many good people build their lives on a bedrock of religious faith and are sustained by it. That is not my way. I will not sacrifice my personal power to an external authority.
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Information and learning give me courage. Literacy and curiosity are gateways to understanding, compassion and revelation. The beauty and complexity of our world and our universe, the remarkable experience of being human, the persistence of life, the perspective of history, the indomitable creativity of the human spirit — all these inspire me and give me courage.
My study and practice of minimalism has given me courage. The more objects and distractions I peel away from my space, time and energy, the stronger and more peaceful I become. Serenity, it turns out, has everything to do with living with less stuff, needing less money and concentrating on the undistracted and undiluted abundance of each moment. I don’t need nearly as much as I thought I did. Peace, joy, clarity and courage immediately flower in the space freed from stuff. I have what I need. I am what I need.
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And that brings me to the last big ingredient in my particular recipe for courage. Learning to know, love and trust myself has given me courage. Part of this has to do with the gifts of aging. I’ve done a lot, seen a lot, made a lot of mistakes and collected a lot of scars. Every day I learn a little more and heal a little more. I have allowed my experience in life to expand my compassion, empathy, intuition, wisdom and ability to love. I’m a resilient, adaptable survivor, and I know, no matter what happens, I’ll do my best to my last breath.
A poem. The Right Thing To Do. Information and learning. Minimalism. Self-regard. Mix well.
Choice: an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities (Online Oxford Dictionary).
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This morning I’ve been reading about doing one thing at a time and having too many choices. I’ve considered the paradox of choice: how important it is to understand our power to choose for ourselves and how unhealthy too many choices can be. I’ve thought about all the subtle ways I limit choice overload in my own life. For example, we have a large DVD collection. I like to watch my favorite movies and series over and over again, so I move through the shelves in alphabetical order when considering what I want to watch next. I do the same thing in our fiction library. My partner, on the other hand, likes to have as much choice as possible and can’t understand why I deliberately narrow the field in terms of entertainment or anything else.
It’s not mysterious. I do it because I don’t like the feeling of floundering around with too many choices. If I want to relax in front of a movie, I don’t want to have to endure an hour of deliberation first. I know I’m healthier and happier when I keep life simple. We know many people, faced with too many buying choices, walk away without buying anything. That’s me. I have a low tolerance for hassle and unnecessary complications.
Choosing is powerful, but there’s also a tricky, dark side of choice. When we’re compelled, addicted, manipulated or numbed, we become divorced from our ability to identify two or more possibilities and our power to choose. We’re asleep at the wheel of our own lives, abdicating both the struggle of choosing and owning the responsibility for our choices and their consequences. We stop learning. We become victims. We all know people like this. They protest their behavior is not their fault. They couldn’t help it. Somebody or something else made them do it. They refuse to be accountable.
According to the above definition, choice is an action. It’s something we do, which implies it can also be something we don’t do. Yet doing, not doing or refusing to choose are all choices. I had a boyfriend once who avoided choice. He wouldn’t say yes to going to the movies. He wouldn’t say no, either. I used to tell him refusing to choose was also a choice that resulted in steering my own choices, but he wouldn’t accept it. He focused his blame on me for the choices I made — in response to his.
The truth is we’re responsible for our behavior and decisions, whether they arise out of conscious choice or not.
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Modern American culture does an interesting thing. Our rightful power to choose has become shackled to consumerism. If you want to have a healthier body, for example, a wide array of diet programs, supplements and exercise equipment, clothing and technology is available to you. Want to become more effective and organized? There’s an app for that! Want love and connection? Buy it with diamonds, perfume, makeup, a phone plan, an insurance policy or a car!
We follow blindly along with all this because we’re brainwashed by our media consumption and the overculture. Our choice to improve our physical self-care leads to economic choices, not behavioral changes, even though we all know a gym membership is not useful unless we actually go to the gym and change our behavior! We are seduced onto distracting avenues of endless shiny, tantalizing, seductive promises of exactly what we want, if only we buy the right things.
