Shelagh Meagher's Blog, page 10

The Scariness Scale

What’s scarier, bungee jumping or clothes shopping? Depending on who you are, you might answer either way. I have zero interest in bungee jumping – the whole idea gives me the whim-whams. Shopping, I generally like – except when it comes to showing my legs.

Now, I’m not saying that gives me the same kind of terror that bungee jumping would, but fear is a very personal thing. At the risk of over-sharing, varicose veins, dog bites, and horse kicks have all made my legs look like they belong to a 90-year old. So while I like the idea of dresses in the summer, the reality kinda falls short of my vision.

I was shopping recently in Montreal, where women are a little less uptight about having to dress like older people when they are older people. I tried on a dress that was very form fitting and – the biggy – shorter than I anticipated. My knees (gasp!) were showing. When I came out of the changing room, the sales lady remarked on how good the dress looked on my body, which was true. I said I didn’t feel I could wear it. I couldn’t get my eyes off my legs. The sales lady, perplexed, asked me “Why? Is it your -” and here she groped for the right English word ” – personality?”

Ahem.

An English speaker might have used a more discreet word. But after a bit of initial shock, I realized she’d gotten right to the nub of the matter and I had to laugh. My personality was exactly what was standing in the way of feeling comfortable in that dress.

I didn’t buy it. But I am wearing other dresses. They’re a little longer. I’ve moved myself up one notch on the shopping scariness scale, and for now that’s just fine.

Skinning Cats

The expression ‘there are many ways to skin a cat’ is awfully morbid and, not being a cat skinner, I don’t know if it’s even true. But it’s an idea successful adventurers apply a lot. Making dreams a reality, unless you’ve just won the lottery and also have no obligations in your life, often requires looking at the challenge from more than one angle. Here’s a great example.

The glamour of Galapagos life.

Sharon loves to travel, especially to remote, wildlife-rich locations, but that can be pricey. How to do it without breaking the bank? She parlayed her work expertise. The first time, she used her librarian skills to get a pro bono stint with the marine reserve at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Galapagos, allowing her to stay on after the tour group – normally the only way to see the island – had left. Nothing like an inside look at one of the most sought-after wildlife destinations in the world.

Realizing she’d discovered a brilliant solution to her travel desires, she then went after the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s wildlife refuge on the Midway Atoll in the Hawaiian Islands. By then she was a webmaster, a skill that got her three weeks each summer for several years in a place very few people get to see for even a day. In fact, the refuge has since closed to the public, making Sharon’s time there a real rarity.

Rare friends on Midway.

A little work was a totally worthwhile trade-off for such incredible opportunities. In a world where ‘volunteer’ experiences are something you typically pay to have, this approach to  travel adventure was particularly inspired.

The Peculiar Obligations of Women

Why isn’t The Practical Woman’s Guide called the Practical Person’s Guide? Men have similar needs. But women – and this is, of course, an incredibly gross, perhaps even politically incorrect generalization – have a particular sense of obligation that seems to make it more difficult for them to just go do what they want.

Witness this startling example from rocker Annie Lennox in Would I Lie to You. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhpu2N4rQZM It’s a fantastically fierce song, delivered with maximum attitude, about how she’s going to walk out the door on her lousy boyfriend. But catch the lyrics: 

My friends know what’s in store

I won’t be here anymore

Pack my bags, clean the floor 

Watch me walking, walking out the door.

Did you notice the part about cleaning the floor? Wow! Even in the midst of all that moxie, she wants to make sure she tidies up before she’s off. I find it hard to imagine a male rocker singing that line, letting alone having the thought occur to him. Don’t get me wrong, I have great affection for men. But I think women bear a different kind of burden.

And so The Guide is for those of us who feel compelled to juggle responsibilities, keep the standards up, and seek the unachievable perfection of life called Balance. Feel free to pass the wisdom on to the lovely men in your lives. But this, ladies, is for you.

Building a Courage Box

These musings arrived in an email the other day (thank you Augusta):

I wonder if the nature of “courage” and “adventure” change as we age: doing things at 20 may be natural…and unthinking. 20 years later, those same things become a terrifying risk.

Can remembering our adventurous selves be as useful as learning new techniques?

Augusta’s thoughts echoed a conversation from a Practical Woman’s Guide workshop I gave a few months earlier, with some wonderful women who’d agreed to be my guinea-piglets to try out some of the Guide’s theories and exercises. We talked about the idea of a Courage Box – a container of memorabilia celebrating your previous acts of daring-do. Something you could peek into when feeling timid, to remind yourself of what you’re really capable of.

Having reminders all over the house isn’t quite enough, I need a box, too.

