I recently confessed that sometimes I get scared of not being perfect enough, but I’m just as scared of being too perfect. For me, polar opposite fears are a good indication that something unconscious is running the show. (Why hello there, ego!) My Dance of Shiva practice is confusing the hell out of me helping me clarify this nonsensical pattern.

I’ve been doing the Dance daily for a couple of months now. And I love it for both the epiphanies and the sense of ritual. (Okay, ritual schmitual, I’m getting to be an epiphany addict.) I still have a steady stream of questions about the how and the why of it all, so if you’re still confused, you’re not alone. I’m pretty obsessed with learning more about how it works. I was reading an old blog post about finding the challenge (remember, the challenge is key) and I read this bit that triggered a little something in me.

You’re not supposed to be able to combine arms and legs yet. 
After just a couple months? That’s crazy talk.

 Oh no! Back to that part about how I’ve only been doing it for a couple of months. Immediately after reading this statement I thought, ewww, how annoying of me. I am combining arms and legs. This is terrible!  Who do I think I am? And then: I must be missing something. I’m probably missing the whole point. I’m clearly oversimplifying or cheating or something. 

At which point all of these scrambled neural pathways in my brain are so tangled I can barely think straight. Funny idiom, thinking straight, huh? It feels like my brain is firing in a new direction and for a minute here it doesn’t seem to be firing at all because I’m so utterly flummoxed. And I’m apparently pretty annoyed with myself for being too good at the Dance. Too perfect. I can’t let anyone find out about this. All of the Shivanauts will hate me. (*She typed neurotically just before hitting publish.*)

Hmmm. Interesting fear, considering yoga is pretty much all about love, huh?

Then I started wondering why I might be getting it earlier than expected. I’ve always loved sports that push both my body and my brain. Here’s where you can bust out laughing because the first such sport I’ll mention is, wait for it, cheerleading.

The brainy part of cheer had to do with learning a dance routine that gave my brain something to think about while my body was moving, which makes perfect sense to me in light of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory about flow. I felt the same way about kickboxing; remembering the sequence of moves would keep my brain from complaining about the pain in my shin as my leg made contact with the bag. And it’s part of why I love tennis. And now the Dance. 

Oh good, so now I kind of have an excuse for learning the Dance ahead of schedule and I can be all self-deprecating and humble so that no one thinks I’m annoying for being too good too soon. Right. Except making excuses to diminish my progress isn’t such a happy pattern.

But the cool thing is noticing how I can recognize patterns that aren’t serving me or fears that create lose-lose situations: Being scared of polar opposites is kind of a red flag. I’m scared of not being perfect enough and I’m scared of being too perfect, and that just doesn’t fly. As soon as I become aware of both fears, the emotional charge kind of plummets. Once again, I can identify this as a gift from my cuddly reptilian brain.

The kicker is that learning the Dance, or doing it “right,” is actually all wrong. Because the more confused I am, the more neural pathways my brain is creating. So if I’m getting the Dance, I’m not getting the epiphanies. Which kinda means that all of the Shivanauts who are struggling to combine arms and legs are actually more successful with their practice than I am. Oh, hahaha. This is too much. I could whip us around in a few more spirals of paradox if I tried, but I think that’s plenty for now.

Good God I love paradox. And hate paradox. I’ve mentioned that a time or two, yes?

I have this wacked out pattern that consists of a main course of really, really wanting to be perfect with a side order of really, really not wanting to be “Little Miss Perfect.” I was aware of it on some level already, but the pure magic that transpires from the pattern-translating wonder of Dance of Shiva has re-introduced me to the contradiction between my inner perfectionist zealot and her wimpy nemesis, my inner shrinking violet.

And the part that really has my brain scrambled is that I’m noticing the pattern because of my Dance of Shiva practice which is all about identifying patterns, and this particular perfection/antiperfection thing also has to do with my competence at the Dance. What?! Argh. Or … thank you? I don’t know yet.

I should really write a post that provides a concise and clever little definition of this Dance that I can refer you to every time I talk about it, because so much of what I’m learning lately about myself and my world is Dance-related. And that way, if you’re into it, you can relate to the Dance-ification of it all, and if not, the patterns and the discoveries are equally applicable to whatever stuff you’re dealing with.

