BREAK

It doesn't matter what we're talking about, whether our bodies or or minds, flexibility is our greatest strength.  Otherwise we break.

BEST

When I was younger we had several sets of clothes.  There would be the clothes we'd wear to church, or for visiting relatives, another set for school and then a third set for playing around.  It was a prudent thing to do if you had more kids than money to constantly buy new clothes for.  You had to hold the best back so you wouldn't go broke.

I've noticed that people hold back the best of themselves too, as if their kindness, compassion and joy needs to be rationed because there's a finite amount.  The reality is that unlike clothes for kids, the more you use the best the more there is to use.  When you give your kindness, compassion and joy to others, it comes back to you in heaps.  

Now more than ever don't hold back, the world needs our best.  

FALL

How do you hope to help another person up if you've never fallen down yourself?

It is out of our own struggles that we attain the insight we need to help ourselves up when we've fallen.  It is from battling our own demons that we discover our own grace in reaching back to help another. 

We can't understand any of this if we don't risk.  If we don't do what feels scary, if we don't push ourselves to reach beyond what our fear tells us is safe.

DISTANCE

The cause of a lot of anxiety for a lot of people is the distance between who they think they want to be and who they perceive themselves to be right now.  The distance is created by the misguided notion that their true selves is something they have to strive toward in some distant future.  

We are ourselves in this very moment.  Dig under the crap and you’ll see.

DEFINE

Take inventory of what has come to define you.  Is that who you want to be?  What labels have you allowed to be adhered to you, is that truly who you are?

PAUSE

Sit still and let the moment of reflection linger.  Stave off the temptation to obliterate all the reminders of warmth and compassion that were stirred to the surface.  Hold that kindness within you for just a minute longer, and then a minute longer after that, and another after that, and another...

GRATITUDE

Pause and think of the many people who would give anything to be where you are right now.

CHARITY

You could write a cheque at this time of year and clear your responsibility for others off your to do list.  The far more meaningful thing to do, especially at this busy time, is to volunteer.  It’s so much more meaningful. 

A cheque will never be able to convey the sparkle of gratitude in someone’s eyes or the warm smile of appreciation.  And charity is not meant to be measured in dollars and cents, the real value of charity is in how it can strengthen the connection between our common humanity.

COUNTERINTUITIVE

Some of the most valuable lessons we learn are actually counterintuitive.  Like when we want to rush in and fix someone, when we want to save them from pain.  We come to find out the absolute opposite will do the most good.  Pain is memorable, a lesson learned through some pain will stick.   

VAMPIRES

LOVE THIS.  BY WHO ELSE?  SETH GODIN 'CAUSE IT'S BRILLIANT.

"Vampires, of course, feed on something that we desperately need but also can't imagine being a source of food.

You have metaphorical vampires in your life. These are people that feed on negativity, on shooting down ideas and most of all, on extinguishing your desire to make things better.

Why would someone do that? Why would they rush to respond to a heartfelt and generous blog post with a snide comment about a typo in the third line? Why would they go out of their way to fold their arms, make a grimace and destroy any hope you had for changing the status quo?

Vampires cannot be cured. They cannot be taught, they cannot learn the error of their ways. Most of all, vampires will never understand how much damage they're doing to you and your work. Pity the vampires, they are doomed to this life.

Your garlic is simple: shun them. Delete their email, turn off comments, don't read your one-star reviews. Don't attend meetings where they show up. Don't buy into the false expectation that in an organizational democracy, every voice matters. Every voice doesn't matter--only the voices that move your idea forward, that make it better, that make you better, that make it more likely you will ship work that benefits your tribe.

It's so tempting to evangelize to the vampires, to prove them wrong, to help them see how destructive they are. This is food for them, merely encouragement.

Shun the ones who feed on your failures."

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/12/the-care-and-feeding-and-shunning-of-vampires.html

ENDINGS

Some things are meant to end.  Let them.

PRESENT

Uncertainty forces us to be present.  Sometimes people misinterpret being present with being still.  While true that we can be still and present at the same time like when we meditate for example.  Being present as we move through our daily lives however, is like moving down rows of fertile ground dropping seeds and moving on.  

In other words, we go about our day consciously living in each moment.  That conscious moment is our existence in the realm of uncertainty caught between the seed we’ve just dropped and the one we’re about to drop and the future desire that the seeds will sprout and grow and yield what we hope for.  

