UNDER CLOUD NINE – Reclaiming My Lightness of Being

Sometime during my adolescence I felt my identity as a carefree boy being challenged. Nothing extreme, just occasional negative thoughts, self doubts, perhaps a tinge of fatalism. 

ILLUSTRATION: Dreamstime

Part of it was, of course, simply being a teenager. I was experiencing feelings typical of this difficult stage: worries about fitting in, embarrassment over everything my parents did or didn’t do, frustration that I was neither a
child any more nor quite yet an adult.

But there was also something just a bit more sinister, a kind of low-grade dread. Of what, I wasn't sure. Maybe there was some dark secret my family was keeping from me.

By no means did this ruin my life; I was still generally a happy, healthy, functioning teenager. But it did have an effect, inhibiting my social life, I’m sure, and giving voice to a kind of self-defeating alter ego. I just had this vague sense that something stood between me and the full happiness I imagined was possible.

Most of the time I wasn’t even conscious of these feelings at a level I could have described, much less that I thought anyone else might notice. I just figured they were normal, that everyone felt that way.

Those hazy, dark thoughts, that elusive doubt, continued to weigh on my spirit well into my adult life.

                 Why do you always have that
                 dark cloud over your head?

DIAGNOSIS! 
When I was about 40 I had an epiphany. It occurred during a meeting of my men’s group.* That night, in our continuing effort to understand each other and challenge ourselves to grow, we were doing an exercise called simply “feedback.” **

Each of us got a handful of three-by-five cards. We were to write down for each of the other men an observation about him. No judgments, no criticisms, just an observation. We could either sign our cards or remain anonymous. 

The first card handed to me—signed by Peter, a man I admired very much for his courage and insight—read: “Jeff, why do you always have that dark cloud over your head?”

The consequences of that question have been profound. The immediate impact was a sense of relief, perhaps like that felt by a patient finally getting clarity after suffering for years with some undiagnosed illness.

Finding out that it has a name, that it’s not all in your head, at last lets you address the problem and start doing something about it.  

All this time I’d managed to keep my little affliction stuffed into an uneasy little corner of my psyche, figuring that’s just the way life is. Finally I knew that it might not be normal after all, and, more significant to me, that everyone else could see it.

 Either I’d keep entertaining this unwanted guest
 in my house, or I’d put out the “No Vacancy” sign.

CLEANING HOUSE
The very next day, finally seeing my little burden as others could see it, I began cleaning house, realizing that each time I became aware of my defeatist self talk I’d have a decision to make: either keep entertaining this unwanted guest in my house, or put out the “No Vacancy” sign.

In a sort of self-styled Zen, I started working to detach from expectation and the illusion of control. I chose to feel good, not bad. Gradually, I reclaimed my sense of completeness and rediscovered the lightness of being I’d known as a boy.

Now, lightness of being doesn’t mean one is always happy. It means that, even when all’s not going well, when you’re in pain or sorrow, you acknowledge those hurts, but don’t let them define you. You look for gratitude to supplant expectations. You take it easy on yourself and find humor in your imperfection.

A MANTRA
One thing that’s really helped is my new mantra. I guess I’ve always believed in it intuitively. But I’ve only called on it regularly since the traumatic confluence of disasters that have piled up on the world over the past decade or so. And since I’ve started encountering the many personal physical and emotional challenges of growing old.

IMAGE: Genuine Tibetan Arts

So when I find myself especially overwrought about the state of my life or of the world, that’s when I invoke it: If there’s something, anything, I can do about it right now, do it. If not, let it go.

   The things triggering them literally do not exist.

PAST, TENSE
To clear my skies of the dark cloud it’s also helped considerably to identify which tense my self talk is using to discourage me. And, if that tense is either past or future, not to listen to a word of it.

As the gifted spiritual guru Eckhart Tolle teaches, the past has already happened; it no longer exists. The future hasn’t happened; it doesn’t yet exist. The only time that does exist is the here and now.

I spend lots of time thinking about those tenses, trying to fully realize that emotions like expectation, fear, regret, dread and guilt are pretty useless considering that the things triggering them literally do not exist.

AND YOU?
So do you have a dark cloud? An inner voice that blocks out the sunshine of your spirit? We’d love to hear how you’ve come to recognize the encumbrance and how you manage it. Jot your reflection in "Comments" below.

* My men’s group, founded to challenge ourselves and each other to be more thoughtful, more loving—more evolved—human beings, has been meeting more or less every two weeks since 1977. Forty-seven years!

** We were fortunate to have two members of our group who were organizational development professionals. They provided many thoughtful team-building, consciousness-expanding and communication exercises. Among them, the “car wash,” where each week one member had to sit and be “washed” with compliments from the rest of us; a ropes course, which forced us to recognize and apply each member’s unique strengths to bring the whole group through a series of physical challenges; and taking the The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test to explore our respective personality types and how they colored our relationships with each other.

