freedom · growth · success

Many drops in the bucket.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

2.28.18.jpg

This morning, I completed the 21-day meditation challenge from Oprah and Deepak called, “Manifesting True Success,” and was struck deeply by this line:  Every path to success is a path to freedom.  This brought me pause and led me to write, and emphatically circle: What “freedom” am I seeking from this success?

What freedom am I seeking from becoming a tour pilot over Napa valley vineyards?  Well: competence, adventure, intellectual amplification, joy.

What freedom am I seeking from being a school teacher?  Freedom over my time (during the summers), intellectual & creative amplification, spontaneity.

What freedom from being in partnership? Stability, serenity, emotional growth.  From being a mother?  Joy, continuity, sharing my abundance. …

I can, and likely will, make a chart of each of my “Success –> Freedom” desires, because the magic piece is how to amplify each of these desired successes in my daily life as it is.  If I want to share the abundance of my heart, how can I do that today?  If I want to expand my intellectual engagement, how can I do that today?

How can I inject today with each of the freedoms/successes that I seek?

Every day I open the WordPress site, I must click a button labeled, “Write.”  And each morning I click it, I feel a hearty dollop of joy, competence, and esteem drip into my personal bucket.  I feel accomplishy, even if it’s the only thing I do this day (as it insinuates that I’ve already written Morning Pages and meditated, as I won’t blog without clearing my personal pathways first).

When I cross off “moisturize face and body” on my Habit Calendar, I feel competent, self-loving, and prosperous (as it implies I purchase and replenish my moisturizer).

Every morning I drink my coffee, it implies that I’ve set it up the night before, replenished and ground new beans when it was low, and desire to gift myself a physical pleasure.  Competence, stability, self-love, and prosperity.

In every morning, I can list a host of ways I feel successful before breakfast!  And that’s good, because lately in the afternoon when I continue to sit reading Game of Thrones for 3 hours… I start to feel less esteemable.

So it will be up to me to see if there is a “success” to be gleaned from 3 hours of sedentary imbibing of gore, and to parse out what it is I’m attempting to accomplish if there’s not.

What freedom am I seeking from this success?  And how can I own that freedom today?

abundance · authenticity · expansion

“Damn the Man, Save the Empire.”

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

2.27.18 captain-planet.jpg

I met with two women this Sunday to review my and their financial situations.  We meet about every 6 weeks to go over our “numbers” and to offer feedback or advice wherever the other person wants it.

We particularly focus on what is “pressuring” us — where do we feel out of balance or unclear, where do we need ideas or support, encouragement or caution.  And I brought up this idea of Stocks.

As you read a few weeks ago, I recently bought my very first share of stock (in Tesla) and the following week, I bought a few shares in Starbucks.  While this has been a pretty cool exercise, and I do like watching the numbers go up or down (as they will do!), as I look toward a next investment, I begin to feel stymied.

Despite my affinity for renewable energy and Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial style, Tesla mines an incredible amount of precious metals and minerals from the ground, and their batteries will only last a decade at max, at which point they’ll be trash.  Despite having installed a new executive board that is purported to be full of innovation and forward thinking, Starbucks produces a ton of waste per minute.

If you know me, you’ll know that I compost voraciously, I use handkerchiefs that I wash weekly, I carry reusable bags and bottles to the grocery store, I purchase consignment clothing, and I donate to organizations working to fight the conservation fight.  My values around conservation of the earth are virile.  So how can I rightly invest in companies that have such a harmful impact on the earth, even if, in Tesla’s case, the ecological benefits in the long run may outweigh the costs?

So, I brought this up to my financial group of ladies, as I’ve also known that the investment funds that support “eco” or moral entities do not perform well in the stock market.  It seems that in order to make money in the market, I cannot live by my values.

My ladies said: Yep.

One did suggest my looking up the sustainable investment bundles, just to check out their recent performance (which I’ve not done yet).  But the other woman said something that struck me even more brilliant:

Soon, I won’t need to invest in others’ ideas.  My own success will fund me.  My own ideas will fund my life.

