Mindfulness

How Does Being Present in the Moment Vaporize Fear?

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“You’ve been walking in circles, searching. Don’t drink by the water’s edge. Throw yourself in. Become the water. Only then will your thirst end.”
– Jeanette Berson

When we throw ourselves in and become the water, we are completely present. And when we are completely present, we have no fear.

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What does it take to become the water?

Fear lives in the past through regret. Fear lives in the future through uncertainty. Fear lives in attempting to control others and outcomes.

My clients often question me about being present when they don’t like the present. It’s such a great question because we as humans spend a lot of time attempting to avoid what we don’t like.

A vivid experiential answer I have for that comes from when I used to have debilitating migraines. I spent a lot of time fighting them, doing anything I could to distract myself from the pain.

When I’d exhausted all those distractions and myself, I would finally surrender. What I found in those present moments after the surrender: this sweet, tender way of being there with me, for me.

Every time, it seemed so strange to me to be relishing being with myself while at the same time experiencing excruciating pain. I no longer feared the pain. I accepted it and I stayed with myself through it – cherishing myself as the beloved.

Ah, to be the water. So very similar to being the migraine. Isn’t that fascinating?!?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences . . .

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

What Helps You Be Super Present?

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Recently a new friend asked me what helps me be present. At first I wasn’t sure how to respond. Then, as I allowed my mind to wander, the floodgate opened.

A cool breeze.  Intimacy.  Awareness of my breath.  The moon.  Gratitude.  A delicious latte.  Reverence. Snow. Deep conversation. Skiing. Meaningful ceremony. Kundalini yoga. Railroad tracks.  Expansive vistas.  The Grand Canyon.

What Helps You Be Super Present?
How could I not be present with these two love beings?!?

My cats.  A long, hot shower.  With my lover.  Dancing.  Music that moves me.  Aaron Neville.  Grief.  Sunrise.  Sunset.  A rushing stream.  The ocean.  Silence.  Tiramisu.  Touch.  Holding space for someone.  Kissing.  A compelling movie.  A shared tender moment.  Sade.  Drumming.  Vulnerability.

Realizing what helps me be present feels so good to me!

What helps you become super present? I’d love to hear from you.

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

How to Create a Stress-Free Zone in Our Lives

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I learned earlier this week that my car needs a new engine. And, I learned this the way I learn many things – experientially.

Sitting on the side of the road waiting for AAA, I realized that, as we always do, I had a choice. I didn’t have the choice I wished I had – choosing my car to get back on the road, drive to Whole Foods and then drive home.

I did have the choice of where to focus my thoughts and attention. My human inclination was to think of all of the things I should have done differently in the past to have created a different future.

And then I heard, clear as could be, “we spend our lives trying to manipulate the future to correct the past.” In that moment, as I felt the cool evening breeze coming in the car window, I realized the insanity of that.

How to Create a Stress-Free Zone in Our Lives
How rich are our lives when we truly receive the moment, moment by moment?

We have the opportunity in any moment, no matter how much we assess the situation as “bad,” to receive the gifts of the present.

When we are willing to let go of our thoughts about the past or the future, we create a stress-free zone in the present. When we are willing to focus on what is right in front of us, we don’t need to manipulate or change anything. How freeing is that?

(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?

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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”)

How Do We Stop Overwhelm?

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In the past week, I have had so much coming toward me, from so many directions that I completely bypassed overwhelm and went right to surrender. Several of my coaching clients also have been startled by what seems like chaos.

More than 10 years ago, I wrote a self-study coaching e-course, Steady in the Wind. We may need that course right now! I’m going to dust it off and share more with you next week.

In the meantime I offer you this.

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When I am still and present with these vibrant beauties, all is well . . .

Radical Stillness

Breathing deeply,
I allow myself to move toward stillness.

Ah, the irony,
Moving toward stillness.

This awareness of how much
I am programmed to move and do
When my heart and soul call me to slow and still.

In the stillness,
I feel my heart beat.

In the stillness,
My breathing deepens.

In the stillness,
My mind chatter drops away.

In the stillness,
There is no lack, no longing.

In the stillness,
I am One with All that Is.

In the stillness.
In the stillness.

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

Do You Need to Know Your Purpose to Be Happy?

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It turns out you probably do need to know your purpose to be happy.

In an informal survey of fellow Yale graduates at their 25th class reunion, Adam Leipzig, a former Disney Executive and currently the CEO of Entertainment Media Partners, discovered that 80% of his classmates were unhappy with their lives. 80%?!?

I decided to do a bit more research. Maybe those privileged Yale grads were an anomaly.

The Harris Happiness Index surveyed 2,345 American adults in April 2013 to find that 1 in 3 Americans considers themselves very happy. In 2011 – 2012, Gallup found that worldwide only 13% of employees are engaged at work. In the US, the number was higher at 32%.

So these stats leaned a bit more toward happiness, but not much.

Here’s where it gets interesting. What Adam Leipzig further discovered: the 20% who were happy knew something about their purpose.

He believes you can learn your life purpose in 5 minutes and he takes you through the process in his TedxMalibu Talk.

