Tag Archives: authenticity

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_the_PLAN_of_NOTPLANNING

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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.

On_Fire

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To move your life forward you sometimes need a push, or a shove, or to finally realize the choices you’ve been making don’t serve you anymore.

Four weeks ago, at work, I drew a line in the sand and said what I thought and what I believe to be true, not what someone wanted to hear, but exactly what I thought.  I felt in my gut that if I did this I might be fired. I did it anyway, because it was the right thing.  Anyone I asked said,

“Oh no, you’ll never be fired for that!”

Somewhere deeper than I can explain though, I felt it, I knew this choice might just tip the scales.

The GIFT was knowing it was the right thing and could cause a problem and still doing it.  To speak up after all these years of not really speaking up, not just at work, but in life in general. The consequence of not speaking up this time was too great.  I was losing myself and my voice.  Feeling lost is not enough for me anymore.

I WAS fired just shy of one week ago today.  I feel fortunate that even in the moment when I was being fired I understood that it too was GIFT and a choice.   A push, a challenge – to be true to myself, to say what I mean from the most authentic place inside myself.

I never, ever imagined that there would come a day when I would say that I was fired.  I’ve worked since I was 7 years old and I’ve never once been fired. But, now that I have been, it’s one more thing I don’t have to fear.  I thought this was the worst thing that could ever happen and now I realize it’s not, I’m sure there is something worse.  I get the opportunity to reinvent myself, become a little better than before and to be more authentically me.

I do wish the conversation would have gone a bit differently, more genuine, but that was their choice. Now it’s my choice how I deal with it.  I’m a little angry and bitter and am letting those feelings run their course instead of stuffing them back like I would have years ago.  I know I’ll be fine, everything ALWAYS works out as it should, even if it’s a tough road to get there, or the end is not as you expected.

Here’s to what’s next in the world, what’s now. We can have whatever we want in life, we just need to ask for it, to choose it.

I’m not quite sure what the future holds, but I’m asking that whatever it is, it allows me the time to finish my book – oh and it has to be amazing.  Definitely.

Because of my new found freedom, I’ll have the chance to write more and I’ll be posting here two or three times a week, I promise to keep them shorter than this one and hopefully, they’ll be interesting to you.

What do you want to ask for that you think you can’t have?

What PUSH do you need to move forward?

For_GainingCourage

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When I was 40 pounds heavier,
I always thought,
I need to lose weight.  What I realized after I started losing weight was that I didn’t need to lose weight. I needed to gain COURAGE and the weight would take care of itself, or not.  The weight wasn’t the problem, it was the courage to commit to myself that was the problem.

Courage was lacking when I wanted to go out and run.  The I can’t, I won’t, I’m too fat, I jiggle when I run voice was all over my mind.  Instead – out loud I would say, “I don’t have time”, knowing full well, I lacked the courage to stick with it.

You might choose to use your courage for something other than getting out and exercising, but courage is what it takes to take care of yourself and not feel bad about it.

Courage – the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain…without fear.

WITHOUT FEAR! Imagine that.  What if I ran and nothing happened? What if I ran and didn’t lose weight?  What if?

With courage you don’t worry about such things, you do them! Without fear!

It doesn’t take courage to be who you are, you already are. What takes courage is not being perfect – letting go of fear.  You do not HAVE to lose weight, you do not HAVE to be authentic, you do not HAVE to be true to yourself, but to do these things, you do have to have COURAGE.

Having courage can feel like you are speaking for the first time. Letting your own voice and beliefs out into the world.  It can be scary, but with courage, you won’t fear it.

Once you let it out in the open – courage is contagious. If you can find a little courage everyday, you’ll see in time that courage multiplies and AMPLIFIES.  The root word of courage is cor, latin for heart.  You have heart! Courage is in you! FEAR NOT.

I’m still not at the weight that I want to be, but I have the courage to keep trying, the courage to put fitness as a priority in my life, and the courage to stop berating myself for not being where I want to be.

Be courageous –  be you, be awesome. Take the first step. What do you want to gain the courage to do/say/be?