Workaholism, Perfectionism, and Letting Go

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For many years I’ve been working on letting go of perfectionism and workaholism. In the past, I’ve done this through therapy, Workaholic Anonymous meetings, and even in my Counseling Psychology degree. I’m happy to say that they no longer control me but they still do impact me.

Letting go

In my job, I regularly keep tabs on them. Given the constantly changing software industry in which I work, burn out is not uncommon. Now, as I develop my calling as a healer of the spirit, I must admit they have shown up in the guise of fear about not doing “it” right. Perhaps some you might resonate with this with respect to your career, your relationships, or other things.

For the last month, I’ve developed two ways to help me deal with my flare ups. The first is by tuning into my body, noticing if my heart or mind is beginning to race. When that happens, I have a chat with Mig (that’s what I call my amygdala – the part of my brain which controls our fight or flight response). During my chat, I let Mig know that there’s no danger and invite him to rest.

Another way is through meditation. Recently, my meditation focuses on breathing deeply into each part of my body to let go and trust my guides and God. The meditation includes repeating phrases, including “I am whole” and “I trust” and feeling them in my body and spirit. One phrase I’ve added is “I am enough.” They help set a more relaxing tone for my day.

By doing this, I realized that as I let go, the energy I spent worrying and pushing myself is now freed up. Unexpectedly, and with great excitement, I’m using that energy to write a novel where my philosophy undergirds the story. Still, even with this, I do check in with Mig to ensure I’m doing this with ease.

If you’ve ever struggled with workaholism and perfectionism, and are working to let them go, perhaps these two ways will help and so free up some of your energy to embark on new adventures.

Each moment is new and can be wondrous – yeah right

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Recently, I received another “moment” message asserting that each moment is new and can bring wondrous things. Yesterday, that message had practical applications.

As I move closer to my last day in my job, I’m spending a good amount of time, preparing to hand off my work. When my boss asked me yesterday to take on a new project, I agreed but I wasn’t very happy. Still, I threw myself into the project. In the process, though, I made a mistake in a document that I couldn’t fix. I felt like crap. After I emailed the document owner, I decided to take the walk I had previously planned.

As I got ready, I looked for my new sunglasses. I bought them to replace the new sunglasses I bought the previous week that didn’t work well. Despite my searching and reciting the “St. Anthony” prayer numerous times, I couldn’t find them. I wondered if losing them was the universe’s way of telling me I shouldn’t have bought them. By then, I felt even worse.  I didn’t want to walk. I wanted comfort food, specifically a brownie or cookies.

That’s when I remembered the message that each moment is new and can be wondrous. My first reaction was “what kind of b.s. is that”? Although I believe it, I wasn’t feeling it. But I did get a spiritual nudge challenging me to not let the new project, my mistake, and my lost sunglasses control my day. So, I forced myself to take a walk.

Nothing wondrous happened during the walk. But when I got home, I received an email from the document owner telling me he was able to fix my mistake. And a few minutes later, Michael found my sunglasses.

Now, on the grand scale of life resolving a mistake and finding sunglasses is not wondrous. It was definitely a relief. What was wondrous was my decision to just keep going, even though I felt crappy, and to be open for something good to happen. I can’t say that my “yeah right” attitude has gone away about the message. But now I have an example of when it was true. That’s something for me to build on.

The Story Tells It All

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This is a different kind of post for me. Two nights ago, in a dream, a group of us had to tell the story of the creation of earth and life by decorating hard hats, attaching them to the ceiling of a room, and presenting them to a panel of sages. When it was my turn to present, I believed that my hats were “lame” in comparison to the others. I thought that I had to compensate by making up a story. My first hat depicted the creation of mountains and my second the emergence of plants, animals and humans. As I was sharing the story, though, I felt like I was channeling Mother Earth and the divine, which was confirmed when I heard the message that “the story tells it all.”

I never presented my third and fourth hard hats, nor do I recall what they looked like. But, as I was coming awake, I had the feeling of great potential but also uncertainty, and that the earth and life were at a turning point.  One direction would tap into great potential and result in wonders. The other would lead to collapse and devastation. Soon after I realized that the odd use of hard hats in my dream made a kind of poetic sense as they are worn by construction workers who build up or tear down.

I felt like Mother Earth was sending a message to me and all of us, In fact, Mother Earth gave me a precursor of this through Michael Jackson’s Earth Song that I stumbled upon a couple weeks ago while watching “The Voice” auditions. With the evidence of global warming so apparent all over the world, given the changing weather, droughts, hurricanes, and so on, we’re at a turning point to determine how our future evolves.

As a healer of the spirit, my calling must include healing the earth through my actions and my attitudes. So I am being challenged to determine what my contribution to the story will be to ensure that our future is wondrous.  What will your contribution be?

Let the moment take the lead

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It’s been almost a month since my last post. Since then, I’ve had various tests to understand the impact of my small stroke. It’s been stressful, as each test approached and the results came in. The news seems promising. I’m grateful for how things are turning out, as I know others whose lives have been drastically changed after their stroke.

