What If You Have the Key to Your Freedom?

“So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains
That we never even know we have the key . . .”
~ Lyrics from Already Gone, Eagles

Earlier today one of my clients sent me these lyrics because they reminded her of some of our coaching conversations. The Eagles were my sister’s favorite band when we shared a room in the mid seventies. I’ve probably heard that song a thousand times and never heard those lyrics on their own.

It’s strange that I had never picked out those specific lyrics because they are meaningful to me. The foundation of my life purpose involves helping us free ourselves from our innocently self-created prisons. Thank you Eagles for planting seeds in my teenage psyche!

So what is this key?

Over and over again, as I grow and evolve and as my clients grow and evolve, I see that the less involved we are with the content of our thoughts, the more free we are.

When we recognize there is actually a witness to all these thoughts – and that we are that witness – we begin to realize we may not be as crazy as we have feared. Indeed, we tend to have some crazy thinking, but we are not that. We are the witness of that.

And, when we recognize that we can choose to not engage with trying to take care of all the problems that seem to be in our thoughts, we have freed up a whole bunch of time and energy for living.

What If You Have the Key to Your Freedom?
Ah, to living!

Imagine if we never again tried to answer the question, “I wonder what he is thinking about me?” Or, if we simply noticed that we were once again upset for being upset but allowed ourselves be okay with it. Nothing to fix. Or, we started to rehearse what we were going to say and realized we didn’t need to rehearse.

So, what about you? What if you are not your thoughts? What if you don’t have to fix the problems of your thoughts? What if you don’t have to attempt to control every aspect of your existence? What if you notice that your true identity is part of All That Is? And that life is organizing itself beautifully without addressing all that repetitive thinking inside you?

What a glorious key to our freedom . . .

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for transforming stress and overwhelm into clarity and purpose”)

How Do Our Unconscious Conspiracy Ideas Harm Us?

“In one of my favorite studies described in The Storytelling Animal, a team of psychologists asked shoppers to choose a pair of socks among seven pairs and then to give their reasons for choosing that particular pair. Every shopper explained their choice based on subtle differences in color, texture, and stitching. No shopper said, ‘I don’t know why this is my choice,’ or ‘I have no idea why I picked that one.’ All of them had a story that explained their decision. But here’s the kicker: All of the socks were identical. Gottschall explains that all of the shoppers told stories that made their decisions seem rational. But they really weren’t. He writes, ‘The stories were confabulations – lies, honestly told.'”

Brené Brown
From the book, Rising Strong

rising strong

Brown goes on to say, “The most dangerous stories we make up are the narratives that diminish our inherent worthiness.” When something in our lives feels painful to us, instead of feeling the hurt, we tend to jump to meaning-making.

Instead of feeling the pain of losing a client or learning our partner had an affair, we tend to explain these events with one of our core wounds. “See, there it is again. People always end up abandoning me.” Or, “Of course they left, of course they cheated. I’m not good enough.”

Our brains find comfort in patterns and our core wounds are familiar patterns. This is the booby prize.

If we are instead willing to feel our feelings, then we have the opportunity to be present with ourselves. We create a powerful pause that helps us to not automatically choose fear-based, self-protecting stories that end up keeping us scared and shut down.

By being willing to feel our feelings, we give ourselves the opportunity to then choose to look at the story we are creating. This begins the process of ending the pattern of innocently dooming ourselves to repeat the story of our core wounds over and over again.

Instead, we can get curious about “the story I’m making up is . . .” We can explore our emotions, bodies, thoughts, beliefs and actions. As we are willing to examine our stories and reactions, we come to see that there may not be a conspiracy after all.

We become less self-protective and more generous in looking at our assumptions. In the end, we become more wholehearted.

If you haven’t read Rising Strong, I highly recommend it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, experiences . . . post them below in the comments section . . .

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for transforming stress and overwhelm into clarity and purpose”)

How Do You Know If You’re Living Your True Nature?

“A fish cannot drown in water.
A bird does not fall in air.
Each creature God made
must live in its own true nature.”
~ Mechthild of Magdeburg

For us humans, we are the only species that has the joy and the burden of discovering, remembering, our own specific true nature. We each have free will to live or not live our true natures.

