One day a knight and a Shaolin monk, coming from opposite directions, came upon a band of brigands accosting a frail, elderly couple on the road.

The knight, yelling in outrage, threw himself from his horse and onto the nearest of the brigands, slicing and stabbing with his sword. Blood spilled; the screams and moans of wounded and dying men were heard.

The monk calmly and smoothly unleashed a barrage of punches and kicks upon those nearest him until they backed away from the two elders, broke, and scattered.

Leaping back into the saddle, the knight called to the monk, “You see those two villagers safely home. I’ll chase down those ruffians to make certain they leave the vicinity!” The monk nodded and began to escort the shaken couple back to their village. The knight galloped after the fleeing brigands.

When he returned, the monk had already made a fire by the side of the road and was cooking a simple meal. He smiled and beckoned the knight to join him.

Red-faced and puffing, the knight clanked over to the fire and sank to the ground. He pulled off his helmet to reveal a knitted brow. His teeth were still clenched in anger, but he tried to stifle it for politeness’ sake.

“Those brigands are gone for good,” he said. “I chased them all the way into the next province. But—oh! Imagine them bothering a defenseless old couple like that. It made me furious to see!”

“I was very angry too,” admitted the monk.

“You? You seemed so calm and serene while fighting those vile bandits!”

The monk spooned food into two bowls and handed one to the knight. “No, my friend, I was extremely angry. So I allowed myself to feel the anger fully. It entered me, shook me like a tree in a fierce wind, and blew away. Once it was gone, I could clearly see the best place to begin my attack.”

*       *       *

When it comes to our emotions, most of us are far more like the knight than the monk.

When we see injustice, rather than remaining centered, we become righteously angry and take it out on the offenders, doing them harm. We rattle and clank around, huffing and puffing and tiring ourselves out with the weight of all that armor.

Or we see something which causes us fear, or grief, or frustration, and we attack it head-on, taking it as our enemy.

Now at this point you’re probably thinking you know what comes next—I’m going to say that the monk’s approach is correct. It’s better to coolly assess the situation and deal with it in the most efficient and least violent way possible, to avoid harming others whenever we can. Right?

Well, sure, but let’s face it. We’re only human, and most of us neither have nor want the training of a Shaolin monk. We’re going to get upset, and probably often.

The point I want to make isn’t so much about the violence we do to others, although that’s important.

It’s about the violence we do to ourselves.

I think that’s just as significant, and often far more insidious.

We think we’re helping ourselves when we try not to feel normal emotions like anger, fear and sadness, but we’re really hurting ourselves instead. We become hardened, calcified, walled off from a portion of our own lives. Armored.

No one enjoys experiencing negative emotions. But we sometimes forget that they come as part of that whole package deal of being human, and that there are very good ways of working with them.

Or we understand that these feelings exist, but that it’s not okay for us to feel them. We’re tough, we’re strong, we’re capable. We should be able to take negativity in stride and forge ahead tirelessly. After all, we have so much to do!

One way or the other, we try to suppress the emotions we don’t want to feel, or to acknowledge as part of ourselves.

We do this by distracting ourselves with endless activity. Work or play, we fill every spare minute with action so that nothing unsavory can wiggle through the gaps.

We do it by focusing primarily on others, burying ourselves in their joys and troubles instead of our own.

We do this by developing addictions that keep the unwanted pain at bay.

We are endlessly creative in finding ways to armor ourselves, like knights, against emotional distress.

But what happens if we remove the armor?

What happens when we allow ourselves to feel—really feel—our emotions fully?

It feels like vulnerability at first. Without armor, we can be hurt! We’re wide open!

But we’re also much more unencumbered and flexible. We can move easily, with greater subtlety and precision, like the monk. We have a lot more freedom to choose our responses.

We can also observe how emotions ebb and flow. We learn that if we let a painful emotion in, it won’t hang around forever. It has a natural rise and fall. We can let the wave of pain roll over us and pass by more quickly if we don’t construct walls against it.

So what does this mean for you, right now, today?

You can relax and cut yourself some slack.

It is completely understandable that you don’t want to feel negative emotions. No one does. Nobody wants to suffer.

But know that you don’t have to be perfectly strong and relentlessly positive all the time, either. You don’t always have to be the shining knight on the tall white stallion.

Above all, know that it’s not just you who shies away from internal discomfort. It’s a tendency we all have.

We’re all human. We’re all vulnerable, and scared of that.

