The Rubber Band Game

I’ve noticed a funny game that we often play when faced with our dreams. This game describes how it is that, despite swearing allegiance to the dream, years can pass without us actually taking it on. I call this game the Rubber Band Game. The Handel Group calls it the Double Agent.

The Rubber Band Game goes something like this: say you have a dream, such as starting a company. You are scared about going after this dream– you might fail, look stupid, lose money. And yet, it’s your dream, and so you buck up and take a few steps toward starting that company. The closer you come to the point of actually taking the leap of starting the company, however, the more scared you become. The chance of failure is starting you in the face, breathing down your neck. And so you retreat a few hasty steps away from starting the company. Maybe later. Not now. The economy is bad, your house needs work, you don’t have the time anyways… the excuses flow. You hang out in a state of inaction for a while, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t feel right either, because you really do want to start that company. So you take steps toward starting the company. And the cycle repeats.

It’s as if you are standing between two poles (see diagram above): one pole is you going all-out for your dream (red pole), the other is you completely giving up on the dream (blue). You are tied by a rubber-band to each one. Seems like a fun party game, huh? The thing is that the closer you go to the red pole, the stronger the blue one pulls on you, so that you eventually snap backwards toward the blue pole. But then the red one pulls you even harder. And so you bounce back and forth, spending lots of energy and yet never really completing anything.

There are examples of this all around us. For example, one of my friends Liz wanted to have a baby with her husband. And yet as they started preparing to have one, she got scared. “Maybe now is not the right time. My husband just got a new job. I always wanted to go to China–we should definitely travel there before kids.” And yet, even as she was hanging out by the China pole, you could tell that her heart was by the kid pole.

I played the rubber-band game with my career. I knew I wanted to coach, and yet as soon as I enrolled in the coach-in-training program and was faced with the actual prospect of leaving the safe haven of science, I took a few steps toward the “science isn’t so bad” pole. And yet, when I was hanging out near the science pole, my heart was with the coaching pole.

The solution? Choose a pole, and then get a big ol’ pair of scissors and cut the rubber band of the other pole. Make a rule with yourself that once you’ve made a decision, there is no looking back. As the saying goes, great leaders make decisions quickly, and change their minds slowly. Once you’ve made your decision, the other pole is merely a distraction.

Where are you doing the rubber band dance in your life?

A blog by Dr. Samantha Sutton, life coach at the Handel Group

How to tell if you’re moving in the right direction

When people work to achieve their big dreams, they usually hit a few self-imposed road blocks. For example, I have one client who, when the going gets tough, reverts to a “what’s the point?” mentality and then blows off his commitments and promises to himself. When I pick up the proverbial Skype phone, I can tell right away if he’s doing his what’s-the-point dance, and get prepared to haul him out of it.

Everyone has their own unique dance. Some of my other clients:

• Binge eat
• Become overly dramatic
• Say “it’s impossible!”
• Beat themselves up
• Hide from the world
• Blame everyone and their brother
• Get mean
• Get overwhelmed

I’ve found that we typically pull out our schtick when we’re up against the important stuff. Important stuff makes us scared, and so we resort to our schtick to keep us safe. For example, my “what’s the point” client only does his schtick when he’s facing 1) producing his debut album, or 2) dating. Which, incidentally, are his top two dreams. If he convinces himself that there is no point to either one, then he is off the hook from stepping outside of his comfort zone. Brilliant little dance, that.

There actually is a silver lining to our dance, though, because it serves as a great litmus test for how important something is to us. When I see my client saying “what’s the point,” it’s a good sign because I know we’re in the right direction. He only whips it out when he’s up against the big, important stuff that would make him so darn happy and proud if he were to accomplish it. So I interpret “what’s the point” as “full speed ahead!”

A handy little trick, then, is to identify your dance, and then when you see it coming up, take that as a beacon that you are in the right direction. Actively seek out overwhelm, drama, or hiding, and then instead of giving in to them, smile at them and say “thank you.” It’s like hunger… hunger, while an unpleasant sensation, serves a very useful purpose in that it tells us when we need to eat. We don’t wallow in “aw, man, I feel so hungry… this stinks! I wish the pain would go away” and then run away from the situation. No, we just say “I’m hungry, therefore I should eat something.” The same is true for our dances: “I’m overwhelmed, therefore I need to take this obstacle ON!”