A repeated message I’ve received from my guides through this time has been to let it all go. Let go of worries about my health, about advancing my calling as a healer of the spirit, and about my job. This letting it all go message was and is calling me to be fully present in each moment of each day.

For most of my life, as a trauma survivor, I lived alert to possible future dangers in order to avoid them. Many years of therapy and spiritual work have brought much healing. These last two months though have challenged me to go to the next level of being fully present by letting the moment take the lead.

Photo by Monstera on Pexels.com

So, what does that look like? It means not planning my activities or goals for the day in any kind of rigid way. It means sensing into each moment for what I am drawn to do or not do. Is the moment leading me to step away from my computer and take a walk? Is the moment leading me to do nothing, literally just sitting quietly? Is the moment leading me to write a blog post? As you can tell, that hasn’t happened often recently. Ultimately, it’s about trusting God, my guides, and in truth, my deepest self (a.k.a my divine self) and letting life unfold as it will.

It’s not always easy to let it all go and trust. However, I’ve noticed in the weeks that I’ve let the moment take the lead, that I am able to relax more, and be more present to others, myself, and life.

Hardships, uncertainty, and trust

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The last two months have been challenging. I was laid off from my job in mid-May. Although, it’s not effective until the end of the year. Then, in early June, I passed out twice at a family event and only learned a few weeks ago that it was a small stroke. Needless to say I felt varied emotions over these few months. About my job, I felt resentment, anger, and sadness. Add on to that feelings of fear and confusion associated with the stroke.

For the most part, I have been wonderfully supported and loved during this time. My family and friends have helped in ways too numerous to list, for which I am very grateful. My husband is handling household chores and errands that we used to share, not to mention him having to cope with his own emotions around my stroke. My spirit guides and God have been less helpful than I would have liked. I looked to them for understanding, but I haven’t gotten a lot of details. Their continual message of trust has left me feeling a bit alone at times and admittedly resentful.

All of this has resulted in my need to step back and rest, even around my healer of the spirit calling. It’s not always easy. Since I launched this site back in January, I felt on a roll with writing, attending workshops, and taking risks as a healer of the spirit. So, I’ve had to set some things on the back burner as I move through this time.

With my health still uncertain, I’m essentially being forced to really appreciate each moment and each day, without planning for the future. That’s a good thing. And daily, I’m still being reminded to trust God, my doctors, Michael, friends, and just let go.

So, I’m left with a number of unknowns and learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, especially as I have further medical tests scheduled about my health situation.

Perhaps some of you have been in a similar situation with your career, relationships, or even health. To use the twelve step phrase, it’s truly about embracing one day at a time.

Brokenness being a vehicle for light?

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In the Denise Linn’s “Becoming a Modern Day Oracle” workshop that I recently attended, someone raised the question about how to prevent low self-esteem from getting in the way of giving a good Oracle card reading. Denise responded with something like the following: “Light goes through the cracks.”

My read on this is that divine light or inspiration is able to come through us not despite our imperfections but because of and through them.

In my last year of my Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology, I was required to write a thesis. My thesis was called, “The Good Enough Therapist.” This came out of my therapy to heal my perfectionism and my struggle with not feeling good enough. At the basis of this was first realizing that a perfect therapist does not exist. But even if there was, that person would be someone without empathy, and therefore couldn’t connect with another’s struggles. In contrast, a good-enough therapist is one who recognizes that her or his own brokenness can help them be fully present with their client and walk with the client on their road to healing.

Likewise, for those on a spiritual path and committed to being a light to others, our brokenness (aka cracks) isn’t necessarily an obstacle to sharing that light but a vehicle through which that light can shine. In fact, as a result of them, in conjunction with our own life experiences, we have an opportunity to reach others who have gone through similar experiences. For through the cracks we bring our own unique empathic light. For example, if like me, you’ve struggled with self esteem, as you come to recognize your beauty, you can help others recognize their own because you’ve been there. Equally important, if and when self-esteem issues arise again, say when you’re trying something new, you have an opportunity to normalize that experience for others and remind them that life is a process.  

“Light goes through the cracks.” What a wonderfully freeing piece of wisdom. Thanks Denise.

Exploration: Can chaos be a good thing?

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In a “Time Traveler’s Guide to the Universe” workshop that I’m currently taking with Denise Linn, Dr. Brand Fortner, and others, Denise said the following:

“Sometimes for new growth, you need chaos.“

That statement stopped me in my tracks.

I work in the software industry that is in constant flux. New products and strategies are regularly being developed. At times, it feels like I’m perpetually juggling my work. In addition, throughout this whole pandemic, as medical folks learned more about COVID-19, their understanding and guidelines changed, requiring us to make perpetual adjustments to our activities. It’s often felt chaotic and overwhelming. Perhaps you’ve felt the same.

