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Do you want a breakthrough in your writing work?

I sure do. I got one this morning. It feels so good to just let the words flow with nothing hindering. What worked for me this time? I think there are a couple of ingredients in this soup.

First, I’ve been working hard on allowing myself to write imperfectly. Normally my inner critic/editor is right there with me, reading as I write, constantly interrupting me with her opinions and directives. This is maddening and makes me give up more than anything else. I’ve been in talks with her to convince her to allow me to just get it all written and then I will hand the project over to her. She doesn’t really want to do all of her editing and criticizing at once. She’s a bit low energy like me and prefers to do it a little bit at a time in real time. But for now she has agreed to step aside. This really helps me to let down my guard and just write.

Second, I’m taking off the masks. I’m not trying to “be good” at what I am doing or make it sound like any certain “good writer” that I’ve read. I am not trying to do it like Jeannette Walls or Ann Lamott or Cheryl Strayed or even Elizabeth Gilbert. I’m going to do it like ME and I don’t care if it doesn’t look the same or look like what a memoir is “supposed” to look like. There’s no law. So I am committing to a.) being myself, right to the bone, and b.) telling the truth, as impoverished as I may think it is. I never made anything up but I did try to make it sound a certain way. Not doing that anymore.

The result? This morning I sat down and poured out 1000 words and could have gone longer but I wanted to get a blog post in before it is time to take coffee to my man. It feels so good. I hope it lasts this time.

What do you do to get the words flowing? Do you ever struggle with your inner critic?

Photo by Alexa Mazzarello on Unsplash

 

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INFP: develop your extraverted intuition and soar

I get into these crazy spins in life and I don’t know why until I stop and think about it and remember yet again: I’m completely skipping over my secondary function: extraverted intuition.

It’s called a tertiary loop and I do it all the time. A tertiary loop is when you get to spinning between your dominant function, which in an INFP is introverted feeling, and your tertiary function (introverted sensing in INFP).

I become even more introverted, isolated, and sometimes even afraid of the outside world. I am living on the inside of myself, flipping rapidly and radically back and forth between introverted feeling – judging everything in light of my inner values and how I feel about those – and introverted sensing – perceiving everything according to my inner memories of pain, which causes me to withdraw even more.

When I am in a loop, I have stopped considering any possibilities and all I want to do is hide from the outside world.

The only way to solve this problem is to put one foot on the floor to stop the spinning, and then remember about my secondary function, extraverted intuition.

Every MBTI will do well to focus on his or her secondary function. I believe it is the most efficient path to a rapid increase in the quality of life no matter who you are. It is truly the path to sanity and the beginning of wholeness.

In the INFP, making use of extraverted intuition jolts an extreme introvert back into the outside world in a very pleasant way. INFP’s really are possibility thinkers when we remember that we are, and we take a lot of joy in studying our environments for options and new ideas, especially when it comes to creative endeavors.

When I look at the world around me in an extraverted way, it balances me and nourishes my soul in the best way possible. It’s the other side of me and it’s good and necessary. It can feel very uncomfortable and unwelcome at first, especially if I’ve been in a tertiary loop for some time. It’s awkward to poke your head out of your shell if you’ve not done it in a while. However, it doesn’t take long to start feeling good again. It’s worth the effort.

Whenever you hear someone saying they are both introvert and extravert, they are intuitively understanding that just beneath the surface there is a balancing, complementary force. It’s true. None of us are only introvert or only extravert. When we forget that we get into a spin. A loop.

As introverted as I am, a huge, powerful part of me is extraverted – and that is my ability to see possibilities in the world. It’s a blessing.

Do you get into tertiary loops? Or do you have a solid grasp on your secondary function?

If you’re unfamiliar with your MBTI temperament, you can take a free test and start exploring.

 

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

 

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The cold shock of meaningful writing

I’ve distilled the source of my happiness and contentment into three daily things: eating right, moving my body, and writing something meaningful. If I do these things, at the end of the day the odds are great that I will be at peace with myself. I like peace.

I want to focus on the meaningful writing. For me that means it can’t be stream of consciousness stuff like morning pages. I have given morning pages the old college try. I’ve done 750words.com for years. I’ve have a few streaks of writing my morning pages by hand as soon as I wake up. I love the feeling of the ink on the page. But no matter how I do the morning pages, by hand or typing, I always end up asking myself, why am I doing this? It is meaningless to me to write to myself about what I am going to do today or how much yesterday sucked.

For me, meaningful writing is beautiful, or it works out a dilemma, or both. Meaningful writing is structured in some way and it is directed and purposeful, not aimless. It leaves me feeling satisfied that I have “done my work” as a writer.

Meaningful writing is not easy to do. It accesses everything that is vulnerable inside me and for that reason it meets with resistance. It taps into the pain and shame of the past, or the insecurities of the future. If I show them who I really am will I be rejected again?