What is your dance telling you?

A blog by Dr. Samantha Sutton, life coach at the Handel Group

Image courtesy of Anne Mucha

Making messes

We hate making messes. Do any of these sound familiar:

• I don’t want to tell my parents that I don’t go to church because they will get upset.
• I don’t want to ask for a raise because if my boss says no, it’ll strain our relationship.
• I don’t want to tell him that I’m not interested in him, so I just won’t return his calls.
• I want to try presenting our material in a new way, but maybe I shouldn’t mess with a good thing
• It bothers me when my friend gossips about our other friends, but if I say something, things will get awkward between us.
• I want to start an investing club with my neighbors, but what we fail?

Somewhere, early in life, we learned that messes were unpleasant. Maybe it was by making a literal mess of our food and getting yelled at. Maybe it was by asking someone from school out on a date and being rejected, and then having to see that person every day at 6th period Spanish class for the rest of the year. Whatever the experience(s), we learned that messes were no fun, and so the lesson we learned from this experience was “I shouldn’t make messes.”

But this lesson doesn’t give us much power. Because to build that dream career, marry that dream spouse, have that dream set of friends, you have to risk making a mess. Standing up for who you are and what you want means that sometimes you have to do the unconventional, take risks, and make huge, messy mistakes. I wish it weren’t that way, but it appears to be so.

So the lesson, then, that we should be drawing about messes is not that we should avoid making them at all costs, but that we should get good at cleaning them up.

Think about what a great skill that is. To be able to ask your boss for that raise, and then deal with any feelings or concerns that may arise as a result. To tell your parents that you don’t go to church, and have that revelation improve your relationship. To try presenting your material in a new way, but sensing the reception and handling whatever comes your way as a result. Yup, I’d like a dose of that, please.

And where does the skill in cleaning up messes come from? Chime in, all my blog readers… you know the answer. It comes from practice. Just like how we all learned  to do algebra in high school by completing practice problem after practice problem, we learn how to clean up messes by making them and cleaning them up. Something that I’ve learned by practicing making messes is that love and honesty go a long way. Practicing making messes can be scary, uncomfortable, and downright icky sometimes, but on the other side of those feelings is the confidence and courage to go after just about anything.

What messes are you going to make today?

A blog by Dr. Samantha Sutton, life coach at the Handel Group

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/krisnfred

The chicken behind the control freak

I have a strong work ethic. I work hard. It’s not surprising: my parents are hard-workers. And their parents before them, and their parents before them, probably all the way back to Adam and Eve. And what’s not to love about hard work? It helped ensure that the great-grandaughter of penniless Polish immigrants would be positioned to get a Ph.D. from one of the finest technological institutions in the world. Way to go, guys, and thank you!

But there’s another, quirkier side to hard work that is unrolling itself before my eyes, day-by-day. I started exploring it in a recent blog post about how I had the theory that “I need to go through a huge amount of work in order to find quality.” In this blog post,  I was looking to buy a bike, and was reluctant to just pick a bike up off the street because it was too easy… surely to find a quality bike I would need to put in more effort than that. At the end of the blog, I introduced a new theory to try out: “Quality is quality, and it isn’t necessarily correlated with the amount of work you put in.” And then I skipped merrily into the sunset.

Except that sunset wasn’t as merry as it first seemed. You would think that I would have loved that new theory, because it meant less work. More free time. What’s not to like about that? Except I found that I was scared. Yes, scared. I actually found myself fighting the idea that things could come easily. In the Handel coaching community, we are all about visualizing what you want and energetically attracting it to you (we call it manifesting). I’ve seen my fellow coaches do this time and again, and yet the idea of bringing it into my life was downright frightening.

Why? Because I like to be in control. I don’t want the “universe” or “God” or even other people to give me things out of the blue. No siree, I would rather have my logical path from A -> B -> C -> D and be in tight-fisted control of the ride every step of the way. I am the captain of this ship, and it’s safe and predictable that way. Even if it means that I have to work myself to the bone to get there, I prefer it that way.

I am like one of those downhill skiers who slowly descends the mountain, going back-and-forth between the two edges of the path in large, controlled S’s, never going too fast, never losing control, always the last one of her friends to reach the bottom. I rarely have accidents because everything is controlled, planned, and foreseen. But I am also the one whose calves and thighs THROB with exhaustion halfway through the day because they are working so hard to turn-turn-turn and brake-brake-brake. But at least I am in control. That is the important thing.

