A beautiful time waking up in till I realised that I need to intervene with work not being done correctly on site. Passed it to the foreman to deal with by text. Then I started pondering on the general situation with staff.
Had a chat there yesterday. Controversial. My idea of giving them all a pay rise of £2k a year to spread a bit of happiness to help with the cost of living has backfired. Now I have resentment and rivalry and entitlement to even more which one voiced yesterday. I had to speak quite forcefully. Stressful. Two staff were off.
How long will I tolerate this business I wonder? It’s shelf life is limited is my sense. I will probably keep the business and do design only. Drop the construction side. And the men can arrange themselves in a way to collect the business independently from me as a separate entity, or get other jobs.
The therapy practice is slowly organically expanding, with a couple of new enquiries a week without much effort from me. I’m full up in the mornings now, 6 days a week. Now any more clients will start to be put into later appointments. I have some ambiguity about depending on it for income solely. I like that I’m not, that it is an extra.
It’s all ticking along though and I remind myself that I don’t have to get my head involved with working anything out. I just need to keep on in the same direction and things will unfold naturally.
Had a wonderful walk with E yesterday. We got caught in a downpour of rain and had to shelter under Holly trees in the middle of the field. Then had soup in the outside cafe under the big umbrella.
Conversation was excellent, all about love and surrendering. Dealing with ourselves and others. This stripping off of defences makes one more sensitive to anger and complaint energies expressed by others. Just a temporarily vulnerability I think. Soon the love will be strong enough to overcome all resistance. That’s what I imagine anyway.
Opening up to more happiness and joy while others are digging into anger and complaint is a bit of a conflict of goals. I have less attraction to seeing P, N and W at the moment due to this. New friends seem to be slowly emerging though. E is relatively new, as are Em and S, and also R. All met within the last 5 years or less.
So opening up to more happiness inside, I’m seeing in sharp relief unhappiness. A level that used to be normal that now isn’t. It’s disturbing. And inside myself, my own unhappy reactiveness when life doesn’t go the way I want it to. That I’m dealing with too.
You set yourself on a trajectory of love and happiness and everything that resists it pops up for addressing, simple.
How to eat properly too. I sometimes think of shopping in Lidl as an act of self hate! Exaggerating but I sense the way much of the food is produced. As cheaply as possible. What chemicals are involved, what damage to the soil, how bad are the animal welfare standards? Not much different from the other supermarkets probably though I sense more quality control in the some of the others.
Upstairs neighbours have now got nurses going in 3 times a day so on top of my irritation in response to the existing footfall and noise I was getting used to and dealing with it is now multiplied. More noise and more often.
Much more inner irritation and resistance. This has been very disturbing to live with. My disturbances inside, not the people upstairs, to be clear. All day long pretty much there’s loud creaking squeaking as lots of people walking over loose floorboards. Last night I threw a slipper at the ceiling as the son was walking about in the same spot making a big noise right above my bed after 9pm. He likes to watch out the window for half an hour for the nurses to arrive. He left when I did that though, got the message I hope. That time of night I’m fine with taking a stand. Ultimately this is my issue though.
It’s not about getting them to change anything so that I feel better. Yes I go down the route in my head of making a complaint to their landlord, trying to get them to fix it…..but no.
Not about rearranging the world so I don’t feel disturbed inside.
I have to deal directly with my own disturbing reactiveness inside.
Feel it allow it, not resist it, and surrender it fully. Over and over till it leaves completely. Till I’m no longer holding on to a thought that ‘this shouldn’t be happening’ or ‘they shouldn’t be doing that’.
It is happening.
It is life presenting an opportunity to me to deal with my own reactivity. To give it up. It is upping the game for my benefit to help me clear it all out. The attachment to likes and dislikes. Hand them over, relinquish them, surrender them up. Welcome the equanimity.
I do not want to live in a house with regular high pitched creaking and squeaking noises. I want to live in a quiet house where I rarely if ever hear neighbours.
That is not what I’ve got though. Something I don’t want to be happening is happening. It is happening every day and will happen today again. I can hear them right now.
So nearly the fussiest person ever about noises, has noises to deal with. How’s that for cool design 😂
Time to up my game. Take the pain and go through. This is the surrender experiment. Initiations.
“Paradoxically, the self expands through acts of self forgetfulness.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Learning to Rest with it All 