In the meantime, our lives wither, we become enslaved by money, and the only choice we can recognize is whether to buy brand A or brand B. Our brief flicker of power in deciding to take better care of ourselves is extinguished by guarantees, reviews, special deals, customer service and returns. We give our time and energy to sorting through glittering products, rather than doing the inner work of noticing our self-destructive behavior and learning to manage our choice making more effectively.
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I wonder if the power to make free and conscious choices is not the most important thing we can learn — and teach. To be disconnected from our ability to say yes or no is to be enslaved. Enslavement is, of course, the goal of advertising and marketing. Corporations wouldn’t pour billions of dollars into advertising if it didn’t richly reward them. Controlling our buying choices is big business, and our economy rests on it.
Becoming more conscious of our non-consumer choices is perfectly possible, but it requires we wake up and pay attention. It requires a silent place in our lives for inquiry and reflection. It requires a step back from our busy, multi-tasking lives, distractions and deeply-rooted habits. We can’t make free choices if we’re unwilling to be wrong or afraid of unforeseen consequences. We can’t manage choice if we refuse to be honest with ourselves and others. Most of all, we must be willing to take responsibility if we want to manage choice effectively and appropriately.
No one can take away our power to choose unless we allow them to. In every circumstance we can choose something, even if it’s just refusing to be disempowered by difficult events and experiences. It’s never too late to claim our ability to choose, including limiting our exposure to marketing, advertising and algorithms and finding ways to avoid choice overload. Chocolate or vanilla is a lot easier to choose between than 31 flavors.
The holidays are here, and with them even more choices to make than usual. It’s a good time to stay awake, pay attention to what we’re doing and why, and exercise our right to choose what works best for us, even if it’s wildly different from anything we’ve ever done before. We don’t need anyone else’s permission to choose for ourselves, and nobody has the right to choose for us.
I looked up the word “denial” to find a quick definition as a starting point for this post. Fifteen minutes later I was still reading long Wiki articles about denial and denialism. They’re both well worth reading. I realize now the subject of denial is much bigger than I first supposed, and one little blog post cannot do justice to its history and scope.
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I wanted to write about denial because I keep tripping over it. It seems to lurk in the background of every experience and interaction, and it’s nearly always accompanied by its best buddy, fear. I’ve lately made the observation to my partner that denial appears more powerful than love in our culture today.
I’ve written before about arguing with what is, survival and being wrong, all related to denial. I’ve also had bitter personal experience with workaholism and alcoholism, so denial is a familiar concept and I recognize it when I see it.
I see it more every day.
I was interested to be reminded that denial is a useful psychological defense mechanism. Almost everyone has had the experience of a sudden devastating psychological shock such as news of an unexpected death or catastrophic event. Our first reaction is to deny and reject what’s happening. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified denial as the first of five stages of psychology in a dying patient. Therein lies the distinction between denial as part of a useful and natural cycle and denial as a permanent coping mechanism. In modern psychology denial is followed by other stages as we struggle to come to terms with a difficult event. We (hopefully) move through the stages, gathering our resources to cope with what’s true and coming to terms with the subsequent changes in our lives.
Denialism, on the other hand, is a “choice to deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth” (Wikipedia). For some, denial is an ideology.
In other words, denialsim is all about fear, fear of being wrong, fear of change, fear of painful feelings, fear of loss of power, fear of one’s cover being blown. This is why some of the most rabid and vicious homophobes are in fact homosexual. Unsurprisingly, projection and gaslighting are frequently used by those who practice denialism.
I’ve no doubt denial is an integral part of the human psyche. I never knew anyone who didn’t have a knee-jerk ability to deny. I do it. My partner does it. My friends and family do it. My partner and I have a code phrase: “I’m not a vampire,” that comes from the TV series Angel in a hilarious moment when a vampire is clearly outed by one of the other characters. He watches her put the evidence together: “… nice place… with no mirrors, and… lots of curtains… Hey! You’re a vampire!” “What?” he says. “No I’m not,” with absolutely no conviction whatsoever. It always makes us giggle. If Angel is too low-brow for you, consider William Shakespeare and “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Denial is not a new and unusual behavior.
