So What's the Problem

So what’s the problem? Doesn’t that question invoke a negative connotation? And does it not have us focus on what’s wrong instead of what is working? Is there a better question? Some might say asking what the problem is gets to the heart of the matter quickly. I beg to differ. 

A better query might be: How do we solve this? In this way you put ice on the swelling and enroll your loved one, business client, friend into being part of the solution instead of having to be defensive or making a bad situation worse. Two heads are better than one and by asking how we can fix it you validate their feelings and get them to focus on the desired outcome.  

False Evidence Appearing Real

The acronym that FEAR means false evidence appearing real is probably one of the best I have ever heard in AA. Not only does FEAR plague the recovering alcoholic in early sobriety but with old timers as well. This old timer is one. I know I am not alone but I certainly feel I am when I build a case of panic on sand. In fact I cannot remember one time where the altered state of fear ever justified the terror that I put my body through. 

Just today when someone wouldn’t talk to me by denying they knew me sent shock waves through my solar plexus. I gave complete credence to this one individual (who I hardly knew) that his simple act of denial would bring chaos to my business life based on no evidence whatsoever. My creative mind couldn’t imagine what in the world he might be so upset about that he would deny my very existence. It didn’t make sense on any level and that should have been my first clue. However if my rational mind couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation that was of no consequence I would invent one out of thin air regardless of how implausible.  

The quick end to this story was that the only mystery that remained was why this man pretended he didn’t know me when we’ve spoken on the phone and met several times in the past month. When the fear left my body it was as if an entity had left my corporeal structure. Fear when confronted with the truth flees like the coward it is. If fear was a coat I seem to put it on as if it was protecting me from a cold blast of artic air. Trouble is I am manufacturing a lie based on no substantiation. If I had actually done something to warrant fear I don’t think I would have felt quite as put upon because I would know that it would come around eventually. Maybe because things are going so well self-sabotage has a hand in keeping me from feeling happy, joyous and free.  

False evidence appearing real and even a greater fear when there is no evidence at all.  

When I give in to fear I am clearly lacking faith I need to remember that too!

JPG

I am so blessed to have found or rather more accurately been found by my trusted friend and colleague Joe Guarino. I’ve known him for nigh on 18 years now and although I never worked directly with him before now I’ve always admired his honesty and his undaunting energy of trying to do the right thing. He never in my eyes got caught up in the greed that is pervasive in our business. He is transparent and even when he could be justifiably self centered he chooses the high road instead and he shares like no one I know. He makes me want to rise as high as my God given talent will allow. 

I’ve always been a lone wolf a one-man band now for the first time in my business life I can be part of a team. It takes courage for me to be a group member but I am embracing it whole heartedly because Joe makes me feel that working as part of a team will bring my clients more and satisfy my wildest dreams as well.  Letting go of ego is a difficult task in the insurance world but being a cast member with my own specialties I don’t have to rely on skills I simply don’t possess.  

I believe in signs and Joe arrived just in time before I gave up chasing the ghost of Christmas past. Now I can share my talents with those that don’t have what I possess and I in theirs. It’s comforting to know I don’t have to be the producer or the director I can do what I love to do and that is to pitch the 9th.  Yes I haven’t felt this good in 10 years and this time I don’t think there will be any side effects.  

Enough is Enough

When I heard this Barbara Streisand-Donna Summer song today in spin class I almost wanted to throw up. I am so tired of these anthem songs against men that are not only outdated but one sided. Distaff dissertations on relationships that went wrong just because the gender was male don’t sit right in the 21st Century or any century for that matter.  

I have to tell you that it is men that need to sing their own songs of enough is enough. Women do not by any means have exclusivity over someone did me wrong. I have made many choices in my life and there are many that I regret and I had plenty of help from the women in my life. 

 The woman in front of me in class today was lip-synching this song word for word bobbing her head back and forth as if she was personally wounded and still carrying around the resentment some 30 years later. I am sure she put just as much of a monkey wrench into that love affair she can’t seem to let go of either.  

Enough is Enough.

Emotional Chaos

You’re in it and when it hit you were not ready for it.  Since I am lacking in the skill of common sense I usually over react and wind up doing more damage to my physical body when I am emotionally disturbed than I could ever imagine. I am blessed with a decent set of grey cells but when my heart speaks my head gets paralyzed and my intelligence goes to sleep over camp.

It was oh about 15 years ago when I first discovered that I could experience more than one emotion at the same time. Women do it like its second nature but when I was fully cognizant that it was indeed possible my life changed. Mostly for the better because I learned the skill of setting aside one emotional outburst and step into the person that was watching my illogic get played out. It is as if I were two people in the same body with two brains operating at each end of the seesaw. What that gave me is the ability to see both sides of an opinion, a diametrically opposed belief and someone else’s emotional chaos. A great skill was born and it usually had the effect of lowering my emotional temperature. 

However I am human and When Love Takes Over emotional chaos can be the result.  It is for me instincts in collision and after a time interval I start to recover but the repercussions can last for hours or even days. Some might say that I bring it on all by myself by the choices I make. I think my energy tells me instead that for the first time in my life I am alive. Living life in moderation may be healthier in the long run but even the long run in the life of a human is less than a blink on the universal clock.