Being present is consciously living in trust and faith, in the uncertainty of whether things will turn out the way we need them to AND nevertheless continuing to drop those seeds of promise as we move along.

365

I was berating myself the other day for not having posted a blog in over 100 days.  What’s the point, I thought, so much time has passed, I can never catch up... and on and on.  Just as anxiety over failure and disappointment started to well up in my chest the little voice that comes from my heart and knows what’s real and true whispered, so what, start again today.

We have 365 chances to start.  There are 365 times Matilda, our primal lizard brain, our ego’s mouthpiece, can shut us down.  Stuck in the middle is our freedom to choose.

The bottom line?  We have 365 opportunities to choose.

What choice have you made today?

I ate badly all week, what’s the point...

OR

So what, I’ll start again today.

I haven’t worked out in a month, I’ll never catch up....

OR

So what, I’ll go today.

I disappointed my kids yesterday, they’ll never trust me again...

OR

So what, I will apologize and follow through on a promise today.

What have you said SO WHAT to today?  I’d love to know.

COWARDS

Rationalizations are for cowards.  If we're engaged in something that involves lying to others but most especially to ourselves then we need to stop rationalizing why it's okay to be cowards.  

LYING TO OURSELVES IS THE GREATEST LIE OF THEM ALL.

CRAP

While we get really annoyed when we have to deal with other people’s crap, it’s our own crap that’s the real problem.  So cherish the individuals in your life who see the authentic you because they’re the only ones capable of shoveling away this crap we so consistently insist on strewing across our own path.  

ENOUGH

Dimming your light so another's can shine is not leading with love, it's coming from lack because there is enough light for both of you.

ADJUSTMENT

The journey of our life is a series of adjustments.  The truth is we're off track most of the time, the trick is to pay attention and make those tweaks to get you back in the direction you want to go.

FREEDOM

The Buddha often said that wherever you find water, you can tell if it’s

the ocean because the ocean always tastes of salt. By the same token,

anywhere you find enlightenment —whatever improbable or unfamiliar

shape it may have assumed— you can tell it’s enlightenment

because enlightenment always tastes of freedom.

Not comfort. Not ease. Freedom.

~ Martha Beck

What an amazing distinction - comfort is often misunderstood as freedom, ease is often mistaken for freedom, but true freedom is neither comfortable nor easy.  Freedom is an imperative that leaves you no choice but to move toward the cliff and barely braced, compels you to jump off.  

If you’re scared to death because a decision you have to make is taking you like a fast moving train toward a 100 foot drop, then baby hang on, because you’re on the path to freedom.

UNPLUG

The other day a woman with her nose buried in her iPhone walked toward me.  I moved out of her way when I realized she wasn't going to look up.  Just as I was passing her a bus whizzed past and I saw her look up.  She looked annoyed at the bus for having failed to stop for her.  Since she wasn't paying attention she hadn't made it to the bus stop.

A woman preoccupied with texting pushed a stroller down the sidewalk.  Her baby was looking up at her trying to make eye contact.

Sure it's easy to rationalize that those are just an ignorant few but in truth I could fill a book with instances like this because it's the ignorant mass.  It crosses every race, ethnic or socio-economic line.

More than ever we are presented with opportunities to disengage, to abdicate our responsibility to participate in our lives.  Burying our head, whether it's in an iPhone or the sand,  is easier than actually giving a crap.  Giving a crap takes time, it takes energy, it takes risk.  Engaging in our lives means that we actually need to expend emotional energy.  It's so much easier to give into fear.

BRICK WALLS

A brick wall is a person with a mind that dismisses things out of hand.  Before all the facts are in, before anything is even remotely clear, brick walls have already made up their minds that, "whoa there with that idea...where do you think you're going?"

Brick walls are made of fear.  That's it.  There's nothing mysterious about them  They're under the misguided notion that they're dismissing things, saying no to things for their own good.  Nothing is further from the truth.  Bricks walls are solid things with no flexibility.  It's a horrible way to waste a mind.

MAKE IT HAPPEN

When you finally come out from under your blankie, bright and shiny and new, you'll be ready own it once again.

Seth, as usual, says it best:

"If you announce what you want, if you are clear about what's on offer, if you set goals...

