Monthly Archives: March 2012

On_THEverge

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Ever feel like you are on the verge of something big – revolutionary?

I’ve felt it before and a few times have followed it and trusted it, but I’ve never felt like I really honored it and WENT for it.  I always held back a little, the what if was too much for me.

Now, I’m standing at the edge, right there at the edge. Options, choices, I’m flailing about a bit. But I know I’m on the verge.  THE verge of something fantastic. The question is – can I wait, can I hold out for what the next thing is, or will I fall back into a trap of grasping onto the next shiny thing, job, or idea that appears? 

On January 1, 2012, I posted on Facebook (which makes it true)

instead of a new year’s resolution, i’m starting a new year’s revolution. dream big, be big, believe everything will come true. 2012 you’re the start of a beautiful future.

So far this year, I lost my job and started a blog and found new freedom in just being me.

I started a 6 week fitness challenge that is kicking my ass and I am loving it. I want to feel better about me and I know this is one sure way to feel better.

I’ve recommitted to my personal projects and am putting high priority on what I WANT and believe.

I am happy in the present and looking forward to what comes next and that is a good feeling.

The revolution has started – But can I dream big and be big and believe everything can come true?  Can I pull it off?

Here’s how I’m trying it. I’m putting thoughtful and big dream intentions out there and then following where the energy goes.

If I send a query to 10 people and none call back – I’m not frustrated. I know – the energy is not there. If I send out 10 and one calls me back – the energy is there. I don’t go overboard and think this must be it, it’s the one.  What I do think, is let’s find out more.  The more information I have the better decision I can make. It’s MY decision to go or not. I’m not saying I don’t have moments where I freak out and worry and over-think things, but I don’t let myself get too consumed by it most days.

I use this simple tool in everything, writing my memoir, these writing sessions I post, contacting potential clients, relationships, friendships, all things, follow the energy. Write what feels right, connect with people who want to connect.  There is no need to force, pry or wiggle through anything.

If you don’t feel like doing something, why do it? If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.

The things you don’t want to do will still be there tomorrow.

Where is your energy taking you?

What tools are you using to pull of your next big dreamy dream?

For_BeingBroken

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Sometimes something happens in life that breaks you wide open. It usually has to do with LOVE or a RELATIONSHIP. Cracked down the middle. Something beautiful happens on the other side of this breaking, but in the moment it’s a brick wall pushing you up against realization, your choice – break open or break down.

When we enter relationship with our work, another person, our family – we sell each other a message of who we are. When the other person, all of a sudden, doesn’t live up to that, or changes, we’re upset by it. What we’re not thinking about, is that it’s not only on them to communicate what’s going on, it’s on us to be paying attention. Sometimes we choose not to, because it might be painful, or we don’t want to change, but whether we want it or not, change is going to happen.

Relationships when they break or change, leave you – alone. One side goes away thinking, did I make the right choice? and the other one goes away rejected.

This is the place –  the point – where one, or both of you, can be broken open.

Breaking open – to be forever changed in a meaningful way. To learn something and integrate it into your life.

Breaking down – bitter, angry, vindictive, victimized.  While feeling those emotions is good, holding onto them doesn’t bring change.

Breaking open can transform those emotions into something more meaningful – love, compassion, understanding of yourself and maybe even the world.

When breaking open, you take part of the responsibility of coming to the table with an open mind and heart, not only about them, but about yourself. You are engaged and notice where they are changing and where you are changing and decide if you want to work together, to stay – to create a meaningful relationship, or not.

If you’re not in a relationship where this can happen or it’s already ended, it’s your opportunity to have this dialogue with yourself and decide what is right for you and to bring that to your own table.

The world is changing rapidly, in realtime, due to social media, and this change signals that it’s time for all of us to begin having more meaningful conversations and to stop waiting for the other person/people to join in or catch up or become the person you want them to be.

Whether you choose to stay or to go, quit or not, discuss or not – open your mind and heart to whatever you choose and live it, breathe it, feel it, let it transform you. It doesn’t matter if it ends, changes, stays the same, you have the power to make it more meaningful. 