We’re all in this together.

Josiane writes about having a major epiphany: “I know one of the reasons why I don’t get around to doing some of the things I want to do is that as long as they remain undone, they retain the potential of being perfect.”

This is a huge realization. HUGE.

For a very long time I was unaware, as many people are, of the direct link between perfectionism and procrastination. In fact, it seems contradictory. Someone who strives so hard to be absolutely faultless would be sure to include following schedules and meeting timelines in that, wouldn’t they?

But that ignores how deep the perceived need to be superhuman can go. And that need is based on fear, one of our most primal emotions. Which is linked to our basic biological drive for survival. So yeah, perfectionism carries some serious oomph.

To describe what can happen, I am hereby coining a word of my own.

Procrastifectionism (noun):  Delaying action out of the fear, either conscious or unconscious, of not performing to the unreasonably high standards one desires to meet.

It works like this.

You want or need to do something that feels high-stakes for you. (It doesn’t have to look high-stakes to anyone else—it only needs to feel that way to you.) It’s so important, it absolutely has to be good. And today you just don’t have it in you to give it the amount of time, energy, or concentration that it needs to be that good.

So you put it off until tomorrow. Or Monday. Or the first of the month. Because you’ll be ready then.

Except you’re not. You can’t be, because you’re still just as intimidated about how overwhelming the project seems and how perfectly you need to do it.

So you start feeling bad about your ability to get the job done. If you can’t even get started, how will it ever be good? Your self-esteem sinks, and you don’t feel ready to tackle the task. Again.

Rinse and repeat. It’s a vicious cycle.

Until you realize, like Josiane did, that

The form in which that imagined potential of perfection exists . . . it is not what I want. That potential perfection, even if it was actualised, is deeply flawed. It is flawed, and for a very simple reason: there is no “me” in that (potentially or actually) perfect thing – it is not in any way infused with my essence, my me-ness.

Hmm. Interesting. I kept reading. Then she pretty much blew me away with this bit:

Those things I don’t create . . . can’t be infused with my essence so long as they remain within me. As long as they’re only within me, I am not within them; they have to come out of me in order to take with them – and contain within them – some of what I am.

It reminds me of when we learned about the two types of energy way back in grade school—potential and kinetic. Kinetic energy is energy in motion—acting on the world and doing things. Potential energy contains power, but doesn’t unleash it. It just sits there, pregnant with possibilities, but giving birth to none of them.

Okay, so I’m anthropomorphizing basic physics. But you get the point.

As you go through the next few days or weeks, check in with yourself from time to time and ask yourself which type of energy you’re embodying. There’s no right or wrong—this is about just noticing, so you can make more self-aware choices.

And check out the rest of Josiane’s blog post. She’s one smart woman.

But I’ve been so well trained to fear
What happens if we don’t adhere
To all the rules we’re taught will keep
Us safe from wolves (obedient sheep)

That I’m no longer even sure
Of what I want; I just endure
Days and weeks and months and years
Of subservience to collective fears.

You say that I must earn my pleasures
By dancing to society’s measures,
Following norms I had no choice in making
With most of my waking hours yours for the taking.

But now I’m making a different choice
And listening to my inner voice
That tells me which rules I want to follow
And which make me choke when I try to swallow.

“Everyone does it” is not an excuse
For allowing myself to be seduced
Into a life that’s unfulfilling
In so many ways—I must be willing

To sever my ties to what you have taught me.
I am not the person you’ve always thought me.
The “good little girl” is growing into
A woman committed to learning what’s true

For herself regardless of what she is told.
She’s scared, but determined, and will not be sold
On a story that keeps her inside of your cages.
She wants to be daring and free and courageous

In facing her fear and her anger and doubt
Along with her laughter and joy, letting out
The pressure that’s built up for much too long
By struggling so hard all those years to belong

To a system she never really believed in.
So I’m waving goodbye now, truly leaving
Your heart-grinding tedium far behind,
Unless you’d like to change your mind

And come along, too. I could use some companions
When fording the rivers and crossing the canyons
I’ll surely encounter along the way—
But make your decision. I’m leaving today.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about next year. I’ve had a year of making great progress “in the soft,” as Havi Brooks would say (that’s the inner emotional and thought-process kind of self-work), and in 2010 I want to continue with that. However, I also have some definite goals “in the hard” (all that outer, tangible and sometimes trackable stuff) that I’d really like to achieve. Have I learned enough in the past few years to be able to have “hard” goals again without beating myself up over them? And will they block my “softer” goals, or can I find a balance between the two?

