BYPRODUCT

The life that we’re living has not happened by accident.  Our decisions and interpretations have shaped it into what we live today.  Accidents happen beyond our control.  Our life, therefore, cannot be a byproduct of an accident.

BECOMING

Our identity is born little by little.  It is handled by time and shaped by circumstance.  It’s the only way.  It takes time.  Consider that it is only when we’re on the ‘shady side of 50’ that we catch a glimpse, every now and again, of who we are becoming.

DISCOVERY

We could never hope to know ourselves if we’ve never paused to reflect on what it is that we need, want, desire. 

The best way to whittle that down is to pause and reflect on what we don’t want, are tired of, have had it with.

TIRED

Of understanding, of explaining, of running around in circles.

PRIMAL

Our family of origin is our primal place.  It’s where we were shaped, it’s where we learned about fear, shame and guilt.  It’s where we were formed and deformed.  It’s a place where we felt the most vulnerable, the most powerless, the most visceral struggle of life and death.

It is also the place we must return to if we ever hope to understand our adult life and how we are shaping it.

EDUCATION

Revelations come in crisis.

SERIAL KILLER

Fear doesn’t mess around, it is a serial killer.  It will try and kill any and all aspirations we may have.  Whether we're wanting to lose weight or write a novel, fear’s goal isn’t to wound or disable, it aims to kill.  In fact it kills with such vehemence and thoroughness that we’ll remember the fear so keenly we’ll think twice before even entertaining that idea again. Is it any wonder we stay stuck for such a long time.  Some of us for entire lifetimes. 

IT IS THE SERIAL KILLING OF OUR DREAMS AND ASPIRATIONS THAT IS THE MOST UNFORGIVABLE ASPECT OF FEAR.

READY

I will never get tired of repeating this because it’s so important.  Waiting until we’re ready means we will never be ready.   Waiting until we’re ready means that we’re waiting for the fear to go away.  THE FEAR WILL NEVER GO AWAY.  If we want to accomplish something with our lives, even if it’s just to live a more authentic one, we need to be ready in spite of fear.

“Henry Fonda was still throwing up before every performance, even when he was seventy-five.  In other words, fear doesn’t go away.  The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.”

~ Steven Pressfield, The War Of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

PROFESSIONAL

Approaching our life authentically means approaching our life like a professional.  What does that mean?  It means that we don’t take people who don’t agree with us personally.  We don’t succumb to notions of what others think we should be doing.  We show up in our lives with the integrity and respect that a professional does.

Living our lives is serious business.  Approach it with the authentic professionalism it deserves.

DIRECTION

Fear is a great dowsing tool.  Whenever you feel the most fear in a direction you think your life needs to go, chances are very good, that it’s the right direction.  

Conversely, if you consider going in a direction that provokes no fear,  it’s precisely the wrong direction to go.

PARADIGM SHIFT

What piece of information did you receive today that changed the way you saw something?  

OPPORTUNITIES

When we’re faced with opposition, a good question to ask ourselves is are we missing an opportunity?

Opportunities oftentimes come to us wrapped within some sort of opposition.  We miss a lot of opportunities this way mostly because opposition stirs up fear.  What if we leaned in to the opposition instead rather than doing what we’ve always done, run away from fear?  What would happen then if we stood our ground and leaned into it?  Leaned into the fear and resistance?  What opportunity would we find?

We won’t know until we try.  But if nothing else we’ll find an opportunity to trust ourselves, to prove to ourselves that the fear did not, in fact, kill us.  

An opportunity to learn that, is a gift we’ll not want to miss receiving.

SHIFT

The most significant shifts are rarely huge.  Rarely are the things that change our lives earth shattering.  See, fear, is in the huge. Most of us expect ‘shaking in our boots’ kind of shock and awe when we think about change in our lives.  Little wonder we flinch at the prospect of change.  We resist.  We run the other way.  All we’re running away from though is fear, not change.

If we can stand still and lean into the fear instead we’ll actually recognize important life-changing insights that arrive small and quiet.  

TRUST

Why is it so important to be authentic?  What’s all the fuss about needing to be our true selves, our best selves, all that we can be, anyway?  Why make waves, why upset our lives, why disrupt the status quo?

I think it’s fundamental to trust.  How can we trust our intentions for ourselves, for others and for our world, if we are not first authentic to who we are, what we believe in and what we stand for.

The sad reality is that most of us sleepwalk through our lives having given our trust over to “things” that promise happiness, that feel safe.  That numbs us against fear.

I know this to be true by how difficult it is for most of us to articulate what it is that we truly want in our lives, what we stand for, what we believe in.  How much harder still it is for most of us to build a life from such a place of honesty.

I believe that when we strive to find our authentic selves we are actually looking to find trust in our capacity, trust in our wherewithal, trust in withstanding our fear and moving beyond it, in spite of it.

It’s not only important.  It’s everything.

“Bold authenticity is an immediate trust builder.” ~ Lauryn Ballesteros

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIrTYnuHYu4

START

Finding the areas that need our attention isn’t difficult.  We just need to wait for the pain to surface.  The pain finds us.  

GETTING OVER OURSELVES

TOMORROW NIGHT, FRIDAY, MAY 10TH AT 7:30 PM AT C.O.R.E STUDIO, WE'LL BE GETTING OVER OURSELVES.  JOIN US.

COURAGE

Scratch the surface of any dysfunction and you will hit fear.  So if we’re in enough pain due to our dysfunction we need to move beyond it despite the fear we feel.  I’m not sure we understand how critically important this is.  How withstanding the fear is critical to the life we lead.  I love this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt:

“Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.”

MOVE

We may have a life, but are we living it? Is our life just dormant seeds of possibility?What’s missing?  Action, movement, moving.

“There are three kinds of people, those who are immovable, those that are movable and those that move.” Benjamin Franklin

ACCIDENT

Our life, up to this point, has not happened by accident.  We made choices and the life that surrounds us is the result of those choices.  

So, if what surrounds you isn’t what you want, make different choices.  Change doesn’t happen by accident.

HURT

The only way we can be hurt is if we believe lies about ourselves in the first place.  For example, if you believe the lie that you are unlovable, then you are wide open for someone to step right up and confirm that for you.

REGRET

We are all responsible for our own regret.  The problem is that we think we have all the time in the world to make different decisions, but that's not true.  Time is finite.  The time we think we have is just fear rationalizing.

READY

To say that we’ll do it when we’re ready, is to really say, we’ll do it when we don’t feel the fear anymore.  

The problem is that the fear isn’t going anywhere, we will always feel the fear.  To be truly ready is to DECIDE that we will move forward toward the change we want DESPITE the fear.

Being ready is about withstanding the fear.  That’s it.  Everything else is denial.

GETTING OVER OURSELVES

BOOGIE WOOGIE

“One night I was layin’ down

I heard Papa talkin’ to Mama.

I heard Papa say, let that boy boogie-woogie.

‘Cause it’s in him and it’s got to come out.

~ John Lee Hooker, “Boogie Chillen”

What’s that about?  It’s about doing what you need to do, what you were born to do, what you’re compelled to do, because to do otherwise is death.

It has got to come out.  Death may not be physical but it’s certainly death of everything that is truly you. “Resistance defeats us.” (1)

(1) This post is largely paraphrased from Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle”.  (It’s an amazingly superb book)