Mornings with Carmen

Sea of Cortez

2012 is a reality. Happy New Year!

For those of us who plan to stay in this world despite the end of the world predictions, it is a nice idea to have some new resolutions. You know some map for the road. Everything that helps us to be a better person is a great idea for a new year’s resolution.

I use some tricks to keep my self on track after the excitement is gone and the challenge arrives. I will call them principals and will share them under the magical number of seven, just to add some spice here.

Ok, here are my seven principals for self-motivation. I took them from other books, friends or simply, life experience.

1. Realistic and measurable goals are easier to track. If I say I want to save 100 dollars, is something I can measure, it sounds simple and is not scary. Very different if I set the goal of saving. If I want to show love to my mom, I can break down the goal in counting how many times I am going to call with patience and care, go to a movie with her or bring her flowers. Did you go it? Not that life is only numbers, but having in the list something I can compare in December 2012 with what is me now will help. Ok, then take paper and pencil and put down your goals so clearly that a kindergartener can measure it.
2. Changing others is not a goal. I hear very often in therapy people who want to change others because they are the problem. Well, the good news is that often they are not a problem. The bad news is that we are the ones who allow or not allow some behaviors toward us. If a goal is about a partner, a boss, or a cat, chances are you will face frustration and despair. I know, it is hard to think what we can need to relate different with others but is the best option, especially for a new year’s resolution.
3. Baby and firm steps are the foundation of big accomplishments. Again, saving 100 dollars is a small goal, it seems possible and it is motivating. Saving 20,000 for a new car is also possible but harder to imagine. If you think that your 100 dollars represent now one of the tires of your new car, you will be motivated to save 300 more. Usually cars require 4 tires and a lot of things in between. Got it? Remember, self-discipline is shy, do not scare it with huge goals. Self-confidence, on the contrary grows up in the midst of little and evident successes.
4. Public declaration is a commitment. By voicing your goals you are telling the universe: “ I am ready”. By sharing your goals with others you may inspire them to do their own. If they see that you are actually following thru, most likely they will get involved in your efforts. People love to help others who are working hard toward something wonderful.
5. Have images to refresh your mind. I talked before about vision boards. Having a collage near my bed, help me to see them every morning and my brain has a clear map to follow. Any kind of image that helps you to see the outcome will be great.
6. Self-compassion takes 5 seconds. If you broke your discipline, be kind and compassionate. Esther and Jerry Hicks would say, “be like a gps”. The voice in the gps is neutral. When you turn to the incorrect side, it says “recalculating route”, it never says, “your are stupid, now I need to think again”. Is it that clear? Love your self; shake your body ad start over. After all the year has 365 days. If you try this many times, you for sure will get to your goal.
7. They must bring you joy. If your goal is a torture for your self, you better think if you really want it. We are made for wonderful things and learning how to enjoy the ride is as much important as arriving to our final destination. Besides, we are a more desirable company when we are willing to be happy.

I hope this is helpful. If you need any assistance, ask to those who already mastered whatever you want to accomplish. You may be surprised how many people love to share their experiences. Also, feel free to post here your goals or send an email. I will be glad to pray for you so may become a better person this 2012. It will be fun to see them again at the end of the year. Let’s the year begin that we are ready!

With love,

Carmen.

Comments here or at comment@morningswithcarmen.com

Recently I have been catching a cold three times a year. Since I am usually healthy, it is no easy for me to stop working and staying at home for long time. However, I realize that the stress of a graduate program is showing up in my body. Therefore, I am researching any healthy way to help myself.

Let me tell you that back in Mexico, a cold would be a chance to watch TV and receive visitors. Most visitors volunteer to make you laugh and to eat with you. The goal is to motivate the appetite of the pale and skinny person (weight does no t matter, if you are sick is because of lack of food, according to my father). Therefore, while struggling with headaches, fever, and running nose, I used to find myself in bed with tons of fresh juices, homemade food, and some of the eight cats that my sister has. Oh, the dog also will be there staring at me for long, long time, trying to figure out why I am not in the mood to play. Of course, there is no need for medicine other than hot tea. With this pampering approach, as you can guess, colds are never long enough.

Anyway, I am an American now and we, Americans deal differently with colds, (if this way can be called dealing with). People, like me, have “important” things to do. Despite the “important” things to do, you cannot be cruel to the point of inviting somebody to your home or go to work. A cold is not a thing to enjoy according to the American society. Time is money! Somebody would say. At the same time, you better stay away from everybody. Besides, we all have full agendas and a cold, like many other unimportant needs to be scheduled. &^%$*%%$%# grrrr!