Here’s my courage box. Actually, I have stuff all over my house (could it be I need constant reminding?) but my box contains a cow bell found at the first Italian property we ever coveted, a button and a bone carving from my ride across the Mongolian steppes, the sand dollar from Nova Scotia that I took as proof that great good fortune was on its way even as our villa, starved of cash, went up for sale, the Ninja doll that wards off naysayers, reminders of love, and bits of things from my greatest adventure, my daughters. It’s a good box.

It sits on my desk. On top of the box sits a small angel that used to belong to my mother. The angel reminds me that, regardless of the contents of the box, I have learned from a master.

What’s in your courage box?

The Courage Box

These musings arrived in an email the other day (thank you Augusta):

I wonder if the nature of “courage” and “adventure” change as we age: doing things at 20 may be natural…and unthinking. 20 years later, those same things become a terrifying risk.

Can remembering our adventurous selves be as useful as learning new techniques?

Augusta’s thoughts echoed a conversation from a Practical Woman’s Guide workshop I gave a few months earlier, with some wonderful women who’d agreed to be my guinea-piglets to try out some of the Guide’s theories and exercises. We talked about the idea of a Courage Box – a container of memorabilia celebrating your previous acts of daring-do. Something you could peek into when feeling timid, to remind yourself of what you’re really capable of.

Having reminders all over the house isn’t quite enough, I need a box, too.

Here’s my courage box. Actually, I have stuff all over my house (could it be I need constant reminding?) but my box contains a cow bell found at the first Italian property we ever coveted, a button and a bone carving from my ride across the Mongolian steppes, the sand dollar from Nova Scotia that I took as proof that great good fortune was on its way even as our villa, starved of cash, went up for sale, the Ninja doll that wards off naysayers, reminders of love, and bits of things from my greatest adventure, my daughters. It’s a good box.

It sits on my desk. On top of the box sits a small angel that used to belong to my mother. The angel reminds me that, regardless of the contents of the box, I have learned from a master.

What’s in your courage box?

The Practicality of Losing Control

One thing is absolutely certainty when doing adventuresome things: stuff will happen as a result that you don’t anticipate. Good stuff too, not just bad stuff. My adventure with the Italian pile of rubble fondly dubbed Godzillavilla is a case in point, with its unanticipated, heartwarming social interactions, along with its vastly greater than anticipated sucking-up of money.

When I set out on an adventure, even a little one, I try to imagine everything that might happen. The wonderful and the terrible. But here’s what I’ve found I need to wrap my head around most in order to make any leap:

I CANNOT IMAGINE EVERYTHING.

Clearly out of control: jamming with a rock band looks a lot like getting a really bad stomach cramp. But is way more fun.

Part of the fabulous, freeing, life-affirming goodness of adventure is that it shows us we can go with the flow, adapt and cope, and – wait for it – give up some control. A lot of practical people are loath to give up control. I’m one of them. But I’m coming to believe that it’s actually infinitely practical to do so.

Truth is, you can’t control everything, and trying to just saps your energy and makes you a nervous wreck. When you give it up, even just a little, you gain time for more important, fulfilling and useful things. Plus sanity, and that’s a big plus. You learn to roll with the punches, which means every time stuff does happen to you that you hadn’t planned on (because it does), you get better and better at dealing with it – speedily and positively.

I’m liking this idea of the practicality of losing control. I’m finding it quite liberating.

Don’t Look in the Mirror

I’m stupefied by the current trend of promoting relentless positivity, and affirmations in the mirror, as the swift route to everything fabulous in life. Having dived into the realm of the ‘how to live your dream’ industry in search of information about what makes it possible for people to be adventuresome, I’ve come across some great tips for making exciting stuff happen. I’ve also come across an awful lot of bunk. 

With apologies to anyone who is really into mirror affirmations, I’m personally much more drawn to the idea of actual, bona fide, proof of performance.

Hence my delight in finding Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America. It’s a bit of a rant (just a bit), but it is refreshingly in my corner of the universe on this topic. The idea that thinking positively – and only that – will bring you everything you want in life seems to me a recipe for not only lots of disappointment, but also plenty of neurosis over why nothing is good is happening yet. Am I just not positive enough? Do I need to smile more brightly at myself when I’m doing my affirmations? What’s wrong with me?

I’m all for a positive, can-do attitude. Moping and whining are adventure’s kryptonite, turning great possibility into a quivering mass of would’a-could’a-should’a. But I really, strongly believe positive attitude needs to be coupled with positive action. Then, instead of looking in the mirror and saying ‘that bright shiny person deserves to have something exciting happen to them’, you get to say ‘that bright, capable person has done 3 things this week that are absolutely making exciting stuff happen’.  

That gets me way more cranked about how my future’s going to look. OK, so this analogy still involves looking in a mirror. I don’t actually speak to myself that way. But if you’re going to, isn’t that a way cooler thing to be able to say?