Or is it? Sure, I get to be 100% in control and from that I get a certain sense of security and safety. But I am also missing out on an awful lot: the thrill of speed, of unforeseen adventure, of chance, of magic, of crazy blessings and crazy curses. And, more strikingly, of taking on things that are way too BIG to imagine myself accomplishing in incremental steps, like coaching the President or reinventing education. Controlled, sequential planning and implementation keep me dreaming small, in step-sized chunks.

Dreaming big and welcoming magic into my life involve a degree of allowing, of turning over some of the stewardship of my skis to something outside of me. It involves setting my vision on my destination, be it coaching the President or getting to the bottom of the mountain, but not knowing with 100% certainty how I will get there. That it’s not entirely in my control, but by golly, I will get there. Maybe I’ll hit a patch of ice and screech over to another part of the path. Maybe I’ll catch the most amazing run of fresh powder and swish-swish my way down at twice the speed. Maybe I’ll hit a rock and walk a bit. Maybe another skiier will catch my eye, and I’ll follow him for a little while to a cool new path I didn’t even know about. Who knows what will happen? It won’t go according to any plan of mine, but it will be fun and get me to the bottom quicker than ever.

Relinquishing this control is scary. In order to do it, I need to have faith. Faith that no matter what happens, rock or ice or powder, I can handle it. That things will work out, even without my tight-fisted intervention. In fact, that things will work out even better than with my tight-fisted intervention. That there is a whole world out there that is ripe to be explored, and that that world is so worth facing fear and instability for.

So here I am. The hard-working control freak who is learning to point her skis down the hill and just go. Who wants to join me?

A blog by Dr. Samantha Sutton, life coach at the Handel Group

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/cernese

On flying high, and thud!

Have you ever noticed that sometimes certain themes are repeated strangely often during a given day or week? Like all of a sudden it seems like everyone around you is talking about ostriches, when you haven’t heard the word “ostrich” mentioned in years before that? These past few weeks, a certain theme has been emerging with my clients, and when it popped up in the audio book that I listen to as I run, I knew it was time to blog about it. From Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore:

“A long time ago, I threw away something I shouldn’t have. Something I loved more than anything else. I was afraid that someday I’d lose it. So I had to let it go myself. If it was going to be stolen from me, or I was going to lose it by accident, I decided that it was better to discard it myself.”
– Miss Saeki

In this case, Miss Saeki is speaking of her son who she abandoned as a child. I have noticed that many of my clients act similarly in a variety of other situations. When faced with the prospect of soaring up on the wings of accomplishment and striving to be their greatest selves, many of us deliberately ground ourselves. Why? Because the crash (which is inevitable at some point… just ask Obama) HURTS. Much better to stay with both feet planted firmly on the ground, we reason. We may not get to experience the wonders of soaring high, but we also avoid the thud. It’s worth it. Plain and simple: we are afraid of the pain of failing, so we don’t try in the first place.

Here are some examples:

– one client of mine entertains a constant thread of self-criticism while she auditions for roles in local theatrical productions. Why? Because it’s better if she rejects herself before they can… if she thinks she stands a chance, the rejection will feel all the more painful. Thud.

– another client is trying to get pregnant, but won’t try all-out because what happens if she gives it her all, gets her hopes up, and she still can’t conceive? Thud.

– another client always dates unavailable men, because she is afraid of falling in love with someone, letting down her guard and being vulnerable, and then being dumped. Thud. Better to never have any pretenses that a relationship will last.

– another client runs a company that is stalling, because she is afraid of taking the steps to go bigger and then failing, losing money, and looking bad. Thud. Better to keep the company small and predictably just scraping by.

I would like to make a case for flying. There is no feeling quite like flying… meeting that partner, getting the big business deal, having that child. These, in fact, are our dreams, the things that we really want our lives to be about. Not going for these things that mean so much to us takes a day-to-day toll on our spirit–we feel a little heavier, a little sadder.

The key, then, is not to avoid flying and crashing, but developing a healthy relationship to the crashes. It’s like learning how to ride a bike. I remember crashing into my share of bushes, skinning my share of knees, and yes, they hurt, but little Samantha still kept on getting on that bike. How did she do it, when those bushes lurked everywhere? She knew the skinned knees would heal, and she really wanted to ride that shiny red bike.

