Another Day -- Another No Show

These past two weeks have been virulent with no-shows.  The one at 5:30 yesterday (my most popular appointment time) was just one too much and prompted the following new policy:

Hello "T"

 

I am very disappointed that you and your daughter did not keep the 5:30 appointment yesterday that I had set aside for you.  I had prepared myself, my office, your paperwork, reviewed the notes from our numerous telephone conversations and begun your daughter's file. 

 

That you haven't responded to my calls to your home and cell disappoints me further.  I hope that there hasn't been an emergency that caused your absence.

Based on this experience, and too many similar experiences, I am now requiring a credit card number to secure first appointments.  If the person doesn't give proper notice of cancellation, the credit card will be charged $160 for the session.

 I wish you and your daughter all the best.

 

Letter Ll Progress Report

              I’m only a few weeks into the practice of focused discernment between my Self and my self that I wrote about in my January newsletter.  Well, folks, it looks like it’s going to be a long, long year. 

          As much as I like to think of myself as enlightened, conscious, unfailingly kind and compassionate, real life experiences keep showing up that prove otherwise.  Just ask my husband of 35 years.  I’ve nearly bitten his head off twice in the past two days.

          We are preparing for a big remodeling of our really old kitchen.  All we’re doing is making decisions at this point and already my serenity is coming apart at the seams.

          The only thing that’s been keeping me sane is my Bikram Yoga practice.  Yes, there’s a Group-on out right now for it that’s attracting some real bozos to the studio … to the class I happen to be taking … and the challenge to stay out of judgment and anger is enormous … it’s still my best ticket to a quiet mind.

Smartphone OCD

I'm having a very hard time with something.

For a long time, I only had my personal email coming to my phone.  Recently I added my business email account as well.

The intention was to make my life easier and the result has been just the opposite.

Every so often an email will show up on my home PC that never makes it to my phone so I need to read through both stacks carefully on a regular basis to make sure I don't  miss something important, like a new client inquiry.

I also now have two huge stacks of emails that need to be culled for deletions. If clutter in our homes is bad feng shui, cluttered inboxes in two places must be just as deleterious.  Not to mention the clutter all this is causing in my head!

Plus, now that I know that business emails are on my phone, I have a constant need to check and check and check.  I have developed smartphone OCD and I hate it.

I've been considering removing all emails from my phone and just having them on my home PC.  Frankly, this thought causes me great anxiety.  People expect you to have 24/7 access to their messages and don't always understand if it takes a while to get back to them.  Our technology has programmed us for impatience, hasn't it?

I've lost my perspective and can't see a solution.  As I am by nature a very solutions-oriented person, this situation is causing me great frustration.  If anyone out there has any suggestions, please feel free to share.

In the meantime, I'm off to do some TAT on this.  Don't want to bring these confused, grumpy vibes to my office this afternoon.

. 

The Magic of Life

As I wrote in my October AHP newsletter, my trust muscle has been getting quite a workout lately.  I don't remember signing up for the Trust Olympics, but there it is.  

This trust thing really challenges me to walk my talk.  The "All is moving toward the Good" mantra I should have tattooed on my forehead sounds more like magical thinking than Truth sometimes.  After all, there are no guarantees that it's not.  Just like everyone else on the planet, I have to trust that trust is the right response in just about every situation popping up in my life these days.

I'm always reminding my clients that when any of us sets the intention to heal, to move forward in our lives -- emotionally, physically or spiritually -- it's a sacred intention.  Enter a whole Greek chorus of Guides and Angels cheering us toward the finish line.

Well, what other explanation can I give for the Sacred Spiral that showed up in a pan in my kitchen over the weekend?

Is all really moving toward the Good?  Evidently I am to trust that it is.

Argh!

Obviously none of us in the 6 am Bikram class is working as hard as R. Otherwise, why would the rest of us be so silent? Especially during final savassana.

Breathe, Lucy, breathe.

It cracks me up when people say to me,"Oh, you must be so calm all the time with the work you do." Hah! Those people should have seen me stomping out of class this morning, seething with resentment and dripping with judgment.

I do recognize that R is a good teacher for me. I should be able to tune him out and just go about my business in total peace and serenity.

Well, it's not happening that way.

Good Stress

Our daughter's boyfriend proposed to her last week and now she is engaged. My husband and I are beyond thrilled.

