Living Luminously: Diane Hutt

Survey says, "I come to Internal Luminosity to get inspiration"..."Include more posts on people living luminously."  And so I deliver to you, my readers, a big ole dose of inspiration for living luminously in the form of Diane Hutt.  Who says you can't be a biologist and an artist who divides your year between Alaska, Antarctica and Asheville?  You won't get that advice from this unique traveler who takes her multiple talents and interests on the road to create a life that she finds well worth living.  Follow this link to our friend Stephanie's blog from Antarctica and read more about Diane.  Then find your way back here and remind me, what really good reason do you have for postponing the creation of your own life worth living?

When Characteristics Collide and Energy Does Not Match Ambition

I had a great experience yesterday presenting to parents about the characteristics of sensitivity and emotional intensity.  It was affirming to hear from so many people how important the information was to them—it encouraged me that I’m on the right track with this work of blogging and coaching.  I also think there might be one or two among the participants who may choose to join our tribe here on the blog.  As a finishing flourish, I was asked to write an article on intensity for a national newsletter.   

I was so excited that my first thought upon leaving the conference was that I wanted to go home immediately and incorporate what I had learned from the participants into my blog and to find answers to the questions I hadn’t been able to respond to and to formulate an e-mail to the participants that would explain why they might want to join us here.  There's that intensity.  My need to know, to create meaning, to be intellectually stimulated and to constantly improve can lead to sustained attention for hours on end when I’m really interested in something.

Alas, there is also the matter of my sensitivity.  Since my long winter’s nap in December, I have worked on projects through the better part of three weekends.  In addition to working my regular teaching job, I’m tutoring two afternoons a week and then coming home to coach and work on my blog makeover.  The truth is, though my brain was spinning with ideas and possibilities, my whole being needed to stop and recover.  Frustrating as this can be, I know that if I don’t surrender to a period of nothingness, I’ll end up grumpy, prone to making mistakes and inevitably sick. 

Unique travelers tend to need either more or less sleep than the general population.  For me, it’s better to get enough sleep or I end up paying for it with an extended period of what my friend calls “being worthless.”  So I remind myself now that balance is called for when trying to create harmony between drive and energy.  What can I do right now to restore balance and achieve peak productivity?

• First, surrender to the need for “recovery.”  I often have to wait out the conflict in my brain and body where I’m still amped up with thinking, but my body is exhausted.  Whether recovery means taking long baths, watching movies, getting a massage or finding some outdoor space where you can relax, be still until you feel restored.  For me there’s a noticeable increase in energy that often comes only after feeling blob-like--unpleasant but necessary.

• Use exercise, even a gentle walk or yoga, to build some energy.  The more regularly you do this the better.

• Engage in guided visualization to help you first relax and then feel energized.

• As much as my intuitive prefer to gravitate to what feels like the next best action to take self bristles at schedules, creating one can help you track your energy output.  Make a schedule that balances intense periods of work with refreshing breaks.  As hard as it can be to interrupt that super focused state of productivity, there is evidence that we’re actually more fruitful when we do so at regular intervals.

• Take a holiday from technology. Turn off your phone, don’t open e-mail and turn off the TV.

• Go to bed early one night a week.  Commit to it ahead of time, and plan your day accordingly so that you’re ready to be in bed and on your way to REM at your chosen time.

It’s a constant dance between drive and energy.  There are times when being seduced by the lure of pushing a little further is hard to resist.  That’s okay—just have a recovery plan in place and work towards greater balance in the future.

How do you balance your tendency toward drive and your energy limits?

Or is your energy challenge different altogether? 

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Gettin’ Ready to Get Ready

I was once the Queen of Gettin’ Ready to Get Ready.  Several years ago, I participated in a pilot of a Creative Problem Solving Style assessment that looked at individual preferences/strengths across the problem solving process from identifying problems to getting acceptance for solutions.  My strengths were in the early stages of the process: identifying problems, locating resources and generating solutions.  All of the little details of the follow through interested me far less.  Part of this is my tendency toward divergent thinking and a desire for novelty.  However, over the years, I came to realize that there were some other issues at play here that I needed to consider if I wanted to be successful at acting on ideas and bringing possibilities to fruition.