Luckily for me, Pace and Kyeli Smith, whom I’ve written about before, are launching their newest program today. It’s called ”52 Weeks to Awesome, and it involves a conveniently year-long process of completely pressure-free and non-guiltified remarkamobilization. (That’s mobilizing yourself to become even more remarkable than you already are. Of course it’s a word. Humph.)

I could talk about it, but why not let Kyeli and Pace do it themselves? I was lucky enough to catch them before they head off to Ireland very soon on their honeymoon, and they were kind enough to let me interview them.

You’re offering a year-long e-course entitled 52 Weeks to Awesome. “Awesome” is a pretty vague term—what exactly do you mean by it?

Our definition of awesome is pretty simple and twofold: a) Knowing what you want and how to get it, and b) knowing what you don’t want and how to avoid it. This knowledge coupled with this behavior makes for a pretty awesome life.

I’ve seen your list of weekly topics for 52 Weeks to Awesome, and it’s quite aweso…erm, impressive! What were your criteria for choosing which topics made the list?

Well, with 52 missions, we had lots of space for as much awesome as we could come up with. Almost. I mean, we did wind up with 5 bonus missions, because we kept coming up with stuff. But anyway. Every mission had to be simple, concrete, uncomplicated, useful – and fun. We want every week to be something that’s straightforward and simple to implement because that keeps it do-able, and if they’re fun, too, that’ll keep you opening those emails.  (:

I’ve lost count of all the programs I’ve started with enormous enthusiasm, only to berate myself when I inevitably fall off the wagon. How can people like me get around this tendency?

Yeah! We planned for that! The first week’s mission is about figuring out how to avoid exactly that. It’s called “Helping you complete the next 51 missions (and anything else you commit to).” We realize that the course won’t do anyone any good if it’s sitting at the bottom of your trash folder, so our first priority is to help you get what you need out of it.

I also tend to get very rigid in the way I define success—where maybe I’m not really doing all that badly, but my thinking becomes very black-and-white. For instance, I might start an exercise program where I decide I have to or should work out four days a week, but I only manage to do it two or three times. So in my mind, I’ve failed, my self-esteem takes a blow, and I stop working out entirely. I recognize the folly of this way of thinking, but it’s so hard to break free. Any suggestions?

*nods* That’s exactly why we made the missions optional. You’ll get out of it what you put into it, but we won’t judge you based on how many missions you complete, or how well you complete them. This is exactly why we put “Self-acceptance essentials,” “Self-esteem essentials,” and “Self-love essentials” at the very beginning of the course — weeks 2, 3, and 4. Hopefully that will be quick enough to beat the “have to”s and “should”s to the punch. (:  Last but not least, anyone who enrolls in 52 Weeks to Awesome gets a lifetime membership — you can repeat the course as often as you’d like, and you don’t even have to wait until next year. So imagine your life explodes in January, and you get behind on the course. In April, you finally have time to devote to the e-course again, but now you feel behind, like you have a mountain of backlog. Just start over. Just start over from the beginning, and we’ll re-enroll you so you start receiving Week 1 again. You can do this as many times as you like, with no worries or judgment.

What can we say to ourselves, or do, to help ourselves feel that little steps really do make a difference?

It’s like moving. When you get ready to move, you (or at least, we) look around the house and feel overwhelmed. So much stuff! So many things to do! But if you grab a box and start packing, before long you’ve got an empty house and bunches of full boxes. You can’t possibly fill 10 boxes at once — you have to take it one box at a time till you’re done. The same thing applies here: one step at a time. You can’t burst into awesome and totally change your entire life overnight (well, actually, you can, but it’s really crazy and we don’t recommend it). Reminding yourself that the really good, permanent, sticky changes take time — and that every step you take is good, no matter what — will really help put it in perspective.

What are each of your personal favorite topics in 52 Weeks to Awesome?

(Pace says) I can’t pick a favorite based on usefulness, because all 52 are useful. So I’ll pick based on which is my favorite to talk about: Week 52: Manifestation essentials. That’s when I get to go off about my personal philosophy of the nature of reality. The stuff we teach that week works regardless of your metaphysical beliefs, but it’s fun to think about and talk about anyway. (:

(Kyeli says) For me, it’s a tie between Week 10: Stopping the Downward Spiral and Week 15: What is Fear, Anyway? These have been two of the most powerful steps I’ve taken in my own personal journey towards awesome, and the two I’m most excited about sharing!

