Mind The Gap: Procrastination and the Intuitive Mind

Procrastination has become a dirty word in an economy built on productivity, product life cycles, and publication deadlines. We may admit we procrastinate, but rarely about the specifics. Procrastinating on impressive projects like a dissertation, a book, or a big project at work is o.k. Cleaning out the cat box, getting our kid to the dentist, or changing the oil in our car: Not so much.

I have a vision for my life. We can see if you and I share this dream. Would you indulge me as I make a rough sketch of it? In the vision, I live in a home that makes me feel like I just left a Swedish massage each time I walk in the front door. It is as if no one lives there, it is so tidy. And best of all it smells of waffles — with butter and real maple syrup. My friends swoon at the vibe I’ve got going on. My dinner parties are the dinner parties where the food is trendy and the philosophical conversations stimulate thoughts and raucous laughter. Magazine photographers ask to capture my eclectic style for their glossy gossip rags. And my dream life is funded by a flourishing writing career complete with a best seller. My blog has a mind blowing number of readers awaiting my next installment. My ideas fly from my fingers unto the computer keyboard as wholly-scripted witty prose. I am thin too. The kind of thin where clothes look better on me than on the hanger. And I do not have lumpy thighs.

The problem is that between this vision and my current reality there is a gap the size of my thighs. The ones that have not seen a yoga room since 2010. While nesting in an unmade bed joined by a basket of unfolded laundry and my cat (who actually is ideal), I struggle to compose my muddled thoughts and limit my run-on sentences. I am grumpy and I don’t feel witty. My kitchen does smell like waffles, but the stack of sticky dishes and a batter-drenched mixing bowl is overwhelming.

It is December 27th, the gifts I looked forward to giving are with their new owners, and I am feeling as deflated as the unstuffed stockings. I can’t tell if I am just feeling disappointed, or if I am the disappointment. These are dark days before January 1st that have me wondering if I should make resolutions, but fearing the future disappointment. Living here in the gap, no make that the chasm between my ideals and my real life, has me underwhelmed, overwhelmed and just flat out annoyed.

Being an idealist, a romantic, is not an easy thing to be. In my last blog post: Thriving as an Intuitive Person During the Holiday Season I noted that this idealism often leads me into just these situations where my idealism only highlights the less desirable aspects of life. The grey looks dull next to high def color.

There should really be word for this place. A place where my feelings take me by the hoodie, toss me unto the cold stones, slam the iron gate, and laugh maniacally. My sparkly visions only serve to remind me of the depressing reality of my life. I am convinced that the energy I so desperately need in order to fold laundry, run errands, and generally be a productive human is draining out of tiny holes in my butt (a likely culprit of the lumpy thighs). Regardless of how the energy leaves, it is going, going, gone. Or it never showed up in the first place.

Oh wait, there is a word for this place.

Procrastination.

This is the place where goals waste away in the desert winds, where it is decided that New Year’s resolutions are a dumb idea anyhow, and where Wile E. Coyote never wins. It is a dissolute place of scorched, cracked earth.

And here is the kicker: the width of the gap directly correlates to the brilliance of the vision. The greater the idea, the more steps, the more grand and impressive, the more I feel overwhelmed. The greater the chasm. The bigger the gap. I wonder how I will ever get over there, or up there, or down from here. Will I ever make it?

An intuitive person is a visionary person. Our minds riff off simple stimuli to create more and bigger thoughts. Grand ideas. Some might say grandiose. But all impressive ideas are grandiose until they are achieved. The World’s Tallest Building. Moving pictures. Machines that fly.

Madness is what genius looks like to tiny minds.

– Steve Moffat

Intuitive minds think differently than the convergent thinking taught to us in the school system. Convergent thinking sifts through and dismisses many answers until it can convert the pile o’ information into The One Right Answer. The intuitive mind naturally prefers to use divergent thinking. By association and abstraction, one thought generates more possibilities that branch out even further into still more possibilities. Like a snowflake of ideas or images. I call this a Brainstorming Brain. Only we don’t need to have a meeting around a white board to brainstorm. It happens at 2 a.m. when we woke up to use the bathroom, right? Boring meetings around a white board might get things going too, only typically it’s not on topic. Our brainstorming brain is working away on whatever our intuitive mind thinks is cool right now.

And being a visionary is cool. J.K. Rowling is a visionary and both she and Harry Potter rank as cool. Frank Gehry is a visionary and his buildings are cool.

