The Secret to Being Appreciated: A Follow-Up

Last week I shared my discovery about feeling appreciated. It was such a profound learning for me that I want to follow up on what happened in the week since. It was just seven days ago when I discovered that I don’t have to wait for others to bestow appreciation onto me in order to feel good, rather, I can give myself the feeling of being appreciated any time I want.

I practiced this all week long. Every time I had a quiet moment, I let a wave of satisfaction lap over me, as if someone just patted me on the back. It was soothing and calming, and made work more enjoyable because I felt assured that I was being appreciated. While my co-workers struggled with management’s lack of empathy, I sailed through the week with detachment. Having this feeling at the ready gave me the confidence to not need it from anyone else. Interestingly, the very day I began feeling this way, my manager sent me an email congratulating me on my performance. Something he’s never done before.

It’s like the missing key syndrome – you dash around the house searching for your missing keys, cursing them for making you late for your appointment, and just when you give up, you realize they’re in your hand. When you give up searching for something, it shows up. It’s when you let go and detach that the path clears. This is what I learned this week: the way to have others appreciate you is to first feel appreciated. And this is possibly the way to have anything and everything.

The more I practice feeling appreciated, the more confident I feel in this area. I no longer wonder if I’m being noticed, and the anxiety it use to bring up is gone. I’m more relaxed in all of my relationships, not just at work. Now that I’m becoming assured in this respect, I want to move onto other areas that are challenges for me. I noticed this week that I’ve labelled myself as an outsider, often feeling left out of conversations and not being heard when I do speak up.

Just like feeling unappreciated, this is just a belief and it can be changed. In this coming week, I’m going to give myself the feeling of belonging. I’m going to let go of the notion that I’m different and forever on the outside looking in, or that I’m too shy and quiet. These are simply recurring thoughts that looped through my mind so often that I believe them. Not only do these statements sound like rubbish now that I’ve written them down, they’ve also only ever served up hurt for me. So I’m replacing them with a new belief and, more importantly, a new feeling: that of belonging.

This is my plan: challenge and change all of my negative thoughts and feelings, one by one. I’m up for this and I’m ready.

 

 

Discovering the Secret to Being Appreciated

Every week my job presents me with a new set of challenges. It’s as if it’s my personal spiritual classroom. The work itself is easy. In fact, the technical aspects of most of my jobs come easily to me. It’s always been the emotional, relational aspects that give me difficulty. This week I struggled with feeling unappreciated. A large new project began on Tuesday and the message from management seemed to be: yes, there’s a lot to do on top of everything else, but get it done anyway. The timelines were unreasonable, especially with all the interruptions that happen throughout the day. But the workload isn’t what irked me, it was the lack of sympathy and recognition. I got everything done, and none of it was acknowledged. I kept waiting for some sign of appreciation, but none came. I felt let down, and the feeling simmered into this weekend until it boiled over.

I was stewing in self-pity [“what would they do without me?” and “they’ll be sorry when I’m gone!”], when I had an epiphany: It’s my responsibility to make myself feel appreciated. Whatever the job was causing me to feel was actually coming from me. I feel unseen in general and it gets projected outward, so no matter what actually happens on the outside, it gets interpreted to confirm my feelings of under appreciation. However, I can choose to feel acknowledged. At any moment we can choose our emotions. It doesn’t have to be reactionary, and it’s fully within our control.

I’ve known about how expectations dictate our experiences for a long time, but now I understand it at another level.  Life doesn’t conform to what we want, it conforms to what we expect. I was expecting to be unseen and the world graciously complied. What if I started to feel appreciated, and taught myself to feel this way on a regular basis? My world would likely acquiesce to that too. This is an ongoing lesson that I seem to need to learn and relearn. I keep falling back into feelings of being invisible because that was the environment I grew up in. With this new experience, I got a glimpse of paradise. Imagine feeling loved and appreciated all the time regardless of what is happening around us. Now it’s up to me to practice feeling all the emotions that I’ve been waiting for the world to give me. I wasn’t waiting for the world after all, I was waiting for me.

 

How to Kick Intimidation to the Curb

Two months into my new job, a former employee, I’ll call her Tammy, came back and took up her old position. She’d been away on sick leave for several months after having been with the company for nearly seven years. Aside from her long tenure, we hold the exact same position, with similar responsibilities. And our relationship’s been uneven from the start.

Without yelling or being pushy, Tammy has a way of commanding attention every time she speaks. Even when she’s simply talking about socks, she holds people in rapture. I’m in awe of the confidence she exudes when she speaks. Self-assurance flows through the cadence of her voice. And she talks a lot, mostly about herself. I both admire and have difficulty asserting myself around someone like her. Making myself heard and feeling deserving of being heard is something I’ve always struggled with. Even when I have fantastic ideas, I’m hesitant to share them. With Tammy, I rarely feel that there’s even an opening to get my words in as she talks continuously. It’s tedious at times, but mostly it makes me feel unseen. Every time this happens, I feel invisible, and this is one of my greatest sore spots.

