Sigh
Had a turbulent day .
I got up with a severe case of grumpiness, so I promised myself I would be alert and try not to let it get the better of me.
I also made the deliberation I would try to mainly listen to people today, instead of voicing my opinion immediately.
At work we have started working with the Skillful Means Program. Skillful Means is a way of looking at work based on Buddhist teachings, tweaked for the West by Tarthang Tulku. We start each day with a small reading from one of his books and use a theme during the day. We also practice “essential speech” which means we try to minimise “idle speech”, or talking that is not related to the tasks at hand. We also have a focal exercise during each day. At the end of the week we close with an evaluation.
Boy, what a start. It turned out that the first things I was allowed to order for the Center (three bookcases) had arrived and I had mismeasured by 3 cm, so they didn’t fit! That nearly set us back 200 euros. I was able to fix the problem, but by then I was so caught up in my selfrecrimination that it affected me all day, despite my efforts to “let go”. I just couldn’t get it out of my system.
The exercise for this week is to just look at what happens during work, both physically and mentally, so I have got my practice cut out for me. Maybe I will just ask around how other people deal with these things. I know it has to do with trying to do perfect, but how do you flick that button to the “off” position? Being told to “just let go” doesn’t help. I tend to mistrust answers with “just” in them anyway, they almost always turn out to be anything but easy.
Luckily the day ended well. I am going to housesit and cat-sit a house in one of the most beautiful neighbourhoods of Amsterdam, so I went to my friend and had dinner. We had mussles, which were lovely and the cats were a bit less scared than last time. I’m looking forward to it. I have at least shaken the bad feeling I had all day and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
Have a good day.
Related posts
Rate this Post
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...This post has had 270 views
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 23:08 and is filed under Buddhism, Daily, Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Ha! Misschien waren het juist wel de mosselen… of laat ik daar maar de schuld aan geven, die beestjes kunnen zich toch niet (meer) verdedigen. Zouden ze Ritalin bevatten of iets anders opwekkends? Aan de Zeeuwse kust schijnt veel cocaine verhandeld te worden.
Het lukt mij nu namelijk ook niet “even” los te laten, “even” in slaap te vallen. Terwijl dat de laatste tijd juist zo wonderbaarlijk goed ging.
Was ook niet zo slim van me om vlak voor bedtijd nog “even” werkmail te checken. Eigenlijk niets ergs aangetroffen, objectief gezien, maar wel extra werk waar ik niet op zit te wachten zo vlak voor de vakantie. (een klacht, uitzoekerij over de salarissen, blah blah blah) Nee, dan waren het toch niet de mosselen, maar mijn eigen onvermogen om dit te parkeren tot morgen. Ook ik kan me verschrikkelijk opwinden over mensen die dan zeggen dat je het maar “even” moet loslaten. grrr.
Wel is het geruststellend te lezen dat je uitkijkt naar je verblijf hier. Met die gedachte zo maar weer in bed kruipen dan.
Niet te hard op de katten gaan zitten hoor, ze zijn dan wel te dik, maar pletten is niet de beste aflsankmethode ;-)
Liefs,
Helga.