This was a welcome thought: I do not have to play the game if I don’t like the rules.  To me, it had felt as though there were two options: profit from Earth-raping and the demise of the planet or don’t profit.

That there is a third way doesn’t surprise me — though at the moment of realization, it always does!  There seems always a third way; always a path I’ve not considered.

Consider that my own success, in whatever realm, will lead me to be financially prosperous and financially independent from corporate malfeasance?  Yes, please.

 

demons · fortitude · self-love

Don’t Sleep in the Poppies.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

2 26 18 wizard_of_oz3

What is it the voices say to you?  How do they impede your path, and trip at your ankles?

What mistruths do you hear when you’ve tried something new, or have desired to?

How much do you believe them?

 

In the whispering of these voices, what else can you hear?  Like now, the rain on the windowsill.  What realities attempt to counterbalance the hatred that sparks up when you move into new areas?

What real truths can you find?

 

In the work I continue to do to expand my life (and love and prosperity and connection and forgiveness), I have come upon a trove of voices —grizzled witches and scribbled orbs— that sometimes whisper, sometimes holler ideas that I know intellectually are untruths, but which can cut so deeply so as to sound true or at least make me question — which is indeed their purpose.

To encourage me to question my power, my desires, my strengths, and my vision.  These voices may have been born of a long-outdated need to stay small so as to stay safe, but have calcified into demons that belabor my efforts, like driving with the e-brake on.

To know of them, to meet them on my path, to look them in their maleficent, fiery eyes, and feel the wrathlike fire of their untruths, is to become able to undo them.  “Know thine enemy.”

Uncovering what it is that makes me question and doubt and falter and hide, feels uncomfortable, mournful, desultory.  But if I should only stop there, in the quagmire of falsehoods and demons, I cannot be where G-d, Fate, Truth demand I stand.

Despite the poppy field of self-hatred, I am called to find the energy to root out each bulb –perhaps discovering they are rot, perhaps discovering they are the dark side of a necessary coin I am to carry with me.  And in this work, I am most especially called to expand my self-love with elemental and primal force.

 

codependence · friendship · surrender

The Heart Cell does not judge the Liver Cell.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

2.23.18 flood.jpg

In true ‘Universe’ fashion, my commitment to give up worrying about others has been put to immediate and raging test.

Over the past 2 years, I’ve formed a friendship with a now 91-year old gentleman because of my work on overcoming my debting thinking and behavior.  Together with another person (ostensibly) committed to the same, the three of us meet on a monthly basis to review Dennis’s financial situation and suggest actions for him to take.  Dennis is one of the sweetest people, a trumpet player in a veteran’s band, a coronet player in another band, and perpetually tan from his daily sun-lamp “health” regimen.

Dennis is also totally drowning in debting behavior.  He lives in a cramped, cluttered illegal studio/porch behind his two-story house, where he’s rented 2 units to other people — one of whom recently called the fire inspector and has created a chaos of tasks Dennis “must” complete in order to keep his house.

Over and again during these 2 years, there’s always been something that Dennis must pay for or a crisis he must overcome.  And, diligent compatriot that I am, I attempt to mitigate the advice he’s receiving from the other member of the triad (“pack up everything and move to Bali;” “escape the tax man by moving to Mexico”) and from his own brain (“I have to take down all the paintings in the foyer because my tenant wants me to;” “She wants a gold door, so I have to pay for it”).

When we began, Dennis had $24,000 in savings; now he has less than $5k.

And when he called me yesterday to give me the update on his situation in advance of our monthly meeting, and told me about this freaking gold door situation, I kind of lost my cool.

… well, not kind of.

I became enraged that people are taking advantage of him; that this tenant now feels she can play him for a piggybank because she can “call the fire chief” on him.  And I feel enraged that he’s allowing this, that he’s allowing spiders to spin webs in his head and breed lies.

I feel angry, … and I feel powerless.  And sometimes when I feel those things, particularly when I feel that an injured person is being harmed, I try to control it ALL.  What the tenant does, what Dennis does, what the other member of the triad does… I try to make it all better for Dennis because it’s obviously and clearly not going “well.”

