Top Level Living: Eliminating the Negative and Accentuate the Positive

This is a follow up with my adventure into eliminating what wasn't working for me and adding something positive that could be helpful in my life.  I did manage to leave behind an online community and now I barely look at the latest threads.  People take breaks from some forums; I had to really leave.

I have to remember that in order to grow in my business or in my world, the first place to expand is with myself.  And that meant that I had to stop hanging around people with limited beliefs and closed belief systems. 

Step One:  New Habits of Elimination - Adjusting Holiday Expectations

Our family has started some new traditions in which we eliminate the negative and add some positive.  Holidays are a great way to initiate healthy habits - in one way shape or form.  Christmas, for example, we plan to serve in various charities instead of focusing on gifts.  Yeah, we are still doing the extended family presents and stuff, but lighter more heartfelt presents to one another as a substitute to the madness that usually accompanies the season.  We want to teach our children to think beyond themselves and also think about the future.  Working and serving is more in the spirit of the season, rather than spending and receiving - at least, in our household.  I think its a good habit to start now.

 TV Turn Off Week(s)

When we lived in Vermont, our local school sponsored No TV WEEK.  Usually this was in the dead of winter while my husband was traveling so while it could have been hellish, the school planned some really cool activities to help us handle the withdrawal symptoms:  Carnival, Swimming, Game Night and so on.

So in this season of reflection and renewal, we decided as a family to turn off the TV.  Since I already stopped the negative forum addiction, stopping my television habit seemed like a suitable partner in detoxification.

Boy was it hard.  At first at least.  We have missed The Vikings and The Bible on History channel but I also have to keep the thing off during the day too.  No WealthTV (which I love - some cable stations carry it, but I watch mine on the internet - on blu-ray) - lots of documentaries on exotic islands, crazy party mamas and essential shopping in Istanbul.  It's like my little bit of traveling in my mind.  Watching WealthTV is like pretending I'm traveling to Palm tree lined beaches and sipping an umbrella drink.  I need some sun and blue waters in March....even if only for a mind trip.

But not this March.  This March we as a family will switch our blu-ray to Pandora and listen to music.  For hours.  And lucky me, my husband, who normally travels every week for his job, is home this month.  Almost like my supervisor.  "No TV For YOU!"

Unstuck

But a funny thing happened on my way to utter boredom.  I got myself unstuck!

Huh?  Unstuck.  I started to move in the other direction.  As in productivity.

I didn't realize it but there was a big piece of delusion I was carrying around called "productivity".  I thought I was being productive, but I was spinning my wheels for months on end agonizing over the simplest of decisions and worry.  And then, finally, the television stopped, the forum posts stopped (and my writing stopped too - it was hard to write to an audience I haven't quite found yet - for those here who are reading from the trickle of links you may have found me at thank you for your patience!).  But hell, I write to myself all the time in a journal, I might as well start typing right?  So I have.

I turned off the television, turned off the forum addiction, turned on my Clockwork Tomato app for twenty minutes and just started working.  Working on my blog, working on learning how to sell products on Amazon - from sourcing to creating - and yep - finally FINALLY doing my Quickbooks and sending my damn corporate tax information in. 

My daughter, who is aged 9, is now dancing up a storm every night as we try to entertain each other listening to Strauss (Richard, not Johann), Mahler and occasionally Brahms.  We allow her to watch youtube videos on the blu-ray on ballet, stretching or fashion and that gives me a break.  Husband is now totally addicted to solitaire on his ipad.   Oh, we rock, we do.  Just prehistorically that is.

Rewards

The rewards for eliminating television for the family are less tangible.  My daughter is still wired up each night until 10:30pm, my son watches youtubepoops all the time (and I encourage him - we got him some software and downloaded utubecatcher so he can make his own "poops" for fun) and my husband - well, you know about the solitaire thing.  Me?  Here is what miraculously happened to me:

I finally am taking a retail sourcing course - which is excellent if you want to learn about the basics in retailing or reselling  on different online marketplaces. I finally created my business cards, signed up with Fiverr for a logo, some brand name ideas, and trademark searches.  I finally bought a couple of domains for my retail business and am looking up any special licenses I may need to apply for with this business.  And I went to my first book sale at my old library and bought some books that will net me barely a profit.  Seriously, barely a profit and most at losses, but its my first try.  And I have ordered samples for a skin care line I am thinking of starting.  So far, I LOVE the skin care.  Stay tuned for that one!