We can work a job that hurts our soul or spend a lifetime wishing we had different strengths. Or, we can courageously create work that celebrates our true nature and embraces our strengths.

One of my private coaching clients has Executing and Influencing strengths in her top 5 strengths. She used to wish she had some Relationship Building strengths. Instead of wishing, we began to coach her around how to create good relationships with the strengths she does have. The work has paid off beautifully because her desire for close relationships is part of her true nature.

Another client who has mostly Strategic Thinking strengths in his top 5 strengths spent much of his life feeling bad because he was considered the “crazy thinker” in a room of doers. Today he has started a company that embraces his Strategic Thinking nature. I have no doubt that his name will one day be well-known for the huge contribution of his true nature.

And, another client hired me to mentor her to become a business coach. She would have been an excellent business coach, but her heart wasn’t in it. Today she runs a non-profit that provides addiction recovery and education. She passionately writes and speaks about this issue that is so meaningful to her.

How Do You Know If You’re Living Your True Nature?
Ah, to live our true nature as effortlessly as these little loves! Might we be over-working it?

So how do we each know our own true nature?

By paying attention to what lights you up, what energizes you, what engages you.

When do you feel most alive? In what situations do you make contributions that feel effortless? Or that require focus and effort, yet feel meaningful and fulfilling to you?

When do you feel most you? When do you have the sense, “I was born for this”? When does time stand still for you? Or fly by? When do you feel connected – body, mind, heart and spirit?

How might the world shift if we all were living our true natures? Oh my goodness, that question gets me out of bed in the morning . . .

I’d love to hear your experiences . . . post them below in the comments section . . .

Might you like coaching
to discover, remember and live your true nature?

Let’s have a conversation to see if you and your situation would be a good fit for Strong from Within coaching. My gift to you.

I keep a few openings in my schedule for these important conversations – Access my calendar here now.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for transforming stress and overwhelm into clarity and purpose”)

What If We Didn’t Fight Ourselves?

After studying A Course of Love for 10 months, I finished reading it a couple of months ago. At the end of the book, it instructed me to begin again – read it a second time!

Since then, I had resisted rereading. After all, it is not light summer vacation reading.

Then, a couple of weeks ago in my study group, I was guided to re-read several specific chapters. In the past two weeks, I have repeatedly read and re-read seven chapters.

These chapters addressed what to do about not liking several situations in my life. My takeaways: I do not have to like the circumstances, but rather I need to accept how I feel about the circumstances.

What If We Didn’t Fight Ourselves?
Homage to an Audi.  I loved this car, my dream car.  Such a beautiful car and an amazing driving experience.  And a few weeks ago her engine died.  To say I didn’t like this is a ridiculous understatement.  I’m still grieving.  And, I have accepted that I’m still grieving.  And yes, I know she was “just a car.”  A car that I loved.

This has been life-changing for me. I quit fighting myself and my feelings.

I wonder if every war there ever was, internal and external, was started to get away from feelings we didn’t like.

What a simple solution to accept that I feel sad or mad, lonely or hopeless, envious or not enough rather than wage an internal battle against these feelings or try to get away from them.

As I’ve accepted my feelings, I’ve felt this new tenderness for myself. It’s also been heartwarming to witness how quickly my feelings shift as I am willing to embrace them. And, I’ve noticed that I’m advocating for what I need and desire in a more clear and direct way.

I highly recommend accepting whatever you are feeling.

I’d love to hear your experiences . . . post them below in the comments section . . .

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for transforming crisis into clarity and purpose”)

How Might We Not Take Fear Seriously?

I’ve worked with several clients this week around moving through fear. Fear of making the wrong decision. Fear of being in romantic partnership with the wrong person. Fear the money will run out. Fear of hiring the wrong person. Fear of not getting everything done because the business is growing so quickly.

And, here’s the fascinating thing about the content of the fear. The specifics of what we are afraid of don’t matter. It’s best if we don’t engage with the content.

I can hear you now, “But I must hire the right person.” Yes, absolutely. And when were our best decisions ever made from fear?