Break open or break down? 

For_Change

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I was reading Seth’s Godin’s writing session, Extending the Narrative this morning and it spurred a question in me.

Everyday, for me, right now is a new beginning. It’s an exciting and also horrifying time. Who wants a new beginning EVERY day? Do I? I DO!

The bottom line of his dialogue for me is this:

“The truth though, is that doing what you’ve been doing is going to get you what you’ve been getting.”   “Is this a reflex that’s part of my long-told story, or is this actually a good decision?”

It’s exactly what I was talking about the other day in my session “For Safety”

I want something different, not more of the same, so I have to change, what do I need to change? I’m not sure yet. That’s going to come in time. Am I willing to dig deep to figure it out? I hope so – wait, that’s more of the same – Yes! I am!

Changing yourself, changing your mind, changing what you want in life – is it such a bad thing if it happens more often than not?  I’ve been told all my life that you can’t change this or that, it’s just how it is. But what if you can? and What if you did? Scary, right?

I used to get an expensive haircut, it was important to me. I love my hair stylist and loved how I looked when I came out of there. I always thought that I’d never go to another salon, but when I started to change my mind about things and wants and needs, my haircut didn’t matter as much as having more money in my pocket. My story was, if I pay a lot for this haircut, I’ll look and feel better, now that I’m not paying as much, I realize, it wasn’t true. 

What if it’s all an illusion, all a story we tell ourselves. What if you don’t really need that latte everyday, that next level of education, that new tech gadget, or that <insert whatever it is for you> to be who you are in the world?

What if you can change the world? Your world.

Spring is here, it’s time to push forward with new energy.  

Change? Evolve? Or Stay the Same??

For_Safety

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Whenever beginning a new journey, feeling out of sorts, not sure of where I’m going, or that I’m not enough – I begin to stock up. In my mind, MORE = SAFETY. 

It is not only about food – toilet paper, paper towels, emotions – they all fall in the same category.

I know, rationally, that I don’t need things in large quantities to make me feel safe. But there’s a part of me that wants that – however unnecessary it might be. My psyche wants to feel safe and this is how it knows how.

I have learned to watch patiently as I go through what I must go through, but I also have the ability to coach myself and remind myself of what’s important to me and how different my life is at this point in time compared to how it used to be. What’s now is not what was then.

Coming from poverty, we didn’t always have enough – money, food, light, electricity, hot water, love – I understand that this is what I’m feeling when I feel out of sorts. Rationally, I know I’m going to be fine, I’ve always been fine. But my pure animal instincts* do not understand that I am going to be fine.  So in my case I stock up. I get ready for the other shoe to drop, for the lights to go out, or the barn to burn down.

I used to think if I had a house, money in the bank, and a decent car, I’d feel safe.  It was always the struggle to get them.  Then when I had those things – what? – nothing had changed. I still didn’t feel safe. I had to go deeper to find what I really needed and that was to know myself a bit better, to understand what I was doing when I was stocking up and how there might not be the same need now.

A life truly lived constantly burns away veils of illusion, burns away what is no longer relevant, reveals our essence, until, at last, we are strong enough to stand in our naked truth ~ Marion Woodman

By going deeper, asking myself what it really takes for me to feel safe, I’ve learned safety is something I carry with me, inside me.  I had to drop the illusion that more was making me safe.  I don’t need anything else to make me feel safe but me.
Me = Safe.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that if I need to stock up, I will. I’m not denying myself the right to feel safe, only questioning my own motives about what safety means. Old habits and the old stories we tell ourselves die hard.

Be easy on yourself when you need to, but there is something powerful in asking the question – What illusions are holding you back from truly living?

What makes you feel safe?  What old stories are you telling yourself?

*animal instincts reference from Peter Levine’s – Waking the Tiger

The Past and the Future

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She knows where to go.

Some people say you have to forget your past and focus on the future.

I don’t disagree that you should not wallow in the past, but we do have to recognize that the past is the key to why we do the things we do and how we are in the world.  Moving forward is not the answer to everything.