This post isn’t much for clever or concise, but maybe it can just be the stand-in. 

So the Dance is less like dancing and more like a form of yoga. Except I’m not really all that into yoga so that should tell you something about how non-yoga-ish it is right there. 

You basically combine specific arm and leg movements in certain sequences and it feels a little like trying to rub your tummy and pat your head. In an anti-gravity chamber. While also trying to memorize an international telephone number. And some annoying person is shouting random digits in the background. In Chinese. Or something nothing at all like that, but even more confusing. 

Why on Earth would I do such a thing? Because it helps build new neural pathways in your brain which means you can figure out why you do the things you do by peering at your patterns all up close and personal. And then rewrite those patterns. Super cool stuff. Delicious epiphanies, truly. 

Oh, and you also need to know that the harder it is and the more you mess up, the more epiphanies you receive. Having just one thing in your life where doing it wrong is the only way to do it right is the most infuriating transformative practice I can recommend to a perfectionist.

The aftermath is pretty incredible, and it’s difficult to put into words the full effect. As evidenced by this rambling post. And yes, sometimes looking directly into your stuff is kind of uncomfortable (that’s why the stuff is still there), but the Dance serves up palatable, bite-sized doses. And the benefits are well worth the ten minute time investment. Seriously. All it takes is ten minutes of the Dance and then a few minutes of sitting around doing nothing or meditating if that’s your thing.

Okay, this post did not quite achieve the brevity of description I had in mind. But with that background, next time I can explain this little “I need to be absolutely perfect, but obviously not too perfect or everyone will hate me” thing I have going on.

Please note that this is my humble and amateur description and you should really go read more from someone who knows what she’s talking about.

And if you have tricks for taming your own streak of perfectionism, tell me all about ‘em.

On Friday night I watched the original pilot of Seinfeld.  This is a testament to a couple of things: (1) my undying devotion to a show whose final curtain closed over ten years ago; and (2) my undying devotion to all things homebody-ish, like a Friday night at home with my old friends Jerry and Elaine.

If you weren’t a Seinfeld fan, this post may be lacking in metaphor for you. And I apologize. Not for the post, but for the ways you missed out on those happy Thursday nights in the 90’s. 

To clear up any confusion, when I say pilot I’m not referring to the episode where Jerry and George pitch a pilot to NBC. I’m talking about the real pilot of the actual show.

Before I tell you what I thought of the pilot, allow me to explain my love of all things Seinfeld. The show was fresh and original and made ordinary crap seem funny and personal and oh so familiar. The characters were real and vivid, and made something out of a show about nothing.

And guess what? The pilot totally sucked. I feel like a complete traitor even typing that, but sheesh! Holy awkward and uncomfortable and oh-for-the-love-of-Larry-David squeamishness. It was actually kind of boring and not very funny. And worst of all, it was trying too hard. 

Luckily, the episode previewed a few delicious glimpses of the glory the show would eventually grow to become. So two points I want to make about that:

(1) Even something as wonderful as Seinfeld started out being way less than wonderful. Things take time to grow and develop. Art needs nurturing. Characters become more authentic as they live out the lives of the role they play. The whole entity of the show itself needed time to get comfortable in its own skin, work out the kinks, refine the relationships, polish the humor. 

(2) Someone (much savvier than myself) still saw the potential and gave it a shot. And geez am I grateful for that. Because no idea or craft or “thing” starts out fully formed and organically awesome.

They had the shell of a great show: the actors and writers and creators and story (or innate storylessness). But everything needed time to deepen in complexity, to build the confidence to take risks, and let the heart of the show start beating on its own. And not only did the show itself need time to develop; so did its audience. We needed time to catch on, to connect with the show in order to allow it to affect us.

And yeah, same is true for us. Our thing needs time, space, (cheese alert) love. What a relief.

Interestingly, the series finale also sucked wasn’t my cup of tea. Remember? The trial and everyone being sent to jail? Yuck. It was time to move on and the talented people involved in the show knew it. The rest of us didn’t want to let it go. But the actors and creators were ready to go build new things, to create fresh stuff, to start over.

(Totally random endnote: If there had been blogs in the 90’s, can you imagine the comment debate there would have been over that last episode? Pretty heated. Or is it just me?)