… however, more to the point, it’s merely not going the way I want it.  For all I truly know, this is exactly how it should unfold.  Maybe Dennis is supposed to move into an assisted living program and forfeit his home to these mongers.  …

But whatever it is that he is or is not supposed to be doing, my ire does not help anything.  It makes him defensive, me offensive, and doesn’t help move the needle forward.

I am powerless over his situation, and judging him only serves to make me ill.

I am not his Higher Power.  I can’t read the runes.  I can’t make him change his thinking from these behaviors — and this is a hard fact for me to swallow: I cannot change others’ minds to act in ways I think they should.

And so, also in true Universe form, this morning’s Oprah/Deepak meditation emphasized the following sentence:  I find success without judging others or myself.

I am in a middle place, where I haven’t yet relinquished this habit of judging, caretaking, controlling and saving others, and where I haven’t yet found a replacement way of being.

This is “okay for now,” as my bf says, because I do at least know that wherever is next will have more dignity and humility — for me, and for those I love.

freedom · lent · purim

reLent

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

2.22.18 lent Purim_lion_in_Syna_3221317k.jpg

Last week, as we stood in the welcomed mild evening in an increasingly lengthening line for the next showing of Black Panther, I asked my boyfriend what he’d give up for Lent.

Now, yes, I’m Jewish by birth and by practice (though my father is a convert to Judaism), and my boyfriend is a relative agnostic with ancestral roots in Russian Orthodoxy… nonetheless! I felt influenced by the idea this year and thought it would be beneficial to consider a habit I’d like to curb.

He responded, “Worry.”

Ha!  That brought a much deeper aspect to the exercise!  (Although, truthfully, first he said, “Bread.”)

He specified, Worry about the Future.  I liked this understanding.  “I’ll give up worry about other people,” I proffered.

And so it is that we’re attempting to relinquish habits of mind that not only give us zero pleasure, but produce a wealth of ancillary negative thoughts, words, and actions.

(When I reported this resolution to a coworker, he began to laugh heartily.  A Jew giving up worry was apparently like an Italian giving up hand gestures.)

As I continued to reflect on this attemped habit of mind, I realized that Lent and Adar overlap.  Adar is the month in which the Jewish holiday of Purim falls and, in honor of the impending celebration (think “Jewish Halloween”), we are all to be as silly and joyful as possible in the weeks leading up to the day.

This struck me in two ways: Firstly, if Lent is represented by a hemming in of one’s vices (simplistic and naive as this interpretation is), then Adar’s hallmark is an intentional indulgence in said vices (ditto to above).  Lent is for suffering; Adar is for gladdening.

Secondly, maybe this “giving up worry for Lent” is exactly what the Jews had in mind!  Here is a people typified by anxious and neurotic haranguing of self and others — what would happen if we gave it up for a month?

So, unbeknownst to us, my boyfriend and I are now observing two religion’s practices —albeit in truly Adarian bastardization. 😉

addiction · goals · reading

Come on, just one more…

Molly Daniels Hayes1 Comment

2.21.18 clocks.jpg

My eyes are raw and scratchy, the lids nod closed, the thoughts stutter fuzzy and disconnected.  I try to harness my attention, to inject one more word, one more page into my skull.  I try to shove words into my brain like Gluttony topping his gullet in Seven.

The sun has moved across the window pane, bathing me in warmth and stupor, and still I cannot put down the book.  I sneak glances at the clock like a school mistress, waiting for it to chide me, to alarm me out of my torpor.  But it only peers back at me with curiosity, head cocked, asking, Now?

No, I tell it, defensive, defiant, perhaps rabid.  No, you cannot take this moment.  This is mine, and my couch’s, and my book’s.  And besides, reading is good for me.  For anyone.  Mine. …

 

In the circles in which I’ve run, I know many people who learned very early in life that a book could not only be a pleasure, but it could be an escape, a haven, a protectorate.  And many of us found that we could hide inside the pages of a book from all the chaos outside the binding.  I certainly did.

I’ve been an avid reader since childhood, eventually picking up longer and longer books left by my mom from the library — including Stephen King’s 787-page horror/delight Insomnia in middle school, and staying up ’til the wee hours of the weeknight, ’til 1 or 2 am, before I felt sufficiently zonked that I wouldn’t be scared to walk upstairs in the dark alone.

