PROCESS

The miracles hide in the process. 

If getting from point A to point B didn’t require a journey, didn’t require a process, we’d miss out on all the miracles hiding along the way.

Don’t fight the journey.  Pay attention.

PATH

If our life is a dark room our path (our future) begins on the edge of a dark and unfamiliar forest.  Are there monsters in there?  Are there magical faeries in there?  We’ll never know unless we take that step forward.  We awaken the miracles and angels that weave themselves into our lives when we step into a situation where we can’t see clearly.  It is part of having blind faith.  It is the magic in our lives. 

Isn’t that a much more productive way to frame fear?

LIGHT

The need to see our way clearly is one of the biggest reasons we stay stuck.  Our life is not a lit room.  It is a room cast in darkness and as we enter we bring light.  That’s the critical point - we must enter it, we must enter the room in order to see what’s around us.

SUPPORT

Even the people closest to us, those that we believe know us best might still not be able to support us in exactly the way we need to be supported.  The problem is not with them, they’re doing their best, the problem is that we’re not always sure what we need ourselves.  And while some of us feel an overwhelming need to act, to do -- do anything so long as we’re moving, very often, this is the least helpful thing we can do.  

Here’s the thing, what will actually help us most is turning inward, asking for help from our core self and then keeping still - for as long as it takes  (this is the excruciating part for most of us), and then, only when we’ve heard our answer, perhaps just an inkling of an answer in the form of a ‘feeling,’ from our core being, will reaching out and acting be helpful.

BITS & PIECES

The bits and pieces of our lives and the bits and pieces of our parents’ lives make us who we are, every last bit.  We forget that.  The mind-blowing part of it is that we also forget that, as adults, we can change what doesn’t work for us, what keeps us stuck, what keeps us from loving the child that deserved the best of all possible opportunities but didn’t get them.  We’re afraid to approach the hurt, illformed, scared little kid inside of us that did not fit into the family it was born into.

QUICK & DIRTY

In terms of knowing whether you’re stuck or not, the quickest and dirtiest way to tell is that if the same crap keeps coming up in your life, big or small, but it shows up over and over again -- then honey, you’re stuck.

STUCK

What most of us see and recognize are the SYMPTOMS and they manifest as: anger, guilt, shame.  Symptoms lead to being stuck, by:

1. Living in the past - blaming others for our circumstances
2. Myopic vision - focus on minutiae - living safely
3. Lack of empathy - me focused - believing what you think
4. Can’t make decisions - fear of the unknown, needing certainty
5. Disease to please - need for approval
6. Addiction - stunted emotional development, started as coping strategy

MATTERS

Life isn’t a contest as to who has suffered more, who is in more pain and who holds the panacea for that pain.  Our pain is great simply because it is ours.  And our pain, whatever it may be, keeps us stuck.   

You may deny this pain for your entire life, but rest assured that this pain will also deny you.  It will deny your potential, it will deny your joy, it will deny your spirit, but most of all it will deny the world of the shiniest, best, you.   And that, by the way, matters.

INSTRUCTIVE

We have been taught to undervalue our feelings and overvalue our thought process.  Men especially have been socialized this way.  And it’s a shame.  The most instructive tool we have is our body and what it feels in any given circumstance.  

EXCAVATION

Before we can fly, before we can set on that path that leads up, we need to burrow into the dirt under our feet first.  We need to dive in face first, using our bare hands for the dig.  

The dirt is our history and we need to excavate it first if we hope to release the gravitational pull it has on us.  If we don’t dig, if we don’t excavate, if we don’t release some of the energy that keeps us mired and oftentimes drowning in the dirt of our history, we cannot take flight.  It’s that simple.

YO-YO

It’s not just for diets - it’s when our emotions are yanked up then down depending on who’s talking to us and what circumstance we find ourselves in. The emotional yo-yo produces a great deal of confusion, anger and anxiety.  It’s a terrible place to be.  

The only defense against this emotional yo-yo is a daily commune with the core of our being - our centre - the tiny part inside us that knows exactly who we are.  