Where have you gotten off your bike and are refusing to get back on? How are you deliberately grounding yourself and not taking flight?

A blog by Dr. Samantha Sutton, Life Coach at the Handel Group

Lessons from the October Twitter Challenge

As most of you know, in October I took on a Twitter fear challenge. My goal was to become a fear warrior who charges through fear, and tastes the sweet nectar on the other side. Every day, I did one thing that scared me. Some of my actions faced big fears, others faced small ones. I’ve had a few days to process the experience, and am going to share with you a few things I learned during the journey:

Fear is everywhere. It is amazing how many little things scare me in day-to-day life. Visiting a different apple vendor at the farmers market, and worrying that my “usual” vendor would be offended. Asking the person in the seat in front of me on the train if they could move their seat to its upright position because I don’t have enough space to open my computer. Telling my friend that she hurt my feelings. Fear really does call a lot of the shots in my day-to-day life.

By taking on fear, you expand your comfort zone. The more scary things you do, the higher your fear tolerance gets. Something that scared me at the beginning of the month was no longer scary after I had done it a few times. For example, I used to be afraid to ask clients for testimonials. After asking for a few, it wasn’t scary anymore. The good news is that my comfort zone is much bigger now than it was before. The bad news is that if you have sworn to be a fear warrior, then you will be faced with taking on bigger and BIGGER things. Or maybe that’s GOOD news .

Integrity is the key. It takes a lot of integrity to be a warrior. There were days when I had NO desire to do anything scary. I was busy, tired, cranky, or just plain out didn’t wanna. What pulled me through was the muscle of personal integrity that I have been practicing for years. Briefly, every week I make a list of promises to myself (I will run three times this week for atleast 30 minutes each time, I will take 5 inspired actions toward my career, I will do one thing I have been putting off, etc.) and then every week I report back to my coworkers if I kept my promises or not. Over the years, I have learned to ignore the chatter in my head, and, as Nike says, just do it. What’s going on in your head really doesn’t have to have much bearing on what your body does. Your mind can scream that you don’t feel like going for a run, and yet your body can go anyways. Your mind can scream that it wants a brownie, but your arm can refrain from putting one in your mouth. My mind screamed that it didn’t want to do one more scary thing (who really cares, anyways?) and yet I did it. And my integrity wasn’t even perfect. Sometimes my scary actions were lame (thanks Duane, for drawing my attention to them), and sometimes I reported scary actions a few days after they occurred. I am now more convinced than ever that personal integrity is the foundation of achieving any dream, and is a basic tool that we all should be developing in our lives.

Our fears are linked to our character traits. Different things scare different people. I am afraid of rejection. Afraid of telling someone that I want to be their friend, and them saying no. Afraid of asking for something, and it being denied. Afraid of looking bad to the people around me. Of course someone who is a guarded control enthusiast, such as myself, would fear these things the most!

My next Twitter challenge

So what to take on next? Here is my new challenge in the spirit of the holiday season: from today until Christmas morning, I will observe and celebrate one gift from the universe (or God if that’s your bent) each day. I believe that we are showered, literally drenched, with gifts that align with our dreams and desires, both big and small. Many times we don’t notice or appreciate them. We take them for granted. We focus on all of the things that are going wrong. We feel that everything is random and coincidental. But I don’t think so. I think that we are part of something bigger, and that force manifests itself all over the place. My goal this holiday season is to see and appreciate it!

A blog by Dr. Samantha Sutton, Life Coach

Your mind: computer or weather front?

We all have experienced times of strong moods or persistent thoughts that seem to infiltrate our minds, sap our energy, and derail our best intentions of “having a good day.” Some common phrases I hear from my clients:

“I just got really down on myself”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about what a jerk he was”
“I wasn’t feeling motivated today”

Everyone seems to be in agreement that these moods and thoughts just happen; there is an aura of mystery and unpredictability about them, like the weather. A fog rolled into Boston at 8am this morning, and lasted until 10am. We feel helpless, like we are prisoners locked in a dungeon until some mysterious gatekeeper decides to let us out.

But what if it doesn’t have to be that way? What if our brains really are cool biological computers, or CPUs, that can run whatever programs we choose. What if there is no such thing as a fog of regret, anxiety, anger, or self-doubt unless we hit “run” on that program?

