LeaderShape Reflection

**I went to LeaderShape, a camp retreat designed to cause us to be better leaders,  during spring break, and was asked to write a paper about my experience. This is what I came up with.**

The first time I wrote this paper, it sounded like this: “Going to LeaderShape has been a one-of-a-kind experience. I have never experienced anything like it before in my life. It really has helped me to grow as a person. I have learned to respect people so much more. I realize now that everyone has a story and that has profoundly shaped the way that I look at people. I used to think that there were “one size fits all” rules for people and how people should act, but I realize now that life and people are much more complicated than I thought before. Everyone is going through something, and everyone is worthy of respect.”

            The second time I wrote this paper, it sounded like this: “Truthfully, it is hard to put into words what LeaderShape meant to me. On one hand, I want to say that it has not changed me. I am still me. But on the other hand, I feel like I am so much more aware. I feel different.

            Today, I went to a mini-conference on campus called “Partners in Movement.” It was all about white privilege and aimed to have conversations about race and discrimination. It was co-run by one of the family facilitators we had at LeaderShape named Amanda Goodenough and one of the staff named Carmen Hetzel. I signed up to go to this program about a week ago and only decided this morning at 11AM that I actually intended to go. Before LeaderShape, I would have never gone to a program like this. Never. Not on a weekend at noon when I would rather be sleeping. I would be casually interested in it, but I would not have actually drove to campus and attended. It was a huge step for me.

            Later this evening, after returning home from the mini-conference, I found myself to be really upset. Putting a word to my feelings, I realized that I was angry. Really angry. Angry at the systems that I have involved myself in and the discrimination that I have perpetuated. The injustices that I have let slip on by as if they mean nothing. Well, they do not mean nothing. So, I let myself rant. I took out a notebook page and just let loose. My pen screamed across the page as I ranted about every injustice people had done to me and I had done as of late. I was left lying on the floor, exhausted, wondering why in the world I was feeling this way. What was wrong with me lately?

            The truth? Nothing. Yet, at the same time, absolutely everything. I felt like a lot of my life has consisted of lies up until this point. All of my relationships with my friends need to change. My family dynamics needs to change. UW-La Crosse needs to change. The implications were overwhelming. Now that my eyes had been opened, they could not unsee what they had seen. We have a lot of work to do. The world, and my life, is very unequal right now.

            And all of these feelings are coming from me. Erica Thiem. The passive, people-pleasing, “A” student, who does not like participating on campus, who is hardly involved in clubs, and hates rocking the boat. Me.

            So, you want to know what people get out of LeaderShape? Why we should keep this program around? Easy. Just pick a word. Passion, integrity, dignity, respect, community, change, anger, truth, love. . . The list goes on and on, but it is all there. I have learned and/or experienced all of these things and more at LeaderShape.

            The third time I wrote this paper, it went like this: “If I had to sum up what I learned from LeaderShape, that would be very, very simple. In a sentence, I learned that I have a voice. A very importance voice and one that deserves to be heard. And if I will just tell the truth about what I see, in the best way that I can, I cannot imagine what kinds of change I can cause in the world. And in this moment, my truth is that I want to thank you. Thank you so much for giving me this experience. It has truly changed my life.

Sunday Evening Thoughts

Because if I were a bird, I would want to fly, too. . . .

Natural Highs

I am currently enrolled in a fascinating class at my college all about Addictions and the various forms that they take. It is incredibly interesting, and today the professor had us go around the class talking about "natural highs." It really got me thinking, so here is a list of some that we came up with, along with help from the internet:

• Dancing
• Seeing a sunset
• Performing
• Runner's high
• Showering after being dirty for a while
• Walking out of your last final
• Finding out that the shirt you wanted to buy is on sale
• Texting someone to find out that they were just thinking about you!
• Letters in the mail
• Long-distance phone calls
• Surprise gifts from friends
• Getting an "A" on that paper
• A chocolate milkshake
• Getting a strike in bowling
• Seeing the Northern Lights
• Smelling cookies in the oven
• A hot shower
• Laughing so hard you cry, your face hurts, you can't breathe, but you still can't stop laughing
• Being in love
• Cuddling in front of the fireplace
• Compliments from strangers / those you love
• Random conversations with strangers
• Staying up until 4 in the morning talking to friends
• Winning that game you worked your butt off in
• Hugs
• Holding a puppy
• Pay day
• Seeing a shooting star
• Walking outside barefoot
• Hearing "you're beautiful" and believing it
• Reading for the heck of it
• Holding hands with someone special
• Naps in the sun
• Getting engaged
• Taking off in an airplane
• Helping someone
• Roller coasters
• Saying "I love you" and not needing to hear it back
• Seeing a beautiful rainbow
• The first day you can wear flip flops after a long winter
• The first snowfall
• Hearing birds sing in the morning
• Cuddling with your pets
• Laughing for no reason
• Skydiving
• Realizing how blessed you are
• Finding money in old birthday cards
• Having classes cancelled
• Singing loud and proud when no one's around
• Birthday cake
• S'mores at a campfire
• Overcoming a fear
• Checking off something on a list

See this page for more.

