As a Life-Coach I like things that work, that get results and help people make useful changes in their daily lives. And I’m especially impressed by how well one practice seems to work in shifting a self-pitying or complaining attitude into a more positive one.
I’m talking about the practice of gratitude; that is, writing or focusing on what you are grateful for in your life, rather than paying attention to what is going wrong. The attitude of gratitude seems to trump all others and when you are feeling grateful you cannot simultaneously feel resentful, angry, or sorry for yourself.
Kudos to it. It is an important point to remember, and does seem to help many feel better about themselves and able to cope with whatever life throws in their path.
However, sometimes I find myself, like the proverbial stubborn mule, balking at the word itself. I just don’t like the word gratitude very much and I think I know why. I’m sorry. I know this borders on sacrilege, so if you love it and it works for you, then stop reading this bit now and skip to the next section.
Here we go. For me gratitude always seems predicated by ought and should, as in, you ought to be grateful for your health/home/good income or you should be grateful for the food on the table. There are lots of starving children in Africa—sort of thing.
I’m so blessed, gushes the movie star from her Malibu home where she does yoga and meditation on the beach each morning while she sips her smoothie. The subtext is, I am the recipient of all these wonderful things that have somehow been bestowed on me and I am so thankful I am not like others.
Sound of teeth grinding.
Yes, I guess you would be. In the next breath she is saying in her L’Oreal ad that she gets to live this life and wear this makeup because I’m worth it. How does that work? Worth it? You mean you think you deserve it? Does that mean all who don’t have this stuff aren’t worth it? Are we all entitled to a house in Malibu? And how will she feel when she loses it all in bankruptcy or her next film is a failure? Still blessed?
Caveat here. I was never very good at what I should and ought to think and feel. I’ve always been one of nature’s rebels—cantankerous and bratty. And OK, a little catty at times.
Words That Work for Me
Back to the matter at hand. I am always casting about for words or phrases that take me away from either entitlement or victimhood. Words or phrases like gratitude and I’m so blessed but without the baggage.
There are lots of them: cherish, relish, not take for granted, appreciate, to name a few.
I really like appreciate. It carries no remonstrance or guilt-trip for me. It means more or less the same thing as gratitude, but with slightly different connotations. It is more about “valuing, noticing, being conscious of, or placing a high estimate on”. I like that. It’s good to appreciate things and people in your life.
But I don’t want it to feel like I’m thankful for being privileged when the rest of the world is not. Something feels ‘off’.
I don’t deserve anything any more than anyone else—trust me on this one. I’m not especially worth it and I don’t feel I’m entitled to anything. But I can appreciate everything.
My Favorite Word
The other day I stumbled across another word that expresses similar feelings, but in a way I like even better. It made me tingle with recognition. It’s a well-known word, but not used all that often in everyday conversation.
This word was lurking in a book called Getting Stoned With Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu by J Maarten Troost. (How’s that for a title? I’m so jealous.)
It was recommended to me by my equally rebellious and curmudgeon-in-crime niece, so I couldn’t resist downloading it. (We’re in this together Sally. I won’t give you away.)
Here’s the quote. See if you can spot the word before I tell you what it is.
“For what is life, a good life, but the accumulation of small pleasures? In Washington, we lived in a place where everything was available, for a price, and yet I couldn’t recall the last time I had really savored something—a book, a sunset, a fine meal.”
There. There it is. Savored. That word just jumped off the page at me, daring me to ignore it.
Savor. That works better for me than gratitude. I want to savor life, everything about it, appreciate it, experience it, even the smallest of details.
Savor reminds me of chocolate—you put that truffle on your tongue and know you have to savor every moment of it before it disappears forever. You know it’s not a good idea to have another (well, maybe one more) or you will feel sick. But this first bite is just heaven and you want to enjoy it fully. When you savor something you totally appreciate it with all your senses.
I want to approach life like that. When I step out into my garden in the morning I want to savor the soft sunshine (unless I’m in England in which case I savor the rain and chilly breeze.) I savor looking at the trees and I savor watching my dogs playing. I know they won’t always be with me, like the chocolate, so I want to savor every tiny moment with them.