• the chances of accomplishing your goal go up, and so does...
• the chance that you will be disappointed

For many people, apparently, it's better to not get what you want than it is to be disappointed. The resistance is powerful indeed.

Every time you use waffle words, back off from a clear statement of values and priorities and most of all, think about what's likely instead of what's possible, you are selling yourself out. Not just selling yourself out, but doing it too cheaply.

Own your dreams. There is no better way to make them happen."

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/10/on-owning-it.html

OWN IT

There are days when the last thing you want to do is own it. Any of it.  When everything just gets on your very last nerve and you just want to curl up under your blankie and whaaaa, whaaaa for your mama.

The thing is, we have to own this more than anything else.  Lean into it and embrace it fully.  This too is you.  It's the other side of the bright shiny you.  

It's part and parcel baby.  It's all of who we are and then some.  If we don't own this, who will?  We are incomplete without both sides.  Surrender to it, it'll actually feel really good.

SHOES

Compassion is being open to walking in someone else’s shoes.  And while we may be open to it, we will never truly understand what walking in those shoes means.  That’s why we can’t possibly judge others.

WIMPS

Forgiveness is not for wimps.  It takes a willingness to put our own pain aside, our own need for understanding and healing on the back burner in order to offer all of that to someone else.  That takes a strength of character that’s truly rare. 

FREE PASS

The very first person we need to forgive, every day, is ourselves.  That doesn’t mean we get a free pass every day, it doesn’t mean we don’t take responsibility for what we do, it just means we don’t become defined by the messes we create for ourselves.

MOVE

Much of our pain is created by spending a great deal of time in our heads.  We mull things over and over and create stories around feelings and perceptions that do nothing but escalate our pain.  By moving our bodies we disengage from the hamster-wheel of repetitive thoughts.

DARLINGS

What are the darlings in your life?  I’m not referring to people or things that you hold dear.  I’m referring to beliefs that don’t serve you any longer, sacred cows, that you’re not even sure why you keep around any longer.    

Killing the darlings is an expression writers use to do away with anything that doesn’t serve the story.  It’s a productive idea to apply to our lives as well.  It’s about doing away with limiting beliefs that hold you back.  Bury them, set them on fire if you have to, there’s no good reason to keep them around anymore.

When it comes to our  “people darlings”  - please don’t literally do away with them -  but if they’re not contributing or supporting your growth, then to the curb they must go.

PRECIOUS

Money simply is.  It’s just a tool.  There is nothing precious about money.  Yet in our society it has come to define a person’s intrinsic worth.  It is a grossly dysfunctional way to live. 

YIELD

We do so unconsciously perhaps, but as the summer winds down and we feel the first chill in the air, our mood changes to reflection.  It could be what affects us with depression at the close of the year that has less to do with the changing of the seasons and more to do with the disappointment we feel at the paltry yield of our year.

If we began the year with high hopes of making changes but find ourselves, nine months later, at exactly the same place we started from, then we stand atop a very slippery slope.

PERFECT

All this talk about being perfect doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do in the being better human beings department.  Being ‘perfect’ has nothing to do with being blameless, or that our every act is beyond reproach.  The reality is that while our spirits are perfect, our behaviour oftentimes, is not.

That’s the distinction between the perfection of loving ourselves unconditionally and the not so perfect choices we often make.  Our choices are not who we are.  Choices are changeable.  Our inherent perfection is not. 

REMEMBERING

Here’s what I have felt perhaps all my life but had no words to articulate until I was reminded of this.  In the Epistemology, Plato says that  knowledge (how we know things), is innate, we have always known everything that is critical, deep in our souls, and learning is simply an act of remembering.

If nothing else this is the definition of authenticity.  Of living an authentic life.  When we sit still and allow our spirit to remember what we have always known is most important, we are tapping into that innate knowledge. In fact our soul is trying to remind us of that all the time, it’s called instinct, it’s call a gut reaction.  That’s the knowledge that Plato is talking about.  

When we listen to what our instinct is telling us, from who we’re hanging out with to what we’re putting into our bodies, then we are remembering what is innate, we are listening to our soul.  We will always feel right and fulfilled if we remember this.

