Like most people, there are things I have a wonderful internal motivation for, like eating, sleeping, seeing beauty in small things, pulling weeds, and watching nature. And, like most people, my internal motivation is very weak in other areas. Many of the things I am NOT motivated to do are pretty important.
Like cleaning house. I am actually related to people who have a clean and organized house ALL THE TIME, and some of them even have children. I'm pretty good about it now, but when I was a teenager and living as an adult, there was no one to make me clean my room, and the whole house was my responsibility. So, I psyched myself into doing what must be done by pretending I was cleaning house for someone else. Sometimes it was for a family whose mother was unable to clean the house, and her small children suffered from the nasty conditions of their home. As I cleaned, I had a mental conversation with others about the situation, and how I was helping this family, especially the children, have a better life by cleaning their home.
When I began college, I had an 11-week-old baby. So all four years were very difficult in many ways. But I met the challenge and did relatively well. I did REALLY well in classes. I did REALLY well as a mother (even as a housekeeper). But when it came time to stop whirring around at 100 mph taking care of EVERYTHING, I had terrible trouble allowing myself drift off to sleep. Everything I hadn't finished, every upcoming test or paper, every lingering bill that I couldn't pay because we had so little money kept running through my mind as I closed my eyes seeking restful, restorative sleep.
Once again, "pretending" as I thought of it, came to my rescue. I laid in my bed with my eyes closed and imagined that I was unable to interact, only hear as the authoritative male voice of a doctor said to my loved ones, "She's exhausted. She must rest. She is unable to keep going like this. It has taken a heavy toll. How long? Well, that depends. Right now, she must be allowed to sleep." Then I would hear the doctor tell me he was going to give me something in my IV that would make me go to sleep. I would fall asleep almost immediately after those comforting words, and with the "permission" I had been given to let others take over, because I couldn't do it any longer.
This happened over and over, night after night. It was before I knew anything about the mind-body connection or creative visualization. It was before I knew that I could create the reality I wanted or needed in my life by practicing it over and over in my mind. I didn't know that our brain doesn't know the difference between a real experience and one that is imaginary. I didn't know that my brain created synapses based on how many times areas of the brain were triggered, that every time I practiced something, real or imaginary, my brain was mapping it, and making it hardwired.
I should have had a clue about this when, every time my mother would come visit me, I immediately came down with a terrible cold or flu or some other illness that took me out of commission for 3 days. Someone was there to share the very heavy load. Someone else could cook the food, clean the house, care for the baby. After my 3-day illness, I was back to my old self, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound.
After graduate school, I found myself under a doctor's care (several doctors, actually). But the medical community was befuddled. They could find no physiological reason why I would wake up in the morning feeling good, and full of energy. But by the time I finished my shower and dried my hair, I felt as though I had lead pumping through my veins. I would drag myself to the bed and sleep, hard, drooling, long dream sleep for the entire day. Sometimes I could manage to get up to make my daughter, now in middle school, something for dinner, check in with her about her day, then it was back to bed. I slept 20 hours a day for a year.
If it hadn't been for my child's father who paid the bills, learned how to cook, learned how to be a single parent, and who was endlessly patient, I don't know what would have happened. I remember many times when we would try to go out to dinner. Nothing fancy, Steak N Shake, maybe. By the time the waitress got our order, I was feeling really heavy and I knew I wouldn't make it through the meal. By the time the food got to the table, I was laying in the back seat of the car, sound asleep. I didn't hurt anywhere. I was just "uber" sleepy all the time, and would fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I had created reality from the fantasy I used to help me go to sleep every night.
Of course, it was more complicated than all of that. I tried to find out why my body was responding the way it was responding. What mechanism was in place that caused such exhaustion? I saw a couple of acupuncturists who both said that we have energy that we operate from daily, and which is recouped when we have restful sleep every day. We also have an additional store of energy that we sometimes need in emergencies, when we have to get through a crisis. This store of energy is there for times of need, and not what we are supposed to operate from. They told me that I had burned through my "everyday energy" and I then began using my "reserve energy" until it was depleted.
I felt tremendously better after each treatment, but by the time I came back for my next treatment, I was depleted again. Finally, the acupuncturist asked me what I was doing when I left his office. "I clean my house, take walks, prepare meals, hang out with my daughter, driver her around, etc." He instructed me that from now on, when I leave his office feeling better, I am to go home and lay on the couch. He said that he is trying to build up my "emergency" energy stores, then he can work on the "everyday" energy stores. He said that every time I come in, he has to start all over again because I have used up all the benefit of the acupuncture.
So, I began learning how to pace myself. I'm still not great at it. But I am careful about getting a good night's sleep, eating healthy food most of the time, gentle exercise, doing work that is meaningful but that doesn't cause a depletion of my emotional energy, and spending time with people and activities that "fill me up" rather than drain me.
I am about to enter into a new stage in life. I am looking hard for a new career that uses more of my talents, and brings me more joy than my previous career. The work I have been doing for many years is the most important work I will ever do as a Child Protective Services social worker. But it is a job I could not do indefinitely without it taking a massive toll on my spirit. I have done good work, but need to move on now.
My daughter has graduated from high school and and entered college. Ihave finally come home to the mountainous town I love where I lived for 20 years before moving to be closer to my daughter's father during my "sleeping sickness." I'm awake now.
Knowing the power of the mind, you bet I'm picturing myself in the kind of career I want, in the house I want to live in with the mountains in the background, fruit trees, a grassy knoll, a large vegetable garden, and many flower beds bursting with flowers. I envision myself hiking with friends, having dinner with friends, going contra dancing on Thursday nights, joining a writer's club, writing and being published, going to Mexico to scuba dive, visiting a friend in Juno, and family in Great Brittan. I hope to harness my synapses to get me where ever I want to go, but I'm very careful now what I ask for!
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