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.