I have noticed my daughter finally reading more and turning in her homework.  Her attitude has improved and she is really working on her ballet.  My son doesn't really watch television that much unless its history and ufo documentaries.  We stopped morning news programming last year and my attitude really improved a lot - so we extended the television drought to the whole day - but we catch Morning Joe anyway...that's an addiction that will never go away at least for my husband.  Oh, and that solitaire thing.

Kundalini Yoga and a Path of Self Discovery

The 1990's saw me transitioning from a life of post graduate wanderings and living paycheck to paycheck.  I evolved from pursing a life in the theater in New York City to a stable life of married woman with a job.  Giving up my dream of performing in theater - a life I loved very much, was precipitated by the realization that I was outgrowing my peers and spent my life talking about performing and success rather than actually participating in it.

Everyone loves to socialize.  The relatively new social media hype (of which this blog is a part) denotes this craze and I'm not immune.  Back on the 1980's when I attended university, I spent a great deal of my time talking to my friends discussing everything - theater, politics, dreams, classes, metaphysics - you name it we dissected it all to within an inch of our lives.  I realized back then that I was creating my own "bitch and moan" crowd; spending time talking and not enough doing and most of the talk surrounding how terrible everything was.  The more I theorized with my complaining buddies, the more it reinforced how smart I was (or so I thought to myself).  After awhile I wanted out and left for New York in 1989 because I was done with bitching and moaning and ready for action.

I found it working at 13th Street Theater, a small Off-Off Broadway theater company that at times literally swept kids off the street to perform in plays.  I worked the tech booth, the box office, sometimes stage managed and performed for about two years.  I had found friends who I could related to and was thankful I could vibe with people from all over the world.

Then in 1993 I changed.  I needed my freedom but I also got a wake up call to move on or else be stuck for years.  My apartment was broken into and all the stuff I bought that got me into debt was stolen!  I took the event as a wake up call and decided that things had to change and change fast.

(Within weeks of that event, I had my first date with the guy who I later married so sometimes change is thrust upon you!)

By 1996 I found myself stuck again.  This time, it wasn't external.  I was the one who was stuck.  I knew something needed to adjust but I didn't know where to start.  My husband told me about Julia Cameron's work "The Artist's Way" which is a 12 week inner workbook that opened up a lot of healing for me - the blocked artist.  Adulthood often puts a damper on fun and I was no exception.  "The Artist's Way" gave me permission to try something new and stretch myself.  One of those "stretches" was Kundalini Yoga.

I was first made familiar with Kundalini Yoga from working on a play back at the University of Minnesota.  I was cast in a new play by Omaha Magic Theater creators Joanne Schmidman and Megan Terry.  They came to the U to help us with the staging and also lead a workshop.  Joanne Schmidman was my guide and coach.  Her approach was amazing in that she used Yoga as a means to get us out of our "heads" and into our intuitive bodies - and intuition and impulsivity that allowed me to create without judging myself or censor myself in any way.  In the workshop, we used Hatha Yoga, but instead of poses, used breath and movement - I was exhausted running around the black box and doing the plough, but my creativity was absolutely heightened and finally I stopped "thinking" too hard and allowed me to do what my greater being wanted to play at.

The experience changed my life, opened me up to all sorts of new possibilities and was as much a metaphysical revelation as a creative one.  I knew that there was something bigger that I could do - something beyond my sentient self and wanted to know more.

So, ten years later, I decided I was going to try this Yoga thing again.  Fortunately for me, there was a Kundalini Yoga studio right in Manhattan.  I don't recall how I found it, but I did start attending classes.

The teacher was Ravi Singh.  He had classes every day and on Saturday.  I tried a Thursday class after work and it was amazing.  We did breath, sound, poses with movement and meditation.  It was a little scary because I had no idea what I was chanting, but I kept attending classes.  I even took a Bliss Hips class one Wednesday evening bringing in a friend of mine from work.  About an hour after the class finished, I started to break out.  Soon I was covered in welts from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet.  I knew that the yoga workout was a massive detoxing of something - certainly my skin and its welts were evidence of something wanting to leave my body.  I coped with some almond oil and a pint of beer - and I found some relief, although now I would forgo the beer!