(Check this one out. It is on MIT’s campus.)

Steve Jobs was a visionary and ipods, ipads, and iMacs are cool. Tom’s shoes. Wholefoods. The Muppets. Clearly the imagination is a fantastic thing. Who could deny that? But do you know what happens when a visionary is not patient or persistent enough to buck the critics or make it past their own self doubt? Let’s just say it is a lot like lumpy thighs that have not seen a yoga room since 2010:

Not.

Pretty.

When we create a fantasy in our mind’s eye but lack the ability to manifest it in the world, the gap becomes an inescapable, multi-tentacled sarlacc swallowing our creativity and motivation as we drift helplessly past its needle sharp teeth and into its hungry beak.

The clever thing to do would be to limit the vision. Make it smaller. Make it doable. Build square buildings. Don’t make waves. Stay quiet. Write a respectable blog. Live as others live. Except that these things are not worth dreaming about. The fizz fizzles. Inspiration withers. The go-juice dries up. The only thing more depressing then the chasm between our visions and our reality is not having a dream in the first place.

People with small imaginations do not procrastinate.

It is specifically because we have Brainstorming Brains that we do procrastinate. Each idea broadens the gap, widens the chasm, which in effect lowers our motivation. The bigger the perceived gap between today and our desired future, the less motivation, the greater the inertia.

Please don’t limit your dreams. You might live in our shared dream house one day. It would make me happy that one of us can live there. I’ll see in it a glossy magazine or read about it on your blog. Don’t try to squish your amazing voice or grandiose idea into a square box.

But what are we to do with our romantic notions? Our grandiose ideas? Here are three things you might do in order to begin to build a bridge that can one day be draped over the chasm.

1. Make a game of it. Our creative brains love a problem to solve, a game to play, and a way to win. Arrange a challenge. Can you write 1,000 words today? Write five songs this weekend (no extra points for good songs!) Watch an hour less of TV?

2. Break the inertia. Perhaps this is what Mary Poppins meant when she said, “Once begun is half done.” This may have been derived from Pythagoras who is credited with “The beginning is half the whole.” One way to do this is to break your vision down into the smallest step you can imagine. Turn the power of your Brainstorming Brain towards that gap. Think of all the possible ways you could break the inertia. A basket of unfolded laundry. Could I pull out one thing to fold? Then one more? If I can’t get to the yoga place, could I walk around the block? Take the stairs?

The more grand the vision, the stronger the inertia.

3. Enlist others. Find someone with a brain with different strengths. One that loves to break things into tiny, linear steps or organize or schedule or whatever yours doesn’t like to do as much. Every executive needs a brilliant administrator to back them up.

When we are driving 100 miles per hour we need to look straight ahead, but our passengers can see and keep track of all of the places along the way we could stop. Some of the most prolific intuitive minds surrounded themselves with talented others to help them manifest their ideas.

Michelle Miller Bohls is a psychotherapist living in Austin, Texas with her intuitive husband and intuitive son.

If you want to read more, please subscribe to this blog or check out www.anintuitivemind.com

Look for Michelle’s upcoming book, “The Owner’s Manual for An Intuitive Mind: Thriving as an Intuitive in a World Biased for the Logical and Linear.”

Thriving as an Intuitive During the Holiday Season

I look down at my disheveled clothes, wipe the sweat from my face, and wonder, “What just happened??” My head feels like I went twenty rounds. I struggle to focus my vision as blood pulses through my swollen temples and slams against my mangled ear drums. In the silence of my car I can only hear a low, white noise-like buzz ringing in my ears. I barely survived that damn shopping mall.

And on a Tuesday afternoon, no less.

As an intuitive person shopping malls are not a winter wonderland of sense and sound. The decorations do not dazzle. Shinny bobbetts? Festive music? No thank you. These quickly become painful and invasive sensory bombshells. A trip to Ikea or Target can leave me exhausted from a sensory overload in April, but in November it reaches a deafening crescendo.

I am not a quick learner. Each holiday season the romantic in me hopes to find the joy of walking in a winter wonderland and the reverie of “Its a Wonderful Life.” Nostalgia takes me by the hand: through the doors, past the store windows, and down the aisles of glitz. With the dream of making the people I love happy I search for something to buy, something to inspire me amongst the different store shelves and tables. These dreams sustain me for awhile, but at some point the idealist in me switches from living in the Pat Boone movie memories to actually experiencing what surrounds me….and the Scrooge-like rumblings begin about how wrong it all is. The reality of the holiday season pops my inflated dreams like soap bubbles as they hit each blade of grass. Santa should not be commercialized to sell cheap toys. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire should taste better. Ice skating should be graceful and painless. My family should be emotionally available. Grumble. Grumble. Grumble. Ba hum bug!