I hopped on the Harry Potter train just before the 7th book was released, and read the whole series in a mad, head-long, eye-straining dash.  Same with many other novels…many other Saturdays…many other Sundays…afternoons…evenings…

As I listened yesterday to the The Success Principles audiobook when I returned from work (continuing my newly-formed habit of cleaning up for 5 minutes when I arrive home), I heard the author say the following:

If you eliminated one hour of TV from your day, you’d have freed up 365 hours in a year.  This translates to 9 weeks of a full-time job.  

At the time, I’d been waiting to finish my cleaning so I could continue haunting the pages of Game of Thrones (which I’m not convinced I enjoy, but I certainly appreciate disappearing into).  I’d already exercised, blogged, worked — what was the next 2.5 hours to me anyway?

But it struck me: If I eliminated 1 hour of reading from my daily life, what could I accomplish?

I’ve already begun to tease apart my “Time Indifference” (not using the time I have to pursue my goals), and I’ve located so many places where I feel inefficient and blindered:  The goals I write on my January list that recur annually; the writing I must do for my weekly Goals Group that I put off until the 45 minutes beforehand; the practicing of the piano so that I can actually play, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Christmas…

What could I be doing if I weren’t reading?  What could I be accomplishing if I weren’t fogging out in the words of another land?

I love reading.  But I do also know when it tips over from a time of rejuvenation and enjoyment to a drooling, mindless binge.  I love reading, but I don’t need to spend ALL of the hours I have free doing it.  I want to read, more and more and more, and into the future and always — but not at the expense of everything else I’m called to accomplish this lifetime.

Inside a book, I can hide from actions that are in service of a bigger life.

So, for now, maybe only for Lent, I am instituting a habit that I will only read for pleasure for 30 minutes a day (outside the 10~20 minutes I get before bed!).  I don’t actually find this to be limiting or depriving; I find this new edict to open a world of possibilities directly into my hands.

 

 

action · clarity · fear

What’s the Hurdle?

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

run 2.20

As a Middle School teacher, I get the vast privilege of leading a cohort of students to see things differently, try on new ideas, and form new (hopefully positive) habits.

A few weeks back for their journal prompt, I instructed each class to draw 3 columns, the last of which to remain blank that day.  In the first column, they were to write any tasks or accomplishments that they’d been procrastinating on but that they wanted (or needed) to do.  In the second column, they were to write allll the reasons (real or imagined) why they could not complete these tasks.  The next day, they’d brainstorm with their classmates on how to get over the hurdle.

I gave them my own present example at the time:  Not completing my “Synonym Wall.”  In the classroom, I have taped colored slips of paper with “Bad” or “Said” or “A Lot” inside a “No” symbol, and then surrounded each with a plethora of alternatives for students to use.

But I stalled out.  I began this project in August(!) before the students arrived, and I still had “Nice” and “Good” to go.  Okay, so that’s column 1: Finish the Synonym Wall.  What’s column 2?  What are my hurdles?  Well…:  I was using these fancy scallop-edged scissors to cut out the synonyms, and the scissors are ill-effective and hurt my hand when cutting the strips.  I had been using a system of color coding each word group, and I wanted blue paper for “Good,” but I didn’t have any blue.  I was also using a colored-marker pattern I wanted to repeat, but that was feeling cumbersome and complicated.  Finally, now that it’s been so long, who cares whether it gets done; are the students even using it?

Hurdles for me can be MINOR(!!) inconveniences, like “the scissors hurt my hand,” or larger fears like, “My work makes no difference.”  Yet, whatever the hurdle is, I cannot overcome it if I do not identify it.  So, even though writing all these hurdles down made me feel a little silly and immature to see that I can be stymied by such gossamer blockades, I knew it would lead me to column 3.

“What the hell are you gonna do about it?”

In fact, that very afternoon, after having modeling this process to all 4 of my class sections—pointing to the Synonym Wall, reading the hurdles aloud, and considering again and again the hilarity of such stalled action—I went downstairs to a coworker’s materials closet and fetched whatever colored paper was available, grabbed any freaking Sharpie I had and a pair of OMG-so-non-hurty normal, straight-cut scissors, and COMPLETED the Synonym Wall!