(Totally random endnote number two: the September newsletter for blisscovery went out today! Hooray! Join the party and subscribe in the sidebar.)

Last night, in a rare moment of tv viewing, I caught part of a special on optimism hosted by Michael J. Fox.  During one segment, he was playing golf with Bill Murray.  

Golf is mentally challenging, so I hear, and causes many a calm and otherwise rational person to throw crazified tantrums on the green. Imagine learning to play with Parkinson’s Disease.

Midway through the round, they stopped for lunch and chatted about optimism, and Michael J. Fox threw off a comment about just doing the next right thing.  Later, as they finished up the round, Bill Murray brought up the idea again.  The next right thing.

And then Bill Murray said “yeah, as opposed to the next thing right.”  

Wow.  Paradigm shift inside my brain.  What a difference transposing those words makes.  I have spent so much of my life obsessively focused on doing the next thing right.  All this time, I only wanted to learn how to do the next right thing.

I think it’s almost impossible to do both.  If I am utterly consumed with doing the next thing right, I honestly don’t care at all whether whatever I’m doing actually matters.

And…if we worry about doing the next thing right, but the thing is not the right thing, we may get so good at that thing that our expertise will accumulate and we’ll find ourselves successful at some thing (career?) that we never wanted in the first place.

(And by “we” I mean me and by “thing” I mean tax accountant.  Ugh.  So watch out. I’m just sayin’.)

Another key word in this statement: next.  How many times have I fretted over some action to take at a distant future moment?  Sometimes (pretty much all of the time) I can only know the next right thing.

Obviously (I hope) “right” here does not mean morally or ideologically. This is about inspired action, taking the next step from a soulful sense of inner purpose, that Tao Te Ching sense of “doing without doing.”

An idea for bringing some presence to this perspective:  starting up Dance of Shiva, or any practice where you can never really do it right because you’re only doing it right if you’re doing it very, very wrong.  

After spending so much of my life obsessively focused on doing the next thing right, I have consciously committed to sucking at something, and it feels strange and kind of blurry.  

But it is healing my brain in wacky ways.  

Beginning something you’ve always wanted to try can have the same effect, especially if you’re scared to try because you know you’ll be terrible at it, and you allow yourself to begin anyway. 

This concept is so simple and profound ~ I can just ask myself at any moment: am I focusing on the next right thing, or am I all bijiggified trying to do the next thing right?

In my last post I talked about being afraid of shining and being afraid of not shining.  

These teeter-tottering fears make me wonder, which is real: (1) the fear of making a fool out of myself and people thinking I’m a complete idiot, or (2) the fear of shining, and people thinking I’m too big for my britches?  

Um, neither?

But I’m guessing that the second fear propels me to behave in ways that guarantee fulfillment of the first.  If I’m scared of being shiny, the result is all too predictable: fidgeting with a thread on my skirt will cause it to catch on the podium.  As I walk away, the skirt will unravel leaving me standing on stage representing every definition of vulnerable.

Or, the second fear will leave me just as exposed.  Either way I feel naked. Interesting.

Noticing that two opposing fears are battling for the crown is actually pretty cool, because it alerts me to the culprit: only my ego could respond to the soothing of one fear by inventing and swiftly converting me to another.

Another signal these fears are a death threat gift from my ego: the in-your-face obvious preoccupation with what other people think.  

All of these thoughts have Marianne Williamson’s wise words on endless loop in my head.  And I’ve been resisting quoting her, because it seems like one of the most oft-quoted of oft-quoted quotes.  I’m going to do it anyway:

“It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us . . . Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you . . . And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.”

Maybe there’s a reason people in the spotlight keep quoting this wisdom.

Maybe to get to where they are, they’ve had to face their own stuff about getting all sparkly and successful, however that looks for them.  They’ve had to learn how to let their own light shine in order to encourage us to do the same.  They’ve had to stop getting in their own way.  

Because if we are harboring any issues with being shiny, I think it’s a safe bet that we’ll trip ourselves up on the way there.  

And playing big doesn’t necessarily mean stepping into the spotlight of fame.  It may mean you stand up for yourself when someone criticizes you, or you accept a compliment graciously, or you finally lose the ten pounds that used to feel like protective armor.

For me, writing a blog post about shining makes me nervous that you’ll think I think I have all of these legitimate reasons to shine, like I’m getting famous or becoming some kind of successful.