Because of the pain that lurks inside the work of meaningful writing, I find myself dancing on the threshold of it. I long to do it and I need to do it but I avoid it. It’s like how I used to feel as a kid, toes curled over the smooth concrete edge of the swimming pool, half-naked in my suit. I wanted to swim, to dive down and touch the depths while holding my breath, to feel the freedom and weightlessness of the water.

But the water is shockingly cold. I dip my toes in and confirm this. It doesn’t feel good and it will feel worse to be enveloped in that cold. And what if I jump in and my bathing suit dislodges from my body? Old traumatic memories die hard.

So I hesitate. I hem and haw and dance. I go inside and get a snack. I tell myself I don’t really want to swim in this pool. My heart tells me different. I try to shut up my heart. And then I have no peace.

When I was a girl, and I finally screwed up the courage to jump off the side into the chilly clear water, the shock of the cold was striking. It was uncomfortable. I would rise to the surface and draw in a shivered breath. But now that I was in, it was much better to stay in then to climb out and expose my wet skin to the air. I was committed. The cold wasn’t so cold anymore.

So it is with my meaningful writing. I have to jump in to get past the pain. I’ll feel it for a few moments but as I swim and stay with it, the water feels much warmer.

Photo by Léa Dubedout on Unsplash

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Going for beautiful broke (a post from the archives)

Sometimes it seems appropriate to pull up an old post. This one was published 3 years ago today on http://tinagasperson.com, my super up close and personal blog. I enjoyed reading it again today, I hope you also enjoy it.

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This morning as I was writing about my life in Tampa thirty years ago and how I met my first husband, I was reminded of how I would so many times allow myself to be carried along by circumstances in such a paradoxical way. Sometimes I had no choice, other times I did, but I never resisted or made a choice for myself for something better. Whatever happened, always happened TO me and I always just let it. I went along what was for me the least resistant path, fueled by my desire to be loved. Yet, my submission to the path was actually a choice for my ultimate good; for adventure and change and transformation. I was carried by that desire into many adventures and experiences that shaped me, hurt me, maybe permanently damaged me, but ultimately led me to the place where I am now, into the person I am now, the person I was meant to be.

The pattern I see is one of relentless searching and discarding, searching and discarding. I was searching for love – I was willing to go anywhere and be with anyone as long as I thought they might love me. I was repulsed by a number of people who I thought loved me and I was willing to push through that feeling if only they would accept me and appreciate me for who I was, who I am. Whenever I realized that yet again I was not loved, I would wash my hands of the situation, jump back into the current of circumstances, and allow that current to take me wherever it wanted to in my search for transformational love. I had no fear of the unknown, no foreboding of danger, no desire to hide and be safe. I only knew I had to keep going. I wasn’t really searching for a mere human love (I thought I was); I was searching for the one true love, the eternal love of my creator, the one who has always known me and always loved me all along; the one who was always with me even when I didn’t know it, always protecting, always covering, always holding, always cherishing.

When I look back on the course of my life, I can see that God was with me always; walking with me, whispering to me, encouraging me to never give up, declaring that the journey I was on would eventually lead me to the love I so desperately wanted. Perhaps that is why I don’t conform to traditional expectations in my faith journey. I know that God does not “follow the rules” in his relentless pursuit of us; he is an adventurer, calling us to journey with him down the beautiful path of dangers. Why should I follow manmade rules? I will not.

We can choose to be safe, to bury our talents as we wait for the master to return, to lock ourselves in a cage of playing it safe, sitting down and waiting, walling ourselves off from a big wide world and all the scary things; or we can choose to risk everything, to live dangerously, to take a gamble, to live a life of beautiful danger with potential disaster around every turn, to invest it all in hopes of a glorious bountiful return. I choose to go for broke in the dangerous beauty of journeying with God. Anyone up for a walk today?

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Rustic Pancakes Recipe

We visited IHOP recently and the server encouraged me to try the cheesecake pancakes. I did but unfortunately they just weren’t my favorite taste. I should have stuck with the plain pancakes. But Darin got those and said they weren’t anything special. We both reminisced about some delicious pancakes we’d had on a recent trip to DC – light, fluffy, crispy around the edges..

This recipe is a response. I made these the other morning and they were appreciated by my family. There’s just something special about the rustic flair of this stack. The secret is to fry them in butter, and fresh butter for each group of cakes. Read on to see what I mean.

Rustic Pancakes – makes about 16 4″ cakes

Ingredients:

2 cups self-rising flour
1 egg
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups water
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
About a stick of salted butter

Whisk together the flour, egg, cream, salt, sugar, and 1 cup of water. Add additional water as necessary to bring the batter to a smooth pourable consistency but not too thin. Whisk out all the lumps. Let the batter sit for about 10 minutes while your pan is heating.

Heat a sturdy frying pan. I love my well-seasoned cast iron pan. It is perfect for cooking everything and anything, pancakes included. A well-seasoned pan is the perfect non-stick surface.