STARSTUFF

I believe this with all my ‘starstuff’ being.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”~ Carl Sagan, Cosmos

FEAR-RETARDANT

I find fear fascinating.  Particularly how it can be manipulated and be used to manipulate.  How quickly it can be stirred up and how resistant it is to dousing.  That it uses virtually no kindling at all, in fact it can be ignited by pure fiction and amplified by amateurs.  It has an egalitarian nature that is as affective en mass as it is on an individual.  It froths and lathers either equally into an unrecognizable inhuman thing.  

Like fire, that has no equal in terms of destruction, fear loses some of its power when it is understood.  Only by understanding the mechanics of it can we make ourselves fear-retardant enough to pass through it.

GENESIS

While much is said about free will and it being our life to live, consider also that our ‘terroir’ the soil in which we grew permeates our life and the choices we make. No one on this planet grew in perfectly balanced nutrient rich soil.  No one got just the right amount of sun and rain to meet their innate needs.  So to think that our history is not making our decisions for us, is to not understand our etiology -- our origin, how we came to be, our genesis and how that affects, to a huge degree, how we make decisions.

WHAT?

What are you doing today that is worth the risk of failing?

THAT PROVERBIAL ROAD

Sometimes, even when we put our shiniest best foot forward and come from a loving and compassionate place, things, like all good intentions, will still go to hell.

If our sense of self is too precious, one or two of these kinds of experiences are enough to make us withdraw and never put our shiniest best foot forward ever again.  What a shame that would be!

Rather, we need to fortify our sense of self by deliberately seeking out opportunities that set us on that proverbial path.  Goodness why?  You ask.   Because it's the only way we'll realize that when things go sideways, when things don't go as planned, it's at the worst a bump in the road, and at its best, an education.

SHADOWS

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato describes the plight of people who have lived their lives chained up in a cave.  They are chained with their heads constrained facing the wall of the cave.  They watch shadows projected on the wall of this cave of things passing in front of a fire behind them.  These shadows are ‘real’ to them.  If you were to unchain them and show them the people that made those shadows they would not believe you.  In fact, they would be very upset at the suggestion and would insist that they be returned to their chains.  

Socrates, Plato’s protagonist, says:

“...that the man was compelled to look at the fire: wouldn't he be struck blind and try to turn his gaze back toward the shadows, as toward what he can see clearly and hold to be real? What if someone forcibly dragged such a man upward, out of the cave: wouldn't the man be angry at the one doing this to him? And if dragged all the way out into the sunlight, wouldn't he be distressed and unable to see 'even one of the things now said to be true' because he was blinded by the light?"

The shadows are our dysfunction.  We’ve had them with us all of our lives.  The problem is that they are not us.  They are not what is real.  Our resistance to understanding that is similar to the prisoners insisting that they be returned to their chains.

NOPE

You don’t have to listen.  You don’t have to change, nope, absolutely not, uhu, nein and nyet.  It is your life, so you live it the way you want.  Regrets?  You can handle them.  Right? 

How do you know you can handle them? Looking at old age from mid-life is similar to looking at mid-life from the perspective of a teenager.  We can’t really imagine it because from our much younger vantage point, we feel invincible, and those old farts?  Well they look too vulnerable.  That’s not us.

Here’s the thing.  We don’t deal with regret in our invincible years, we face regret in our old age, in the full-fledged throes of vulnerability.  We face regret in the very years we’re the least capable of doing anything about them.

Our resistance to change is nothing more than our fear of fear.  That, as Franklin D. Roosevelt said, is the only thing we have to fear.

“...fear, nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes 

needed efforts to convert retreat into advance...”

VIRGIL

We call guides to us.  Like Virgil who showed up to take Dante through the nine layers of hell, when we need it most, we call guides to us.  The problem is we don’t always recognize them.  More often than not they don’t look like teachers at all.  Sometimes they’re not even people, oftentimes it’s a situation or circumstance.  

Here’s the AHA.  Who is in your life or what circumstance is playing out in your life right now that you’re feeling resistance toward?  You’re feeling this very keen and undeniable urge to run away from?  That, is your guide.  That’s your cue to listen.  You’ve called Virgil to you.  So be the student, because the teacher has arrived, and listen.

TOOTH & NAIL

We fight this kind of learning tooth and nail.  But, every single person who crosses our path we've called to us to teach us something.  