What have you each learned in creating the program?

(Pace says) Amusingly, I’ve learned a lot about the usual error. Some of the missions I thought would be easy turned out to be unexpectedly challenging for others, because those missions rely on things I’ve already internalized — but we haven’t taught yet. We wound up doing a lot of re-ordering to be sure we covered the basics before moving into the stuff that wound up being more complex. The other thing I’ve learned is… I guess I’d call it a Grand Unified Theory of Awesome. Putting all the pieces together in a way that makes sense to teach them has helped me understand how they’re all related, and the underlying principles behind it all.

(Kyeli says) Brevity with impact. I’m a rambler, and keeping the emails in “bite-sized tidbits” has been challenging and fun.

What does the program cost, and where can people sign up?

We want this to be affordable for everyone, because being more awesome is a solid foundation for world-wide change. The 52-week course, plus 5 bonus weeks, is $52 — and, from Monday the 14th (that’s today!) through Thursday the 17th, it’s on sale for $39; $39 amounts to three full months free! We even have a few apprenticeships, where you get monthly coaching and extra email support for the entire length of the course.  There are only six of those spots, and each one is $390; Registration is on our site, here.

If people want to know what other awesomeness you two ladies are up to, how can they stay connected with you?

We’re both on Twitter – @Kyeli and @PaceSmith.  Kyeli is prolific, goofy, and talks to her uterus — so you’re forewarned. We’re on Facebook as Kyeli and as Pace. And, of course, there’s our blog where we talk about being awesome, the Connection Paradigm, personal growth, and all kinds of interesting stuff!

Click here or on the graphic above to view more details

Thanks very much for your time, Pace and Kyeli! Happy packing, and have a wonderful trip to the Emerald Isle!

In the meantime, I’ll be looking over my “52 Weeks” goodies and thinking awesome thoughts about 2010.

Yeah, me too.

This post was sparked by Jennifer Louden (whom I am not accusing of being saccharine, by the way—she’s the real deal) and her Declaration of Freedom from Self-Improvement which she posted today to kick off a week on this theme on her blog.

I signed the declaration by leaving a comment, but it made me think about how easy it is to fall into empty-words, positive-thinking rhetoric and say, “Yes! Non-judgmental self-acceptance, what a great idea! I stand behind it completely!” and then go about your life as usual, vs. really trying to practice it.

And the ironic thing here is that trying to practice it can turn into the very self-improvement self-tyranny you’re attempting to unlearn. (“Damn it! I’m failing at unconditionally accepting myself!”)

That’s a fine line to walk, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on what has helped me to walk it.

Today’s post is about one of the most important attitude adjustments you can make toward overcoming what I am hereby naming “Superhero Syndrome.” (Definitely more to come on that!) I will follow up soon in another post with a list of specific techniques I’ve used.

So . . . how can you move past feeling that the pep talks (from others and from yourself) about how “you’re perfectly fine as you are” are empty positive-thinking platitudes? How can you start believing them?

Realize that accepting yourself as you are now is NOT the same thing as becoming complacent and lazy.

If you already set high (maybe even unreasonably high) standards for yourself, you will not suddenly turn into a person who lets things slide, produces shoddy results, and stops working on yourself. It’s simply not in your nature. You will continue to do your best, but if you can uncouple those efforts from the belief that they define your worth as a human being, you’ll gradually be able to relax into an acceptance what you really are—an amazing work in progress.

This is not easy, but it’s well worth the effort. Personally, I get there by:

• Self-talk. I remind myself over and over again that the essence of me is more than the sum of my actions and how successful I think they are.
• Self-observation. When I act as if the above concept is true, I notice that I feel more peaceful and happy. The more I notice that I do not, in fact, become lazy and complacent when I let go of my attempt to be 100% perfect at everything, the more I build up evidence that I’m not going to turn into an unmotivated lump.

One important thing to keep in mind here is that if you’ve been riding yourself into the ground for a long time, once you begin to realize that you can stop trying so hard all the time you may find yourself sleeping a lot. Or vegging out and staring at walls or the television. Or reading novels. Or playing lots of computer games. Or whatever you do to relax and unplug.

This is fine. You are not becoming a lethargic slob. You are catching up on much-needed rest and rejuvenation, which you may have been denying yourself for years or even decades.