Imagine if you left a job, school, life experience and threw away all the knowledge you gained and started over every time.  You may reinvent yourself and change jobs, but the knowledge of the past is powerful. It stays with you whether you want to forget it or not. I have a background in printing, many years gone now, but invariably when the copier breaks I know how to fix it – should I stand there and play as if I don’t?  Some might, but that’s not in my nature. I’ll pull forward that knowledge and put it to good use.

People ask me “Why are you writing a memoir? Why not leave the past in the past?”

This is a fear based question to me. My past is a bit scary and hairy and complicated. I should want to leave it in the past I guess, but I’m bigger than my past and having done some work with it – I’m no longer afraid of it.

I say – if the past experiences we have in life follow us, then why not embrace them instead of shoving them back into the I don’t care about you bag?  Why I need to write it down, I don’t know – I am compelled, called, whatever you want to call it.

My digging through old memories allows me to see my own patterns, my own successes, my own failures. From those I can take full responsibility for all of it and not be a victim believing that life happens to me, but can be an active participant in making life happen. I can learn from all these memories, not get stuck in an old pattern, but build a new one. By integrating the past into the now, I’m creating a better future.

Your past may be holding you back from everything in life and you can’t see it because you are too afraid to look. Instead of why me? The question might be what is this teaching me?

I’m grateful for my past, grateful in an almost painful way, thankful that I came out alive from places where some people don’t, willing to always get up and put myself back together. Believe you can.  You can!

Do you ever have that recurring thing that comes up no matter what you do?

That’s your old wound, old pattern talking to you.

Change the future, heal the past, live and be more fully ALIVE.

For_the_PLAN_of_NOTPLANNING

Quote

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I’ve been networking the past few weeks.  Usually the first question from the other person is – what’s your plan? what’s next?
I pause – how do I go about saying – I’m planning not to plan.

We’re supposed to have a plan right? The world wants a plan. The world wants to know when you are getting up, and out, and after it.  The world
wants to know you are safe from being out on the streets and then the world wants to walk away and think…she’s going to be fine. I don’t need to worry about her. DONE

What the world doesn’t realize is that things are changing and not everyone needs to be all getting out there and getting after it all the time.  Finding meaning and our own individual path is becoming collectively important.

With that in mind, my plan is not to plan, but to follow my intuition with an open heart and mind.  To be open to possibility and to what’s next. Grasping, planning, searching all feel wrong right now.  The wrong direction.

Poet David Whyte says, of the time he told everyone he was moving toward becoming a full-time poet – I had an intuition that when you really annunciate what you want in the world you will always be greeted, in the first place, with some species of silence. If the goal is intensely personal, as it should be, others naturally should not be able to understand it the first time it finds its own voice.  It means in a way, in a very difficult way, that you are on to something. 

David Whyte, is in fact, now, a full-time poet and speaker.

Right now – WRITING – is all that feels right to me.  So I’m writing in my own authentic voice. I’m on to something.

Whenever I am in a place like this – the path is not yet laid.  I’ve been here before and tried to plan my escape – afterward it never looked anything like the plan I started with.

I do not know which way to go, because I haven’t done it before.

I can look at what others have done, but that was their path. I can and will take what resonates with me from their experiences. For anyone else it will be different.

I’m willing to let intuition lead on all fronts.

And in the process of not planning while writing this morning I was thinking – I have four or five sessions I could post, which one do I choose? This quote from Joe Campbell came up on my Facebook feed – Joe wins, always.

‎”Where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s footsteps. Each of us has to find his own way, and this is what gives our Occidental world its initiative and creative quality. Nobody can give you a mythology. The images that mean something to you, you’ll find in your dreams, in your visions, in your actions – and you’ll find out what they are after you’ve passed them.” Joseph Campbell

Be true to yourself – listen to your intuition – it is speaking to you.

What’s your plan to not plan? What’s your intuition telling you?

RELAX into the drowning

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People die from drowning because they fight it. Who wants to die choking on water?  I’d fight it too. But if you relax into the drowning, you are more likely to survive.

