Carrying with the theme of what I’m discovering from Gretchen’s emails, I wanted to share another one today.

She says:

When I’m reluctant to take a risk or face something uncomfortable, I ask myself these five questions, which, in melodramatic form, I call the “Five Fateful Questions.”

and then shares her five and encourages us to do the same but I decided I wanted to create my own five because some of hers resonated with me but others didn’t.

So when I am trying to make an uncomfortable decision or when I am thinking about something and it’s making me sad, frustrated, uneasy in some way, here’s what I want to ask myself each time:

1. What’s this in service of? What’s the bigger purpose I am trying to serve here? Why is this important? What will be possible if I do this or don’t do this?
2. How will this matter in five years? Will having asked for this or taken this step, etc matter five years from now? Or will it be insignificant? How will this particular thing possibly change the course of my life?
3. Which of my values does this honor? By doing this (or not doing it) how am I honoring who I am. How is it moving me towards living my life more authentically? How am I being more “me”?
4. What’s the worst possible outcome? Since I am a worrier, this one matters a lot. I tend to fear things going horribly wrong. If i really flesh out the worst possible outcome, I can see how this is often not nearly as bad as I might make it in my head.
5. What’s the best possible outcome? Clearly important to balance #4. And also important to help be braver.

These are the four I have for now.

Here’s how I use them. Let’s say I want to ask for a raise. Here are the questions and some possible answers. 

1. What’s this in service of: better schools for my children, being able to afford more vacations together. So it’s in service of better education for my kids, more family time or even what i might consider to be higher quality time. Then I can think about whether these matter and whether I can achieve them without the raise. Do I really need a raise for higher quality time? Will more money really mean better schools for my kids? Will better schools really mean better education? etc. etc.
2. How will this matter in five years? Well, getting a raise now might mean more money saved, more invested, and it might mean i can afford college more easily. It might mean more vacations we’ve taken. It might mean less daily stress on our economic situation. 
3. Which of my values does it honor? Maybe it honors my family and love values that I’d be doing this to provide better opportunities for my children. Or maybe it’s self-worth. Etc.
4. What’s the worst possible outcome? Realistically the worst possible outcome here is that I wouldn’t get the raise. I can’t believe this would lead me to losing my job without my getting belligerent, etc.
5. What’s the best possible outcome? I get a raise even more than I asked for and maybe my manager tells me what a good job I’ve been doing. Yey! 

So there you go. What are some questions you ask?

I have long been a fan of Gretchen Rubin. I’ve read her first book and really enjoyed it and her second one has been in my queue for a while. Earlier this week, I saw on her blog that she was offering a few mini-courses on different topics. I decided to sign up for the Get To Know Yourself Better one. If you read here at all, it shouldn’t surprise you that this topic interests me.

The first email came yesterday and it was about writing your personal commandments. Gretchen’s are on the side of her blog and I always like seeing them. It’s easy for me to copy almost all of them but I wanted to spend some time thinking seriously about these and see what I would have come up with if I didn’t have her list to cheat from. Here are some things that have come up for me already. I plan to add/adjust as I see fit over the next few weeks.

1. Be You: I know this one is similar to hers. But I like Be you instead of Be Karen. I use this phrase on all my art pieces and I have grown to believe that we work best when we know who we are, we accept it and love it and don’t constantly fight it or feel bad about it. It doesn’t mean I’m perfect but if I am being me, fully owning who I am and stepping into it, things are much more peaceful.
2. Choose Joy
3. Savor the Ordinary: Life is a collection of little moments. When I savor the ordinary, I am appreciating my life and living it and really being in it.
4. Be Here, Now: The present moment is the best moment. It is all I have.
5. Listen: It’s much better to listen than to talk. I am quite talkative but I learn more when I listen. I care more when I listen. I am a better person when I listen.
6. Be Kinder than Necessary: seems self explanatory to me.
7. Yes, You Can
8. Do It Anyway: I might be scared but I do it anyway. Be brave.
9. Remember What Matters Most: Never lose sight of what matters most, what I am doing it all in service of.
10. It Just Happened: This is a new one I’ve been chewing on. It didn’t happen to me or because of me. It just happened. Remember it’s real but not true. I will write more about this one, still thinking it all through.
11. Wait 24 hours

So there we go, here’s my first attempt. It was interesting to see how many of them are similar to what I did for my OLW assignment.  I will work on it more and flesh it out and see how I feel. What’s on your list? 

This morning, as the kids ate their breakfast and brushed their teeth, I decided to squeeze in some work right before we left for school. Clearly, not a good idea, but I figured if I did it, I’d feel less guilty about going to the school meeting I wanted to attend.

I am assuming you already can tell how this goes…

In my rush, I made a simple, silly mistake that made it look like everything was broken. In my panic, I couldn’t see the mistake no matter how hard I looked. I finally asked for help from one of my teammates who told me there was something super-obvious I was missing. I kept looking but it might as well have been a blank page because no matter how much I looked, I couldn’t see it.

And then I saw it.

It was dumb. So super-dumb that it put me right into a huge shame trigger. I felt horrified that I’d bugged him over something so obviously dumb. In the middle of that, more things went wrong and I just kept panicking more and more. Yelling at my family to be quiet, still fighting to finish the task and making even dumber mistakes along the way.

I’ve written before about how when you’re in a state of reactive panic, your fight/flight kicks in and literally shuts down your prefrontal cortex where all the higher level thinking happens. And even knowing this, I just continued to live inside the panic state (and shame state) until the whole task was finished. At which point, I got dressed in under two minutes and was out the door with Jake and the kids.

The climax (or nadir) of this story is that I didn’t even end up going to the school event because I was feeling so super-crappy from the morning’s events. And then I started feeling shame around missing that and having let Jake down and having yelled at the kids. The shame from my coworker was also still live and breathing inside me.It felt like I was spiraling and every small or big event was contributing to the story I was already telling myself. It wasn’t just that I simply could not snap out of it, I kept feeding it so it grew.

This went on the whole day. I read blogs and found myself wondering how come other people could go through life achieving things they wanted and I just kept failing. Or, worse, not even trying. Wait, even worse, not even knowing what to try. I read work emails and made stories around those. On and on.

And here I am. It’s 4pm and I am still carrying the shame from 7:19am. The 2-minute issue that was resolved by 7:40 and had zero fallout. Yet I’m still holding on to it. Worse, I am still perpetuating it.

I want to stop.

I want to learn to be able to say “mea culpa, that was dumb,” and then move on. I want instances like this to not become identity-defining moments. Or even day-ruining moments. If there’s something to learn, I am happy to learn it and then move on. And yet, I am not sure how to do that. What I do know is berating myself for not knowing doesn’t help either. Telling myself to let go or being disappointed in myself don’t either.

So here’s what I am going to do: I will walk away from the computer. I will think of three things I am really grateful for right this minute. (Like my 4-year-old who is sitting next to me, giving me kisses, the perfect combination of sunshine and breeze in the backyard, and the wonderful package of art goodies I got today.) And I am going to go take a walk. Then I will come back and play with one son and help the other.

Sometimes the best path involves getting out of my head. Not trying to “figure it out” or “vent” but to reach out to others and to give and to rest and be kind to myself.

At least, that’s what I hope.