Robert Genn is an artist, who gives us other artists weekly installments of gleanings form his artist journey. Some bits are technical, some esoteric. This weeks topic about unconscious confidence, stuck a chord with me in journey through this cancer world. I keep saying the struggle with the big "c" word is 90% mental.
My nurse in chemo today told me, "I know you guys go through a lot of physical pain, but what you have to endure and overcome mentally is staggering and pushes you farther than anything else could."
So, an artist and a nurse, on the same day, getting to a similar point. After watching the Olympics, he put it this way:
Focus: Focus is the conscious removal of distractions--from a sore toe to the roar of the crowd. The world is a noisy stadium that contrives for us to go off the track. Cutting out ambient hysteria is a learned skill [I placed emphasis, this really struck home]. It means a total concentration on the job at hand. Focus can be understood as a kind of self anointed me-ism--and it's okay to feel that way when the action is needed. In the artist's world, personal mannerisms, processes, techniques and stylistic tendencies are sacrosanct, a mind-state similar to common belief. While artists may be wildly exploratory, the winners need to run like they've already won.
The way I am finding my way through this, as intact or better yet, more evolved as a person/spirit, is to have empathy for the journey of those watching, but in the end, to shut it out and focus on the task at hand. It means I can hear and empathize and really take to heart what a friend or doctor is experiencing or believing about my cancer journey...but in the end, I then have to wash that out of my mind, get my game face on, and proceed with the journey as best I know how. While I notice the "din of the crowd", I can't become mesmerized by the "hysteria".[ I would like to note here, that I define that word, in this context, as an energy not good, or bad, that has built up around an event. It can take form as the hope, or the fear, of the crowd.]
This doesn't mean I don't want to hear my friends, doctors, and well-wishers view of this journey. But it does mean having an acute awareness of what is other's people's fears and not taking them on. Of returning then, back to myself, getting my "Zen" on, and hearing what the next steps need to be.
I am beginning to think, this may make very little sense to others. Or that you might worry I am saying "Don't talk to me about your fears and doubts about this." Not at all. It heals me and makes me feel whole to be in "normal" friend mode!!! In friend mode, I love to hear your journey. Notice I still consider it YOUR journey. When it comes time to make decisions on this journey, I listen, hear what truth resonates, and leave the rest. I then MUST return back to listening to my body and trusting in it's ability to heal and knowing it will tell me which way to go next. Otherwise, I become disoriented and dis empowered....like a compass gone haywire, looking for true north..and that is NOT the place to be when your making these tough choices.
To read the who article from Robert Glenn, go here.
Blessing to all,
Jenna
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