These feelings of intimidation and annoyance are coming from me, not Tammy. She’s simply being who she is. I’m the one personalizing her behaviour. Having struggled with these feeling for the past few weeks, I’ve decided to change my focus and see her as a teacher. I want to learn to assert myself with confidence and Tammy’s a great model for that. I also want to transcend my fear of not being seen, and every day she encourages me on with her self-talk. The more uncomfortable she makes me feel, the closer I get to working through my true struggles, and the closer I am to freedom. This is what all great teachers do – they push you to your limit, daring you to fly.

There may be moments in the coming weeks when I forget this resolve and fall back into intimidation, but I’m committed and know eventually I’m going to succeed. It’s all about reframing a situation. There’s something to learn from everyone, especially those who annoy us.

 

 

How Monopoly Taught Me a Spiritual Lesson

Almost losing at Monopoly gave me an epiphany. My opponent had thousands of dollars in the bank. I was mortgaging everything but my socks, and I knew I was going to win. I owned more property and was building houses, and hotels. Eventually they would all pay off. Because of this, I enjoyed the entire game, even as my opponent was smugly prancing around the board, laughing every time he landed on one of my properties rent-free.  I remained confident because I knew it would turn around, and it did. I won.

This experience showed me that looking at the bigger picture is necessary to keep motivated toward your goals, and to enjoy the journey.  It’s inevitable for obstacles to show up on the road to a worthy goal, and it’s compelling to wander off into the minutiae of daily life. But if you know that everything you’re doing is a positive step forward, then regardless of what the moment looks like, it’ll be a happier ride.

I’ve been looking at life through a microscope these last few weeks, and though there were many wonderful moments, I was frustrated with the lack of positive changes in my life. All the effort I’d been putting into making myself and my life better didn’t seem to be producing results. It was starting to feel like a waste of time.

Yet, when I compare my life now to what it was a year ago, I see tremendous change. I no longer torture myself with replaying old hurts over and over again. Letting go of grudges is becoming instantaneous. Joy visits more often. These are remarkable changes that happened all through hard work. Though, they’re easy to miss when I only look at my life through the prism of moments.

Like a painter at her canvas, every detail is necessary, but you need to stand back occasionally to make sure everything is as you want, and to savour the moment along the way to your masterpiece.

 

 

The Sweet Beginnings of Change

It’s 2012 and I’m incredibly excited about the New Year. This is the first time I’ve felt this way on January 1^st. Perhaps it has to do with the Mayan calendar predictions or maybe there truly is a spiritual transformation underway. Whatever it is, I feel it.

I’m ready to reinvent myself. It’s time to stop waiting to be the person I want to be and start being that person. To do this, I need to cut the ties that hold me back, in particular: excuses. This Friday, I was in a store and came across a book by Wayne Dyer called “Excuses Begone”. In it he asks some fantastic questions designed to deflate the excuses that we use to justify self-sabotaging behaviour. Some questions that stood out were: “Where did it come from?”, “What’s the payoff?”, and “What would your life be like without this excuse?”

Right away I thought about money. Like most people, money is a very complex subject for me. It’s tied into self-worth, a sense of freedom or lack of, and happiness. I use the fact that I don’t have as much as I’d like as an excuse for not being happy, and for not living the life I want. In the middle of the store, I was stuck to the spot questioning this thought.

Where did it come from? Money was a source of constant conflict and unhappiness for my parents. They yearned for a better life, but felt they could never have it because they couldn’t afford it. There was a silent message that if only they had more…they’d be happy. Ultimately, it wasn’t about money. It never is. Scratch the surface of money problems and there’s usually another conflict in hiding.

What’s the payoff of keeping this excuse going?  I get to remain the same by carrying on what I learned from my parents. It doesn’t require me to change, and I can simply continue to live the life that I know. It’s comforting in its discomfort.

What would your life be like without this excuse? This question rang loudest with me. The instant I read it, I knew my excuse was a sham. Without it I would have nothing to blame my unhappiness on; which means that I would be discontented for no reason. And that would be irrational. It’s entirely possible I use money as an easy way to explain what’s not working in my life. Not having this excuse would also require me to change.

I’m starting 2012 by diving into this change. I want to have a better relationship with money, one that’s harmonious and free of conflict. The first step is recognizing that excuses are distractions keeping us from acknowledging the truth. The next step is to decide whether we truly want change and then committing to it. The final step is to instill new thoughts and behaviours. With practice it’ll become a habit. This is what new years are for: reinventions and new beginnings. I’m ready.

Happy New Year to all my friends at WordPress! I hope 2012 fills you with joy and illumination.