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Legend was another recommended book. It is similar to some of the other young adult novels I’ve read. It’s fast paced, interesting, characters that I liked, and a story that kept me going. I’ve been reading a lot of young adult novels this year. Partly cause they are easy to read, partly cause they are interesting, entertaining, and still well written. At least, for me. If you’re in to this genre, I recommend it. I don’t know if this book will have a sequel but if it does, I will read it. Here are the sketches from last week:
that’s it for this week. Daily Sketching is a weekly project for 2012. You can see a detailed post on my sketching journey here.
Here are some snapshots from our week: there was a pancake breakfast at the local firehouse.
david was making faces.
this is his sneaky face.
mischievous one.
and even more mischievous.
getting excited.
and there we go.
and then we got to visit the trucks.
the kids loved getting in them.
even though it was super sunny.
then david had swim class and then jake took them to home depot for the monthly kid project fun.
which was building fire trucks!
they built and painted.
and hugged.
Jake also bought them a huge set of card games and they’ve been wanting to play nonstop.
the light this week was terrible so our family shot is all blurry.
this is Nathaniel counting as in 1-2-3 go so we can say we love legoland.
two.
four.
five.
oh no! lost count.
and then tickle time!
and here we go. i hope your week was lovely, too. Weekly Diary is a project for 2012. You can read more about it here.
The title says: celebrate and love every day you get. some people did not get one more day. this is clearly not a collage tho! Journey into Collage is a project for 2012. You can read more about it here.
This year has been a challenging one for me. I feel like I fell into some kind of hole back in March and took forever to get out of it. And when I finally did for a few months, school started and my schedule went upside down and some of my peace went along with it. I’ve been working consistently in the last few weeks to bring it back. One of the things I’ve been doing in this vein is to reframe my thinking. I’ve noticed that my most common point of view is of anxiety and worry. I make a lot of things bigger than they are and then I feel like they will swallow me whole if I don’t do them perfectly. That the world will tilt on its axis. But the trick, I think, is to do the opposite. The trick to life, I’m learning, is to show up, be/do your best at that moment, and then just let things be. That’s pretty much all we can do. All the worrying leading up to things and afterwards is quite pointless. This is not to say there isn’t room for preparation and reflection. Both are useful. But not the anxiety and stress I seem to add. Also not the identity-attribution. No one thing defines me. If I mess up at work, it doesn’t mean I am a worthless person. If I yell at my kid, he will not hate me forever. It doesn’t make me less worthy. To me, each and everything I do seems to be super-most-important. Because somewhere along the line I decided that integrity was of utmost importance to me and that I had to commit to everything with equal vigor. Here’s what I am learning: not everything is equally important. It’s good to learn to say no and turn things down that I cannot follow through on. But even after all those, not everything on my plate is equally important. If I live as if they are I end up either burning out or stressing out. And here’s the worst part: for me, my kids and husband are what’s most important. Hands down. But when I am burned out or stressed out, they are the first people I treat badly. Partly cause they are right there and maybe because deep down I know they’ll forgive me. But they shouldn’t have to. So I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and trying to remind myself that I will not be able to do it all equally well. I can show up at this moment and deliver my best and then I have to let it go so I can save my best energy for the most important things and people. In an effort to reframe, I’ve also been trying to look at things from different points of view. Instead of thinking of something as make or break, I’m reminding myself that it’s an opportunity to learn and grow and if it works out, great, but if not, I’ve learned and that’s valuable on its own. When looking at it as a learning experience, things seem less scary to me. I put less pressure on myself. And when the anxiety is gone, I can be so much more present. Which often allows me to perform better, be more authentic, and feel more empowered. All because I choose to look at the same thing differently. It’s not easy to turn off who you are and I know anxiety and worry are a part of who I am but I’ve noticed that this reframing does work and it’s a trick I can use to bring more peace into my life, my tasks. And anything that brings more peace is always welcome in my life. And here’s the next page:
The full text reads: even if you forget slowly, always forgive right away. (I used this beautiful art as a guide.) Well here we go. More coming next week. I am creating art journaling pages each week for now. You can read more about this project here. This set uses the Fabriano Roma papers.