What that thing we need to learn might be, is sometimes not clear until some time later, sometimes years later.  It's critical then to pay attention to whom we are drawing into our orbit, especially those that are causing us some pain or difficulty.  Pay special attention to those because we've called them to us for a very important lesson.

CURIOSITY

Cultivate curiosity.  It's a thorn in the side of fear.

DEFINITION

What you do can’t define who you are because what you do can change anytime and is beyond your control.  If your sense of worth comes from your job, what happens if you get fired?  Who are you then?

There is a real danger in identifying too strongly with what we do for a living.  Once that definition goes away the path toward rebuilding a sense of self will be a long, arduous, traumatic and painful one.  

PROBLEM/EMERGENCY

Keep an eye out for folks who love to make their problems, your emergency.  They’re experts at it.  From those riding your bumper because they’re late so your emergency is to get out of their way, to neurotic individuals who can’t ever see the roles they play in their own drama, so your emergency is to solve their problems.

Their methods are so insidious you don’t realize they’re a black hole sucking you into their orbit until it’s too late.  It’s like the Hotel California where you can check out any time you like but you can never leave.

CLOD

I just met the personification of what Shaw describes as a “feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making [them] happy.”

I bet at some point this person is convinced that they’re ‘doing their best.’  That it’s them against the world and, what are you so happy about anyway, Pollyanna? 

There will come a time, there always does, when a moment of clarity descends upon them and they’ll see that they’ve wasted a great deal of time being miserable, when they could have chosen differently.  It was up to them all along.

This is how we manufacture regret.  

ENTITLED

Plenty of people feel entitled these days to all manner of things they have not earned. This type of entitlement has it’s source in fear, scarcity and shame.  These folks try to heal their sense of brokenness by demanding acknowledgment and acceptance.

It never works.  The only things we are entitled to, just because we are sparkling spirits and special souls, is peace of mind, love and compassion.  That’s all.  That’s everything that matters.

ABUNDANCE

I love this because it's such a great reminder to come from an abundant, joyful place.  Isn't this the epitome of treating others how we would like to be treated?  Imagine being on the receiving end of this...

"Today, "mistakenly" copy someone on an email about his best qualities. Leave positive comments about your children on notes "accidentally" scattered around the house. Admire people loudly to third parties when you know the admired are eavesdropping. Praise be."  ~ Martha Beck

FASTING

When things get out of hand, either we’ve been on a junk food binge, realize we’re addicted like crack to our phones or find we’re drowning in the despair of the evening news, we just need to back away.

Fasting or abstaining from whatever activity has become unhealthy, even for just a short period of time, is the fastest way to reclaim balance.  It’s the best way to save ourselves from spinning further down that spiral.

BLAME

Understanding the dysfunction of our family of origin requires that we understand those who raised us. It’s not about going back to place blame, it’s about going back to realize that our dysfunction has deep roots.  

SHAME

It isn’t the feeling that you’ve done something bad.  No, that’s guilt.  Shame is the feeling that YOU ARE bad.  That you are inherently, fundamentally, broken and flawed.  It’s hard to believe, but check and see if it’s not true, most of us operate from a place of shame.  Shame has us lead dysfunctional lives because we can’t reconcile this sense of shame with the truth of our soul which tells us we are whole and perfect.

(Based on Brenè Brown’s research on vulnerability)

WORK

We wait for inspiration to descend before making changes to our lives.  We wait for inspiration to present us with options and make the decisions for us.  This is true if we continually complain of not knowing our purpose in life, what will make us happy and feel fulfilled.  It’s a stall tactic.  We’ll know by doing, by trying this and trying that, by eliminating what we don’t like doing or what doesn’t fulfill us.  Ultimately...

“Inspiration is for amateurs...the rest of us just show up and get to work.”  ~ Chuck Close

RATIONALIZE

Creativity is just one of the ways in which rationalizing stifles the outlet.  In all other aspects of our lives, rationalization is the way we construct stories about ourselves that are not true.  Rationalization is the way we get and stay stuck.

"The intellect is a great danger to creativity … because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth — who you are, what you are, what you want to be."     ~ Ray Bradbury

UPON

We are not acted upon.  We react upon.

Our circumstances are a result of our reaction to what comes our way.