And just telling you that, being honest, is what helps me shine a little more comfortably. Because it’s so not at all about those things that now I’m laughing at myself out loud.  Which makes shining feel way less fancy-pants-ish.

Of course Marianne Williamson’s right that our light scares us.  But our darkness scares us, too.  And maybe the real power comes from peering closely at the darkness, meeting it, and then consciously shining anyway.

This strength is what gives others permission to do the same.  This is about realizing that perfection is not required, and that we all have a shadow, but that the light is stronger.

And what about the fact that being all squeamish about not wanting to shine makes it all about us instead of about the people we want to serve?  

If you are meant to do this big thing, then your people need you to do it.  If your people are waiting for you to shine in order to feel safe doing their thing, then who are you to get in the way?

I’m keep trying to remember that I’m just a channel, a vessel.  I’m able to accept grace a little less clumsily when I acknowledge that any good I do is flowing through me.  I am not the source of it.

In the words of the Sufi mystic, Hafiz:

I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through – listen to this music!

So many things in life seem perfectly orchestrated to bring out our stuff. Like maybe everything.  But definitely some things more than others, and I think public speaking might be one of those somethings.

First, it has the quality of terrifying many a person.  But I’m noticing a very strange dynamic where I find myself waffling between two extremes of unease.  I thought I was mostly nervous about being terrible at it, but sometimes I think I’m even more scared of actually being okay at it.

The fear of being embarrassingly awful seems pretty reasonable.  It’s far more self-defeating to worry about being too good at it.  Because this means my actual fear is that if I do well, then other people might think, “Ewww, she thinks she’s so cool.” 

I think I have a lot of residual “she thinks she’s so cool” stuff left over from junior high.  Or something.  

Also, I can clearly remember a very specific instance from my childhood when I learned that being shiny might lose me some friends.  And by childhood, I mean the joy that was my freshman year of high school.  

What does this say about the way I handle success, or handled it as a kid?  I wonder whether there was something about my attitude that pushed people away, or made me seem holier-than-thou-ish. 

This morning while doing Shiva Nata yoga, during the first hard segment, I pulled off something I hadn’t been able to before.  And I got so busy congratulating myself that I completely flubbed through the next piece.

I laughed at myself, and then I wondered – is this a pattern?  Uncovering and rewriting patterns is one of the things Dance of Shiva does best… i.e. yes my dear, it’s a pattern.  Hmmm.  Do I often get so infatuated with my performance that I stop being mindful of what I’m doing and screw up?

Ick, that’s not flattering or pretty to face.  At all.

And is this all part of my dissonance with accepting praise or being recognized?  The knowledge that celebrating my own sock-rocking has sometimes gotten me into trouble in the past?

Well, here’s what sparked my recent fear spiral with shininess:

There was this teeny tiny, seriously small contest last week and I won.  Let me paint you the picture though: there were only three of us competing, and maybe twenty voters.  Small.  

And the contest had to do with public speaking (on a very beginner level, mind you).  Also there was no prize.  Only the glory of winning.  Which, you can see, is bringing me all of these constant bursts of effervescent joy. Pfffft.

Lately I’ve been noticing that when I hear other people speak, I really want them to do well.  And for partially selfish reasons.  It makes me incredibly uncomfortable to hear someone all shaky-voiced and crawling out of their skin.  I get so empathetic I can feel my own muscles and ligaments straining to dislocate.

And so I started thinking, in some ways learning to be more comfortable with public speaking is like a gift I can give to other people.  Hysterical, right?  At this thought, my inner people pleaser started nodding her well-groomed little head so fast I got a little seasick.  She l-o-v-e-d the idea.  

Interesting.  I started out afraid of making a fool out of myself.  Next came the fear that if I succeed, it will push people away.  And now there’s a part of me that wants to do well in order to make other people feel comfortable. Do any of these seemingly contradictory impulses ring true for you?

More about being shiny next time.  And yes, I’ll even be including the requisite Marianne Williamson quote.

Confession.  I’m having some trouble striking just the right tone for this blog, and I’m pretty sure I know why.  I’m less sure about how to handle it.  The thing is, I see this blog as the opening introduction of myself as a personal coach, or mentor, or life designer, or bliss advocate, or whatever you want to call me.