Think about how silly it would be if our computers entertained moods and feelings the way we do. You want to run PowerPoint on your Mac? Too bad, the machine wants to run Excel today. You better learn to love spreadsheets, because that’s all you’re going to be seeing all morning. You wanted to check your email? Gotta wait until the computer feels motivated to connect to the internet… try back tomorrow or maybe Friday. You have a PC? Good luck ever getting on.

Now, I’m not saying that we should all walk around like computers (I’m sure there have been many emotionless SciFi drones based on this very premise)– there are many beautiful things that come with being human than computers can’t yet tackle. Feelings, emotions, love, a sense of beauty, a sense of morality and justice. I’m not saying that we should get rid of those. We can still thoroughly feel this beautiful range of humanness, yet choose to move on once we’ve felt it. Most of the moods and thoughts on which we spend our CPU time are reels that we play over and over in our heads–no new feeling, no new experience, just the same thing over and over again.

And I am not discrediting all of the neurology research that has shown that levels of chemicals in the brain induce certain moods, feelings and thoughts. But what if we have more control over the release and retention of those chemicals than we think we do?

What if we could choose to play new reels, or excrete new chemicals? In fact, I would argue that usually we already do choose what we spend our CPU time on, but the catch is that we are actually getting something pleasing out of playing the moods and repetitive thoughts again and again. That’s material for another blog post, but owning that you actually might be choosing your moods and thoughts gives you the power to choose differently in the future.

A blog by Dr. Samantha Sutton, Life Coach

A dark underbelly of the fear of not being accepted

Today, I am going to get on a soapbox about something that I hear all the time from my clients. When asked why they spin the truth about how they really feel about something to the loved ones in their lives (see my blog on the PR Agent for some background on this), the most common response is “I’m afraid of not being accepted for who I am.” This is an innocent-sounding victim-esque statement that, when examined more closely, is actually downright mean.

Now, I’ll give you that, yes, there are times when we put our real selves out there, and the person we share ourselves with doesn’t accept that self. For example, when I first decided to go into life coaching, I told a faculty member in my department, Jim, with whom I had always had a great rapport, of my decision. For the rest of the evening, he made it his goal to convince me to stay in science, telling me what a waste it was for me to have come so far and “give up” now. Jim didn’t accept my decision. And let me tell you, that conversation hurt. It took me quite a bit of nerve to tell the next faculty member of my decision. I’m sure that everyone reading this blog has had a moment like that, and would prefer not to have a repeat performance.

But that is no reason to spin the truth when you think things might get sticky with your loved ones. Yes, it stinks to be rejected, but there is a dark underbelly to hiding and spinning your truth that, in my opinion, is far worse. If you think about it, often when you are “afraid of not being accepted,” you are in reality being judgmental, arrogant, vain, and controlling. Let me explain.

Judgmental. You are judging the other person to be an insensitive jerk. Think about it… what if someone told you that they thought you weren’t capable of understanding or getting them?  “You just don’t GET it, do you?” Or that they didn’t think you loved them enough to lend a sympathetic ear. Ouch. That has got to be one of the worst insults out there.  And yet we walk around quietly insulting the people in our life all the time.

Arrogant. How different than the rest of humanity do you really think you are? I’ve seen and heard a lot of life stories, and let me tell you, we are all the same. The details are different (and sometimes not even then), but the patterns of the stories are the same. So by saying that people won’t accept you for who you are, you are actually saying “I am different than the rest of you folks. My life is beyond your realms of comprehension.” Do you really believe that? You are focusing on how different you are than the people in your life, instead of on how many commonalities you have with them… take a guess which one will bring more happiness and love into your life?

Vain. I have found that often when someone is “afraid of not being accepted,” that they are actually afraid of looking bad. After my conversation with Jim, my thought process was literally “Jim didn’t accept my decision to go into coaching, so I’d better not tell anyone else in my department. At their next departmental meeting, they will talk about what a disappointment I am to the department, and there goes my great reputation.” Ignoring for a moment the delusions of grandeur I must have had to assume that they’d discuss me at a departmental meeting, my main concern was being able to do what I want (be a coach) and still look good. We’re all about looking good. Take a minute to examine your day… how much energy did you put into image management?

Controlling. By controlling what parts of ourselves people do and don’t get to see, we are essentially holding the marionette strings of our relationships. Soon it all just becomes a pre-scripted play. And then you feel numb (see last week’s blog post on numb).

