By Shannon Cutts
If you look in the mirror and see this face, then now is a great time to wait.
Years ago, my mentor, Lynn, told me, “if you are feeling anger, then it is not the right time to act.”
Lynn is still my mentor today, and she still tells me this from time to time.
I have also learned that it applies equally well in situations where I am feeling sadness or grief, anxiety or indecision, and, well, anything other than peace, basically.
Peace, Lynn has often explained and re-explained to me, is like finding true North on a compass, or the North Star in the midnight sky. It is always reliable. I can trust it. I can walk in that direction with confidence.
But anger might be pointing me South.
Sadness might ask me to go West.
And anxiety might have me heading off far to the East.
So if I don’t feel peace, it is always the right time to wait.
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By Shannon Cutts
From the front, that self-wall may look impenetrable. But with awareness comes opportunity....and the strength to break the wall down.
Not too long ago, I made a huge breakthrough in my self-work.
I had long been aware that there were certain walls – protective or otherwise – that I had through the years erected and even for a time maintained against others, be they situations, people, places, or even memories.
But it wasn’t until more recently that I realized I also had a wall up, and in place, against myself.
It started with my morning meditations.
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By Shannon Cutts
What is a preference?
What is a priority?
Common definitions would indicate that a preference is something we like more than something else, and a priority is something we think is more important than something else.
Already, it is easy to see that a preference and a priority are not always the same.
My preference may be to sleep in all day. But what will that choice do to my priorities?
Sometimes they are the same. It is great when this happens. For instance, my preference is to keep my body healthy. After 15 years battling an eating disorder, this is also my continual priority.
But other times, they are not the same. An example – my preference is to sleep in late every day. But my priority is to earn rent money, which sometimes means getting up early.
It can be problematic if we don’t learn to tell the difference between a preference and a priority.
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By Shannon Cutts
Just try explaining to this ivy why it needs to create a 5-year plan. It is far too busy just living each moment.
Learning to live in the moment is no skill any child, pet, or insect has to learn.
It is the only skill they possess – the only one they know is possible.
This is also why pets, children, houseplants, and houseflies make such valuable mentors. Because we so easily tend toward forgetting this, and they are experts at reminding us.
If we are paying attention.
Moments matter for so many reasons. They matter because, quite literally, they are the only “life” we truly have. The past moment – the future moment – one we have already relinquished, and the other is not yet ours.
At the risk of sounding too existential, this is the bald-faced, incontrovertible, conscious truth.
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By Shannon Cutts
Happy? Sad? Angry? All of the above? The art of emotional release can help.
If you are like most people (or at least like me) you probably struggle with certain emotions more than others.
For instance, with practice, I have gotten used to – habituated to, even – emotions like sadness and anxiety. But I still arm wrestle feelings of anger daily.
For me, anger is the no-no emotion.
For you, it might be grief. Or fear. Or even joy.
I have also noticed that I am actually kind of afraid of happiness feelings.
Happiness, identified and expressed, feels like a very concentrated emotional pill as compared with more familiar feelings of sadness and anxiety left over from more than 20 years of eating disorder recovery.
In other words, I am still getting used to happiness, whereas depression and fear have become old friends of sorts.
In this, my life coach and I have been working on what I like to call the art of emotional release. This technique is quite different from emotional clinging, emotional distancing, or simple disavowal of having emotions.
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By Shannon Cutts
The key to unlocking our right and ability to embrace wanting is to understand what holds us back.
About five months ago, I made one of the smartest moves I’ve ever made and hired a life coach.
My life coach, Teya, is part therapist, part friend, part mentor, part cheerleader, and part (of course) coach.
This week, she said something so remarkable – I mean, she does that every week, but this week in particular I was just amazed that I’d never picked up on the subtle dangers of “wanting” before now.
She said, and I quote, “It is vulnerable to want things.”
She was speaking to my oft-expressed fear of late that I am not sure what I want.
I am often quite sure of what I don’t want (noisy neighbors, bird poop on the shirt I had planned to wear out later, having to wake up early) but I almost never feel as sure about what I do want.
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By Shannon Cutts
We have all kinds of beliefs and routines that we use to attract luck, or keep its opposite away. But what if the only true "luck" we have (or need) is ourselves?
Recently, a friend and I were catching up, and he asked me an interesting question.
“Do you believe in luck?”
I stumbled and fumbled around for awhile, and finally had to admit that no, I didn’t believe in luck.
I discovered that I do believe in hard work.
And I believe in serendipity (in my world, this is something like a cross between fate and divine intervention, which I suppose some might call luck).
But given that the formal definition of “luck” refers to something called “chance happening,” I guess my real issue is with the word chance.
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By Shannon Cutts
Yup. That's my pretty, pretty girl.
If you’ve been following “Mentoring & Recovery” for awhile, you’ve probably noticed I write a lot about my bird, Pearl.
Believe it or not, this is not just because she is the smartest, cutest, most entertaining avian on the planet.
Although she is all those things.
It is also because she is the prettiest.
This is not an opinion.
She knows it, and I know it.
And everyone else knows it the moment they meet her.
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By Shannon Cutts
As the midnight hour approaches, ask yourself, "What kind of New Year-ian am I?
The approach of a new year can be a source of stress or a source of anticipation depending on your personal perspective.
For some, like myself, we are quite simply incurable optimists when it comes to the New Year.
We are just convinced – year after year after year – that the moment January 1st arrives, all the work-in-progress projects we’ve been attempting unsuccessfully for these past many months (or decades) will simply and neatly resolve themselves into the pristine newness of a whole new year.
Needless to say, our breed is frequently disappointed.
For others, the New Year is a source of remembered shame from years past, a continual pea in the mattress or pebble in the shoe of our willingness to believe in such a thing as a “new leaf”, a “New Year’s resolution”, or much of anything “new” anymore.
Here, jaded personal pessimism is the order of business on January 1st, and worldly-wise has long since ceded the New Year’s path to worldly-weary for these folks.
And then there are those folks who find themselves somewhere in between.
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By Shannon Cutts
When used appropriately, with right understanding and balance, religion or spiritual focus can be an aid to recovery efforts.
Does religion have a place in recovery?
The answer is yes. And no.
By the way, by “religion,” I realize I may be inadvertently saying different things to different folks. For some, “religion” may mean planning a regular visit to a house of worship, while for others “religion” may mean waking up a bit early each morning for a meditation session before work or school.
Still others may define “religion” as something much closer to the realm of “spirituality,” as in an approach to every day life that encompasses the connection we all share.
And still others may have a definition for “religion” that I’ve never heard of or thought of before.
However, that doesn’t change the answer to whether religion has a place in recovery. The answer is still yes.
And still no.
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