How to Overcomplicate Any Decision

1. Look at ALL the options. Not just a few. Not even a handful. Find every single one of these suckers that you can and delve deeply into ALL of them.
2. Now that you have all the options, be sure to become thoroughly educated on EACH of them. Maybe even make pro and con lists for each option that you're considering and compare them to each other. Lists are your friend. So are Venn diagrams. And lots and lots and lots of paper.
3. Ask everyone in your vicinity what they think.
4. Think incessantly about the answer.
5. Worry about the answer.
6. Get little sleep at night due to so much worrying.
7. Encourage your friends and family to yell at you for not deciding so it will speed up the decision-making process
8. Decide to decide. . . .
9. But before that, reconsider all options, their pros and cons, and the opinions of everyone you know and their dogs.
10. Now that you're stressed, engage in the decision-making process by asking yourself, "What should I do?"
11. Beat yourself up when you don't get an answer.
12. Beat yourself up when you do get an answer.
13. When you start to get excited about an answer, remember the key phrase in decision-making:  "yeah, but"
14. Use "yeah but" any time decisions start to become too imminent.
15. Decide you don't know and you'll figure it out later
16. Then, look up even more options, and repeat the cycle

I Quit College: Knowing What you Want and Being True to Yourself

Please read to the bottom. Here is the post the way that I had originally written it:

I have known about Steve Pavlina's work for ages now. Being the more popular self-development blogger on the internet, he is highly successful by many accounts, and has written loads of interesting articles. One of which happened to be about being a college student. And, of course, the first recommendation in his article is "Know why you're there."

I started writing in my notebook. "I am here, because . . . ." I sat.

Nothing came to mind.

"Ok, strange," I started writing again. "I am here, because my parents want me to be?" I sat there. No more insights came. . .

Well, crap! That can't be right. What I had just written stared me in the face as if challenging me. Bad boy, bad boy, whatcha gonna do? I slumped in my chair. Wow, that sucks.

And then I promptly, "unintentionally," forgot about this mess of a moment and continued on with my college life like a good little student.

Fast forward a year.

"What do I want to do with my life?" I scribbled down. I am now a junior in college, still going hard as a psychology major, yet still feeling rather displeased with my life. I've had depression off and on throughout college, seemingly no matter what I do, so by now I have just accepted that being here I'm not as happy as I am at home. But nonetheless, I am here right now, and so a decision needs to be made. Soon.

But of course, as a woman who struggles ferociously with decisions, I have to pull our my handy dandy notebook (AKA the internet) and find out how to decide this. I came across many solutions:

For instance. . ..
I found out that you can ask yourself the "either or" question. "Would I rather have X but never Y, or would I rather have Y but never X?" That can be helpful.

I then made Pro's and Con's lists of the different occupations I was considering. I sent out e-mails asking to shadow a few people in these positions. I asked the opinions of almost every person I know. "What do you think I'd be good at?" I would whisper with a pleading look on the face. No one could give me an answer I liked, so I scoured the internet for more ideas.

The internet had more to say. Specifically, more Steve Pavlina. "What you want to experience next?" Good question, and actually very helpful, but all I got was "I don't know."

I looked into my Martha Beck collection, flipped open my favorite book to a well-thumbed page. "At some point, almost all my clients tell me they don't know what they want, and it's never true. . . Anytime you think you don't know what you want, it's because your social self has decided you shouldn't want it," (111, Finding your own North Star).

a;lksdjaf;lkdsja;ldkjsf! Darn it!!

I then took a deep breath, breathed and admitted that I must know the answer. It was impossible not to at least have SOME idea of what would be awesome to do. . . .

Ok, I know the answer. I affirmed to myself. "What would I like to experience next?"

An answer bubbled up from my subconscious.

"Be financially responsible for myself." . . . . Hmmm. . . . as a student, I am not financially responsible for my well-being as I am very lucky and grateful to have received a lot of help through my family.