The Benefits From Nearly Dying
Eckhart Tolle, the great spiritual teacher and author, says he enjoys reading about near death experiences because it seems to be the closest any of us will come to proof of what happens when we die. Everything else is just speculation. He notes how, despite the differences in what is experienced or who people meet up with while journeying to the other side—Jesus, parents, Buddha, Yogananda, a spirit group, and a plethora of different scenes such as tunnels, beautiful palaces, brightly lit scenes from nature—everyone seems to come back with the attitude that all is well.
They also have a new perspective on life and most never again take anything for granted. They savor the life they have left. Every second. And are filled with purpose.
Ok, I guess they are grateful to be back in the land of the living, but strangely not always. Sometimes they resist being sent back, at least initially, because their experience of the afterlife is so incredibly blissful and interesting. And when they return everything is changed, different. They seem able to experience and enjoy life more than before. They’ve been given a second chance. They can accept whatever is happening. All is well.
Gary Zukav in his wonderful book, The Seat of the Soul, refers to this emotion as reverence for life. That’s another good word that resonates with me. He says,
“Reverence is simply the experience of accepting that all Life is, in and of itself, of value. If we perceived life with reverence, and understood our evolutionary process, we would stand in awe at the experience of physical Life, and walk the Earth with a very deep sense of gratitude.”
Oh, I know. He uses the G-word there. But it’s in reference to reverence. And I like the way he uses it, as acceptance. If I’m accepting life as it is, I’m not complaining or feeling sorry for myself. I’m grateful, and appreciative, and I don’t take anything for granted.
How about this idea: It always seems to be the ‘good’ things we are grateful for. How about being able to accept and flow with everything that happens to us, things we judge as both fortunate or unfortunate? We are truly blessed when we can enjoy everything in life—good and bad—and savor whatever weather greets us each day.
A Beautiful and Elegant Turn of Phrase
Not too long ago I was grousing to a friend about how the word gratitude didn’t work for me. She said, “Hold on, I heard a phrase the other day on YouTube, or a podcast, can’t remember where, and it makes a perfect mantra for you.”
“Try this; first thing when you wake up say, I am the essence of gratitude; when you step outside, say I am the essence of gratitude; when you go to sleep, say I am the essence of gratitude. At every moment in the day, when you remember, say, I am the essence of gratitude. You don’t have to say what you are grateful for, unless you feel like it, or to whom, just that you embody gratitude. See if that works for you.” (Thanks for this Sharyn. I’m eternally grateful!)
Well, it does work. It’s a powerful mantra. I recommend you say it, all day, all the time, for everything, and every experience, without judgment. It completely reframes the idea of gratitude for me. It takes it away from objects to be thankful for, like the Malibu beach home and big bank account, and expresses an appreciation for simply being alive.
So I guess the word doesn’t really matter as long as it takes you to a place that feels empowering and significant. Who cares what the word is if it is life enhancing?
This works.
I want to savor, reverence, walk the Earth with a very deep sense of gratitude, and enjoy every moment, taking the good with the bad. Just as if I had been given a new lease on life—a second chance. That seems to me to be what living my purpose and following the trail of my spirit is all about.
(Excerpt from my soon to be published book on finding life purpose, called Follow the Trail of Your Spirit—The Search for Life Purpose by Margaret Nash.)
If you find the ideas in this article interesting you may like some personal life coachingon getting your life to work the way you want it to.
Contact margaretnashcoach@gmail.com for personal coaching in San Miguel or online coaching from anywhere in the world.
I woke up the other morning feeling out of sorts. Not depressed exactly, just a feeling of restlessness, as if something wasn’t right.
Nothing especially negative going on in my personal life: dogs were well, husband happily preoccupied with his stuff, I could lose a few pounds and exercise more, but hey, what’s new?
So I had a good hard look at work. Ah, oh yes. Very clear what’s happening.
May/June in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where I live, is typically the hottest, driest time of the year, so the town just clears out while most of the ex-pats head to the beach or back to the homeland. My usually busy client schedule emptied overnight. From having to juggle where to book people one week to zero the next, I was somewhat disconcerted. Either they had all left town or they all decided en masse they hated me. I’m banking on the former. Either way, my calendar was pretty spartan all of a sudden.
Plus my business and training partner had left town for a month, so no workshops planned, friends had fled, and I had been revamping my books, they weren’t ready, so no books to advertise or work on for the moment. I seemed to be in a state of waiting, my normally busy life on hold.
