The OFG: an introduction

What this tired old blog needs is a series of posts! After all, Olivia at Happy Luau is Being Brave right now, this being season two (I'm so glad her bravery was renewed for another season!), and Patti Digh has done several series over the years: poetry months, going-through-the-alphabet months (I still am a bit stunned that she rejected my suggestion of "xyst" as the X word/topic)--both forward and back--and I have decided it is time to contribute.

There is the Sacred Life focus which has been constant here (well, at least weekly since I completed the every-day-for-a-month initial challenge almost a year ago) because it is what prompted me to start this blog in the first place. Carla Blazek is my Matron Saint.

But what about the wisdom of the old fat guy? What about that? It is a running joke on my team at work, the references to the OFG. It's a little like the ancient commercial, "Give it to Mikey! Yeah! He won't eat it...he hates everything... Hey, he likes it!!" mixed with a little Eastern philosophy (after all, who was Buddha if not an old fat guy?).

So, off we go on the OFG adventure.

Patience with yourself...

I can still recall the first time I was really disappointed in myself. It was junior high school, and I had done a speech in class which was recorded by the teacher. She encouraged us to learn from our mistakes by taking her comments and listening to a replay of our speeches with those comments in mind.

It was the first time I had heard my own voice when it wasn't coming out of my own mouth. You can imagine the disillusionment! When we talk, we have the advantage of hearing ourselves both through the air, and through bone conduction--that's where the richness of our own voices comes from: the sound conducted inside our own bodies, added to the sound our ears pick up from the sound waves in the air around us.

I did my best to get better at public speaking, yet I harbored that disappointment for years. Did everyone hear me as having so thin a voice, one with no timbre or depth at all? It drove me to avoid a passion, one secretly held for decades, to be a singer. Instead, I took up the trumpet because I loved music too much to avoid it entirely.

In the process of overcoming that self-doubt, I learned the importance of providing to myself the same gentle patience which I offered to those around me. No, I don't pretend I am always patient with others. Yet, I found I was ten times more patient with others than I was with myself.

Then, I discovered a bit of magic: if you are nice to yourself, you will see improvements in the very areas which were prompting your low self-image. When you think about it, it is really not startling. We respond to our own encouraging thoughts equally well as we do to the encouraging words of others.

So, today's OFG message is, be patient with yourself. When you fall short, look for the improvement from last time and praise that. If there was none, look to the value of persistance in seeking improvement and praise that persistance. You get the idea: be patient. Be supportive. You are worth it!