Procrastination Paradigm Shift...
Sitting in the hot tub on a cold, crispy country morning during a Paradigm Shifting Retreat, my friends and I were talking about the constant upkeep needed on old houses. “Have I got a story for you” beamed Sheila, the co-teacher of the workshop. “It is the perfect example for what you will be learning about this weekend.”
"Last month, while I was walking past our septic tank at our lake retreat, I noticed it smelled. I told my husband who said he would drop some ‘treatment’ in. He also reminded me that he knew he needed to fix the pipe that was crushed by workmen over a year ago.
"I asked why him why he hadn’t done so already and he told me he was waiting for a time when we weren't there for a while so the pipe would be dry on the inside.
“Sounds like a sturdy, reliable, wise answer, right? Except that we had not been there for about 8 months. So I asked him how long it took to dry. He said about a week or two!
Everyone in the tub laughed, probably remembering something like that in their own lives.
"Well, he went on to tell me he didn't want to do projects anymore but no one else could do it right and if all the pipes were brittle it would be a big job.
“OK, so he didn’t want to do it, but no one else could, either! Stalemate! That was the typical conversational exchange we had about things that needed repair in our 36 year old country lake house."
To my surprise, many heads nodded a sympathetic yes.
"The point is" Sheila continued, "that when a PATTERN of behavior emerges in our lives, that is the time to look for the paradigm or the habit patterns that are adversely influencing NOW.
“I have been an excavator of old thoughts and feelings that limit our NOW since my early twenties, and my wonderful husband has endured 25 years of mental/emotional weed pulling and paradigm shifting, but I’m sharing this one with all of you right now because it involved old reactions to women and teachers, both of which I am.
“I challenged my husband to explore his reticence for quick and effective repair on house issues. The small amount of light that had been in his eyes vanished, and he turned quiet. When I said to him that was not the reaction I would have had, he asked for an example of how I would respond. In the midst of my animated demonstration of ‘Yes, I want to be free of this feeling’, he realized that his reaction had been to retreat within.
“Using a technique you will learn, we found his retreating began when his school teacher made him stand with his nose touching the blackboard, inside a little circle drawn with white chalk. As a dyslexic 50 or so years before it was recognized in schools, he was simply thought to be stupid. The woman, the teacher humiliated him in the midst of learning. All he could do was retreat within.
“I asked him to go farther back from that memory. He just laughed and said he probably has been a Muslim and that he had been told he would make a good one. I laughed but then he said six little words that revealed his procraastination paradigm: ‘I need to let this percolate’…the perfect way for him to try and avoid making any changes because it was a woman and a teacher who was guiding him in that moment.
“So I hope you can see from this example that even the small attitudes we harbor in life can come from past influences. I could have logically accepted all the reasons why my husband was right about putting off getting things repaired. This happened in the middle of winter, so why not wait until spring? Or summer? Or fall? Or next year when we might find someone qualified to do the work?”
Catching the sarcasm in her last question, I piped up, “The procrastination pattern was becoming dangerous to the healthy longevity of your house, your retreat. WHEN would the roof missing its shingles get repaired? WHEN would the drainage prevention happen? WHEN would the two year old deck get its needed railings? WHEN would you get a safe water system installed, right? It was the school year trauma and the residue from a former life that kept him from seeing the God within that helps create the right now. His sense of power was to prohibit and put off. You couldn’t have it done, but he wouldn’t do it either.”
“Exactly” Sheila said with a sincere smile. “Since the future is a nebulous 'sometime', NOW is our true moment of decisive action. Getting free of that old influence allowed my husband to not only move beyond the last vestiges of masculine superiority that conflicted with his heart’s true feeling of gender equality, but he could do so without feeling humiliated.
Sitting in the hot tub on a cold, crispy country morning during a Paradigm Shifting Retreat, my friends and I were talking about the constant upkeep needed on old houses. “Have I got a story for you” beamed Sheila, the co-teacher of the workshop. “It is the perfect example for what you will be learning about this weekend.”
"Last month, while I was walking past our septic tank at our lake retreat, I noticed it smelled. I told my husband who said he would drop some ‘treatment’ in. He also reminded me that he knew he needed to fix the pipe that was crushed by workmen over a year ago.
"I asked why him why he hadn’t done so already and he told me he was waiting for a time when we weren't there for a while so the pipe would be dry on the inside.
“Sounds like a sturdy, reliable, wise answer, right? Except that we had not been there for about 8 months. So I asked him how long it took to dry. He said about a week or two!
Everyone in the tub laughed, probably remembering something like that in their own lives.
"Well, he went on to tell me he didn't want to do projects anymore but no one else could do it right and if all the pipes were brittle it would be a big job.
“OK, so he didn’t want to do it, but no one else could, either! Stalemate! That was the typical conversational exchange we had about things that needed repair in our 36 year old country lake house."
To my surprise, many heads nodded a sympathetic yes.
"The point is" Sheila continued, "that when a PATTERN of behavior emerges in our lives, that is the time to look for the paradigm or the habit patterns that are adversely influencing NOW.
“I have been an excavator of old thoughts and feelings that limit our NOW since my early twenties, and my wonderful husband has endured 25 years of mental/emotional weed pulling and paradigm shifting, but I’m sharing this one with all of you right now because it involved old reactions to women and teachers, both of which I am.
“I challenged my husband to explore his reticence for quick and effective repair on house issues. The small amount of light that had been in his eyes vanished, and he turned quiet. When I said to him that was not the reaction I would have had, he asked for an example of how I would respond. In the midst of my animated demonstration of ‘Yes, I want to be free of this feeling’, he realized that his reaction had been to retreat within.
“Using a technique you will learn, we found his retreating began when his school teacher made him stand with his nose touching the blackboard, inside a little circle drawn with white chalk. As a dyslexic 50 or so years before it was recognized in schools, he was simply thought to be stupid. The woman, the teacher humiliated him in the midst of learning. All he could do was retreat within.
“I asked him to go farther back from that memory. He just laughed and said he probably has been a Muslim and that he had been told he would make a good one. I laughed but then he said six little words that revealed his procraastination paradigm: ‘I need to let this percolate’…the perfect way for him to try and avoid making any changes because it was a woman and a teacher who was guiding him in that moment.
“So I hope you can see from this example that even the small attitudes we harbor in life can come from past influences. I could have logically accepted all the reasons why my husband was right about putting off getting things repaired. This happened in the middle of winter, so why not wait until spring? Or summer? Or fall? Or next year when we might find someone qualified to do the work?”
Catching the sarcasm in her last question, I piped up, “The procrastination pattern was becoming dangerous to the healthy longevity of your house, your retreat. WHEN would the roof missing its shingles get repaired? WHEN would the drainage prevention happen? WHEN would the two year old deck get its needed railings? WHEN would you get a safe water system installed, right? It was the school year trauma and the residue from a former life that kept him from seeing the God within that helps create the right now. His sense of power was to prohibit and put off. You couldn’t have it done, but he wouldn’t do it either.”
“Exactly” Sheila said with a sincere smile. “Since the future is a nebulous 'sometime', NOW is our true moment of decisive action. Getting free of that old influence allowed my husband to not only move beyond the last vestiges of masculine superiority that conflicted with his heart’s true feeling of gender equality, but he could do so without feeling humiliated.
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