The idealist that misleads me to desire the fabled holiday is the same romantic who is so easily crushed by the disappointment.

I don’t know who said the quote, “Behind every cynic is a romantic with a broken heart,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if they too were disappointed by cold, wet reality of dashing through the snow.

I know I am not alone. Each year at this time my clients wonder out loud, “I don’t know why I am so depressed.” Or “Why do I feel so anxious?” As intuitive minds, we are both weighted down and ungrounded by the emotions of this season. And emotions run rampant. From the unexpressed anxiety about mounting debts to the repressed grief of lost loved ones, people do not want to acknowledge let alone feel, the Shadow of the holiday spirit. And what others refuse to feel for themselves, we take on. The unfelt, denied, repressed, and disowned feelings float through the air and swirl at our feet as we move through the streets and shopping malls.

It can be crazy-making for an intuitive mind to be around people who are disowning their feelings. Intuitive minds emotionally entrain with others which means that their own emotional life can either be heightened or hijacked by those around them. Like hopping a train, we can get caught up by, or entrain with, the energy and emotions around us. We vacuum up the unfelt feelings of those around us like an emotional Roomba. Often not even realizing the emotional energy that we collect, we become overwhelmed quite easily. This time of year stirs up more emotions than any other time of year, so while we are out shopping or at family events we consume a heap of emotions that can be impossible to digest.

An intuitive mind collects people’s disowned energy and emotions on a continuous basis. Just like the charge of static electricity, emotional static remains until it is transferred to an object with a weaker or opposite charge, or it is discharged altogether. Emotional Static produces a feeling of being amped up, wired or short-circuited, or burnt out.

As I rest in my car and try to regain my equilibrium, I realize that in that shopping mall, I was vacuuming up other people’s emotional static. I collected other people’s fears about their lack of money. I swept up the sadness and loneliness of not having family or friends, or just being far away from them. I picked up people’s anger at being over worked and stressed out. I absorbed the shame of having a less than ideal family, not feeling the joy presented as ‘normal’ for this season, or just feeling different. And like static electricity, the emotional static had built up an excess of charges that were trapped inside my head and pinging around in my body.

If I cannot intentionally and consciously discharge the build up of emotional energy in a healthy way (exercise, yoga, psychotherapy), it remains in me and weighs me down, or I may be drawn to compulsively discharge it in unconscious ways. I might pick a fight with my husband or the customer service clerk, smoke cigarettes, fall into a dark hole of excessive screen time, have too much to eat or drink, or overspend. Maybe all of the above.

If only I worked like that little robotic vacuum machine. I wish I had a sensor to warn me when I had taken in too much: “Error: Please empty dust case and clean brushes.” Or one that warned me, “Entering this store places you at risk of sensory overload.” Or even better, “Holiday season approaching, reduce expectations you place on your self and keep your romantic ideals in check.” Yeah. That would be swell.

Michelle Miller Bohls is a psychotherapist living in Austin, Texas with her intuitive husband and intuitive son.

If you want to read more, please subscribe to this blog or check out www.anintuitivemind.com

Look for Michelle’s upcoming book, “The Owner’s Manual for An Intuitive Mind: Thriving as an Intuitive in a World Biased for the Logical and Linear.”

Our Ancestors: The Wanderers

I remember when we lived in homes with soft curves and animal skins.

I remember a time when there were hundreds of tribes upon our planet with each tribe having different values and unique ways of seeing the world. It was a time when dancer tribes made dances, worshiping tribes carved monuments, and explorer tribes wrote maps of the land. Some tribes went to war while others told stories, and still others did both. Each group lived, worked, played, and died together as their wisdom was passed from elder to child, season after season.

My tribe was different from all of the other tribes. Our focus was on the web of life. Where the other tribes were concerned with the visible and known world, we concerned ourselves with all that lay beyond. We could sense what was in the realm of the invisible, and because of this, we understood the patterns that connected all ways of being. We called ourselves, The Wanderers.