PSEUDO-REALITY

What reality have you bought into?  The social media reality that says everyone is looking for you and really wants to know what you’re doing every nanosecond of the day?  The marketers reality that has you convinced of not only what you want, but what you NEED?  Your boss’s reality that says, you’re not overworked, you’re lucky to have a job?  Your kid’s reality that says you suck as a parent because you’re not indulging my every whim? 

These other realities look really attractive because much of our time is spent in us not liking the reality we’re living.  Here’s the thing, all of these pseudo-realities are ‘pseudo’ because they look like a life but actually are not.  They are vacuous facsimiles of existence.  They are a proposition with an agenda driven by the people who have created it: social media, marketers, your boss, etc., all exist to satisfy their specific need.  Pseudo-realities have nothing to do with us and our wellbeing.

Yet we get caught up in them all the time because we’re looking for an escape.  It’s so much easier to disappear into these alternate realities than make hard decisions, face our fears, live authentically.  

GIVE/GET

You can’t give what you don’t have.  Conversely, you can’t get what you don’t give.  It might be a cute little phrase but it’s true.  We expect compassion, love and respect from others but have none for ourselves.  

How do we know we don’t have any for ourselves?  When our default response is angry and defensive, anxious and fearful.  When we feel as though there’s not enough for us, when we believe everyone is trying to take something from us, when most of the time we feel empty. 

How can we possibly offer anything to anyone if we come from a place of emptiness?

DOORMAT

Living our life with love and compassion doesn’t mean we become doormats. It comes down to knowing our boundaries.   

A quick and dirty guide to knowing what your boundaries are, goes something like this:

1. Stop doing things that make you feel bad
2. Do more of the things that make you feel good

Simple right?  But not easy.  Our culture confuses us with mixed messages.  For example, #1. Stop doing things that make you feel bad, doesn’t mean that you stop doing things you know you need to do to grow and be responsible for your life.  It doesn’t mean stop when things get uncomfortable and challenging.

It’s the same with #2 Do more of the things that make you feel good, doesn’t mean being irresponsible with our behaviour.  Doing things that jeopardize our health for example, or doing things that make us feel good in the moment but have awful repercussions in the long term.

Boundaries are about being responsible for our life, for our behaviour and respecting others to take responsibility for their life and their behaviour.  Boundaries are crossed when one or the other isn’t doing that.

TRUST

Trust is not passive.  Trust is not hoping.  Trust without action is magical thinking.  It is wishful thinking.

Trust is a verb.  It is active. There’s action associated with it.  It means that we take a risk and then release the need to manipulate or worry about the outcome  because we’re confident that whether our efforts succeed or fail, we’ll not only be able to handle it, we’ll be ready to trust again, ready to risk again.  That’s trust at its most elemental.

COMPLEXITY

Since we create complexity in our lives, we can also work to eliminate it.  But wait, you say, what about the things that enter my live that add complexity, that I can’t do anything about, things like my kids, my boss, that pile of laundry in the corner.  AH.  

We tend to get caught up in the literal. There will always be a layer of complexity that we can’t LITERALLY make disappear (no matter how badly we wished we could).  The complexity we do have control over however, is our thought process.  In and of itself that pile of laundry is just a thing.  It doesn’t actually have meaning, until of course, we invest it with some.  

That’s the difference.  How we think about things, how we initiate things, how we interpret things, how complex our relationships are, how complex our environment is (for example, if our house is a mess and how that stresses us out), is all a product of how we’ve thought about these things and what meaning we’ve given them. 

Change the meaning, eliminate the complexity.

LIVE NOW

Yup, living in the present moment is definitely the healthiest, most aware and enlightened thing to do.  But most of us don’t really understand what that means.  It doesn’t mean what advertising and marketing geniuses want us to think it means. 

 “Live now” in our popular culture is an object-referral type of living.  We are supposed to define ourselves by the objects that we acquire and surround ourselves with, by the superficial, popularity based relationships we’re supposed to have, by the vacuous gratification from our 15 minutes of fame.  Nothing good will come of this kind of ‘living now’ because we can lose those objects.  Our so called friends and significant others, drawn to us from this type of energy will disappear.  And while all this disappears, so does our sense of who we think we are.