When I finally admitted that I needed to slow down and nurture myself, I slept for 10 hours or more per night for four straight months, with many daytime naps on weekends. And when I came out the other side, I had more energy and enthusiasm for life than I’d felt in many years. I was able to do more.

Go easy on yourself. Don’t be like the saying on one of my all-time favorite t-shirts.

And stay tuned. There’s more to come on this reeeeeeally important topic.

And a hearty hail-and-well-met to anyone who has found my blog via that post. Welcome to you! )

The post has received many positive comments so far, indicating that it has struck a nerve. That’s very gratifying to me. Several people have even written things like, “Wow, I feel vindicated. Now I’m going to go write something horrible!”

Well, I’d like to invite you to go ahead and do so. And then if you’d like, you can post the results here.

You can either link to what you’ve written via a comment below, or even write something directly in the comments if it’s not so long that it will make scrolling difficult.

The only rules?

1. Nothing profane, deliberately insulting, or in general bad taste, please.
2. No judgment. Let’s all acknowledge that posting is scary, and cheer on anyone who takes a chance and shares what she or he has written publicly.

So . . . no praise or harsh words about any of the content, please. Just support for the act of writing and publishing itself.

Wahey! Let’s do this thing!!!

I’ve been pondering why it is that I always feel as though I have to meet a higher standard than anyone else. How did that requirement sink in? What, in my genetic makeup or my upbringing, makes me feel like I must be flawless in everything I do, to the point that I’m often so paralyzed I can’t even start?

I may have gotten some fresh insight into this. I’m currently in an extended phase of physical decluttering at my house, and yesterday I unearthed a bag of stuff my parents had sent me a few years back when they were decluttering. I’d tossed it in a “things to deal with later” box and forgotten about it.

Now here it was again. I opened it up to find a pair of my baby shoes, a baby book with entries by my mother, and an assortment of old report cards, poems I’d written, plus a couple of clippings of myself in the local paper. Curious, I started flipping through the baby book. There were pictures, a few locks of my hair taken at different times, and glowing entries about how cute I was. Then, as I read about myself getting older, I noticed an interesting pattern.

First medical examination: “She was so good and didn’t even cry.” Six months old:”Such a good girl!” And more through the first years of my life, in my mother’s handwriting: “Her nursery school teacher is continually astounded.” “Michelle is a really good girl.” “At a fifth-grade reading level already.” “A teacher’s dream.” “Michelle is still a very good girl.” (As if they were poised for me to become something else?)

Then an undated entry under “Likes and Dislikes” (about school) reads, “Michelle loves to learn. She seems to expect perfection from herself and others.”

Many people develop a sense of perfectionism because they are taught to feel inadequate from early childhood, and the only way they think they can be worthy of love is to strive (or at least appear) to be flawless. That was never my problem. Nope—I was always being told how smart, creative, wonderful, artistic, and ahead of my peers I was. You’d think this would be absolutely fantastic for a young child to hear, wouldn’t you?

In many ways it was. I’ve always had a lot of self-confidence, and I’m very grateful to my parents for instilling that in me. But it certainly set the bar high.

I clearly remember my parents telling me that they would be proud of me no matter how I did in school as long as I tried my best…but that they were very glad I always brought home As and Bs. College, they continued, was very expensive, and it would help a whole lot if my grades were good enough to earn some kind of scholarship.

This was when I was about 10 years old.

I don’t blame my parents for pushing me—they were honestly doing what they felt was best, and I certainly never balked. I was one of those geeky kids who really did love school. Why? Well, I truly did love learning things. But I also liked all the ego strokes I got for being such a good student. Who wouldn’t enjoy all that praise?

So I must have become terrified of not getting it anymore. I became a people-pleaser. First my parents and my teachers. Then anyone in authority (religious leaders, college professors, employers), and friends who might take away their approval and acceptance of me if I failed to be the person I thought they wanted me to be.

I created a series of costumes to wear in different situations. They don’t completely cover me—I wear them so that just enough of me peeks out to give my appearance a stamp of originality. The zany sense of humor. The jaunty confidence and outgoing nature that so often hide the yearning places and the sadness in my heart. The tightening of the mouth that I can’t allow to reveal what I want and need, because that might not be acceptable. And then people might not like me anymore.

Underneath it all, there’s still the little girl who so desperately wants to be included in the hopscotch games at recess not because she’s smart or creative or a good little girl, but simply because she’s herself.

I think I need to find out some more about who she is.