Following My Intuition

If you’re new here, welcome! I’m Barbara Ellen McMahon, author of the novella, Mrs. Rochester. It’s a sequel to Jane Eyre. This time, it’s Jane who’s locked in the attic and there’s a new governess. It’s available on Kobo, where it’s been getting rave reviews. If you enjoy my writing here, chances are you’ll love Mrs. Rochester.

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Let me remember that each life must follow its own course and that what happens to other people has absolutely nothing to do with what happens to me.

—Marjorie Holmes —

Except, of course, that we’re meant to care about what happens to each other. But what I think Marjorie meant was that we’re not supposed to compare.

Life follows its own course and happens in its own time. I believe that trying to make it fit our schedules and expectations leads to burnout and feelings of failure and shame. I prefer to intuit my way through life, rather than trying to enforce my will on it. It’s what always works better for me. But I can regularly forget that, so ready am I to feel bad about myself for not going out there and making things happen. I deride my lack of ambition, when, actually, my ambition is to learn to dance with life, to see what it has to offer. Fix your sights too soon on a distant goal and you miss a lot of what’s around you along the way. I think paying attention to the small nudges, the quiet bids for notice as you move through life may not win you any awards, or get you into the corner office, but it’s way more interesting. It gives you a deeper sense of what life is for.

I have this image of the go-getters, in contrast to the intuiters and, before the burnout and disillusionment get them, they get a lot done. They may even achieve some great things. But it’s their agenda, their schedule and that seems insulated from life, from the lessons life might be able to teach them, if they were willing to learn.

It’s like people who have central air conditioning, compared to those of us who mainly rely on fans and hope for cross-breezes in the summertime. The AC may be more comfortable, but isn’t it a bit weird not to feel the weather? To spend vast parts of your day not even knowing what it’s like outside?

The same goes for grabbing life by the balls and bending it to my will. Sure I might have gotten the goodies. But would they have been the right ones? The ones I need? The ones I came here to earn? Or would I have just been going after some kind of generic rewards, the kind of life other people thought I should live?

Are you playing the comparison game? And will that bring you any joy? It never does for me. I can compare my life to almost anyone on the planet and end up feeling like a total loser.

My bad health and lack of babies goes from being what is to being almost unbearable when I look around at the lives of others, when I compare their lives to mine.

I can deal with RA and constant pain when I’m not comparing my existence to anyone else’s. When I put my energy into finding the joy in my day, my day becomes pretty darned joyful. When I compare that day to someone else’s all the joy leaks out and I become miserable.

And the accomplishments! Of which I’m convinced I’ve had none, even though I’ve done my TaDa! list and it fills an entire page and is full of cool things that I can actually be quite proud of, if I let myself, if I don’t lose myself in comparing myself to other people. Instead, I think, “If only I’d stuck with…” anything long enough to make a name for myself, I could have had a name like anyone I admire. Which, when I’m completely honest with myself is not the sort of life I would have wanted. I hate when people start to expect things of me. “When’s your next post?” “What are you working on?” “Why aren’t you knitting?”

Expectation feels like obligation and obligation is a burden I choose not to bear. I’ve borne too many in my life and now I get to say no.

So, while my accomplishments don’t seem to add up to anything coherent, I’ve tried, enjoyed and been good at a whole bunch of things and I’m free to wander between them as my inclination, my intuition, lead.

My life, as I’m living it, is good. As long as I keep my eyes on my own page.

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Don’t forget, my book, Mrs. Rochester, is available on Kobo. Your purchase helps to support an independent author.