I could not believe that I have all these symptoms on the first week of school. Well, my cold this time, said “Excuse me madam, cell workers on duty, so cancel everything and let us do our job”. Ok, I thought I could read or write since I am in bed. Nop, I cannot even move. I do not want water, tea, or even open my eyes. The headache is so intense. My Indian warn me: I DO NOT take medicine, unless I am dying. I find it disrespectful to my body. Ok, I know that but, this time meditation is not helping. Oh God! I cannot say I am miserable either because actually, I am quite happy with my life when cold is not here. Additionally, I am not falling to sleep despite how much I want to. &^%$*%%$%# grrrr!  Suddenly, I heard my inner voice:

-Go and paint!

-What?, I almost yell back to my self. -Paint? I cannot even seat.

-Yes, move and find the stuff to paint! If you ask your clients to paint for stress, why don’t you?

I moved out of bed and painted, well, I put some color on the paper at first slowly and using dark colors. After 30 minutes, I ended up having fun, tolerating more light colors not only in the paper but in the room. Soon I was hungry, thirsty and ready to read a little. Painting helped me to alleviate my cold symptoms and function around the house for today. Therefore, I agree that can be an alternative way to deal with cold.

Do you have any other alternative ways?

Please share here or at comment@morningswithcarmen.com

Whether or not physical movement is a challenge for you, camping, especially with company, could be a great opportunity for emotional and spiritual growth. This experience helps you to stretch not only your muscles but also your soul. If you are ready to learn from yourself, here are some basic attitudes you may need for your next sleeping outdoor adventure.

Sense of humor: Living without a cozy bed, a toilet, hot shower, and your basic private space can be a nightmare if you usually have them. Laughter can be handy here. Be willing to enjoy the temporal lack of luxuries. Yes, you do not have a Starbucks near by or grandma to cook a soup for you. However, this does not mean that you can be grumpy and turn yourself into an undesirable company.

Tolerance: Allow yourself some neurotic behavior, you are human! Pick a small luxury you are not willing to give up and share that with your co-campers and listen theirs. The secret is that you forgive yourself and other people for being a little neurotic. For instance, in my last trip I wanted to take a shower at least once a day and my friend wanted to have everything super clean around food. We swam in a cold lake and I help her to super clean everything after we ate. We both were happy campers!

Curiosity: Explore, explore, explore! Unbelievably, but there is life in trees, animals, and rocks. You are their guest. They share some wisdom in their own language. It is important to listen what other people know about the place, but it is also important to be in silent and collect information yourself. Open your five or six senses. Listen the wind, enjoy the rain in your skin: be a curious child!

Openness: While it is important to plan with checklists and google maps, improvisation is a key attitude. Plans are merely suggestions when it comes to outdoors activities. Camping shakes our beloved fantasy of having the control. Be open to change route or the entire plan if necessary. Be open to other’s ideas as crazy as they may sound. Everything is permitted, as long as you feel safe and are protecting the environment. After all, you are at the mercy of the weather and the capricious mother earth. Isn’t it fascinating?

Creativity: Do the same things in very different forms. If you want to struggle less, accept the scarcity of the moment and be creative. As for entertainment; being bored is forbidden when drawing, singing, dancing, and journaling can be done with none or limited accessories.

Gratitude: Gratefulness enhances your spirit and makes you a better human being. Leave at home the preconceived ideas about what a lunch is or how a dinner table looks like. You may find yourself happily eating a cold soup or sun-heated oranges. Be grateful for the moon, the sun, the air, and even the lack of Internet or cell phone signal. Those great things make your camping trip an adventure. Don’t you think?

If you are not camping soon, do not worry; this emotional survival kit applies to everyday challenges. Until the next post . . . take care.

Dear Carmen:

I trust you. I trust that you will come with ideas and wonderful paragraphs. I know there will be hard times in the writing of your dissertation but, I also know you’ve accomplished so many things in the past including the thesis for the master. You keep saying that writing in English is not your thing, but I can see you improve everyday. I am very proud to see your posts and papers. I can see the fluidity that you have now in comparison with two years ago. I still remember when you used to panic for one page assignment and the challenge of putting one sentence together without the underline corrector of the word processor. I can laugh now, of how many times you fought with those awful green lines trying to guess what was the problem. One sentence could take you so long that at the end of the paragraph you ended up crying and questioning your intelligence.