This morning, on the way to dropping off the boys, I was listening to another one of Tara Brach’s podcasts. On this one, she mentioned how feelings only last for just a few seconds. The life of an actual feeling is pretty short, and yet, we carry them for such a long time. What makes us get attached to the feeling is the thoughts we have around it. We feel something, however ephemerally, and we immediately attach meaning to it. We’re meaning-making machines after all. So we create this story around what this feeling “means” and then we spend the rest of our lives feeding that story. We do it so often and with so little mindfulness that it simply becomes “truth.” At some point, we completely forget that this “story” was never true. We feed it more and more until it’s just a part of who we are and how we define ourselves. Everything that comes after that is just more fodder for the “story.” As I listened to this, I thought of all the areas of my life where this is true. All the beliefs I have about myself. The way I think of myself and look at myself. Some of these thoughts and beliefs are so engrained in my core that it’s hard to tell when they started and how to separate them from who I am. Or who I believe I am. Tara mentions Byron Katie in her talk and I’d read some of Katie’s books a while ago when I took Stephanie Lee’s classes. And she has these four questions:
And Tara talks about doing an exercise where you just assume it’s not true. Like if I believed that I am a person who needs to be peaceful. What if I just assumed I didn’t need peace. What if each time the thoughts/feeling came up, I just said, “I don’t need peace.” I am Ok or I am already peaceful or whatever, just let that thought not be true. What would happen then? This idea made me very curious. What if I questioned some of my fundamental beliefs about myself (especially the negative ones) and just practiced assuming they were untrue. What would happen then? It’s as if I am going all the way back to that one moment of first feeling an emotion and choosing not to write the story I wrote. Choosing to let that feeling float away without it meaning anything. So now I have no story. Nothing to feed over the next 30-some years. And maybe then it’s no longer a belief. No longer a part of my identity. Even the “good” parts of our identity can sometimes weigh us down. For example, I am quite responsible. It’s at the core of who I am. On the whole, this is a good thing. It’s helped me achieve a lot of success and respect in life. But sometimes this feeling of needing to be responsible can make me feel crushed and stressed and cause me to overwork, overcommit, etc. So even a seemingly positive trait might be worth questioning. This talk made me think all day about all the “automatic” thoughts that come to my mind. The way I react to things. The assumptions I make about what I “have to” do. Who I am and who I must be. It’s shocking how many assumptions I make all day long. It’s shocking how many core beliefs I have that I could easily question now that I notice them. I decided that I would spend one whole day next week taking notes as some of these things pop into my mind. So I can see them in plain sight and see all the assumptions I make. See all the stories I created. If I spend a whole day believing nothing about myself, assuming nothing, and creating no new stories, how would that look? I am curious to see if it’s even possible. But I love the idea of the possibility. If nothing about me has to be true, I can let anything go and pick up anything else I want. Or I can just be present and open to whatever is here. Wouldn’t that be magical? And here’s the next spread :
here’s a closer up of the left side:
The first story is about jake and david going to the stanford football game. Then one about Brave Girls Art school and my birthday. And here’s the right side:
Here is one about david doing homework and then one about Nathaniel’s class practicing for a class photo and one about david and class puppets. Art along the bottom as usual. Another great week. Happy Savoring. The Savor Project was supposed to be a weekly project for 2012. You can read about my setup here.
I listened to The Night Circus and it was a complete surprise. I didn’t know what to expect but I didn’t think I was going to love it as much as I did. It was absolutely unique and fascinating. The story is about magic. It’s a competition. It’s a circus. It’s a love story. It’s just the most unusual book I’ve read (listened to) in a very long time. The audio version was also great, so if you’re into listening to books, I recommend this one. If you’re looking for an interesting story that has great characters and and even more beautiful plot, I very much recommend it. Here are the sketches from last week:
that’s it for this week. Daily Sketching is a weekly project for 2012. You can see a detailed post on my sketching journey here.
When I was a senior in college there was a special meeting for all the international students. The career center got us all together into a room and explained that in the United States, when interviewing for a job, you wanted to make sure to talk about your strengths. They said that while they understand this may look like boasting for some cultures, at a job interview, it was the only way for the interviewer to find out more about you. It is important to talk about accomplishments and credentials and successes. However uncomfortable it might feel. Even though I don’t think I come from a culture like that, it seems to be incredibly difficult for me to give myself any kind of credit. Maybe it comes down to lack of self-worth. But I think this partly comes from the fact that I know exactly how much I don’t know. I am very aware of how much more there can be. I have a good sense of the people who are better, more capable, more talented, more intelligent than I am. I tend to be improvement-focused so I don’t pay attention to those behind me. Just what’s ahead and how much more I can be. So it seems obvious to me that I just don’t qualify to boast. To claim. It feels too much like posturing to me. So I always shy away from it. I hope that I have good managers and that my work can speak for itself. I know there are times this gets in the way but I haven’t found a way to work around the discomfort. So here’s why this is coming up today. A while ago, I began the certification process for coaching. Life coaching. The kind where you talk to someone about anything in your life: career, family, friends, goals, dreams, daily annoyances that you want to change, etc. Where you’re committed to change but need someone to coach you along. This not about having someone with the answers. You already have all the answers or know how to get them. This is about having someone completely on your side who wants you to get to your goals and dreams as much as you do. Someone on your corner cheering you, invigorating you, etc. And so now I am looking for clients. But I don’t want to come here and write a long post about how great I am and why you should work with me. Feels inauthentic. No matter how I try. Instead here’s what I will say: I am a big believer that our current life, just as it is, without huge modifications, can be lived with so much more joy. So much more aligned with who we are. And I am very motivated to work with people who want to live every minute of their lives. This might mean a career goal, a new relationship or it might mean a million small changes. Either way, I just believe that it’s worth making your life magnificent for you and if I can be a part of helping you get that, well that’s just a privilege. And you’ll get 100% of me on your side. So if you’re looking for a coach and want to consider me, email me at coach@karenika.com. I’ll be up front, there will be a fee involved (though relatively minimal compared to industry norms) and it will require commitment. So if you’re up for it, email me and we’ll take it from there. If you have friends who might want it, please feel free to send them my way. I don’t have a lot of open spots but I do have a few. I never like to advertise things on this blog so you will likely not hear about this again for a while. But I might mention it, especially as I feel my way around this. And I could list a bunch of my credentials, or make a post on why I am the good choice and I am worth your money and time, but I can’t seem to do it the way I want to so I just didn’t want to sit on this any longer. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been here a while and know me, who I am, and what I might bring to the table. And if you don’t but you’re still interested, well, email me and we can see where it goes. I am grateful to say that even though I am not one for self-praising too much, I’ve been luckier in life than not. I have a solid career, a loving husband and some amazing friends. So I am going to hope that being who you are and showing up as fully yourself works more often than not. Let’s hope. This is a layout I made for My Mind’s Eye.
And the journaling says: details:
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