The next morning when I modeled column 3 for my students, I was able to write down each of the above in “Overcoming the Hurdle.”  One Overcome I also got to write was, “I think the Synonym Wall is important, whether the students use it or not.”  And: “The perfect is the enemy of the done.”

I rewrote this last one on a sign that now hangs above the whiteboard. (In whatever color and on whatever color I had available!)

Every day, I could write a list of Tasks I Procrastinate, Hurdles, and Overcomings.  And maybe I should.  Because each of the remaining hurdles on that list 4 weeks ago have now too been vaulted.

 

 

adventure · goals · pilot

Take off.

Molly Daniels Hayes2 Comments
2.19.18 miss-fisher-plane.jpg
My fictional style hero, Miss Fisher.

During my brief and spectacular life, I have wanted to be the following:

Piano player, lounge singer, painter, poet, home organizer, decluttering specialist, home stager, blogger, stage actor, physics teacher, physics student, math student, fitness instructor, model, runner, international traveler, bass player, guitar player, gallery assistant, English professor, property owner, board member, gala attendee, copy editor, executive director.

Most of these desires remain (several have been accomplished, yet not enough to satisfy). Though some rise to the top of my mental list and some swim among the bottom rungs, one has rarely fallen: Small-plane pilot.

Specifically, the desire to be a tour pilot for tourists over the Napa and Sonoma valley vineyards.

Today, I continue to place the stepping stones toward that goal in front of myself, like a childhood game where you have to use only 3 cardboard squares to wend your way across the “lava” of the carpet.

My brother and I have the identical, if apparently false, memory: flying in a glider or small passenger plane as children.  We both remember being in a small plane in childhood, perhaps during the annual family vacation in Cape Cod, perhaps somewhere else.  The details of the flights aren’t clear, but the memory –and its attendant delight, thrill, and glee– are.

Surprisingly to us both, neither of our parents have any recollection of such an adventure.  And so, either our parents are mistaken, or Ben and I have a shared sensory delusion.

In any case, the desire for me to fly a small plane has never diminished.  I bought a Groupon discounted one-day flight lesson several years ago, and a little more than a year ago finally cashed it in for a 4-hour lesson, including FLYING AND LANDING an ACTUAL PLANE — with PEOPLE in it!! (just the instructor and myself, but still).  I went up flying with a friend who has his pilot’s license last year, and he let me take the yoke for a while (THRILLING!).

And last week, as it continued to be written on my goals and dreams pages, I finally contacted a flight school nearby to ask about the time and financial commitment to earn my private pilot’s license.

They replied to the effect of, “It’s complicated,” and why don’t you come on down to discuss it.  So, today, I am.

I have no idea if I will continue to lay the cardboard steps before myself, if I will decide to train the path in a different direction, or forge ahead on this one.  But, I will never know if I don’t show up.

Molly Louise, You are Cleared for Take Off…

 

god · Jewish · relationships

Devotion.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment
2 16 Camp Harlam.jpg
Camp Harlam’s Chapel on the Hill. Kutztown, PA.

The following is a list of the organizations at which I’ve worked during the past 10 years:

The Bureau of Jewish Education.  Congregation Beth El.  Oakland Hebrew Day School.  Brandeis Marin.

Perhaps you notice the clear and obvious trend: Jew.  Jewish.  Hebrew.  Jewey jewness.

I grew up Reform in northern New Jersey, and attended Sunday and Hebrew school, high holiday services, and occasional family services.  For a while (apparently at my and my brother’s behest), my family sat down for Shabbat dinner with a challah and chicken dish every Friday night.  One year, to our father’s ire, my brother and I chose to honor Rosh Hashanah by walking around the duck pond across from the synagogue while our parents went to services.

Ben and I went to Jewish sleep away camp, and learned the songs and more melodic prayers.  I became active in my synagogue youth group which participated in wider NJ-NY events, connecting with high school students across the region, singing those camp songs and new songs, and crafting inside jokes and photo albums.