I also remember the love and patience of many of your friends who were willing to sit and work with you despite their own stress.

I trust you will be fine in writing many pages now. Moreover, I trust your intuition to gather material, to organize it, and to be able to make it yours. I trust your playfulness and capacity to have fun with whatever comes. I love when you write with passion thinking that you will change the world, at least for the Mexicans in this country. I trust you will dance, sing, draw, and write posts during the process.

Ambitious, disciplined, courageous, and optimistic are the traits that brought you to Palo Alto and pushed you to have a PhD. Those same traits will get you all the way through until the graduation day.

Keep writing that I will be with you at every moment.

Love,

Your inner/magical Carmen.

Two days ago, I had a client for therapy. Therapy would be a normal thing to do in Mexico after 19 years of woking with people. But here, it was de first session I could gave after 5 years of living in this country. This is my first unpaid hour of the almost 4,000 that I have ahead before getting paid for it. It is amazing how the bussiness of psychology is controled and made for people not to get license before investing thousands of dollars. Anyway, this is another topic.

I was happy, excited, and grateful to have the opportunity of listening somebody. I am passionate about my career and I will choose it again and again. Yesterday, I was even more happy to sit with colleagues and exchange experiences. I loved the faces of those women, specially the new ones, some of them terrified to do therapy. That is right, therapy is a scary profession. The good thing is that requires heart and very good intentions. Therefore, a new therapist who pay attention and is willing to open the heart can be a better therapist than an old one who thinks he or she knows everything. The interesting part of my profession is that never ever a session is the same and I feel challenged at every moment, and I need as attentive now than years ago.

Doing therapy for me, could be similar to driving. You need to be attentive all the time, does not matter if you are a new driver or an old one. One single mistake can damage others or yourself. The most accidents I had ( in therapy) was when I thought I was right and powerful. The best this to do in both, driving and doing therapy, is to love and be compassionate toward our self and others. When driving, you cannot think who is more important or who has the better car. Traffic rules are not about that. During the session nobody is more  important or less, is only who is the one driving at that moment and how much this person cares of the passengers. If you love and care for your copilot, you will not admit for him or her to do something crazy in the middle of the highway. The same in therapy, if you love your client you will set boundaries and do so with firmness and determination but also with softness and good manners.

Anyway, I want to dedicate this post to all the new therapists in the world. Welcome to this profession and thank you for wanting to make a difference in other’s people lives.

May we all have opportunities to grow whether in the role of client of the one who is leads. Until the next post. . . drive safe even if you are not or will intent to be a therapist

Carmen.

Getting inspired (living in-spirit) or being visited by the Muses seems like an accidental or almost impossible feeling, especially when we need to work with deadlines. I rather believe in creative playful improvisation and persistent work. Practice, practice, and practice is the key and it usually works for me.

“To do art only when the high feeling of completion and connectedness in the moment of inspiration would be like making love only for the moment of orgasm” says Nachmanovitch in his book Free play. 

In all the creative writing books I’ve read for the past two years, the famous writers mention that very seldom a first draft is also the final one. Edit, edit, edit! They repeat like a mantra or manifesto. Editing and revisiting one’s work is the best strategy to create masterpieces, according to them. Maybe this is why I love to do blogging. Here I can share first drafts without fear of being inadequate. I must confess that is not always a good idea considering that will be in the virtual world in who knows what minds.

Anyway, tonight their mantra is not working either. I have dancing and slippery ideas in my head and a huge need for extended vacations. I even started wondering what I miss the most, if the visit from inspiration or the creative playful moments of orgasm. None of then seems to appear in my life lately leaving me with the only option of repetition, in writing for now J. “Fake it until you make it” is one wise sentence I learn from my informal English lessons. Ok. I will pretend I am a wonderful researcher and will come up with wonderful ideas for my dissertation topic. It will be good I know it. I’ll keep you posted.

Remember, when lack of inspiration is the problem, “fake it until you make it,” it works, don’t you think?

Comment at comment@morningswithcarmen.com or below this post.

I am a free, a happy, and a privileged woman. I am grateful I have had the conditions in my life that allowed me to run away from violence, poverty, lack of education and suffering. I can tell you my life is perfect in comparison with many other women in the world. Ok. . . except for the student loan I am getting for the sake of a PhD .