Our purpose was to learn about all aspects of being alive on our planet. In order to do this, each Wanderer would chose to become a part of another tribe’s ways and leave our home to join another, at least for some time. As a Wanderer, I would attempt to blend in and become part of their ways. I would dress as the other tribe members, learn to speak as they spoke, and think as they thought. Over time I became one of them. In the light of fires and the warmth of shelters I connected to these people, while outside nature threatened to kill us with her cold breath and bare teeth. I learned from the elders side by side with my new kit, until their skin felt like my own, until I almost forgot who I really was. After I truly mastered the ways of that tribe, I began to feel restless. Only then would I recall my greater purpose. It was then time to say good bye. It was time to return home to be with my own people and share the knowledge I gained and awaited the next time I would venture out once again.

Together in this manner we collected great wisdom about the nature of humanity, animals, plants and the earth. We held this wisdom as sacred. We used our gifts to understand, via the realm of the invisible, that which connects all things, living and otherwise. It was said that when we were united as a tribe, we possessed additional gifts including those of foresight and prophecy. Our tribe united all of the other tribes and maintained balance in the world by holding the value of each perspective.

Although at times, some of the tribes had battles and waged war, no tribe’s ways ever dominated over other tribes. The balance was held by the Wanderers, our role, and our wisdom. This balancing of all of the tribes produced a time of great abundance on the earth and humanity thrived.

And with this time of balance and abundance, the tribes began to appreciate the differences of the other tribe’s ways of thinking, moving, and being. The tribes began to mix, and then mate. This was a time of great joy for all of us, until it became clear that our children were not certain to which tribe they belonged. 

It was decided that each child would decide which tribe to join. They would seek out their own place in the world according to their interests. And when a child was ready, they would choose their own tribe.

Most children were adept at finding this tribe of choice. After all, the tribes’ values were easy to grasp as they were in the realm of visibility. Many tribes produced things, and it was clear what they valued by the symbols, clothing, and activities of the group. Most children found their tribe quickly, and settled in to be taught that tribe’s ways by elders.

But the path became murky for those children whose destiny it was to be a Wanderer because of our chameleon nature. By using our gifts of intuition and empathy, we quickly blended in as member of any group. We excelled quickly at their ways and felt certain we had found a home. But eventually we would find that the complexity of our nature made it difficult to stay with only one tribe’s ways of being in the world. Part of us longed for more, as the way of one tribe was too small for our soul. Sensing something was incomplete, we would question the elders, and even ourselves. Inevitably we would decide to leave the first tribe of our choosing to begin the search once again.

Being adrift like this, and not understanding why or who we were meant to be, often led us to experience great loneliness and confusion. We had little choice, but to continue our quest, as this is part of our deepest nature: to seek wisdom and an understanding of all ways of being.

The Wanderer’s children’s children became lost in a search of futility, eventually forgetting who they are. Those who did best were those who happened to find other Wanderers, but many became restless and disheartened. And those that did the worst, grew very, very ill. They could not thrive without their tribe.

And neither could the world.

As the years passed, the they forgot who they were. Unable to connect to the elders of the Wanderer’s tribe and learn about their gifts, they and the wisdom of the Wanderers became lost.

Without this, the balance between the tribes disappeared, and eventually One Tribe’s values grew to dominate all others.

That One Tribe discouraged the ways of other tribes. People who thought or valued something different from their ways were converted or ostracized. Difference was criticized. Various practices and ways of thinking or being were outlawed by penalty of death, but mostly difference was silenced through fear. Those who were different were treated as moody, crazy, stupid, and even evil.

Eventually, only what was visible was considered true and the realm of the invisible was denied completely. Emotions and the ways of the intuitive mind were feared. The power to know ourselves and to understand and empathize with others via the realm of the invisible, all but disappeared. And in that, the wisdom of the earth and many of the ways to heal were lost.

Prophecy says that the balance will not return, nor peace be restored, until the ways of the Intuitive Mind and the realm of the invisible are honored; until the tribe of the Wanderers is reunited once again.

But the story does not end here….

The Wanderers agreed to participate in this time of darkness. Yes, as incredible as that sounds, we agreed to forget who we really are, to forego wisdom and even some of our abilities. We agreed to be lost, forgotten and invalidated.

You see, our greatest desire is to understand the whole of creation and the experience of life in all of its various and complex forms. In the past, we had learned a great deal about the light.

