Things I Wish I’d Focused About
I’ve titled this blog “A Focusing Life” with the intention of writing about how Focusing – the attitude and the practice – can infuse a life. But since that very first post, what continues to pull at my sleeve like a neglected child is the knowledge of all the times I have not used Focusing … and wish I had.
Thing One: Buying a House
About a year ago, I was astonished to realize that I made the biggest decision of my life without the benefit of Focusing. In 2003 I received an inheritance, and was advised to use part of it to buy a house. It made sense, kind of. This is San Diego; the housing market has traditionally provided excellent returns in spite of the occasional downturn. Because my inheritance included two cats and a dog, my pet inventory had suddenly zoomed to three cats and two dogs, and I knew it would be hard (if not impossible) to find a rental that would allow all of us to move in. And I couldn’t stay in my apartment because the new owner wanted to renovate.
So I went house-hunting, and when prospect of homeownership began to terrify me, I muttered a mantra I had devised: “You have to live somewhere; if you could to find a place to rent, you would pay about as much as you would if you had a mortgage; if you’re going to have to pay that much, you may as well end up with some equity to show for it.”
It’s not that I didn’t know what I was afraid of. I had always lived rather minimally – the rent on my charming two-bedroom Hillcrest attached cottage was ridiculously low, and I had lived there for 15 years. I had long since paid off my car, and my needs were few and not costly, so I worked when I needed to and spent the rest of the time goofing off. (Ambition has never been my strong suit.)
Buying a house would change all that. For one thing, I would have to remain employed for long periods of time. I would have to get serious about saving and about budgeting. I would have to think about retirement (which I should have been thinking about all along anyway). These would be huge changes, and I wasn’t sure I would be up to them. That’s what scared me: the prospect of buying a place and then losing it.
Rational and Linear vs Complicated and Less Efficient
This is rich fodder for Focusing, and I teach this stuff, so you might think I would naturally plunk myself down and invite the scared parts to come forward and be heard. I didn’t. Instead, I just carried that list of pros and cons around in my head, repeated my mantra over and over, and eventually found this cute little two-bedroom on a cul-de-sac near San Diego State University. It was not a poor decision, even though I ended up buying at the peak of the recent upsurge. My home has lost value since then, but I’m not planning to move any time within the next 15 years, so I can wait for the market to recover. And my mortgage is a relatively sensible five-year fixed – not a subprime atrocity that could force me into foreclosure.
I’m not saying that I would have made a different decision if I had done some Focusing about it. I don’t know what might or might not have been different. What I do know is that by consciously inviting only those parts of myself that make decisions through rational, linear thinking, I cheated myself of the full input of my Self – input that might have made my decision more complicated and not so efficient, but also more satisfying, more complete and somehow easier.
Fortunately, it’s never too late to Focus about an issue.
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~Lerissa
Tags: Focusing, home purchase, making decisions
This entry was posted by Lerissa at 4:39 pm and is filed under A Focusing Life.
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