My current situation is the product of a personal hard work, yes, but also the product of social conditions and people that were on my favor. Unfortunately, this is not the case for many other human beings, and somehow one part of my soul is still suffering with them.

I wish I could have the words and sense of humor to explain in a useful way what I see in my career as psychologist. I wish I could have the conditions to be more helpful to those people who suffer specially in Mexico, where violence is growing at giant steps without any hope in the near horizon.

Maybe for now, the best is to go back to dissertation work, hoping one day will help me to better express my indignation and frustration for the treatment given to Latino immigrants. I believe no men, women or children should be overpowered or diminished.

For now, I’ll leave you with my favorite author and activist , Isabel Allende, in her TED talk “Tales of passion” She will make you laugh and charmingly will make you reflect about women’s conditions. Enjoy it!

I am not posting that much lately, I know. It is because I am having great time in Mexico. I am sleeping, eating, and resting. I am having coffee and long conversations with friends. In my free time I also watch TV with my Mom or a lot of movies with my sister. I still have two more weeks to go of this sweet life. I guess I am enjoying it because I know I have another intense academic year in front of me. I know the fall will come and, in my desk will be more written sheets than leaves falling from the trees. For now, I just want just one more cup of tea or a piece of cake.

After 6 weeks I feel like my brain start to believe that it is ok not to produce papers, or to be concern about how many book and articles we need to read for the next day.

When I was younger, I always wanted to be rich to have this free time until I discover that, actually I can have it because I am not rich and I do not need to be worry about wall street moods.

Anyway, what I want to share with you now is that, it has been very healing to slow down. I hope this can be contagious and you get inspired to have some rest in whatever you do to stress yourself.

Resting is good for the good functioning of the brain and for the stress. It seems that it is a very simple fact but so easy to forget.

Hugs from Mexico!

PS: If you do not feel like resting and want some ideas of what to do, please start by commenting at comment@morningswithcarmen.com or below. They are always helpful so I know somebody actually reads this site.

I will read it when it is time for me to work

Carmen.

A week ago, I attended a memorial service. This was the first one for me in this country. I loved it!

Family members got to speak about their relationship they had with the person who passed away. He was a wonderful man whom I did not have the pleasure to meet. I was there because I care about one of his wonderful daughters. This post is with all my respect for he and his family.

The whole public speaking and sharing stories is a new idea for me, I was fascinated listening how each family member, or friend who has experienced the same person in very different ways. The common thing on the speeches was that this person was a loving father, uncle, grandfather, and friend. All of them spoke about the moments when they felt inspired, loved, understood, or celebrated by him. There I was, learning from him, even though I only meet him at his memorial service.

This is it. It does not matter, how many languages, diplomas, houses, cars, or career accomplishments one can achieve. The only thing that matter is how passionate we are about life and how much we care about those near us.

In my family traditions, people get to the mass in the Catholic Church, the priest talk about the death person and the rest of the people cry all the way until the cemetery. If one is lucky and the priest is a family friend, the speech will be more accurate. If not, it will be whatever the priest is feeling to say this day. I do not like that, I never did. However, I like the ritual of the next nine days when the family prays every night and get to share food and stories about their beloved. I remember, I was a young age when I told my mom that for my funeral I wanted Mariachi music, and a party with food. Of course, my mom always changed the topic.

I really meant it. I am living my life in the way I want ever since I am a child. I enjoy most of my days, and enjoy most of my friends. For sure, I enjoy all my meals with company or without it. I am doing the career I always wanted. I danced, loved, and made love with passion and intensity. I drank coffee or tea with most of my friends and spent hours talking about life. I cried, loved, worked, and played hard. So please, in my funeral or memorial service, in English or Spanish, feel free to laugh, dance, and share stories. Do not let the priest talk about me unless he or she knew me. Feel free to enjoy the day with me. This is a celebration. Whoever attends will have an excuse to leave work or other responsibilities for a noble purpose and, I am going to heaven (oh, yes, after my wonderful life here, I am going to heaven). I lived my life convinced that every day is a brand new day to love, to care, and to share. So please, this day do the same.

Now, this is not a good bye, I have plans to stay around for another 40 years . . . at least. The point here is that every memorial service, funeral or person who die gives us the opportunity to reflect in our own lives. It is like weddings that make us to reflect about romance.

Here is the question for today: Do you love your life enough to love your death?