AXE

“Stop screaming at the forest when God has blessed you with an axe.”  TD Jakes

How you fell those trees varies.  Just make sure that you don’t sell yourself short because when the same old trees keep showing up remember that you’ve actually been blessed with a chainsaw. 

OTHER

While tempting, blaming someone else, including our family of origin, for the way we are and therefore the unhappiness in our lives means that we’ve given the power to change our lives over to those people.

The thing is that there’s a vast difference between understanding our difficulties and unearthing the root causes in our family of origin, and blaming our family of origin for our difficulties.  The former allows us to retain the power to change our lives, the latter gives that power away. 

YEARS

Results, if they’re to mean anything require years.  Whether the results are to indicate a good marriage, a job or raising a child, it happens in years, in time, in the stick-to-it-ness  of the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and months that create not just longevity but anything worth a damn.

WANT

How insightful are we to want to ‘manifest’ such trivialities?  Our wants sometimes feel more like the hissy fits of a toddler than the yearnings of wise, evolved beings.  

“New Age dabblers insist that if they can just focus their mind on a huge house and a career as a movie star, they’ll “manifest” what they want. These methods try to force reality to cooperate with the small imagination of our personalities. It doesn’t work. A wayfinder’s Imagination doesn’t dominate reality. It feels into Oneness, falls in love with “what wants to happen,” and gives itself to the vision created by that love.” ~Martha Beck

The question is how long before we recognize the difference?  How long will we waste our time in resisting ‘what wants to happen’ and therefore persisting what we don’t want to happen?

REMARKABLE

Doing something remarkable isn’t about splitting the atom, brain surgery or rocket science.  It’s about doing something worth remarking on.  And the way you create something worth remarking on is by bringing your passion, your heart and your attention to it.  And this applies whether you’re bagging groceries or whether you’re creating a masterpiece.  

Ultimately, if what you’re doing doesn’t matter to you, it won’t matter, it will not leave a mark, it will not be “re-mark-able” to anyone else.

(www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html)

BROKEN

Some things: companies, people, structures, processes, etc., are broken, AND IT IS NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO FIX THEM.

IN-LOOK

“Your outlook is not determined by physicality but by your in-look.” T.D. Jakes

In other words blaming outside circumstances for inside turmoil. 

Put another way, what you see outside is a reflection of what’s going on inside.

Until we are happy with our ‘in-look’ we will never be happy with our outlook -- for the life we've built for ourselves.

BLIND FAITH

Blind faith is the opposite of a sure thing and the most important thing we can develop for ourselves to best serve us in building a big, wide life.

DETAILS

A sure thing has a lot of details.  A sure thing has colour and texture and taste and smell, it is specific, it is unmistakable, it is certain, but most of all, it is free of anxiety and free of risk.   It provides a great deal of warm and fuzzy.

But here’s the thing, a sure thing is to life what a Snicker’s bar is to nutrition -- it has ZERO value for living your life.  

A sure thing, so full of details and so free of risk and anxiety, will NEVER provide you with the education and growth you need to achieve your goals.  

Broccoli, leafy greens, so full of risk and anxiety: “I won’t like it,”  “it’ll taste gross,”  “it might kill me,”  that's the kind of nutrition you need to live the life you were born to live.

HIT REPEAT

One radical thing women can do for themselves is to implement a zero tolerance for violence in their lives and the lives of their family.

One of the most important things we need to remember is that violence against women doesn’t need to be physical and it isn’t necessarily perpetrated by men.  

This isn’t new information, but we need to hit repeat on the message until it sinks in that it applies to you and me.  While our sphere of influence may be small, by being absolutely immovable on this one point - this zero tolerance on violence against women within our own life - the message cannot but ripple out and expand.  This is where we start.

LEAP II

Women are radical. We have been on the forefront of the biggest changes.  The most monumental shifts in society have been galvanized by women and yet as far as the issue of violence against women, we seem to have stalled.  Are we too tired?  Are we too scared?  Are we too distracted?