No.  Living now, in the present moment, is about living from the inside out.  It’s about being present with authentic self-esteem that comes from self-referral.  It’s a simple acknowledgment of what is the most fundamental of being human, of being us.  Compassion and love.  It’s about gratitude for the opportunity to be alive today.  It’s about appreciating the power of things we have no control over, like air, like our breath, like our heart beating. But most especially, living in the now is about embracing our heartaches and pain, holding them tenderly and then letting them go.  They do not belong to us.  They belong to what happened then.  And now we are living in the present.

LIFETIME

Emotional stuntedness is the foundation of regret.  Because regret is created from missed opportunities, big and small.  From not repairing a relationship with a family member or friend to not climbing Kilimanjaro.  Over a lifetime it builds into a critical mass of missed opportunities. This big “R” kind of regret will affect our health, our state of mind and how we will spend the rest of our life.  

HIT REPEAT

Emotionally sticky things become old, worn, unproductive, and disfunctional patterns.  These patterns skew our perceptions and hinder our growth.  And the more pain surrounds an emotion, the stickier it is.   The more skewed our perceptions and the more emotionally stunted we become.

REGRET

I’m not sure we truly understand regret, what it means and the impact it has on our lives. The problem is that we can’t wait until we’re 80 or 90-years of age to wrap our brain around it.  We need to understand the toll regret takes now when there’s still time to do something about it, to make sure our regrets are few.  

MARTIAN

If a martian landed on earth today s/he would think that this planet was occupied by laundry-obsessed, creatures with itchy skin, depression, shingles and erections lasting more than three hours. OY!

PEACE OF MIND

We need to stop letting the vacuous, single minded, money grabbing, no-thought-for-what’s-good-for-us marketing machine define what we deserve.  What we really deserve is peace of mind.  

CHARITY

Kids with distended bellies did not suffer the misfortune of being born poor.  No matter what charitable organizations on TV tell you.   Poverty has nothing to do with misfortune and everything to do with an uneducated population which corrupts, objectifies and abuses.  

Before you write that cheque consider that there is a line of adults working at these charitable organizations nowhere near where these children live.  They justify their existence with their hands outstretched taking their share.  Then there's another line of adults in these villages 'representing' these children with their hand out.  All adult objectives are met before a penny (in the form of scant food or shelter) ever reaches a child. 

Poverty is a complex issue and completely devoid of bad luck. Poverty is a question of empowerment.  An uneducated and ignorant population is a disempowered one.  Educate a population, especially a woman, and there will be no poverty, there will be no more children with distended bellies and no more tolerance for these self-serving, wholly disingenuous charitable organizations. 

WITHIN

How much energy do we waste trying to be perfect?  The irony is that it’s not even our own sense of perfection we’re trying to attain.  It’s a perfection outside of ourselves.  And we seek this perfection in order to be enough.  Again, not enough for ourselves but for some phantom tyrant that keeps raising the standard of the perfection that will be enough.  It’s a waste.  A waste of effort and a waste of our most precious energy and time.

“The love we are seeking is already within us.” Deepak Chopra

VENT

While emotional venting may feel good in the moment, what we’re actually doing is making sure nothing changes.  Venting actually “[...] sustains an unsatisfactory status quo.” (Martha Beck, marthabeck.com).

Here’s the thing, venting releases pressure so we don’t actually have to change anything.  It’s so much safer, so much less scary to vent, in the hopes that just talk, talk, talking the situation to death will make it go away.  

Next time we catch ourselves venting about something or someone it might be helpful to ask why we’re so invested in the status quo.   

DIALOGUE

So much time is wasted on what passes for dialogue.  Rather than an exchange between two people that strengthens a connection, we have two soliloquies whose breathless chatter digs a chasm a mile wide.

If questions don’t punctuate the exchange, if the exchange doesn’t include time when each takes a turn to listen, then walk away, because it’s not a dialogue, it’s an ego stroke fest.  

We need to build bridges that connect us not trenches that separate us.  

The Shine in Your Eyes

Try this:

Conscious inner dialogue is a powerful tool for connecting to your true self. Whenever you look in the mirror, even if just for a few seconds, make eye contact with yourself and silently repeat the three principles of self-referral:

1. I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others.
2. I am beneath no one, and no one is beneath me.
3. I am fearless in the face of all challenges.

Look into your eyes to see these attitudes reflected back at you. Look just in your eyes, not at your facial expression. Look for the shine in your eyes that reflects the fire in your soul. If you do this exercise a few minutes every day, it will create profound shifts in your life.