In other words, things had ground to a halt, or to use a better metaphor, I was in the doldrums!
I love the origin of the term in the doldrums
Do you know where this term comes from? Bear with me. It’s quite illuminating.
The word doldrum means dull and slothful. To be in the doldrums is an archaic maritime term, which refers to certain areas in the ocean near the equator. These areas are hot and humid and the wind can sometimes disappear completely, trapping sailing boats for periods of days or weeks on end. It was a sailor’s nightmare.
Kind of like San Miguel right now. This boat was stalled.
These areas were nicknamed the doldrums by 18th century sailors, because getting caught in them was so dull and boring. If you got stuck in the doldrums you would be unable to move forward; marooned at sea in the middle of the tropics. If the winds were too long in coming, you could get depressed and stir crazy; worse, you could die from thirst or hunger.
Most dreaded it more than a storm.
Can you picture it—stifling heat, unrelenting sun, absolutely no breeze of any kind, no sounds of any kind, and the air perfectly still? You could go crazy just thinking about it. Imagine getting stuck there with no way out and no idea when the breezes would start again. “As idle as a painted ship, Upon a painted ocean.”
Yes, I can imagine it only too well.
Colloquially, in the doldrums came to mean a state of inactivity, mild depression, listlessness, or stagnation—a general state of low spirits. A pretty apt metaphor for how I was feeling at the moment. There was no wind in my sails and I felt as if I was drifting on a sea of gloom without an oar. Just like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.
So, who survived the doldrums?
Sailors who kept their spirits up, their sails trimmed and their ships in tip-top-shape—that’s who. They took advantage of the quiet time to prepare themselves for the breezes. And when the wind eventually blew, they were ready. A good sailor can use the tiniest breeze to get moving and out of danger.
Who didn’t survive? The sailors who allowed themselves to sink into fear and depression, who felt disconnected, cut-off, adrift. They focused on their fear, and would sink to the bottom of the ship, drunk and depressed. And when the breezes came, they didn’t feel them and lost their chance of escape. They weren’t ready.
So, ahem, at the risk of stating the obvious…
When we feel like there’s no wind in our sails, and nothing much is happening in our lives, embrace it! Trim your sails and get your ship in order.
Clients will come back.
Workshops will resume.
Books will finally be ready for marketing.
Life will crank up and splutter into action again.
In the meantime, I’m exulting in my freedom. I’m enjoying my enforced quiet time reading, researching, writing, de-cluttering. I’m spending hours just sitting in the garden with my dogs, sitting on my roof at sunset, bingeing on Netflix (a special skill of mine), and just being. I’m in bliss. Trimming those sails…sort of.
Enjoy your summer. Welcome those slow periods in life. They can be your most productive.
Retirement can bring on a feeling of the doldrums. If you are retired and feeling at loose ends or stuck, you might enjoy my book, The Retirement Rebel: How to get your life to work, when you don’t have to available on kindle and in paperback on amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D6TWXP8.
This is an updated and revised version of How to Beat the Retirement Blues.
If you like it, I’d love, no, adore a nice review. Indie writers are so dependent on reviews to get our books noticed, so your review matters. Just go to the book page and click on where it says “Would you like to leave a review?” I’ll be so grateful I’ll treat you to tacos next time you’re in town
I invite you to visit margaretnashcoach.com for more books, articles, and other sail trimming ideas you might like.
Have you ever had a problem so big, so overwhelming, and so intractable that it woke you up at 3 am with panic attacks? Caused you to have heart palpitations? Usually around health or money?
It happens to the best of us. Most of us. It’s not fun. And you can get stuck there.
My personal Waterloo was after Sept 11, 2001 when my business tanked by 90% overnight. Nobody wanted business training when they thought the world was ending. Kept me awake, I assure you. Couldn’t pay my bills.
What was yours? How did you handle it?
These are the three most common approaches to big scary issues:
Like the Warrior. Brave, head on, resisting, determined to win. Taking matters in your own hands and going out to battle. Take no prisoners. No surrender. This approach is positive and takes responsibility for the problem. It’s down to me folks. I can’t rely on anyone else.
Or you can be the Realist and stop resisting what is. You put yourself in expert hands and accept you can’t run that marathon. You surrender to reality. This is the way things are so let’s make the best of it. Let’s face it; I’ve never been healthy/good with money. No point in fighting it.