I practiced Kundalini Yoga on my own for a couple of years and then I became pregnant.  All previous routines stopped as soon as my son was born and it has taken me over a decade to regain the patterns and discipline I was able to enjoy prior to his birth.  Babies have a way of screwing up your daily life that way!  Now that my youngest is 9 and I made a conscious effort to work from home, I am looking again at Kundalini Yoga to bring order, transformation and a cleansing to my life.

So, two years ago (2010) I bought a bunch of DVDS of my former teacher, Ravi Singh who is now partnered with the effervescent Ana Brett.  They have recreated his old tapes into beautiful, clean yoga DVD's that clearly instruct Yoga sets for everyone from the beginner to the adept.  I signed up with the newsletter and today in my inbox I received it with a very cool notation.

It takes about 40 days to build a new habit.  It said.

I have read about 21 days to build a habit so this was a "hmmmmm" moment.  40 days huh?  But it makes sense.

One of the new habits I wanted to create is a daily workout/yoga habit.  I want to pursue this because intuitively I feel the need to change and create positive habits is calling me, not unlike when I decided to walk away from my "bitch and moan" crowd in the late 80's and the time I knew I needed to walk away from the theater in 1993.

I also know that if I don't take heed from this intuitive hunch that God will make the change on my behalf.  Call it my inner Jonah or call me a cab, I have seen this time and again and I hear the same intuitive hit that says "this is the moment - I need to change my habits because my future depends on it".  When I felt this tug in early 1989 and again in 1993, it made me feel anxious and nervous - a sort of restlessness that indicated that change was necessary and imminent - not unlike a looming wall of clouds that signal tornado weather.  In my own symbolic lexicon, tornadoes always indicate positive change - not destruction.  Tornadoes is somewhat like "forced change" or a clearing of the slate from dead air and heavy energy so that abundant lighter energy full of oxygen and negatively charged ions can bring some clarity and serenity in what was previously dressed in heavy, depressing, anxious energy.

So, like with the bible's themes of 40 days and 40 nights, I will look at my habits, beginning with the simplest and see what happens.  I bet that by March 18, if I keep up with yoga, meditation, or conscious gratitude, I will be in a totally different place.  This time corresponds to Lent so making adjustments to my habits makes this the perfect "time" to make any changes.

What will aid me in this quest is a couple of apps I just downloaded.  One of these is Gooall!! by Strongkick and its companion of Unkill Lifetime.  These were apps I downloaded in Google Play and they are both free.  I will also download a Pomodoro app and might try HabitStreak.

The biggest issue people have when changing habits is staying focused.  Creating a new routine or even a lifestyle change requires consistent practice.  I will be using these apps to help me keep this focus and stay on task.

This is both exciting and a little scary.  For a commitment freak like myself this will be an interesting month and a half!

For Kundalini Yoga DVD's check out this:

How I am Breaking Away from Forum Addiction

When I decided to quit drinking alcohol in 2008, I found help in meeting with a counselor.  My counselor, Carl was my prime cheerleader in my quest to achieve sobriety.  The first day, which led to the first week, which led to the first 90 days of sobriety were some of the hardest days I have lived through.  Or so I thought.

When I made that call to the counselor, I made sure I didn't think too hard.  I was told by some of my online friends that Alcoholics like to think too much, talk too much, analyze things too much.  My friend also went through a program for sobriety and helped me overcome the feelings of shame of asking for help.

I had to quit on my own volition before my husband "made me", I was afraid.  I felt that there would be nothing worse than having my husband force an intervention for me, or even serve me divorce papers.  Yes, my drinking was that bad.

My drinking was no worse than my peers, but it was having a very detrimental effect on me.  I was desperately lonely.  I hadn't realized how angry I was, and I was isolated from people living in rural Vermont at the time.  But it was having a negative effect on my parenting as well as my business.  I was a loan officer at the time and it was getting in the way of me making money.  My idea of socializing and networking was hanging out at bars.  In short, the drinking disguised the procrastinating.  The procrastinating disguised the anxiety.