I’ve always viewed being overwhelmed as a bad thing because it felt crappy. In these situations, my focus became re-prioritizing my work and activities, and setting boundaries and expectations about what I could and couldn’t do. The goal was to get over the overwhelmed feeling as quickly as possible. Rather than thinking of those times as something negative, Denise’s statement challenges me to see chaos as a vehicle of growth and therefore positive.

So how might it be positive? Well, as I often equate chaos with feeling out of control, perhaps the growth area is acknowledging, again (<chagrin>) that I don’t control everything. Equally important, though, is viewing the chaos as fertile ground through which new and unexpected opportunities can appear. For much of my life, as a result of feeling unsafe, I became hypervigilant to protect myself. That didn’t leave much space for anything new.

So, Denise’s statement challenges me to let the uncomfortable feeling of chaos be, and invite my spiritual guides and God to plant seeds into that ground to help me grow and expand. Just as the universe expands, as learned from the workshop, so too, I believe that there are more possibilities out there that I can currently conceive.

What do you think? I invite you to post your own thoughts.

Blog Addendum – May 18, 2021

As mentioned elsewhere, my guides and God send messages and support via songs. When I took my daily walk this morning, two songs about living your dreams popped into my head. One from the Greatest Showman musical, and, believe it or not, the other from the Lizzie McGuire movie. The line in the Lizzie McGuire song was “Hey now, this is what dreams are made of.” Reflecting on John Connors’ comments to this blog made me realize that in pursuing your dreams, there may be challenges and perhaps even pain involved. I’m experiencing that now with my job situation. And that’s as much as part of the dream as the successes and synchronicities we experience as we pursue it. Thanks John for your wisdom.

New Meditations menu

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Hi everyone. I just wanted to alert you to a new Meditations menu. It includes two guided meditations.

The first, Stepping into your fear/stepping into your calling, came in response to taking a speakers training program, that scared the heck out of me. My fear arose from feeling too new in putting myself out there as a healer of the spirit, especially since I only published my website at the end of January. In other words, it came out of my self-doubt. Yet, my spirit guides kept nudging me to take it and I’ve learned over the years to trust them.

The second, Connecting with your spirit guides and God, came out of the desire to physically experience a connection to my guides and God throughout the day, building upon the connection I feel to my husband, with whom I’ve been together for almost 25 years.

Finally, as you can see, I’m playing around with a new look for my website. Note that the menus appear at the top of page, above my website title.

Living your calling at work (4/03/21)

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(a Voice of Justice and a Listening Ear)

In various spiritual workshops, I’ve heard people ask how they can bring their calling or purpose to their job. I’ve struggled with that myself. As I’ve written, I believe that everyone is traveling their own unique path and as such I would never try to convert someone to my beliefs. That’s despite that fact that if you work in a non-religious setting, like the corporate world, there are laws against such.

Yet, since a good portion of your week is spent at your job, you want to bring your whole self to work. How do you do so? It’s simple. Live your calling at its most basic level by being a person of integrity, honesty, responsibility, and empathy.

I know that may not feel like it’s enough and it can be frustrating not to be able to freely and visibly live that calling 24/7. Ideally, we all want a job that reflects our calling and provides a livelihood. But it’s not always easy to find that and most of us don’t have the luxury of quitting our job until that new calling-based job appears.

Over the last many years in the corporate world though, I have seen and experienced times when providing the basics are desperately needed. How many of us have not seen examples of situations where profit is placed before people and where employees are sometimes treated as a liability. During those times, I have felt especially impelled to raise flags, and bring honesty, fairness, equality, and justice to all my interactions. Equally important for me, as a healer, is to provide a listening ear to coworkers who want to share their struggles, hopes, and fears. Simply, asking how they are doing, and truly listening, not offering advice, lets them know that they are seen.

Intuition – touching the divine (3/28/21)

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Towards the end of my meditation this morning, I realized that I wanted to chat with God. In college, I started having daily chats with God and found them very important in getting to know God and myself. For the last couple years, though, I’ve been chatting more with my spirit guides. Simply put, I missed my God chats.

So, after greeting God this morning, I told God that I just wanted to check in. I didn’t have a particular topic to talk about though. However, my casual chat quickly morphed into talking about the confusing messages that God and my guides sent me recently in my dreams. Because aspects of them repeated, I knew they were important but I couldn’t figure them out. I had previously told my guides that if they wanted me to get something, they needed to be clearer. I must also admit that I was worried that I was letting them down.

What I came to understand from God this morning was that these dreams are part of their training of my intuition. While my intuition is developed, it still needs refining and deepening, because I often default to my mind to figure things out. So God was inviting me to let my mind rest and just be open to learning.

As our conversation progressed, I came to understand that through my intuition I am touching the divine. Touching the divine! What a powerful and rich idea. That truly blows my mind, which ironically reflects God invitation. By listening to my intuition, I am connecting to my divine self, my spirit guides, God, and all others in that divine realm. And by living through my intuition, I am truly being with them.  

At the end of the chat, I felt greater attuned to the divine, more grounded, more full and just plain grateful.