Then there’s the Friend. You make nice with your problem. What is it trying to tell you? You try to rise above it. You look for causes and meaning, and try to root out negative thinking. You relax and trust it will all work out because you believe everything that happens is meant to be.
Each approach has its pros and cons.
Here are some of the cons
The Warrior is stubborn and sometimes won’t listen to others… and can become the Terrorist if you are not careful. This approach can leave you exhausted and bitter. Fighting the battle becomes all consuming and more important than finding a solution. Result: anger, burnout, obsession with your issue, friends avoid you.
The Realist can leave you overmedicated, dependent on therapy groups, and entrenched in your victim story. Defeatist, not trying anything new. You come to believe there is no cure or that you will go bankrupt and lose your home. The Realist becomes the Victim and just throws in the towel. Result: depression, despair, low energy, just getting by but no solution. Friends avoid you.
The Friend approach can leave you dead if you’re not careful.
Alternative treatments can be effective, but sometimes you need more than affirmations and visualizations. Discovering the root cause of your money issues may not save your house from foreclosure. The Friend can become the Fanatic, insisting that meditation will cure everything. Just imagine all that money you’ve got and it will magically appear. Result: no results, loss of faith, sometimes death.
I have two friends who have passed on prematurely because they got stuck in one mode and in each case the shadow took over. One refused blood thinner and insisted on using quantum touch instead for his heart condition, and the other stubbornly stuck to green drinks and a vegan diet for a serious cancer condition. Both are gone now.
Would you like to know how to come unstuck from that problem?
Use all three. You need them.
Engage the Warrior and attack with energy and enthusiasm. Do your best. You can do this! But you must take action and stop procrastinating.
Indulge the Realist and give yourself a break. Relax, accept what is for an afternoon and collapse in a heap with the dogs and Netflix. Hey, it wasn’t entirely your fault.
Dialogue with the invisible Friend and look for the underlying causes—what can you learn from this? Is the Universe trying to tell you something? Can this make you a better person?
All three approaches are essential for the best results
What worked with my financial meltdown was this 3-pronged approach: go to battle and try to save my company with other streams of income; put myself in the hands of a financial advisor, swallow my pride and ask for a loan to tide me over; and hey, what was the lesson here that would prevent this happening again? Stay out of debt and live within my means. Save. Hello. I got through it, survived, and eventually thrived.
Recently there was a Netflix documentary about Ram Dass, the well-known and beloved spiritual teacher who suffered a debilitating stroke a few years back. He used the 3-prong remedy: Still in a wheelchair, he seemed really happy, content, at peace, and he said with a smile that the stroke was the best thing to happen to him. He wouldn’t have chosen it, but it was nevertheless a gift. He understood more about life. The Friend. And he was also busy with physical therapy and daily swimming. The Warrior. He had helpers to help him get around. The Realist. Covering all bases.
Sometimes we have to give in and accept help from others. Sometimes we have to put aside our long held beliefs about diet and vitamin pills in the face of serious illness and get to the doctor. Sometimes we need to fight, not accept what we’ve been told, and try different solutions. Sometimes we just need to pray.
The Warrior says you can beat this. The Realist helps you see your limitations. The Friend says, hey we can make something good come out of this. Buck up.
You need all three.
Find that balance between them. Using all three ensures your success.
If you are stuck in that problem then check to see if you are sticking with one mode of approach. Try using all 3 and see what happens. Let me hear from you! I’d love to hear your successes; and if you’re still stuck, maybe I can help.
If you liked this you might also like life-coaching. It’s about how to get your life to work the way you want it to. Visit my website and peruse the blogs, check out my life-coaching books, and find out if personal coaching could be just right for you. www.Margaretnashcoach.com.
Not too long ago I saw two separate interviews on TV of two of my idols from the 1960s—Pattie Boyd and Marianne Faithfull. I was in my teens when these two English ladies ruled the world in hipness, coolness and having the most sought after boyfriends on the planet—George Harrison and Mick Jagger.
Back then, both had the mod 60’s look down pat—skinny, long blonde hair with bangs, doe eyes with black makeup and the hippest clothes going. But imagine— a Beatle and a Stone as boyfriends. Oh, unimaginable to this Southern Alabama preacher’s kid. I wondered, what did they talk about? How did they act? What did they do on a normal day? They were only a few years older than I—how did they handle it all?
