Self control. I’m the worst at it.
No, really. I suck.
And it’s one of those things that’s tucked in the Bible in a
not so obvious manner. It’s not really lumped in there with Don’t steal! Don’t
kill! Don’t sleep with your friend’s (or, anyone’s) spouse! – those kind of
commands.
So it’s easy to ignore, to disregard as “Meh. Right now I need
to go the bank and deposit my check so I don’t overdraft my account, so I’ll
think about that nice little Martha Stewart-type self control thought later.”
But really, lately, for the last several months of my life, it has occurred to me – between trips to the bank – that self control is probably where I could afford to focus a LOT of my energy.
I’m logged out of Facebook and Gmail for the moment, but I don’t
necessarily expect that to last more than an hour or so. When I stop and think
about it, I don’t know why it’s so hard or troublesome or worrisome to me to
think about being logged out of these websites – I mean, they’ll be there later
for crying out loud!
No joke, mid sentence in that last sentence there I had this
inexplicable pang to log back in.
While faith and believing in this Guy called God and all
kinds of other things can be really hard for me, I do try to believe and like
the comfort of believing that these seemingly tiny commands, or life
directions, from the Bible, are meant to help, not harm us.
And I don’t mean to sound preachy – if you’re not religious and
you’ve made it to this paragraph I would ask you to keep reading, if you would.
I don’t think that you have to be religious, or Christian specifically, or an
officer of the law, to appreciate that subtle changes have big impact. I think
that anyone can value and experience the effect of making a tiny change to your
routine or your actions or what have you and then seeing how it affects
something bigger, like your mood, or your energy, or your relationships with your
friends.
Some of these tiny changes I really struggle to get on board
with. For example, positive thinking. My friend Michelle tries, lovingly, to be
my coach on positive thinking, but she also knows that it’s very hard for me to
snap out of an emotional upset just by hoping for the best and focusing on what’s
good in my life. I count my blessings pretty much every day, but I can’t help
that I am wired to be a slave to my crazy and often merciless moods. I am
hoping and thinking that prayer can help with this, and maybe even some pesky
additional positive thinking, but for now that is not the conversation I want
to have. I am just listing an example of a common practice in our culture that
follows the [tiny-shift: big-life-overhaul] formula.
A tiny shift that I can
relate to is the protein phenomenon. Apparently our bodies like that stuff. So when
I haven’t eaten in a while (I usually haven’t, because I have self-diagnosed
attention deficit disorder) I go for the Clif Bar. The glass of milk. The dollar
menu hamburger. (My parents are fighting urges to move in next door to me right
now and feed me dinner every night). Also, food in general. Our bodies like to
eat fairly often. More often than I would care to prepare food for myself, always preparing for myself, by myself, me
my own little self in myself’s tiny apartment, where the dishes always heap.
Anyway. I have learned over many years to respect this
request from my body, to eat and to eat well.
But I’m still not great at it. Take for example the
not-yet-finished ham and cheese square sitting next to me here at Starbucks.
(It’s been there for a while).
And why is the ham and cheese square not yet finished? Well,
for now it’s because I’m writing. But if you follow this blog at all then you
know that my life activities don’t get neglected because I am always diligently
writing. Ha.
Which brings me back to my point – whatever my point is, I haven’t
really decided yet, so stay with me here.
I guess my mini-point here, which may be encompassed in some
larger point, is that there’s always something keeping me from something. I have
no direction. I am drifting.
For the first time in my life this is really, truly
bothering me, which is why I brought it up with my latest therapist, to whom I finally
decided to introduce myself recently. That was a good life move, I vote.
Some of this drifting is due to (very correctly
self-diagnosed) ADD. (Hey, I have 27 college credits in Psych. If it’s enough
for a BA, it’s enough to diagnose*).
*Self diagnosis is a terrible idea. Don’t do it.
Some of this is due to unbridled extroversion (which then
makes my introversion have a panic attack when it can’t get any alone time,
dammit. If that’s not happening, my extroversion is having a panic attack
because I am isolated and don’t know where my friends are during another
weekend that I didn’t put social things on the calendar. (This observation is
sometimes self-deprecating shtick for my writing, other times it is terrifying
and terrifyingly unfair, particularly when a) it is the middle of the night
and/or b) it feels like no one, no one
understands it, even God, who LOVES us)).
Some of this is thanks to my very many and very varied
interests – running, cross stitching, reading, writing, TV, cooking, dancing,
singing, petting cats, nature, Celine Dion.
I don’t really know what to do about this lack of self
control in my life, but I think two good starting points – in addition to a
solid routine – are to pray about it (and ask other, more diligent friends of mine
to pray about it) and to start taking self control more seriously.
There’s another part of the Bible – not in the self control
section – where one of the prophets (? OK, yes. Found it. It was Elijah (1
Kings 19:11-13)) hears all these very loud things – a great wind, an
earthquake, things like that. And at the end of the story there is just a
simple whisper. And it is the whisper that is God. That is the part he’s
supposed to listen to.
That self control thing is just hanging out in the list of
fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). I learned a song about the fruits in
middle school, and I could sing it for you if you like. Several of them are
easy, or at least on most days easy-ish. Love. I love a lot of people.
Kindness. I was raised in the ultra-friendly Midwest by rather polite parents. Actually
now that I’m thinking about it most of the other nine fruits are hard for me.
But that self control one, I guess I think of it as
something that you learn as a young’n. They really emphasize that self control unit
in the preschool arena, and personally I could use (an ongoing) refresher
course.
I say that both to make you laugh but also because I’m dead
serious about it. Sometimes things get taught formally to us only once, and they
really ought to be discussed again and again. I mean, I think I’ve graduated
from the “Don’t talk while Teacher’s talking” and “Please raise your hand if
you have a question” lessons, but that doesn’t mean this conversation should
have ended.
I tell people, therapist included, that I know I am capable
of doing things, because I have more than one degree – or even a degree – and I
think I’m a loyal friend and I moved across the country and stuck it out when I
was unemployed and have agreed and managed to stay put in L.A. even though I don’t
always or usually love my life here. (And this is where I am reminded that self
control is real and important, because I know
that leaving L.A. right now would not make me happy or more at peace. It would
simply re-stir the chaos, repeat the restless-motion pattern in my heart and my
mind).
But I tell those same people that I feel lost. What am I doing?
I really, truly live moment to moment. One reason I like going to work is because
while I’m there I can’t, to a certain extent, decide to do one thing and five
seconds later change my mind. On the weekends my actions are a free-for-all. In
a structured environment where I am depended upon and my paycheck is dependent
upon my reliability, I can at least move forward and accomplish tasks.
Of course I do this in my personal life, but it isn’t hard and
fast. And as a creative person, as an over thinker, more than 40 hours of structure
a week can at times feel like my creativity and ability to output creative
items is suffocated. That might sound dramatic, but to the creative over thinkers,
believe me, it sounds accurate. But where there is no structure, or at least no
self control, the creative output is limited, and that is suffocating in its
own, more destructive way.
That’s all I got. Or, all I’m giving you now. Because it is
12:41 and I need to finish the ham and cheese square and do things, and if I write
much more you will stop paying attention. Just a sharing of thoughts and
another unsolicited invitation into my psyche. Blessings to you all.
And if you feel like no one understands and/or it’s the
middle of the night, reach out. I’ve found that people at least understand
pieces of what you think they don’t understand, and it’s way more people than
you think. Way more. Like, all of us. We all understand a piece of what the
rest of us are going through. So even if you feel angry and paralyzed by the fact that others don't perfectly understand, try try try your hardest to push past that and seek at least some understanding.
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