“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

BESIDE MYSELF – A Chat With My Alter Ego

One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening. ~ FRANKLIN P. JONES

I’m the son of German-American parents. Both were wonderful, multi-faceted human beings. But they taught me that whatever I did, no matter how well I may have done it, I could have done better. Those lessons have served me well in many ways. They helped instill self-discipline. They helped me get a first-rate education. They helped me become a good, thoughtful, thorough writer and designer.

It helped shape me into a generally honest and unassuming man whom, if he were someone else, 
I think I might admire.

Those lessons were also about modesty. Stay out of the spotlight; don’t promise what you might not be able to deliver; let your deeds speak for themselves. This part of it too, while somewhat more subjective, helped shape me into a generally honest and unassuming man whom, if he were someone else, I think I might admire.

But such an upbringing also has a down side. I live with a little voice—a very persistent little voice—that constantly provides me with critical feedback on just about everything I do. More often than not, that feedback sounds something like, Okay, sure, you accomplished that, but let’s not go and get all self-satisfied about it. How could you have done it better? What are you going to do next?

      

This is clearly the voice of someone else, not me—perhaps that of my parents; maybe of my older brother, who's afflicted by the same self-criticism and whom I idolized as a kid.

Sometimes, especially on the tennis court, the encouraging voice starts to turn a little more negative. Well, yes, you’re hitting some good shots, but what about all those absolutely horrible ones?

Even though my parents were seldom overtly critical and certainly never denigrated me, I’ve managed to throw in some mean language of my own, eventually turning that measured tennis voice downright abusive. You idiot! You just missed a shot a three-year-old would have made! Can’t you do even the simplest thing right? Does that sound familiar?

That voice, wherever it was coming from, went on for years, then decades. Little by little I came to realize it was dousing my light, laying a heavy, mucky layer of woe over the freedom and joy of playing my favorite sport.


EMBRACING THE ENEMY
A couple of years ago, I was having coffee with a friend who’s in the business of helping organizations and their employees get in touch with the spiritual aspects of what they do and what they want to do. I told him of my negative self-talk and how it was stifling my enjoyment of tennis.

He mentioned that one of his clients had decided to engage his self-critical inner voice in a conversation. He’d even transcribed the dialog as it played out to see what he might learn from it.

I decided to try it.

I was amazed at how surely and naturally my 
own voice and, even more amazingly, the other voice, started to flow.

You can imagine how lame it felt sitting down with pen and paper and actually venturing an introduction between me, myself and I. At first, it felt like the entities I was introducing were in different rooms. But I was amazed at how surely and naturally my own voice and, even more amazingly, the other voice, started to flow.

It wasn’t like trying to create dialogue for a novel or a play. I’ve done that, and it was clearly an exercise in imagination. I’d have to think about each line, deliberately crafting it as I went along.

No, my silent dialog with myself felt, from the very first exchange, like an honest, unscripted, real conversation. I would say (and scribble across my legal pad) something spontaneous, just like what I might say to someone with whom I felt I could become good friends. And the response always came instantaneously, seemingly without the slightest conscious thought or device of my own mind.

ADVANTAGE MR. WILLIUS
Long story short, since then my alter ego and I have had many rewarding conversations. We’ve agreed that he doesn’t mean to hurt me or make me unhappy. He acknowledges that, being an amalgam of my parents, my brother and possibly a couple of other important figures in my life, of course he loves me and, in fact, wants me to be happy.

I acknowledge my tendency toward frustration and defeatism. He admits to tormenting me sometimes, as an impudent teenager might, simply because he can.

As for tennis, we’ve struck a sort of meet-you-halfway deal. If he’ll back off on the criticism, I promised, I’ll try to do better at appreciating and celebrating my small successes. Often, on my way to the tennis center, I’ll remind him of his end of the bargain and he reassures me he’ll be good.

Recently, I’ve even upped the ante and gotten him to agree that, while the absence of criticism is certainly welcome, maybe he could try a little actual praise on for size. So far, this is proving quite hard for him.

After all, he rationalizes, he’s never had a very good role model. Oh, give me a break!

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – 101 Little Tips

 TIP #94

Introduce yourself to your dark side. Sign a treaty.

Know that little voice inside? Is yours your champion or your worst critic? Does it light the way for you or leave you in the dark?

Have a conversation with your alter ego. Write down the dialog as if you were a detached observer. Acknowledge the voice; try to understand whose it is; listen to what it has to say. You might just be able to win its admiration instead of its scorn...or at least meet halfway. Hey, what've you got to lose?