But, what we longed to learn about was the darkness. We wanted to really know fear and suffering. As long as we could return home, as long as we were connected to our shared and collected wisdom, then we could not truly understand the darkest of experiences. If I remembered that bodies could heal, I would know illness.

My ancestors knew that wisdom would come out of these dark and hopeless experiences. As long as healing and wisdom existed, as long as we knew that death does not end consciousness, our experience of the darkness would be limited and our ability to understand these other aspects of creation would remain tempered.

So the Wanderers agreed to forget. I chose to forget and you chose to forget. We chose to forget who we are and all that our spirit knows about in order to fully experience this time of darkness along with the other Wanderers.

And now as the the time of darkness is reversing, the Wanderers are awakening and remembering.

It is time to wake up. It is time to remember.

The challenges have been great. There is much now to understand and learn about the dark time as it passes and peace is regained. Our time has come to awaken.

Come join us and the prophecy will be fulfilled.

Copyright 2013

 

Michelle Miller Bohls is a psychotherapist living in Austin, Texas with her intuitive husband and intuitive son.

If you want to read more, please subscribe to this blog or check out www.anintuitivemind.com

Look for Michelle’s upcoming book, “The Owner’s Manual for An Intuitive Mind: Thriving as an Intuitive in a World Biased for the Logical and Linear.”

Alone with My Scared

The world is big
And I am so small,
but no one will notice
this matters at all.

Today they were mean
and pushed me around
Stepped on my heart
and ground me down
Inside I shook,
frazzled, and frowned.

But on the outside
no fear could be found,
because on my face
I had put on my brave
You really should try it
for others will rave!

No one could tell
that I even cared,
And I got kudos
for how well I fared.

But at the end of the day
I was alone with my scared.

And when I awoke
my scared was still there
it stayed and it grew
buried under my hair,
inside my skull
where no one could see
my terror, my tremor,
my “oh no, not me!”

***

And then our team lost
even though I played well
I got pushed down,
and I wanted to yell!
Everyone said
how grown up I seem
how good it is
to be ‘part of the team’
But all I wanted
was to let out a scream!

Yet no one knew,
and for that I was proud
for my performance,
others praised me aloud.

But inside I wondered
if I was just bad
Because really inside,
I was still alone with my mad.

And then, would you believe
my toast fell butter-side down?
My favorite shoes
could not be found,
and my best friend moved
to the far side of town!

But at the end of the day,
it wasn’t so bad
Except late that night
I was alone with my sad.

And when I awoke
my sad was still bad,
it grew heavy and dark,
down near my heart
and all of these feelings
nearly tore me apart.

There was no one to tell me:
there was no one to blame
Then my sad, mad, and scared
turned into my shame.

My shame stayed there,
stuck there,
day after day
I ignored it
I fought it
I said, “you must go away!”
but like gum on your shoe
it intended to stay.

My shame turned to pain
and it rotted my brain
and my heart became concrete
and the shame,
a deep stain.
And I wandered alone like this
year after year
losing friends and loved ones
to my anger and fear.

Until one day you noticed
I was alone with my shame
and asked if I wondered
if I was to blame?
I looked down
and then sideways
my tin jaw all rusted
I couldn’t believe I was finally busted?!
You asked if I ever felt
“scared, angry or blue?”
and you told me you wondered
because you often did, too!

Then the secret came out,
one I never suspected:
that these feelings, the tough ones,
get toxic, infected.
They flourish and fester
and really grow best
in the dark of our mind
all alone in our chest.

So from this day on,
when I have a bad day
or someone is mean
and won’t let me play,
I tell someone about it,
my mad, sad, or scared.
I know if I share it
It might not be o.k. —
But I won’t have to pretend
or hide it away.

So next time I notice
my feelings a-fluster
I’ll remember I can,
if I just find the muster,
I can share it with someone
a pal or a teacher
someone who loves me
or a kind, furry creature.

Please remind me of this
and tell others too!
Don’t let them hide how they
feel angry or blue.
Tell them my story
and how poorly I fared
when I stayed all alone,
all alone with my scared.

Copyright 2010
Michelle Bohls

Michelle Miller Bohls is a psychotherapist living in Austin, Texas with her intuitive husband and intuitive son.

If you want to read more, please subscribe to this blog or check out www.anintuitivemind.com

Look for Michelle’s upcoming book, “The Owner’s Manual for An Intuitive Mind: Thriving as an Intuitive in a World Biased for the Logical and Linear.”