Mindfulness

What If We Love the Beautiful and the Mess?

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A few weeks ago, after working with a client, I was reflecting on the messiness of being human. The piece below came forth. Yesterday, I was agitated about the messiness of my own life and thought it might be good to share this piece!

What If We Love the Beautiful and the Mess?

So, I’m not getting my work done as fast as I’d like . . . Do I really want to overlook the pure joy in this “annoyance?”


All of It

Without perfection,
there’s presence.

Without criticism,
expression.

Without procrastination,
progress.

Attempting perfection
brings completion.

Hearing criticism,
compassion.

Procrastinating,
a bit of movement.

Breathing in,
Breathing out,
completing the circle
of being alive.

As always, I’d love your thoughts and comments below.

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

Who Is Our Best Self When We Make Mistakes?

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This is a question I asked myself after I’d sent an email to a new client with a typo in her email address. Needless to say, she didn’t receive it. And, I didn’t realize that for several days.

Here’s the answer that came to me when I asked myself, “What does my best self look like when I make a mistake?”

She apologizes. And, quickly and fully admits she messed up. She fixes whatever she can. She asks the other person what they need for it to be cleaned up. If it fits for her, she does whatever the person requested or offers what does fit for her.

She loves herself throughout. She doesn’t criticize, demean or shame herself. She good-heartedly acknowledges her humanness.

Who Is Our Best Self When We Make Mistakes?

Ah, to be as shimmery as this begonia flower, even as I am correcting a mistake.

She lets it go. With lightness and humility, she moves on . . .

What does your best self say? I’d love your thoughts and comments below.

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

Where Is the Sweet Spot for Growing Your Business?

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Last week I attended an “Intentional Connections For Business” in Albuquerque with two of my friends who are also coaches. When we left the event, I realized that the focus had been deeper conversations, which had been wonderful.

What was missing was an easy way to stay connected and further the conversation. The event had been billed as the opposite of typical networking. To make sure we understood, the flyer included a graphic of a business card with a red circle with a slash through it to communicate “business card–free zone.”

While I understood the intent, I knew it had gone too far to the other extreme when I saw my friend, Karin, writing people’s contact info on the edge of a handout. I took a different approach and didn’t exchange info with anyone because I thought we weren’t “suppose to.” Despite it being a no card exchange place, I did manage to get the name of Catdi Printing which is a business card printing company from one of the businesses. If you are not into the idea how about Metal Business Kards where you can exchange high-quality handouts with the information about you and your business. 

As we drove home that evening, we all three realized we’d received value from the deeper connection and mindful structure of the event and felt stifled by the artificial boundary around networking and business cards. 

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I find the sweet spot in growing my business often tends to be the beautiful mix of two extremes.

We want to do business in an authentic way with people who have similar values and we want it to be easy and natural to continue the conversation. That lead to a rich conversation among the three of us about how we could each grow our businesses in a heartfelt and effective way. We spoke about many companies which inadvertently led me to mention this https://www.linkedin.com/company/gds-group Linkedin profile of the company which I’d hired to do all my marketing.

For me the sweet spot involves sharing and serving freely, generously having conversations to see if coaching with me is a great fit and directly asking for the business if it is.

What about you? What specifics create your sweet spot?
If you haven’t thought about it like this, what might help you gain clarity?

I’d love your thoughts and comments below.

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

What Question Could Get Significantly Better Results?

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For most of us, if we notice the nature of our self-talk over a short period of time, we will become aware of repetitive, self-defeating questions.

“What’s wrong with me?” “Will I ever be able to do this better?” “Why can’t I _______ (you fill in the blank)?”

One of my clients tended in several areas of her life to ask, “Why don’t I have _____?” She has now shifted to, “What does it take, who do I need to be, to have _____?”

Another client believes her circumstances are so unusual that there is no solution to what she wants. She has now started asking, “What unusual way can this come about even if I believe it can’t?” So fun. So effective.

I just recently noticed that I frequently ask myself what I need to do to bring in my minimum income each month. Guess how much income I’ve been bringing in consistently! I have now very consciously shifted the question to, “What does it take, who do I need to be, to bring in my desired income?” How much more fun is that?!?

On a lighter note, since I moved to New Mexico two years ago, I have been completely frustrated trying to get a good full moon shot. Over and over, I’ve asked myself what it would take, without doing anything differently. I didn’t realize what I meant was “who would it take?”

What Question Could Get Significantly Better Results?

Photo credit: Eric Saltmarsh, Eldorado at Santa Fe

Check out this breath-taking shot of the Hunters Moon setting beyond the Jemez Mountains west of Santa Fe taken and generously shared by my neighbor, Eric Saltmarsh. Thank goodness I wasn’t too attached to my question about how I would be the one to do this!