So, if you’re experiencing fear right now (or sometime down the road), don’t engage with the content. Simply notice you are having some fear thoughts. A few dark clouds of the mind.

How Might We Not Take Fear Seriously

Isn’t it clear that these dark cloud will be moving on soon?  As with
the dark clouds that wander through our mind from time to time . . .

Allow them to dissipate and move on. When your mood is once again light and hopeful, then revisit whatever decisions need to be made. You may even be pleasantly surprised to find that, at that point, no decisions do need to be made or that the decision is obvious.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for transforming crisis into clarity and purpose”)

Freedom from Our Innocently Self-Imposed Prisons

“What if everything in life was up for grabs and there were no givens?”
Michael Neill
From his brand new, hot-off-the-press book,
“The Space Within: Finding Your Way Back Home”

I am so excited because one of my mentors, Michael Neill, released his latest book yesterday. One of the reasons I have been a fan, follower and student of Michael’s for so long is because we are cut from the same cloth, belong to the same soul collective.

For years I have been working with myself and my clients to release us from our innocently self-imposed prisons. In Chapter 6 of The Space Within, Michael talks about dissolving the bars of our self-created cages.

The Space Within: Finding Your Way Back Home by Michael Neill

In Michael’s words:
” . . . all any of us are ever suffering from is our innocent misuse of the play dough of Thought. When we use it to create insecurity, worry, and fear, we live inside a cage with bars of our own making. But, like a child who gleefully creates and destroys animals and people and monsters and flowers every time they take their play dough out of its container, we’re free to change our mind and think differently about absolutely anything at absolutely any moment.

I don’t always remember this, and there are certainly times when my reality becomes very “real” to me and I feel the walls closing in on my self-created cage. But then a new thought comes along, and I’m once again reminded that I can roll up the bars of my cage into a lump of divinely neutral play dough, change my mind, and begin the game of creation all over again.”

My words:
When we get it, really get it, that our imprisonment comes from our own thinking rather than ANY external circumstances, we are free.

I was fortunate to read Victor Frankel’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, my junior year in high school. His first-hand account of life in four different Nazi death camps depicts how even in the most horrific circumstances during actual imprisonment, a person doesn’t need to be imprisoned.

His story was one of my first directional signals, pointing me toward becoming a business and life coach. I have come to recognize that I am here on this planet to inspire and urge me and you to be fully ourselves by freeing ourselves from our own innocently self-imposed prisons. And, I am so grateful to share a soul collective with Michael Neill and Victor Frankel.

How to Notice When You Are Creating Heaven

Heaven: “This is wonderful. I could stay here forever.”
Hell: “This is not quite perfect.”
– Byron Katie
From her book, I Need Your Love – Is that True?

What separates us from animals involves our intellectual capacity, our ability to think and reason. Yet, for the most part, most of us, most of the time don’t notice that our thinking causes our misery.

The minute we think any external circumstance, experience or person causes our happiness, we have begun to create our own private hell. And, we do this innocently, often without conscious awareness, thousands of times a day.

“I wonder if he likes me.” “If I can just hang in there until I get more clients.” “I’ll feel better when the kids calm down.” “I can’t wait until it stops raining.” “When I make more money…” “As soon as I lose the weight…” “Once I get the car fixed…” “It will be better when I get divorced, married, retired…” “If only…”

You get the idea. Once we become aware of our particular brand of this regurgitated thought, we can begin to consciously question it and/or take it less seriously and allow it to pass without engaging with it.

How to Notice When You Are Creating Heaven

When we remember that our essential nature is Love and well-being, we begin to become aware of the wonder in every moment, in every experience. When we remember that we are like the sun and the eternally blue sky and our thoughts are like the clouds, we can enjoy our Light and be gracious about allowing the clouds to pass.

And, we may just notice ourselves saying more and more frequently, “This is wonderful. I could stay here forever.” Regardless of what our circumstances look like.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for returning to the joy of you“)

Why Might We Like to Perceive in this New Way?

I have been aware of and studying the principles of Thought, Consciousness and Mind for years.* And, I am just beginning to understand the transformative power of not taking regurgitated thought seriously.