Unique travelers can be stunted by a whole lot of getting’ ready to get ready, and here are some possible causes:

• Perfectionism: Whatever I do has to be perfect, so I can’t get started until I have considered every possible scenario and know everything I need to know. 

• Impostor Syndrome: Intelligence is equivalent to ease and speed.  If I can’t do something the first time without any difficulty—if there’s any struggle at all—I must not be smart.  I avoid taking risks because I don’t want anyone (including myself) to finally see how unextraordinary I really am.

• Fear of Getting Trapped: If I commit to this, I’ll be leaving behind all of my other interests.  There are too many things I want to do to focus on just one.

Sound familiar?

Consider this:

• Perfection is an unobtainable goal.  Focus on excellence instead.  Beginning is often the most difficult part of the process.

• Most successful people have failed more often than they’ve succeeded.  Success comes from hard work and problem solving, not magically endowed ability.

• You can always change your mind.  Life and work do not have to exist in a linear step-by-step approach.  There are many different configurations that work and hobbies can take.  However, we’re often fed a formula from a very young age that limits our vision of possibility.

So, are you ready to move beyond getting ready?  Keep in mind that, knowledge does not create change.  Action creates change! 

What is it that’s keeping you from taking that first step?

   

You Have the Right to Take a Leap!

“Take the first step in faith.  You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

                                                                                      ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Eight months ago, I took the first step.  It was for me, actually, a leap.  I decided to risk believing that my needs, values and passion might be shared by enough other people with whom I would be able to make a meaningful connection.   I hoped that what I perceived was one of my strengths might help me create something important from which others would benefit.  I began writing this blog and have been somewhat cautiously putting it out there hoping to gather some readers.  This weekend, with the help of a shameless birthday plea to get Facebook friends to my sight and a whole lot of help from my readers, some of whom made their own plea on my part, I reached 2000+ page views.  With a small group of readers in just 8 months I say, “Not bad!”  Thanks, friends!

In the fall, I announced that there were big changes coming to the blog in the new year.  I had intended to unveil a new look and some new content this month.  I’ve been working on that, but I’ve decided to take a slightly different course.  I’ve enrolled in a kind of blogger’s school so that I can learn a whole lot more about how to make my work here meaningful and useful to you.  So changes are still coming, but I’m not sure of the exact timeline—I’m not sure what the whole staircase looks like yet. 

I share this with you in part to hold myself accountable.  More importantly, I consider you my original tribe members to whom I am forever grateful.  I hope that sharing the details of creating my own life worth living might inspire you to think about what step you could take next.  I’m taking an even bigger risk by trying to get more exposure for the blog—risking believing that there might be even more people out there with whom I can make a meaningful connection.  Please stay with me as I try to grow my value and our tribe!

Finally, in honor of Martin Luther King, I want to say how thankful I am for the efforts of so many who sacrificed their time, safety and lives to bring us greater fullness and harmony as a society.  My life is immeasurably enriched by the diversity of age, culture, race, religion, socio-economic status and beliefs of my friends, family, colleagues and students.  To be married in 1966, my own mother and father-in-law had to leave the state of Virginia where interracial marriages weren’t allowed.  They were married 44 years before my father-in-law passed away.  Thankfully these barriers have been removed, but we still have a lot of work to do.  Thanks MLK and everyone who came before and after him who strive to give all of us the right to create and live our unique lives worth living!

What step do you need to take even if your vision hasn’t yet fully materialized?

  

What's the Donut?