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The power of denial is ultimately false, however. Firstly and most obviously, denial does not affect the truth. We don’t have to admit it, but truth is truth, and it doesn’t care whether we accept it or not. Secondly, denial is a black hole of ever-increasing complications. Take, for example, flat-earthers. Think for a moment about how much they have to filter every day, how actively they have to guard against constant threats to their denialsim. Everything becomes a battlefield, any form of science-related news and programming; many types of print media; images, both digital and print, now more widely available than ever; and simple conversation. I can’t imagine trying to live like that, embattled and defensive on every front. It must take enormous energy. I frankly don’t understand why anyone would choose such hideous complications. It seems to me much easier to wrestle with the problem itself than deal with all the consequences of denying there is a problem.
Maybe that’s just me.
It seems our denial becomes more important than love for others or love for ourselves. It becomes more important than our integrity, our health, our friends and family, loyalty, and respect or tolerance. Our need to deny can swallow us whole, just as I’ve seen work and alcohol swallow people whole. Denial refuses collaboration, cooperation, honest communication, problem solving and, most of all, learning. Denialism is always hugely threatened by any attempt to share new information or ask questions.
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Denial is a kind of spiritual malnutrition. It makes us small. Our sense of humor and curiosity wither. Fear sucks greedily on our power. We become invested in keeping secrets and hiding things from ourselves as well as others. We allow chaos to form around us so we don’t have to see or hear anything that threatens our denial.
This is not the kind of fear that makes our heart race and our hands sweat. This is the kind of fear that feels like a slamming steel door. It’s cold. It’s certain. We say, “I will not believe that. I will not accept that.”
And we don’t. Not ever. No matter what.
A prominent pattern of folks in denial is that they work hard to pull other people into validating them. Denial works best in a club, the larger the better. The ideology of denialism demands strong social groups and communities that actively seek power to silence others or force them into agreement. Not tolerance, but agreement. This behavior speaks to me of a secret lack of strength and conviction, even impotence. If we are not confused about who we are and what we believe, there’s no need to recruit and coerce others to our particular ideology. If you believe the earth is flat, it’s fine with me. I’m not that interested, frankly. I disagree, but that’s neither here nor there, and I don’t need you to agree with my view. When I find myself recruiting others to my point of view, I know I’m distressed and unsure of my position and I’m not dealing effectively with my feelings.
I’ve written before about the OODA loop, which describes the decision cycle of observe, orient, decide and act. The ability to move quickly and effectively through the OODA loop is a survival skill. Denial is a cheat. It masquerades as a survival strategy, but in fact it disables the loop. It keeps us from adapting. It keeps us dangerously rigid rather than elegantly resilient.
Some people have a childlike belief that if something hasn’t happened, it won’t, as in this river has never flooded, or this town has never burned, or we’ve never seen a category 6 hurricane. Our belief that bad things can’t happen at all, or won’t happen again, pins us in front of the oncoming tsunami or the erupting volcano. It allows us to rebuild our homes in places where flood, fire and lava have already struck. We ignore, minimize or deny what’s happening to the planet and to ourselves. We don’t take action to save ourselves. We don’t observe and orient ourselves to change.
Some things are just too bad to be true. I get it, believe me. I’m often afraid, and I frequently walk through denial, but I’m damned if I’ll build a house there. The older I get, the more determined I am to embrace the truth. I don’t care how much pain it gives me or how much fear I feel. I want to know, to understand, to see things clearly, and then make the best choices I can. It’s the only way to stay in my power. I refuse to cower before life as it is, in all its mystery, pain and terrible beauty.
Ultimately, denial is weak. I am stronger than that.