Well, not all that well it would seem. Both are in their 70s now and have suffered greatly from past drug addiction, health problems, and the effects of over-indulgence in the wild life of a rock star’s girlfriend.
But wait. Obviously I don’t know either of them, but when I watched the interviews I was struck by some differences between the two in how they came across, despite similar lives and experiences.
Two Crazy Wild Exciting Lives
Pattie, as you may remember, met George Harrison on the set of a Hard Day’s Night, and they got married shortly thereafter. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. Later on she scandalously left George for Eric Clapton, also known as God to 60s music aficionados. She was the muse for the songs, Something, Wonderful Tonight, and Layla. She was sweet, cute and not too bright (her nickname was Batty Pattie), according to legend. Both George and Eric seemed to get tired of her.
Marianne was famous for hooking up with Mick while still a teen—after making her way through all the other Stones—and had her own music career with one memorable hit, As Tears Go By. She was the quintessential angelic looking bad girl. She seemed to hold her own with Mick until she fell into addiction. She was the muse for Wild Horses and Sister Morphine.
Interviews Give Away a Lot
Pattie and George back in the day
In watching the interview with Pattie, I didn’t at first know who she was. She looked familiar but seemed to have had so much plastic surgery her face was unrecognizable. (Not judging having surgery, but one must be aware that people draw conclusions if it’s excessive.) She still had her long hair and kept flicking it nervously. She was stiff, appeared uncomfortable, and I was struck by how ill-at-ease she seemed with herself. She didn’t seem to enjoy being interviewed and refused to dish on any of the rock stars she had known. Hey, I wondered, why so careful? What have you got to lose? The interview was so boring I flipped the channel.
Marianne, on the other hand, was easily recognizable, just older. She seemed totally un-self-conscious, cracked jokes, and laughed a lot. She was bawdy and funny and not afraid to say what she thought. She had fun stuff to share about Mick and the Stones. Her voice was husky from years of smoking.
Marianne Faithful and Mick Jagger circa 1960-something
I was riveted. She had made a singing career for herself after Mick, and despite many setbacks, always seemed to rise from the ashes. She was thoroughly enjoying herself—owning who she was, wrinkles and all, without living in the past. I wanted to have coffee with her at some cafe in London.
Darwin’s Take
Charles Darwin famously said that the number one survival trait was adaptability.
The ability to adjust oneself readily to different conditions.
How adaptable are you? How flexible? Are you able to adjust to the ongoing and never ending changes in life? Getting older? Not looking like you used to? Not able to do all the things you used to? Kids growing up and becoming independent? Moving to another location? Retirement? How well do you adapt?
One way of testing yourself is noticing how often you complain. Complaining is about not being able or willing to adapt. Something is not going as you would like it to, so you complain about it. Traffic in town. The weather. Neighbors moving in next-door who are noisy. Knees hurting. Workmen not fulfilling commitments. Yada, yada, yada.
Is this you? Be honest, because if it is, then perhaps you are not adapting to life. You want life to adapt to you. The result of this attitude is that you may gradually give up on life as you get older. And the danger is you become rigid in both body and spirit, uncomfortable in your own skin, inflexible, and grumbling about everything to everybody. All the traits we associate with getting old… and that most of us want to avoid.
We associate youth with being flexible, adaptable, changing what can be changed and accepting what cannot. We associate old age with being rigid, intolerant, wanting the world to adapt to you.
Lao Tzu said, The stiff and unyielding are the companions of death, while the yielding and tender are the companions of life.
60’s Icon #3—You’ll Never Guess
So who is the third 60’s icon? Well, none other than Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Keith is in his 70s now and looks 95 from years on the road, being an incredibly famous rock star and legendary guitarist, not to mention unabashed consumer of almost every illegal substance he could get his hands on.
He is the subject of a new documentary on Netflix. Watch it. He’s a treat.
Keith totally enjoys life, has a wicked sense of humor and laughs at himself and how craggy he looks. He’s still out there touring with the Stones, and in his leisure time enjoys his family and playing music with some of the most famous musicians on the planet. Everybody loves him.
Towards the end of the film he is asked about getting older and how he copes with it. He laughed and said, “Well, nobody wants to get old. But then, nobody wants to die either. So I guess the answer is, you just gotta roll with the punches!”