Source: http://chopra.com/8wk-hp-3wk-ase?inf_contact_key=108fff1d554fcaa75c403614374425909d86954e44bb8d9dd251970416ffd91e#

MONEY

Our relationship with money is a very good indicator of the kind of relationship we’re having with ourselves.  Our family of origin has influence over the environment and culture that defines our relationship with money and is therefore, the source of our disfunction with it.

CULTURE

Culture is often followed blindly.   It’s an easy way to live a life without having to do the hard work of engaging or questioning.  Without having to face your own fears, address your own disfunction and change.  Culture becomes a template the lines of which confine our own life and our family’s life.  The degree to which we live within these lines delineated by culture, is always a choice.  However, adhering blindly to a template life never requires us to do our best.  Never.

CAREFUL

In digging into my own family of origin I’ve discovered that my parents chose to make decisions away from opportunities time and time again.  While thinking how interesting this was, and how those decisions were made from a fear-based belief system, it suddenly struck me that I was doing exactly the same thing.

Every time I was procrastinating working on a project I knew I should be working on, I was making a decision away from opportunity.  Now that, is hugely interesting.

This is the kind of understanding that shifts our paradigm.

GORGEOUS

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.” —Hafiz

PERSPECTIVE

Kindness is a choice.

Love is a choice.

Joy is a choice.

AGAIN

We are spiritual beings having human experiences.  

It has nothing to do with religion.

I has to do with the fact that we are:

Love. Eternal. Spirit.

ESTEEM

True self esteem is never at the cost of someone else's.  True self esteem is actually the enhancement of someone else's.

MIRACULOUS WE

We have a choice on how we relate to ourselves.  So why not choose to relate with love and non-judgment. 

That’s what it means to not need to convince others of how wonderful we are because we understand our own wonderfulness from a very profound place.

Deepak Chopra 21 day meditation challenge - Miraculous Relationships

We, especially women, are so socialized to say yes that we say it almost all the time, even when our insides are screaming NO!  

I'm a huge fan of Steven Pressfield and his post just reminded me of this fundamental reality.  Whether we're trying to create something, or whether we just would rather not do something, saying no is a legitimate response that does not diminish us.  In fact, it is perhaps the most respectful thing we can do for ourselves.

Here's the link to the post: http://www.stevenpressfield.com/2013/08/why-and-how-creative-people-say-no/

If you're trying to get a creative project off the ground, or any project at all for that matter, I would highly recommend his book, the War of Art.  It's jaw-droppingly good.

IMPOSSIBLE

It is impossible to care about anyone or anything until we can care about ourselves.  Not some cliche kind of caring either like, I deserve a break today, or retail therapy, or I can act like a spoiled child because the world owes me.

To truly care about ourselves requires the exact opposite.

The kind of break we deserve is making choices that keep us healthy and strong, the therapy we need concerns fiscal responsibility so we don't spend ourselves into a ditch,  and a child spoiled with compassion and love pays that forward to the world.

TRIGGER

Anxiety is perhaps the most common trigger that disconnects us from our instincts.  Anxiety makes us feel rushed and uptight and we usually can't think clearly.  

When we're anxious our thoughts come from a place that calls up feelings of insecurity, lack and unworthiness. We rarely make good decisions when we feel anxious because we've lost temporary access to our instincts that tells us what we really want and need.  We are separated from knowing what is best for us.

Purposely focusing attention on our anxious feelings is the first step in re-establishing a connection to our instincts.

BRILLIANT

Resistance is spectacularly brilliant in its capacity to have you resist doing what you need to be doing.  

FALSE POSITIVE

It’s what our ego tells us - the voice in our heads.  We’re positive that it’s us, that it’s telling us the truth, but the reality is that it couldn’t be further from the truth.

DENIAL II

The more we’re convinced that dysfunction belongs to others and not us, the more we should realize that that’s our dysfunction talking. 

DENIAL I

A good way to tell when we’re in denial, when we’re not dealing with the real issue we should be dealing with is when we have a really good reason for not doing so.  The better the ‘reason’ we have, the more sure we should be that we’re in denial.

ROSE-COLOURED

Having a positive outlook doesn’t require that we refuse to see the negative.  Rather, a positive outlook requires that we take the responsibility to affect the negative.