“Is It Just Me?” When Things Don’t Work

It seems that every time something goes wrong with technology or something mechanical I take it personally. 

As though I am the only person whose email doesn’t work, or whose barbecue starter blows out or whose iPod (which I still call my “Walkman”) gets stuck.

And everyone else is having a perfectly easy time figuring out how to integrate their ISP with their Hosing SPQ whatever-the-hell, or that their cell phone gets perfect connection all the time or their vacuum cleaner never fails to pick up every speck of dirt.

At the risk of sounding totally ego-centric paranoid, I’d like to say I’ve discovered it’s just me not just me. 

Recently, I was on a teleconference and I heard buzzing. So I figured it was my phone generating the fuzz and stayed quiet. Finally a brave voice peeped up and said, “Is it just me or does anyone else hear that buzz?” Of course it was every single stinkin’ person on the call.

And then I remember back to when technology entered our lives and we all got computers and ISPs and Web connection and we couldn’t hook up our connection or our email went down or some ISP server went on the fritz and there rang throughout the land a chorus of “Maybe it’s just me but …”

Basically we’re agreeing to think: How could it not be my fault since I don’t understand the inner miracle wirings of these whatchamacallits.

And it wasn’t just us. It was the technology working miracles and breaking down on us. And it’s not any of our responsibility to understand the how’s and why’s any more than it is for us to understand why the telephone or electricity works.

At this point, if technology doesn’t work right (I’m including cars and bbqs and dishwashers here) and I don’t get it, I take the onus off myself for understanding why or how. I’m not a programmer or scientist or auto-maker or bbq assembler. So there.

If I can’t migrate WordPress onto my domain name (for normal people, the instructions are like Greek inside out) it’s time to delegate and find someone who can.

But I still have this vacuum cleaner paranoia. And I was reminded of it after I was reunited with the little devil—after I gave  my cleaning ladies a sabbatical when I became one of the salary-challenged.

The day I vacuumed my place, I realized of all the years I’ve had vacuums, I always have this feeling that my vacuum is not properly picking up all the dirt on the floor or carpet. And it is purposefully letting me down while every one else’s vacuum is doing a perfectly great job.

And once I realized this silly thinking, the vacuum started gobbling up every speck in sight.

Then I put away said vacuum and called my lovely cleaning ladies and they came the next week.

The (happy) ending.

How To Overcome Your Inner Gollum

How do you stay on track with Big Thinking? For starters, it means staring down your inner gollum or gremlin. At least that's what went down with me this past week. Gollum, gremlin, boogie-man, nay-sayer--any of these names can represent that voice or persona inside you that keeps you from being or doing what you dream of when you dare to think big.

I, for one, have a gollum girl. I met her one night in a dream. In this dream I was given an unreal fantastic opportunity to do something. But before I went off with the initiator of this opportunity, my Gollum Girl was crouched down in the corner showing me her fangs and hissing out a "Don't Even Think About It."

My G.G. gets her name from the second Lord of the Rings movie. My favorite part of the movie is when gollum and his better self Sméagol have a little back-and-forth interior battle that goes something like this: "Master goooood, master goooood; no master baaaaad, master baaaAAAd!" Do I even need to explain how just right-on this is, in capturing that inner nay-saying boogie-man?

So, this past week I got to face my gollum*! Hooray for opportunities. (That's the voice of my Stupid, Positive Self--and that negative adjective was the voice of my gollum self.) See how sneaky?

*Truth is, my gollum shows up every day at some point. Pest. So. I had a lot of Gollum Girl visitations this week--a settling in of that rhapsodic voice whispering many seductive versions of "no."

Versions of No sound like this: "Uh-oh, what have you got yourself into?" "I'll never make a living again." "It's too late, I'm doomed to failure!" "You'll never Make It." "Give that dream up, it's unrealistic." "Here you are again, out of work, a student, all aloooone in the world."

In the Gollum vs. Smeagol face-off Voices of No went like this: "Master's our friend." "You don't have any friends, nobody likes you." Here's a little scene of how the good Smeagol fights off his Gollum.*

*I have to say straight up I am not a big Lord of Rings fan but a big fan of this aspect of the story. And the fact I have to note this shows my gollum is present whispering, you better cover your ass girl!

So, it's been a week with all that gollum bullshit.

So what do you do when your gollum or gremlin shows up overtime?

"Master bad," your gollum may whispering--to you, about you.

Ruh-roh, trouble incoming. Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore.

And you may fight back with a mild, "No, Master gooooood. Has lots of friendses."

"Master good!" he insists.

Stop it right now. Don't feed the gollum beast. Don't engage, don't enter conversation and if you do keep it short. As short as possible.

Next, just see how unwise this creature looks. If you were to conjure up a face or a physical identity for your gollum/gremlin voice what would it look like? I bet it's not the kind of person or thing you'd approach in the grocery store to ask about picking out the perfectly ripe mellon. No, you'd probably just notice it and move on.

Thinking big could be moving past the gollum/gremlin voices by facing them down. Shine a light of recognition on a gollum when it shows up that says, "You are so busted. Now go to your room!" Then move on. Quickly, the same way you'd move past the crazy lady talking to herself in the grocery store.

And start putting your whole attention on what you really really really want as crazy as you may think it is. And if you find yourself thinking it's "crazy" that may be a bit of "master bad" creeping in there.

What else is a gremlin/gollum-busting version of THINKING BIG?

Here's something that tells us just how uncool it is to be self-deprecating and small-acting. Much wiser than anything I can offer. It's my Marianne Williamson.

Read on and enjoy living in your Big Thinking today:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory that is within us. As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Written by Marianne Williamson, and read by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 Inaugural Speech.

For a fun read on Gremlins, and taming them check out this book.