I don’t know if that 5-minute process would work for me because I had already learned my WHY in 2013 through Simon Sinek’s, Learn Your Why online course.

That process takes 7 – 10 hours, the course costs $129 and you need your coach or a colleague to guide you through the process. And, having my WHY articulated has been life changing for me. It serves as a compass and daily decision-maker for me.

If you’d like to know more about Simon’s process, start with his Ted Talk.

Before I listened to Adam’s talk, I had never linked happiness and knowing my purpose. As I look at my own life and the lives of my coaching clients and students, I see that there is a very real link. When we are in a low place, our purpose guides us out. When we are feeling most fulfilled, we are more fully living our purpose.

So what about you? Do you have a sense of your purpose? If so, I’d love to hear about it . . . If not, do you suspect you’d be happier if you did know?

Freedom from Our Innocently Self-Imposed Prisons

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“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.

Mild Preferences Free Us

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All suffering comes from our need to have things a certain way.

I can hear your protests. I can hear them because I’ve had them, too. I still sometimes have them. “I’m suffering because of this illness or physical pain.” “I’m suffering because someone I love isn’t available to me.” “I’m suffering because I don’t have enough money.” And our lists go on.

When I feel sick or experience pain, even chronic pain, it is my thinking that causes the suffering. “I shouldn’t be in pain. I’m tired of this. When will I feel better? I can’t take another minute of this . . .” When I accept what is, when I allow things to be as they are, rather than how I think I need them to be, then the suffering stops.

I may still be uncomfortable with the pain and that too will shift. When I have a mild preference for being pain-free, then I create more space for the pain to ease or for me modify how I do my day even while experiencing the pain.

When we feel out of control, we tend to have strong preferences. We become very attached to those preferences and when they don’t happen, we feel even more out of control. Quickly, we spin into a downward spiral.

If instead, we can use the feeling of being out of control as the signal to dial back our preference to mild, we then begin an upward spiral. “It would be great if I felt better. And, I don’t feel well at the moment. And, this is what I can do even while feeling this way.”

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Last summer, I had an extremely strong preference that this spider hang out somewhere far, far away from my bathroom window. Since he was on the outside of the screen on the second floor, it would have been quite challenging to offer him my typical spider “relocation package.” So, instead, I experimented with befriending him with the safety of the screen between us. I eventually was able to downgrade to a medium preference . . . 🙂

Mild preferences move us toward accepting, even sometimes loving, what is. Because the preference is mild, I’m fine even if I don’t get what I prefer in a moment. My own personal experience of working with dialing back my preferences to mild: what I would prefer often naturally comes to pass. I suspect this happens because I don’t have such heavy, attachment energy involved in the mix.

And sometimes, whether or not I get what I prefer, I experience this sweet vulnerability and aliveness because I have surrendered to what is. In this vulnerability, I feel my connection to the human race and a simple compassion for me and those involved in the situation.

The more I align with what is, whatever that is, the more I am connected – to myself, to life, to those around me, instead of causing my own suffering by railing against what is.

Ah, the sweetness of mild preferences . . .

You Are a Bright Light

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Yesterday morning as I was meditating, I realized that each and every one of us is a bright light.

This realization brought a huge smile to my face. The understanding is so obvious and, at the same time, it seems quite easy to find lots of exceptions.

And yet, there are no exceptions.

You are a bright light.

Take that in. What’s it like for you to acknowledge yourself as a bright light?

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So beautiful that each of our lights shine differently . . .

Let’s experiment. What would it be like to go through our day today remembering that we are bright lights and so is everyone we encounter?

I love this experiment! I will report my findings next week and I would love to hear yours.

And, in this moment, what are you noticing? Insights? New perspectives?

What Keeps Us from Loving Ourselves?

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What stands between us and self-appreciation, self-compassion, self-love? We behave as though our thinking is real.

What if we didn’t believe everything we hear in our head about ourselves? What if we didn’t believe our judgments of others (projections about ourselves)?

When we hear in our heads:

  • You shouldn’t have . . .
  • You should have . . .
  • There you go again . . .
  • You’re so _________ (you fill in the blank).
  • When are you going to change _________ (again, you fill in the blank)?

What if we didn’t engage with those repetitive, dead-end, self-loathing thoughts and instead used them as a mindfulness activity?

We could:

  • Take a few deep breaths and compassionately remind ourselves we are always doing the best we can.
  • Pause and notice the habitual nature of the thoughts and simply give them some space.
  • Byron Katie style, question the thoughts. “Is it true I should . . .?” “What is a turnaround for that thought?” “Who would I be without that thought?”
  • Take a few seconds to appreciate that we noticed the thoughts and didn’t engage.
  • Take ourselves lightly, smile and go on about our day.

What keeps us from loving ourselves? The human thoughts that tell us all the reasons we shouldn’t.

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Ah, to recognize our own beauty and divinity as easily as we recognize
the unique beauty and universal divinity of this daisy . . .

Why might we love ourselves anyway? To honor the spiritual truth about us: that we ARE love.

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