We are also really goofy. Last night my husband walked around the entire house looking for a bottle top that ended up being in his hand the whole time. This is my usually grounded-like-a-rock husband.

This morning in my Bikram Yoga class I caught myself in the the wrong posture, totally out of sync with the rest of the class because my mind had drifted to plans for a family party we'll be hosting in a few weeks.

I keep having to pull my breath down out of my upper chest into my belly. My daily Vimala Alphabet practice is showing some weird patterns that I have to stop and fix as I write.

It occurs to me that this wonderful development in our lives has activated the ancient fight-or-flight response that's usually associated with bad things, not good ones. This good-stress factor kind of sneaked up on me, but now that I'm aware of it, I am doing my best to address it the same way as I teach my anxious clients to address theirs:

1. Take a deep, deep breath! Make sure I'm breathing in through my nose every time and doing my best to draw the breath all the way down into my belly.

2. Pay attention to grounding myself. I like to imagine roots coming down through the soles of my feet and into the earth.

3. Go to bed earlier -- in case my brain wakes up at 3 am (as it has done a few times already) and decides to walk me through all the details it thinks I need to be aware of right then and there.

4. Pay attention to the direction of my thoughts. What is it about wedding plans that generate catastrophic thinking?

5. Write everything down. At least one comic incident illustrated quite clearly that our minds cannot be trusted to hold new information.

6. Remember to laugh!

7. As much as possible, keep JOY as the launching pad for any and all planning. It's all too easy to get sucked into should's that rob me of my perspective, my energy and my sense of self.

If you have anything to add to my list, please comment. I plan to post updates as we go through the days counting down to October 6, 2012. What fun!

Relax!

My absolutely favorite part of yoga is final savassana. The reward at the end of 90 minutes of torture. I crawl to it. I luxuriate in it.

Well, this morning I was just drifting into that delicious la-la-land place when I hear such moaning and groaning, huffing and puffing. Someone must have been rolling a boulder up a mountain, it was so loud.

I pull off my wash cloth/eye pillow and look to see what the heck is going on. Of course, it's "R" all the way across the room. "R" is getting up from his savassana. "R" is pulling his shirt on. That's all. Just "R." "R" who was reprimanded for checking text messages between postures the other day. "R" who can't do anything and still sets himself up in the front row. "R." "R" who has been pushing my buttons since he started coming to 6 am yoga class a few weeks ago.

First I just glared. Nothing. Of course, he has no awareness of anything but himself. Then I felt a roll of anger so red, so hot, that I had to get up. I went out and told the yoga instructor that she had to say something to him about how disruptive he is. She was a little startled because no one in yoga would guess that I could be angry – especially that angry. She smiled. I left.

And then of course he pulls up behind me at the first stop light. And he knows it's me that tattled on him. I refuse to look at him. And then he's next to me at the next stoplight. I refuse to look at him, but I just know he has this little kicked-puppy look.

By the time I got home I felt like such a jerk because obviously he just doesn't know any better. I felt so unkind in my judgment of him, in my refusal to look at him. And wondering why I let him push my buttons so.

The Declaration of the Letter Dd is, "The cause of any upset is never outside of myself." Obviously I need to write some Dd's today.

I Hate No-Shows!

Okay, I admit it: no-shows make me cranky. There I am, in my office, candle lit, mentally and spiritually prepared to work and ... no client.

The minutes tick by. I check my office voicemail, no messages. I check the hallway outside my office, no one. I call the client and the call goes straight to voicemail. I hold the intention that the client is okay. Sometimes I don't get a return call for days afterward and I'm left wondering if something terrible has happened. Occasionally it is something terrible but most of the time it's simply a case of "I forgot."

In the Agreement each client signs at the first session, there is a clause in red that I ask the person to initial. This clause specifies that I charge for any session they miss without giving me 24-hours notice. No exceptions. If someone is ill or has car trouble or something like that, I offer a phone session during the appointment time. I point this out verbally to clients as well and there's never any question.

That is, until they miss a session. Some clients immediately offer to pay for the session. Most get annoyed when I mention the missed session fee. I know that I've lost clients over this because once they pay for the missed session they have not rescheduled.

Have I mentioned that I hate no-shows?

Everything in my life is a gift ...