On the heels of the horrendous news of the young woman in India raped and killed, comes a video made by college boys raping an underage girl in Ohio.  All the news outlets are talking about it, but like everything else they talk in circles, sensationalizing, ‘talking’ about being disgusted but I don’t see the honest and true outrage.  This too will be forgotten in a day or two until another horrendous thing happens, maybe another shooting - the indignation of the latest one disappeared in record time. 

Are we too comfortably distracted? Too hooked on spending and entertainment? Too coddled and encouraged to disappear into our electronic devices?   

How do we stop this?  With record numbers of women of radical age (45 and up) and the resources to put their money where their mouth is, this is the time for another monumental shift.  It absolutely has to be.  Women must initiate it, just like our great-grandmothers did, it is our turn. We must make that radical leap because...

None of us are free if one of us is chained. 

LEAP

“What would your life be like if you didn’t have fear.” ~ Martha Beck

This is a perfect example of why I love her.  The best 4 minutes I spent today.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvtsPc-oPOs&feature=share&list=UURbtZaU_j5x4DnB31yUelDA

And if you want to treat yourself really well today, continue to watch for another 4-odd minutes, “it wakes up the part of you that knows the life you were meant to live.”

RESILIENCE

That’s what courage is really. To push forward when you’d really much rather hide in the corner.  Not so much bravery as stubbornness, insistence, pig-headedness, the refusal to stay down.

LACK

We struggle against a sense of lack every single day.  How much it affects our day is usually a matter of degree because the slow, steady simmer is always there.  Sometimes it manifests in us lacking confidence, not feeling worthy enough, lacking faith that it will all work out alright, in a needy feeling for love, understanding and acceptance.  

Sometimes lack feels like a bomb going off inside your head in a full blown panic attack because life feels way beyond our control.

The thing to remember is that for the most part, lack is a story we’ve told ourselves for a very long time.  And we can change that story.

BLIND SPOTS

They’re hard to see because they are subjective obstructions -- obstructions constructed by our own issues oftentimes subconsciously.  Yet OUR blind spots are glaringly obvious to other people.

If we’re lucky enough and if we’re open enough, we have people in our circle of trust that will alert us to our blind spots.  Once we wrestle our egos out of our way, what these blind spots reveal can be a real education.

CROSS

While drawing a line in the sand requires courage because it means we’re taking a stand, it’s when we CROSS OVER that line that we’ve changed the paradigm of the situation.   The sheer act of crossing over a line means we’ve gone from idea to action.

At this rate, if we’re not careful, we might actually accomplish something.

SAND

Sand is great for lines because water keeps erasing them.  It means we must continually draw a fresh one.  Usually we draw these new lines further and further forward.  A line in the sand is also, as the aphorism goes, a stand, and only the crazy or courageous dare cross it.   

So, drawing fresh lines in the sand takes someone a little crazy and a lot courageous.  Hmmm.  I really like that.

CIRCLES

Circles are for people who have yet to understand the importance of having trajectories with starts and ends.  Lines that represent the direction they want to go -- which is usually different from the place they started from.  That’s the inherent problem with circles.

Lines don’t necessarily need to form a straight path, rather it’s how they connect to other things moving forward that represents their value.

Circles, if trodden often enough become ditches.  With only minor adjustments they become concentric circles or spirals.  The problem with concentric circles and spirals is that they become smaller and smaller and at the end shrink to a minuscule point.  Ultimately, a minuscule point is simply not a place to live a life.

LINE

Even in sports, the starting line is something that you come back to time and time again.  Going back to the start is not a regression if you’ve learned something along the way.  In most cases, if you’ve got the courage to go back to the start, you’ve learned something very important indeed.  

You’ve learned not to give up.

You’ve learned to pay attention.

You’ve learned to remember the lessons.

You’ve learned to tell the difference between what works and what doesn’t.

You’ve learned the intrinsic value of starting again.

You’ve learned that you are the one who draws that line that can either represent a fresh start because you’re not going in the direction you want to go, OR, it can represent a line that delineates a milestone that helps you shore up courage to keep going because you’re headed in the right direction.