RELAX

I was talking to a client on the phone one day.  We were both buried in work, so much so that it felt like we were drinking out of fire hoses all day.  Having been through many weeks of this – I paused for a moment and said “Relax into the drowning, it’s easier that way.“ We both began to laugh, because it was a crazy time, a time when you lose yourself because there is too much to do, think about, be. But if we could relax into it, check off the boxes, do whatever we had to get done and leave the rest for tomorrow, we knew it would be easier. In that moment – we relaxed.

After I was “let go”, “terminated”, “fired” she emailed me and said here are some things that remind me of you.

Relax into the drowning

Don’t harsh my mellow – this was stolen from The Secret, although I didn’t know it at the time.

The mood inside my head is really bright

This is better than dead

If you don’t stand for something – you fall for everything!

I’m thankful for this memory and for her being willing to share it with me. I’ll admit I cried realizing that she wrote my words down and knowing that I made a difference in those crazy moments.

A few years ago I decided that I was going to align who I was in my life with who I was in my work life and this email from her was a great gift – letting me know that I did it! That I really was me at work, maybe not every time, but sometimes. I was true to myself and brought my authentic voice, even in hard times. It wasn’t about doing a job, but was about a real human connection.

Ultimately, we can only be responsible for ourselves and our own decisions, the actions of others are not ours, but if we can stop acting and start being real with each other we may find that sometimes we have an effect on people when we didn’t realize we could.

This is the future of everything, real human connection, not just getting the job done, but making it meaningful. Opening to honest conversations, instead of fighting them, relaxing into it.

What’s drowning you? Call on your authentic voice, to avoid drowning. Relax into it. Make it meaningful.

For_Writing/Righting

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Getting ready to get into formation

I know writing is what I’m called to do. I’m good at other things, but nothing feels more RIGHT than to WRITE. I love that those two words are pronounced in the same way. Write. Right?  Writing is what rights me.

Sometimes I sit down with the pen in my hand and begin – it might be a list of things, a love letter, a story, a poem. It doesn’t matter what I write, what matters is I end feeling more RIGHT. The invisible is visible, right on the page.

The first line of the Odyssey by Homer is – Sing in me muse and through me tell the story.  For me, this is a call to action – the GO BIG or GO HOME message from the 8th century, giving me permission to write – asking for invisible help to guide me through.  The line by Homer is inscribed on a ring I wear on my pinky finger. It grounds me into writing, it’s right.

I have always wanted to be a writer.

I’m only now willing and able to say I AM a writer AND I’m going to incorporate writing into making a living – somehow – because I must. I know it’s what’s right. Somewhere deep.  It’s what I need.  I don’t exactly know what that looks like yet, but I’m going to keep showing up for it and trust that it will come. When I say something like this, I understand I have to be okay with the outcome – What if this means I end up writing legal copy for packaging? – well that’s not what I really want to do – but if that’s what happens, I’ll trust it’s all part of getting there.

I have this fear that wells up when I say I’m a writer.  I think of my father, who used to write poetry and send it off to Reader’s Digest and nothing would happen.  He too wanted to be a writer in his mid-70s.  Did he start too late? What if I’m like him? What if I can’t make this dream happen? Gulp, I would rather have tried and evolved, than not tried at all. I won’t wait until I’m 70.

I’ve spent the last eight years writing in my spare time, EIGHT! – mostly in the dark shadows, with some thoughts and intentions of bringing it alive, but no real push to actually DO IT.

I know that eight years ago I could not have left a job and started writing, not even two weeks ago was I willing to do it, but getting fired well – it’s forced me to rethink things.

I am ready to do it NOW, because I never stopped writing. I never gave up on it. I kept it in mind, always.  Now, I see that all that writing in the dark shadows, was so that I could write in the light, in the daytime.  I was righting things all along.

What are you called to do?  What are you not giving up on? What rights you?

Next month I’ll share an excerpt from my upcoming memoir. Terrifying writing that here, but it’s what I’m going to do. Fear be damned!

Credit to the words invisible help to poet David Whyte.