So there you have it. What on first glance seems like a poor, scared victim can actually be a judgmental, arrogant, vain control freak. Welcome to being human! We are fascinating, aren’t we? And I’m not saying that like it’s a horrific thing or anything…. I think we are great, wacky, and cute, all rolled into one. Gotta love us!

My goal with this post is to challenge you to shift from seeing yourself as a victim of people who don’t accept you, to someone who is playing an active, very human role in maintaining the relationship to be that way.

A blog by Dr. Samantha Sutton, Life Coach

What if you were invincible?

In honor of my October fear challenge, this blog post is going to be about a man who has no fear, Bill Murray in his most obscure movie, “The Man Who Knew Too Little.”

The movie is about a man who thinks he’s acting in an audience participation theater event, when in reality he’s in the middle of an international plot to bomb top world leaders. Full of double-entendre that would appeal to Naked Gun lovers everywhere, the movie nonetheless has an underlying theme that resonates with me.

Thinking that he is invincible, all guns are fake, the muggers who stole his wallet would be returning it, and the wild car chases are scripted, Bill pretty much takes control of every situation and sculpts it to be what he wants. From daring escapes, to brow-beating villains, to awkward Russian dancing, Bill recklessly goes after what he wants, gets it, and in the end saves the day.

What would you do if you thought you were invincible? If every time you found yourself tied to a chair with a bad guy monologging his evil schemes to you, you knew that you would find a way out, because that’s just how this world works? What if you knew that no matter how badly you mess up at what you try, no matter how stupid you look, or no matter how much you fail, there will be a happy ending? Like a big safety net around you. How much more would you be taking on?

Think about it. What are you afraid of failing at, and as a result aren’t going for what you really want?

Now, I’m not saying that you should go out and put yourself in the path of as much gunfire as Bill Murray did. Or almost drive your car off a bridge. But in the realm of your career, your relationships, your life, what are you afraid of failing at?

Here are a small and large example from my life.

Small: I recently attended an event with lots of new people at it, and wanted to introduce myself to some of them. But I was afraid of failing: afraid of looking stupid, afraid that they would be like “why are you talking to me?” If I had thought I was invincible, you bet I would be introducing myself to every Tom Dick and Harry.

Big: When I decided to become a life coach after getting my Ph.D. in Biological Engineering, I was facing a huge fear cliff. What if I wasn’t a good coach? What if I couldn’t make it pay? What if the door to science closed permanently behind me, and I could never “go back” to a life of science and engineering? The only way I was able to make this career change was a belief that, by golly, I could make anything work.

What are you afraid of failing at?

A blog by Dr. Samantha Sutton, Life Coach

In pursuit of feeling

When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, any time we are not living the life we claim to want on paper, it is because we’re avoiding feeling. A businessman wants to start his own business, but is afraid of feeling the sadness and hurt of defeat if the business fails. A journalist wants to write a book, but is afraid of feeling the sadness and hurt if people reject her work. A boyfriend wants to have an open and intimate relationship with his girlfriend, but is afraid of the sadness and hurt that would come if the girlfriend rejects him for who he is.

The thing is, as much as we try to hide from it, being a human means feeling. Feeling the ups, feeling the downs. It’s part of the deal–we get the tremendous highs of feeling wonderful, but also must feel the lows, sadness, and hurt. But most of us don’t want to feel the lows, and so we try to ward them off. How do we do this? Usually by either finding a replacement emotion (anger is a popular one) or just not putting ourselves in situations where we’d have to feel them. Don’t start the business, don’t write the book, don’t give yourself completely to your partner.

Except then we feel numb, disconnected, and ultimately unhappy, because our hearts yearn for the business, the book, the openness.

The solution? Let yourself feel the lows. Let the feeling wash over you for a moment in time. It won’t last forever, and it may be painful. Like childbirth, as I am told. It may be a painful couple of hours or days (let’s hope not!), but just accept the pain for what it is, knowing that it is part of the journey. I’d like to share with you one of my all-time favorite quotes, written by Alan Ball for the play/movie American Beauty, that can be applied to both feeling high and low:

“It’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst… And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life… “

Thanks to Laurie Gerber of the Handel Group for the conversation that inspired this post.

Image courtesy of www.rocbike.com