The Pepper Principle

Hey, all you FFGs and Future FFGS!

First, a word from our sponsors:

I just put a little note on the home page about my appearance on Samantha Heller's Sirius Radio show on Doctor Radio tomorrow (Friday!) from 1-2 EST. If you have a Sirius subscription and want to hear me blather on ... please listen in! Also, you'll be able to call in and/or email questions. The phone # (NOT A TOLL-FREE, SO USE YOUR UNLIMITED MINUTES!) is 1-877-698-3627; email is docs@sirius-radio.com.

Just kidding ... I don't have any sponsors. Unfortunately. If I had sponsors, maybe I could just blog all day and not have to actually work ... because this is not really work for me. Too much fun to be work.

Anyway ... I have been working lately on something I call "The Pepper Principle." As you faithful blog readers know, I have been in major transition for a while now ... and as you may not know, I haven't been handling it very well. One of the reasons I have been so absent from the blog is that I've given in to that old perfectionist's flaw ... the whole thing about hiding when you're not at your best. I can't be the perfect friend, perfect employee, perfect blogger? Well, then, I'm just going to disappear. Not sure if this is just something I do or if you guys can relate. But there it is.

I have been worried about EVERYTHING. Questioning EVERYTHING. What if it wasn't right to move my family to Nashville? What if my magazine isn't everything I want it to be (or at least doesn't suck?)? What if my husband isn't happy here? What if my son hates his new school? What if my dog misses her back yard? What if Michael Phelps doesn't win gold tonight?

This isn't typical of me, really. I have moved several times in my life, but never with a family. I guess I feel like the stakes have never been higher, and that's made me even more likely to obsess about everything.

But I have been working to quiet my mind, quiet those doubts and questions that are keeping me up at night and threatening to make this time ... what should be the best time of my life ... miserable.

You know that whole thing about being "in the moment"? I have never really understood how to get there or even what that means, until lately. But I was reading a book by my friend Ali Domar, "How to be Happy Without Being Perfect," and came across this little thing about of all things, a dog. She makes the point that dogs are the perfect (! there's that word) example of being in the moment. They don't worry about what they're having for dinner, whether they're going to get to work out today, how they might have screwed up a conversation yesterday. No. They are just sitting there, taking in life, their little eyes sucking up the scene in front of them.

I thought that was interesting. And then a couple of days later, I looked at my cute little Pepper (check out her mug, above), sitting on a chair in our APARTMENT, just staring out into space. And I actually said out loud, "I wonder what she's thinking." and then I realized: SHE IS NOT THINKING ABOUT ANYTHING. There is no running commentary in her head. She's not running down the list of what she should be doing today, tonight, tomorrow, yesterday, next month, last year. She is just sitting. Waiting for the next thing. Not judging every moment as good, bad, and spinning out to the next.

And I thought, I want to be like that. I want to stop letting my expectations of this life get in the way of actually living.

That, my FFG friends, is the Pepper Principle. Whenever I start spinning, ruminating, worst-case-scenarioing, I think about Pepper's eyes. That kind of blank stare behind which there's no complicated set of machinery, twisting and turning forward and behind in time. And it's really been helping me, I have to say. Helping me move on when I screw up. Helping me not to lie awake, thinking of all the to-dos.

Anyway ... I would love to hear if you connect with this at all, or if it's just me. And if it's just me, well ... that's ok.

Thanks for reading!

Lisa D