Between a Rock and a Hard Place

     As I sit here between a rock and a hard place, I think about duties, the “shoulds” of our daily lives, the “wants” and the dreams, and debate inside my head, what makes one choose work versus play.  Of course, those two categories can be very different for each person.  For me, I can technically manipulate the “shoulds” into “wants” and the duties into dreams.  Or can I?  Can I really shuffle them fast enough, so I can get past the work items and focus my energy into the play fun stuff?  Or maybe I can convince myself that I really want to finish this technical work so I can get to read my for-pleasure book, so in theory, finishing the job/chore is a priority, something I must master well and fast, so I can get to the “want” pastime.

    The question you should ask yourself is why are you doing what you are doing?  As you weigh the pros and cons of each task at hand, it can be a straightforward type of answer.  Are you comparing apples and oranges?  Should you literally pick an apple over decadent chocolate (the kind which has a tendency to sensually melt in your mouth and give you hmmm-sounding sensations)?  Or is it a career change that you are contemplating?  Or maybe a relationship change?  Are you weighing financial stability against a risky dream venture you have always fantasized about?

     Life decisions are not easy all the time.  Sometimes the simplest decisions are the hardest ones to make.  And you should ask yourself: what makes me happy?  What makes my heart sing?  Is my decision going to impact others?  If so, how does it impact me?  Should I sacrifice myself in the process?  Is this decision perpetuating a continuity of a vicious cycle?  What is the best course of action?

     These are all great questions.  And the decision scale needs to tip more to one side than to the other.

It all comes down to two things: you being proactive and you being in balance.  When you are working towards those goals (and they complement each other beautifully), you are going to make a decision that is right for you, for your peace of mind, for your balance to reach full potential, and ultimately for your health.  When you are confused, or feel like you are going down the wrong path, you need to look within and evaluate your ingredients.  Are they all healthy?  Are they in sync?  How do you feel about it?  What is your gut telling you?

    When making your pros and cons list, pay attention to your intuition and not just what’s on the piece of paper.  Never stop questioning and know that the right answers are always the ones that make you feel whole in the end; they are always the ones that remove you from the rock and the hard place into a place of complete health and freedom, where you heart sings in perfect harmony along with the chirping birds.

Halt the gavel, dear Sir or Madam!

Being judgmental is a very dangerous thing.  Let’s admit it: we are all guilty of it.  Some people I know are highly hypocritical (like the Catholic who goes to church on Sundays to ask for forgiveness for the conscious “sins” acted out during the week) and I try to stay clear of them, and others can’t help themselves (I think that is a conscious choice).  We make judgments every day.  The word judgment has mostly a negative connotation, but judgment is really an opinion or a conclusion about something or someone.

I may come to a certain judgment if someone who comes for a Reiki session has their throat area energetically blocked and shares with me he/she is afraid of talking about feelings.  The throat area is all about communication and self-expression, so the judgment about one’s difficulty of communicating their feelings is made by me as a logical conclusion.

When you are around someone who is highly judgmental in a negative sort of way, always forcing their opinions on you, hardly listening, and being obnoxious about their righteousness, it is a clear indicator to me they like the sound of their own voice and they are not willing to hear your point of view.  They come across as narrow-minded, sometimes arrogant and are normally ignorant.  People like that have sometimes taken the opinion of their peers, or their parents, without really exploring their own ideas or doing the necessary research to formulate their own independent conclusions.  My friend’s husband is guilty of that.  Similar to a colorful peacock, he flaunts his multi-decade-old judgments proudly, and they are normally so far off from everyone’s opinions and show that he lives in another planet, that no one dares to say anything.  What’s even worse about this guy is that his own friends have decided that they cannot stand his company and prefer my friend’s, so they put up with him because they have to.

I’m a little guilty of having strong opinions, but as assertive as I have become, I have earned the right to my opinions, as I used to have none.  When I came to this country, I didn’t know who I was.  It took a lot of exploring and I realized that some of the judgments I had made were fruit of what I had been brain-fed by my parents.  Occasionally, I’ll joke with people that I’m always right, but I know that I am not.  I don’t know everything and I admit it.  Sometimes, I don’t have enough information to draw conclusions, so I need more time to explore how I feel about a given subject.  Do I force my opinions on others?  Sure, I may try, but I realize that the person next door can be as assertive as I am, and being a stubborn Taurus is not ammunition enough to bypass personalities or change people’s minds, just because I say so.  

One needs to come out of one’s shell, almost like a spirit hovering around their own body, to be able to become objective and really figure out if their judgment is sound, deserving, timely, or even appropriate.  So, if my client has indeed communication challenges and that has been my conclusion based on different sources of information, it’s not my call to force my opinion on them, but it’s my job to try and come up with tools that could help them.   If it’s something they can do on their own, they decide if it makes sense for them to implement it or not.  So before you slam that gavel, think and ask yourself a couple of smart questions.  Happy judging!