Since 2001 or so, I lurked on conspiracy theory forums.  I enjoyed the immediate feedback of people responding to my well thought out posts.  I would take a good hour to respond to a post or thread topic and rarely introduce topics.  I developed what I thought was "real relationships" with people online.  For all I know it could only be five - the rest could have been sockpuppets - characters that were created to be a different "voice" online.

I have been an active participant in a small informal network of conspiracy theory discussion groups for over ten years now.  I joked to my husband that since we have chewed up and spit out so many theories that, by now, we just exchange recipes.  For the most part, that is true.  Many of us have children with special health needs like Autism and often reach out to each other for support.  Many of us have endured prolonged unemployment or foreclosure - a direct recipient of banker fraud and misleading bank practices.  I have seen the quality of the content from some of these posters go from thoughtful to pithy to meanspirited to downright paranoid.  As I saw the change of quality of the posters, I started to get a little shaken and had to step back, take a break and see things more clearly.

I posted my last forum post the end of January.  Its been hard for me to walk away from an online community that I have been with on and off since 2003.  I had to do it.  It was not serving me anymore.  As more and more posters became harsh and more judgmental, I had to stop posting.  I realized that "show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are" struck me that I didn't want to be associated with some of the blatant racism, sexism and extreme paranoia (with revisionist history thrown in as a spice).  I knew that if I wanted to publish my ebook and write publically, I had to change my playground.  The result has been a detoxing that is very similar, if not harder to overcome than my alcoholic addiction of four years ago.

The day of the flounce was one where a poster didn't like a banner and threatened to leave.  The result from that pronouncement was that he was the target of abuse from 90% of the other posters so heinous that it brought out the worst in everyone.  I logged out and made one reasonable post as a guest and quietly exited the community.  I am sad to leave some great posters - but then again, since I really don't know the "people" behind the posts, I have to stop kidding myself into thinking I am having a "real relationship" with anyone in that community.

Not unlike the first days of stopping drinking, the next day I was anxious and depressed.  I grew more melancholic as the days went by.  I resisted checking the forum as best I could but I popped in a few times a day but did not post.

I felt anxious and sad and downright depressed.  I wasn't the only poster who left that day either so I was sad to see a couple of other people make the same decision I did.  My symptoms were listlessness, boredom, restlessness and anxiety.  And then it hit me; I was suffering from withdrawal.  Not getting the immediate feedback of response one gets when one posts on a forum just bummed me out.  I felt alone and isolated and I needed my fix.  Surprised at the realization that it was my fix that was drawing me to check out the website, I forced myself to look at other websites and do research that had nothing to do with my normal forum subjects.  I even started to pick up a book.

My addiction was so bad that I at one point I had installed Leechblock then de-activate it because I couldn't stop myself from the forum!  So I knew that there was a definite addiction withdrawal that I was experiencing.  In my efforts to continue the trend of avoiding forum posting, I exited out all my tabs that Firefox so conveniently sets up for me. One by one I clicked all my favorite sites off because I knew the time has come to leave my old bad habits behind and focus on abundant habits instead. There is a real irony here I might add.  I avoid Facebook and note just how many of my friends online are playing games and spending time at chat.  I think to myself that somehow I am not like them because I spend time having "real conversations" instead of blurting out two line status updates.  The fact of the matter is, an internet addiction is an addiction - doesn't matter the substance, it was the act of submitting my will over to an external fix that I couldn't control.  Guilty!

If I were to add up all the hours I spent over the last ten years on forums, I think I would be embarrassed.  I have since learned about revenue sharing sites like InfoBarrel, Seekyt, Buzzlews, and TopicSpotter and now I am kicking myself for not participating in any of these sites before.  So here it is.  Its February, 2013 and its time for me to move on from my forum addiction where I am spending countless hours not accomplishing or solving or helping people to where I can offer ideas, support and content and reach more users AND make some money if possible.

This is the year where I turn my habits around and improve my lift and hopefully others too.  One site at a time, one article at a time, one ebook at a time and one connection at a time!