It's my birthday.  It's not one of those vague in-between years.  Rather, it is a very definitive 4 and 5.  One way to look at this is to say I am no longer 40-something, but I am right in the middle of this decade looking 50 square in the eye.  Age has never really bothered me that much, but 50 seems significant as there is no denying that my life is, at best, half over. That's one way to look at it.

But as I try to make a habit of looking at the donut and not the hole, I recognize that it is all a state of mind.  I have to look no further than my incredibly agile, sharp and active mother of nearly 83 to stop short any whining that might want to creep in.  We define our age.

So, indulge me, won't you? Whatever age you are (no need to reveal it if you would rather not, but it would add perspective), post something here that you feel is an advantage of being one year older.  The side benefit is that I have a goal of reaching 2000 page views on my birthday weekend--a milestone to celebrate a milestone!

Let's call it the Donut List. I'll start...

At age 45, I care less about pleasing others and feel a greater urgency to fully live in the way that brings me the most joy. 


Next...

What's All the Emotion About?

                                                                                                        Photos by H. Meghan Amelia, 2011

I’ve been working, rather intensely, on a presentation I will be giving to parents later this month.  The topic is on highly sensitive and emotionally intense children.  As often happens during these projects, my own characteristics and challenges rise to the surface inviting a little reflection.  I’ve watched myself procrastinate a bit while listening to the voice in my head question, “Will it be good enough?” The emotionally intense tend to be perfectionists.  I’ve been a little overwhelmed by all of the ideas I’ve had—how do I distill this down to the just right amount of information?  Intense individuals can be at once very excited about ideas and feel worn out by having them.  And I’ve thought a lot about the intensities that live right here in my own home.  What do you do when it’s a yin-yin relationship?

Though I’ve spent a lot of time reading, thinking and writing about these topics in the past (revisit Dabrowski's overexcitabilities here), the information gets stored somewhere in my collective understanding.  So a little jolt of consciousness is provided when going through the process of taking specific details out of the mental filing drawers to synthesize into what I hope is something useful.

I wrote recently about sensitivity, so I thought I’d add a post on emotional intensity.  The most important thing for you to take away from this is that, among unique travelers, this characteristic is quite normal.  Here are some ways that it manifests in the individual:

• May experience extremes in emotions and move back and forth between them in a small space of time 
• May have explosive explosive emotions, periods of crying or overwhelming anxiety
• Extreme guilt may be experienced over perceived shortcomings when there is a lack of understanding in the emotionally intense individual--critical self-talk and self-doubt may result
• Physical manifestations may include fluttering of the heart, sensitivity to sensory stimuli, nausea and headaches
• Strong affective memory—ability to relive the feelings of an event throughout a lifetime
• Intense relationships
• Can be overwhelmed by rigid expectations and sensory overload of the work experience

What are some things you can do to help manage this characteristic?

• Build some structure into your day to reduce stress
• Establish clear communication and boundaries with friends, family and co-workers
• Learn to recognize when you’re starting to feel unraveled and engage in self-care (relaxation, time-out or deep breathing)
• Set reasonable goals and then progress toward completing them in comfortable chunks of time
• Celebrate what is wonderful about emotional intensity: the ability to connect deeply with others, the capacity to be moved by music, art and literature and the ability to live a passionate life--to name a few.

Know that much of what creates challenges for you comes from your reactions to situations not the characteristic itself, and you can learn skills to help you better manage this quality.

In what ways does emotional intensity create challenges in your life?  In what ways does having intense emotions enrich your life?

Adapted from Emotional Intensity in Gifted Kids by Christine Fonseca, Prufrock Press, 2011

Stephanie at Sea

If you're interested in following Stephanie's adventures aboard the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer en route to the Ross Sea, use this link to access her blog:  www.steminaction.org/blog/ .  It's educational (lot's of interesting science information), dramatic (the inevitable sea sickness has been endured) and inspiring (coincidentally, I was just reading in a book about how many of us long to do something like see Antarctica but never do because we fear the unknown).  Stephanie just might be your first example of someone living luminously in the new year!