Heat the pan on high and then turn it down to medium, medium-low, depending on your range. Peel the paper off one end of the butter and rub it on the pan to coat.

Pour out 1/4 cup measures of batter into the heated and buttered pan. Pour out two or three cakes depending on the size of your pan. Cook for about 3 minutes and 30 seconds but lift the edges around 3 minutes in just to make sure the underside is not getting too brown. Flip the cakes and cook for another 30 seconds, then remove to a plate in a warm oven.

Take the butter stick and coat the pan again, and cook more pancakes until you’ve used all your batter.

These are delicious with real maple syrup. No need to add any more butter unless you just want to.

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Dealing with stressful thoughts and emotions

We are all much too familiar with things in life that disturb our inner peace. News reports, family pressures, personal failures – any  number of challenges like these can cause a steady stream of stressful thoughts that make it more difficult to be productive.

I’ve sometimes resorted to putting negative or stressful thoughts out of my mind as a way to continue functioning when life is busy and there are multiple demands on my time. But where does a bothersome thought go once I put it out of my mind? I’ve had to be careful that the offending idea doesn’t then go into my body and cause problems there.

I’ve proven to myself that I can’t always ignore a problem to death. I’ve noticed that my head might be able to deny the problem but my body does keep track. It manifests that record by showing up with tension, digestive issues, aches and pains, and in a weird sort of echo back to the mind, anxiety and depression.

So for me, putting stressful thoughts out of my mind does not solve the issue. It only drives it deeper inside where it can sometimes be more difficult to identify and deal with. I’ve found it healthier, both emotionally and physically, to take the time and effort necessary to sort through my challenges, understand them, and give them their proper due, instead of pretending they don’t exist.

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When you’re an INFP

When you’re an INFP, you can find tragic beauty in everything. You can cry and laugh at the same time, for the same reason. When you’re an INFP it’s hard to accept things just as they are. They could be so much better. But you don’t have the energy to change them. Unless you’re pissed off and then you can move the world. Until someone looks at you funny and you stop to wonder why. And then you’re paralyzed and you cry and hide. And you play sad music and you cry some more and then you write something beautiful. You put on your black clothes and tie flowers in your hair and color your toenails black with a sharpie. Even though you’re fifty five years old.

When you’re an INFP, your kids know you’re weird but they love you anyway because no other mom could connect with them the way you do. Except when you’re in one of those moods and you hide in your room and pretend you don’t hear it when they knock. But then they text you and you answer instantaneously because you love them, after all. You just can’t bear to have them look at you right now. So you answer all their questions digitally, diligently, and give them advice that you haven’t followed all that well but you know it is the right way to be. And you would follow it if you weren’t so emotionally fragile. You know your kids are much stronger than you.

When you’re an INFP, you love your husband because he’s perfect and because he’s broken, all at the same time. He’s your hero and he irritates the snot out of you but you would give anything for him and do anything for him. You’d give up writing for him – at least your public writing. The journal is never going to be sacrificed for any reason, except if you just don’t feel like it today because the world seems too dark to relate to but that’s when you need it most so you put on some sad music and you let the words and the worlds come tumbling out. Then you take him coffee and massage his temples and read to him and laugh together and it’s a new day.

When you’re an INFP, you keep pushing onward each day, starting over again with all your commitments and promises to yourself and others. Hope drives you to never give up, and when it seems like hope is running out you find a way to find some more because hope is the battery of the engine of your life and you know that without hope you’d have been dead a long time ago and you’re not done living, dammit, so wake up body. Blood cells flow to where they are needed, by your command, and body parts relax when you tell them to. You control the very processes of your existence. You are in your body and you know it intimately and care for it intimately. You are the master of your destiny and the captain of your soul.

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Being “in my body”

So I’m not  Buddhist, but I wholeheartedly agree with the Buddhist concept of being in one’s body. I must have heard it before, but I recently came to the conclusion that being in my body was a good way to alleviate distress and stress.

I think I must have learned at an early age to “flee” my body because of a desire to avoid the trauma that was happening, whether that trauma was physical or emotional. I learned, in my shame, to exit to another place.

But eventually this no longer served me. Eventually I came to a safe place in my world and I needed to learn how to be with myself. The danger of staying in my body was no longer greater than the the danger of fleeing.

Now, it serves me much better to sit with myself, to go inside, to be in touch with what is going on with my body from a very intimate level. I’m not sure how to explain the way that helps me with dissolving anxiety and physical pain. But it really makes a difference. It calms me and it relaxes my body.

I think what I am doing is integrating the whole me. I’ve been split for a long time and that’s not the healthiest way to be. So integrating, bringing my whole self together by being in my body and by reuniting with past versions of me, is lifting me to new levels of physical and emotional health.

Even in the midst of a crazy season of menopause!