So, what about you? What questions do you repeatedly ask yourself that could use a significant upgrade for a whole new answer?

As always, I’d love your input and comments below.

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

What Are the Many Triggers of Grief?

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Grief arises from any event or new condition that shatters
the foundation you previously knew as your reality.
– goldenwillowretreat.com

Very few of us embrace grief as part of living. We tend to reserve the idea of grieving for something we do after someone has died. And we don’t want to do that for very long or talk about it much at all.

We do ourselves a huge disservice by keeping grief in the shadows.

When we recognize the loss in the death of a loved one, a diminished savings account, grown children moving to another state or a health diagnosis, we give ourselves the opportunity to feel what we’re feeling and allow a new identity to emerge.

What losses have you experienced that demanded a new you?

What Are the Many Triggers of Grief?

Most of us tend to not want a new identity. Yet our former identity is no longer available.

If we don’t take the conscious journey of grieving, we tend to numb ourselves, sometimes to the point of barely living.

If we do take the conscious journey of grieving, we give ourselves the opportunity to embrace more of who we truly are and perhaps even serve others in a whole new way.

Ironically, consciously grieving gifts us with more authentic, joyful living.

If you’ve read this far, I would love you to share something in the comments. Let’s move grief out of the shadows . . .

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

Why Do You Need to Know How to Release Certainty?

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Every time we are certain of something, we narrow our world.
“I can’t go hiking with you today because it’s too hot.”

I’m certain it’s too hot and I’m certain that too hot is “bad” for me, therefore I will stay home. If I might like to go hiking, but think it’s too hot, what happens if I remain open and curious?

Maybe I’ll go and take extra water. Maybe I’ll be willing to go for a short time. Maybe I’ll go, hike a bit and then sit in the shade. Maybe I’ll notice I don’t need certain conditions to be happy, to enjoy the day.

Why Do You Need to Know How to Release Certainty?
Me creating my own shade on a day that was probably too hot for me!

What if I avoid a specific person because I’ve decided she’s too shallow? What if she then tells me something deep and meaningful? What if I then notice I feel connected to her? What if I notice my certainty had kept me away from her for years?

What if you won’t grow your business because you’re not good at sales? What if you notice that you are the one who decided you’re not good at sales? What if you open to the infinite possibilities around how to sell? What if you release your certainty about sales and a used car salesmen being one and the same?

We might want to learn how to release certainty to give ourselves the gift of richer, fuller, more meaningful and expansive lives.

Okay, so how do we release certainty? I do often get too hot, I don’t like superficial and you’re not good at sales.

Wow, look how definitive are each of these statements. They sound like absolute truths when, in actuality, they are preferences or tendencies.

What would happen if I allowed myself to enjoy my life whether I’m “too hot” or just the right temperature? How might my life shift if I was curious about the person in front of me, instead of having already decided who she is? How might your business grow if you expanded your view of sales?

What if we accepted and embraced life on life’s terms instead of demanding our list of certainties?

As we begin to hear our selves say, “I can’t,” “I don’t like . . .,” “That’s not me,” we give ourselves the opportunity to release certainty in favor of openness and curiosity. As we notice our self-created suffering around not having our preferences, we can make a new choice in the moment to be happy anyway.

Perhaps a new perspective on “having it all?!?”

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas . . .

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

What If You Have the Key to Your Freedom?

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“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?

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“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”)

What Happens If We Keep Our Hearts Open?

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“Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart . . . Nothing, ever, is worth closing your heart over.“
Michael Singer
From the book, “The Untethered Soul”

Recently, I dated a guy for a few weeks. It was an incredibly challenging relationship. We often got along beautifully and had a great time together. And, at the same time, we both kept getting triggered in deep, painful ways.

I’ve dated a lot, I’ve been in many relationships and I’ve never experienced anything like this. Neither of us knew what to make of it.

At one point, when I couldn’t take any more triggering, I sent him a short, “No need to go any further” text. A couple of days later, I realized there might be value in being more mature and less reactive in my communication.

I called him and we agreed to have a closing conversation a couple of days later. We met in a park under a magnificent tree. One of the many things we have in common: a deep connection with trees.

What Happens If We Keep Our Hearts Open?

Maybe the tree worked his magic on us.

We had a wonderful, heartfelt conversation about closing the romantic chapter in the story of us and continuing the connection of our friendship. We sat and talked under that tree for two hours.

I felt strangely neutral. I came away from our time together with a deep appreciation for each of us and our connection. And totally clear that we’d made a great decision.

The next day, I read the Michael Singer quote above. It startled me. Maybe I’ve become more willing to keep my heart open regardless of circumstances?!?

So, what happens if we keep our hearts open? For me, it feels life-affirming, empowering and kind of like how it’s suppose to be . . .

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”)

What If We Didn’t Fight Ourselves?

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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”)