When I lived in South Korea teaching English after college, I attended a Passover seder on the American Army base in Seoul (where the hagaddah [prayer book] was written in English, Hebrew, and Korean!).  After being abroad, I moved to San Francisco, got a job at a property management company, and fell in with the Chabadnik family (one of our tenants), who were generous and inviting and funny.

Then, I quit that job, became awfully ill with a 104-degree fever, and pondered what in the hell was I going to do for work.  As I lay bedridden that week, I asked myself, “Besides ‘creativity,’ what do I love?”  I answered myself, Well, I like being Jewish. !

I then went on the internet and Googled “Jewish San Francisco.”  The rest, as they say, is history (aside from the 103-degree fever with which I attended my interview with the BJE!).

Yesterday, I got to sit in the synagogue that is attached to the school where I work.  Every Thursday, the school gathers together to sing and pray and learn.  And I love it.

The songs are generally similar to those I learned in Jew camp and youth group, and I like to notice what’s different from East to West coast melodies.  The order of the service is the same; the wave of choral voices and clapping is the same; the eternal flame over the Torah is the same.

I’m not religious.  I love Jews and Jewishness and songs and clapping and “L’chayim-ing,” but I do not love the dogma or doctrine — the very little I admit that I know of it.  I do love the wide-openness I find in Reform Jewry, and how whatever my conception of G-d or Jewishness can fit generously inside the fleshy parameters of the religion.

Yet, what feels the most significant, most comforting, most embracing is that I can sit inside that synagogue yesterday, hear the voices of children and guitar crash over me, and mourn the present (folding and unfolding) dissolution of my relationship, and be witnessed and honored and held by the hand of whatever G-d there resides.

cats · commitment · relationships

Committed.

Molly Daniels Hayes2 Comments

cat 1.jpg

The first true commitment I made as a grown-up was to adopt my cat.

I know, I know.  But for many years, I’d considered “commitment” close to a prison sentence.  I watched how my mother went to the same therapist for over 30 years (and didn’t appear to get any better), and I figured therapy was a life-time commitment.  I watched how she and my father remained in a marriage that had eroded from the inside (if there was ever much to hold it besides momentum), and I considered marriage a commitment to lethargy and despair.

My own youthful relationships had been bright fire-work explosions, replete with the optical afterimage of what was when that was not true any longer.  They were short-lived, intense, and unstable.

And so, when it came time to move across the cavernous, yawning bay from SF to Oakland for graduate school, my amour of the time suggested I, like he, adopt a cat.  I’d considered owning a cat for a long time, but my considerations had always been followed by this disturbing thought: But then I’m going to have to watch it die.

I’m going to get attached, then I’m going to have to part.  This is life, this is death, this is inevitable.  Why would I ever intentionally knock over a domino that would lead me toward suffering?

Why would I make a commitment, a 15- or 20-year commitment, to love and care for and cherish and laugh with and snuggle with and bat away from my water glass, if I’m only going to have to bring a now-underweight being to the vet and tell them, “Take her”?

So, yes, it was phenomenal, miraculous growth for me when I adopted my cat (Stella Meowenstein — “So she knows she’s Jewish,” my then-bf would laughingly suggest.  Though, I think she looks like a shiksa).  Stella was here in my studio apartment with me as I began grad school and slowed the number of times I could reasonably cross the bridge back into SF (where my real friends were).  She was here when my car got stolen and it was even less reasonable to cross back in.  Stella was here as I healed from my break-up from that boyfriend and tearfully read, It’s Called a Break-up Cuz it’s Broken on the Kindle he’d given me for Chanukah.

My cat has been with me for 8 years, and I will have to say goodbye to her.  I will one day have to help her to exit the world, and I will weep precipitously.

But my commitment to her has also meant oodles of love that I have received and given.  My commitment to her has meant that I have consistency, permanence (for its time), and companionship.  In short, my commitment to her has been a highlight of my life (and I hope of hers).

Clearly, my relationship with a domestic short-hair has altered my ideas of commitment as a prison sentence.  And yet, on occasion, the lines still feel blurred.