When I remember regurgitated thinking is not reality, but rather just regurgitated thinking, then I’ve allowed an opening in my world for fresh, new thinking. With fresh, new thinking comes opportunities I have only dreamed of. With fresh new thinking comes opportunities I have never dreamed of!

When I remember regurgitated thinking is not reality, I don’t take it seriously and my whole world lightens up. Maybe things aren’t as bad as I think. Maybe I don’t need to worry so much. I might notice that things do truly always work out.

When I remember regurgitated thinking is not reality, it gives me the opportunity to remember that my entire experience of life comes from my thinking and feeling, not from ANY external circumstances.

The landscape of my wonderful life.  Focusing on this beauty rather than  getting bogged down in the mud - the literal mud and the mud in my mind!

The landscape of my wonderful life. Focusing on this beauty
rather than getting bogged down in the mud – the literal mud
and the mud in my mind!

It frees me up to experience my wonderful life even if I don’t have as much money in the bank as I would like. Or, if I’m tired. Even if I’m cranky. How great is that – to experience my wonderful life even if I’m cranky?!?

Why might we like to perceive in this new way? Maybe because we can stop chasing and immediately access our wonderful life that is always right here. Well, that’s a bit of a new thought . . .

* If you’d like to dive deeper into these principles, I highly recommend Michal Neill’s book, The Inside Out Revolution or Ken Manning, Robin Charbit and Sandra Krot’s book for business, Invisible Power. Better yet, give yourself the gift of reading both.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for returning to the joy of you”)

What If You Didn’t Believe Everything You Heard (in Your Head)?

Last week we looked at two types of thought: regurgitated thought and inspired thought.

When we don’t distinguish between the two, we tend to give all of our thinking the same weight. When we name regurgitated thought for what it is, we give ourselves the opportunity to take ourselves far less seriously, to quiet our minds and live our lives with far greater contentment and ease.

What if you noticed regurgitated thinking and named it? What if you didn’t engage with it? What if you didn’t heap regurgitated thought about your regurgitated thinking on top of your regurgitated thought? Think about that!

What if you then smiled, took a deep breath and went on with your day? What if your mind then became far quieter? What if you then could more clearly notice and distinguish inspired thought?

What If You Didn’t Believe Everything You Heard (in Your Head)?

The more we become aware of these two types of thought, the less sense regurgitated thought makes. With awareness and without effort on our part, we then tend to have far less regurgitated thought.

What might your life be like if you didn’t believe everything you heard in your head?

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for returning to the joy of you”)

How to Elevate Your Thoughts for a Happier Life

As human beings we have thinking as a distinction from other animals. Most of us clearly understand that our thinking sets us apart. And yet, few of us seem to understand that we have the ability to “think” in two radically different ways.

Most of our thinking is repetitive, regurgitated and anxiety-provoking. Did I lock the house? Why can’t I seem to I get to work on time? My hair looks like hell. What did he mean when he said . . . ? I don’t ever seem to be able to keep track of the money in the account. I don’t want to deal with my mother. I’m sick of . . . When will I get a handle on . . . ? Why can’t I . . . ? How am I doing? There I go again, me with my big mouth. I hate . . . I wish she would . . . Isn’t it ever going to be my turn?
Regurgitated thought.

And then, we have these wonderful, perhaps far too rare, moments of quiet mind. Without the clutter of regurgitated thinking, we suddenly have a brilliant idea. Maybe while taking a shower, hiking through the woods, watching the ocean or playing with the kids or grandkids. Handed to us straight from the Divine. Often eliciting excitement and peace at the same time.
Inspired thought.

My mind tends to settle down and become more spacious when  I hang out with the clouds.
My mind tends to settle down and become more spacious when
I hang out with the clouds.

Lest you start to notice regurgitated thinking and start judging yourself for it, simply notice that the judgment is also regurgitated thinking. And smile. Ah, to be human.

Awareness shifts everything. As we become aware of regurgitated thought, it tends to loosen its grip. Awareness helps us refrain from decision-making until our mind quiets. We also naturally tend to move toward more activities that create space for inspired thought.

More spaciousness in our head for inspired thought and less attention on regurgitated thought naturally conspire for a happier life . . .

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for returning to the joy of you”)