And then it dawned on me.

I'm not happy here. I'm not happy HERE. It all poured out of me.

"I don't want to be here. I don't like it here. Yes, I'm a good student, but I hate it here. It's boring. And some of the poeple are cool, sure, but THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR ME RIGHT NOW. AND I FEEL SO ASHAMED for saying this, but this is ME. RIGHT HERE. RIGHT NOW."

. . . . . . .

I sat back in silence, reeling. Holy cow. . . .

It's true, I realized. I've been rationalizing my time as a college student for my entire college career, but this has never been the place for me. No wonder I've been depressed! I hate it here! I hate it!!!

I have no purpose for being here. None. And, duhhhh, I realized, purpose is the number one thing that I absolutely NEED in my life. I'm amazing at being a student, I rock at it, but NOT RIGHT NOW. This is not for me right now.

The implications were stunning. I penned one more sentence. "I am going to take a semester off." I let the words sink in. "I am going to take a semester off. I am going to take a semester off." My soul burst forward in an explosion of contentment, as if to say, Finally!!!!

I smiled. Well then. I guess that is that.

****************************************************

And this is the story of how my college career virtually ended, if only temporarily.

 . . .

Wait, virtually, you ask?

Yup! Because while this post sounds beautiful, it is just a story :) I wrote it about a week ago and knew as I was writing it that it wasn't supposed to be posted. It is based on a true story, but it is not the FULL story.

The full story is that, yes, I do not like college. And I am not blaming my university or anyone else for this fact. I am simply stating it. I do not like college. But even with that realization comes an even stronger one: even though I do not like it, I am not ready to leave here . . . . yet. And I am learning that being true to myself also requires me to respect my not readiness, as MUCH AS I WOULD LOVE to not.

Believe me, being not ready is REALLY HARD. I am impatient. I'm a pusher. I know these things about myself. But I also know that THIS is where I belong right now. . . .

In the wise words of someone I do not remember, "I am exactly where I am supposed to be." And that is the truth.

Refocusing the Lens

I must say, it was a very interesting experience to hop on over to this blog again early this year.

Many of you will notice that I had not posted in quite some time, in fact, I had actually posted a while ago saying that I don't like blogging and that I was going to quit. Anyways, that is clearly not the case. I am finding that I don't mind blogging. It's actually rather interesting. It is a place where I can have a voice, and say what I find to be true. I can share my truth with all of you.

Though, I will have plenty more truths to share in the future. At the present moment, I only intend to comment on how remarkable it is that I have accomplished almost all of my goals, whilst checking this blog only intermittently for the last 2 years. How neat is that?

My goals are as follows, with the bold ones meaning I have accomplished them:

De-clutter my room
Spend a weekend with a college friend this summer
Attend a concert
Explore my career interests - volunteer at Golden House, help out kids, do office work and/or teach Spanish (did not teach Spanish, but did tutor)
Spend time with a friend
Play with a horse trainer in the area's horses
Go on a road trip
Go to the beach
Teach my dog new tricks (I did improve one of his prior tricks)
Be active 5x a week for a half hour each day
Learn new skills - cooking, driving stick, bar tending and/or self-defense
Learn more about cars
Get a tattoo
Get my cartilage pierced
Get my nose pierced
Shoot a gun
Go paintballing
Sleep in a tent
Go fishing
Finish The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost
Grow a plant
Make 5 new friends (I'm not sure when I set these goals. . . but I think I've made 3?)
Decide on a major for college
Check out CHAPS

The vast majority are completed! Which is awesome! Clearly, I am able to set goals fairly effectively. Nonetheless, I now need some new goals, so will be actively working on those in the next days.

What Should I do? A poem of predicament

Growing up is a struggle,
where am I going?
such a lofty question.
there's no way of knowing

I, of course, am strangely confused
and often mistaken
for here in my home i
have little inspiration

I search consistently
for things that are never found
and mope about all alone
for a penny sum amount

wasting my time on
trivial things
yet time goes by still
and my heart will not sing

it laughs and watches
patiently waiting
for me to make changes
mostly unabated

yet with no guidance
i am always confused. . .
how do I pick things,
to do this or that muse?

a question unanswered
maybe only time tells
for so far i realize
thinking rings zero bells

the more i struggle
the more i despair
the more time i waste
the less i self-care

and life ought to be fun
and vibrant and alive
which all describe me
i intend to thrive

so, to less wasted time
and more loving cheer
my time here is necessary
but that's untrue of fear