A colleague I particularly respect sent me the following email:

My talk was to [an association] – couldn’t believe how nervous I was, inspite of how often I do this. It think, because of my counseling background and wanting to speak especially to their particular needs, my stomach acted up a lot and I felt weak-kneed – how embarrassing; finally pulled out of it by simply telling them that I was nervous! HA!

My response to her was:

I find that experiences such as the one you describe help to keep us connected to what our clients are going through. It expands compassion and deepens understanding, ultimately making us better at what we do.

Change in Plans

I have taken the Summer Solstice Celebration (originally scheduled for Tuesday, June 21st) off my calendar because it turns out that I have another commitment that evening.

This is a perfect example of how busy our lives can get and how challenging it sometimes is to keep all the areas of our lives straight.

I belong to an Armenian women's organization (The Daughters of Vartan). The San Francisco chapter is hosting a national Convocation in July and the planning committee has been working for over a year to make it all happen successfully. One of the many hats I'm wearing as part of this huge endeavor, is as narrator of a special Saturday night banquet program. This requires several rehearsals, one of which is Tuesday, June 21st.

At first I thought of rescheduling the workshop for a day before or after. And then sanity asserted itself and I realized that I had enough on my plate until the Convocation... and perhaps a few weeks after.

What surprises me is the resistance I had to making this decision in favor of allowing some open space in my life. I felt guilty and somehow irresponsible. How weird is that?

Does this type of thing show up in your life too?

Spiritual Diplomatic Passport

I don't know about you, but sometimes I get very huffy about having to face difficult life situations. Good grief, we're on a spiritual path, we're enlightened, conscious beings – shouldn't we get a pass on challenging lessons? Does my soul REALLY need this experience to grow? Yeah, right, whatever ... This "spiritual yoga," pulling and stretching us beyond our imagined capacity, can be exhausting.

Practicing Kindness

I've been working on my February newsletter column most of this week. Some months the column just flows out of my fingertips. Not this time. I've written and re-written numerous times until last night I refused to read it one more time before sending all the newsletter components to my wonderful web administrator, Lisa Keene.

The column is called "A Call to Kindness." In it, I am laying out a February challenge for myself and for my readers to refrain from any and all forms of nastiness throughout the month. I should have written something about this being a moment-by-moment practice because it's not even February yet and I'm already struggling with this.

This morning it was hard for me to get out of bed for yoga at 5:30. I was tired and cranky. When I arrived, I had a flash of disappointment and irritation. There was this very new instructor who is soft-spoken and conducts the class as though she's reciting a script by heart -- which may well be the case. She doesn't unlock the studio doors until the first student arrives so maybe she's as ill at ease with life in general as she is as a teacher.

I really dragged myself through class today. She's a very sweet woman, but totally unmotivating. As I lay in final savasana, my mind was buzzing with negativity and some rather unkind judgments. Remembering my intentions, and realizing how badly I'd fallen short of keeping them, I was ashamed of myself.

The instructor was folding towels as I was putting on my sweatshirt and shoes in the studio lobby. I scrambled for something positive to say, just to stem the tide of my own negative thoughts. "You are getting more confident." She lit up and her ever-present smile broadened. "Yes, she said. "Seeing you and Nancy (another "regular" about my age) makes me feel comfortable and helps me do better."

My heart energy shifted as my expanded. Yes, kindness. I like it.

Walking My Talk

During the 9 years I taught Medical Hypnotherapy and Mind-Body Healing at Marilyn Gordon's school, one of the points I stressed the most was how important it is for us practitioners to work on our own stuff with a professional. I would point out that picking up the phone, making the call, scheduling the appointment, and doing the work with someone else kept us in touch with what our clients experience doing the same thing with us.

It's not easy to ask for help. It's not easy to make ourselves vulnerable in front of another human being -- sometimes a veritable stranger. It's not easy to admit we have "stuff," let alone share that stuff.

Yesterday I volunteered as "the client" for a TAT demo with my certification mentor, Lisa Saubolle. The session was just between the two of us, on the phone, and recorded so the other members of our mentoring group could listen later. I had to really concentrate on my own process because thinking about laying myself bare in front of the other group members -- let alone Lisa -- was distracting, to say the least.

The TAT session went well, bringing to light layers of a long-standing self-sabotage pattern I recently recognized. But just as significant was the opportunity to put myself in the shoes of the people I serve, recognizing anew the courage it takes to heal.