Open Heart Adventure

Oh boy.  Here we go.  I knew it was coming and yet a part of me isn’t ready to let go.  There’s no mistaking this internal shift that I feel.  It’s like, well, letting go.  There’s a sadness about it and a freedom.  Hmm, what am I talking about?  Still working on that myself.  But since committing to making my personal care a priority, something was put in motion.  Granted I’m not turning into Oprah Winfrey or anything, but I surely am seeing all the ways in which I keep myself stuck.  In fact, I’m seeing it so clearly I almost don’t want to do it anymore.  Craziness.

Not staying stuck, or in non-negative (har har, positive) language, would translate into moving forward.  Moving forward and letting go of an old identity.  You see, I’m getting more and more clarity on all the ways I focus and tune into what I’m lacking.  It’s not like I’m a bad person for doing it, it’s just something I’ve done for so long it’s been part of my identity.  I thought it was me.  You know that whole forest from the trees thing?  You’re so in it, it’s SO  you, you can’t even see that it’s not you, that there’s another way.

Okay, so I’m watching HGTV tonight – strange, new obsession with this channel.  In fact it’s thee only thing I watch.  Apparently somebody wants a house (eh hem… me).  Or a home.  And of course tonight’s episode features the couple with lots of kids and even more grandkids and everyone’s hanging out and bonding, and I got it.  Oh, I want that.  I want a family.  Not to mention that they had a paltry budget of $2 mm to spend on the new house so as to accommodate the grandkids.  Okay, I want that too!  Darn it, I’m on a roll here.  The critical thing is that I’ve been watching HGTV for several months now – since discovering it’s existence – and instead of saying (thinking really) “I want that”, what I’ve really been saying/thinking is “How come I don’t have that?”  Translation of super-sublte ego sabotage is… I feel like crap because I don’t have that.  Or… I’m sad, lonely, and pathetic because I don’t have that.  Charming I know:).  I mean really, I can’t imagine why the men have not been lining up!?  Although they are on match.com, but clearly that’s not working.  Point being, something is shifting.  I can feel it.  It went from sinking, sad, unhappy feelings while watching HGTV, or married couples, or when my coworker shared a loving story about her mother-in-law (not being sarcastic) to feeling, clear, clean, happy feelings.  Yes!  Okay, that’s only happened once now, but I know it’s the start of a trend.  Why?  But I see it, my awareness around it is there.

And all of this means that I’ll have that home and family by Christmas, right?  Well, maybe.  Don’t want to rule anything out.  But seriously, no pressure okay.  I’m spilling this stuff here for the greater good.  And mostly because it’s fun and I like to.  The other thing I noticed after my HGTV shift was some fear.  Fear about letting go of this old way of thinking, which is to say this old identity.  Fear of who I’ll be or even what my life will be if I let go of that old habit.  Can I trust that things will be okay and safe?  Such a strange feeling, sort of like dipping my toe into a new pool of water.  Really, I can do this??

Maybe it’s the meditation, the 5,000 self-help books I’ve read in the last three months, coaching, therapy, HGTV, who knows.  It’s working.  Part of me is beginning to trust that I can focus on what I do want instead of the lack thereof.  That somehow the sky won’t fall if I trust that I can have what I want.  Of course, there’s still some stickiness and plenty more work ahead, but I can feel a shift.  And it’s hard to go back once that awareness is there.  It’s that saying – when we know better, we do better.

So here’s to having what we want!  Whatever that may be.

Two side notes.  First, I changed the title of my blog which completely does not match my website address which indicates the level of technology cluelessness going on here.  Ah well.  Second side note that I just noticed… so far my efforts to make taking care of myself a top priority are resulting in depressing blog posts.  Hmm, interesting.  But no really, this is good stuff.  You know, the awareness comes first, which can sometimes be surprising and then fewer depressing posts.  Well, time will tell.

Hello all.  I’m feeling a little lost at the moment, hence the title, “Staying in the Stir.”  Feels like my pot’s been stirred up and boy do I want to do anything but stay with that.  So much so that I have some definite resistance to writing.  As of this sentence I haven’t laid out a clear message for my post, but I suppose that’s a little like life, go with the flow (when we can remember to let go) and see where it takes you.

Uh… so, yeah, it’s not working so far.  Where’s the brilliant message, which is to say that all my previous posts had brilliant messages?  I guess that’s it — letting life take you where it will and understanding that ups and downs are totally par for the course.  When it feels like everything is up in the air and all stirred up, it’s about being with that and not necessarily needing to pull it all together, get it back to good.  It’s funny how we humans seem to think that “normal” is everything staying exactly as we would like it, which sets us up for the constant, exhausting, futile effort to get all our ducks in a row.  I personally have this tendency to make most things a “forever” event.  Meaning, something that seems unpleasant happens and oh no, this is it, things will be this way forever.  Something good happens… okay, well interestingly I have the tendency to expect something bad to happen.  Wow, that sucks.  Although great observation on my part.

The point is that when I can get out of my head, i.e. detach from the swarming worst-case-scenario thoughts and storylines swirling in my brain – there’s relief.  It’s just now and maybe now is on the difficult side, but now is not a forever thing.  I can promise myself one thing – it will change.  Strangely I often can’t remember that truth when I’m in the middle of something that seems just awful, worst thing ever.  And then something changes, and wow, how silly that I was all worried??  Okay, so how many times does that have to play out before I can remember to remember that?  Rhetorical.  I suppose that’s where the practice comes in.  As the Buddhists say, “lean in.”  Lean in instead of running away from the pain, the discomfort, the unwanted whatever.  We actually tend to create more suffering when we run from the pain, when we live under the false pretense that life is supposed to feel super-rosy all the time.  What a funny idea.

I guess a lot of it has to do with this idea of acceptance.  Acceptance of ourselves, first and foremost in my opinion, acceptance of our current situation, and hopefully, acceptance of others.  By acceptance I don’t mean apathy.  I mean being at peace with what is.  Not fighting against life or thinking things should be different than they are.  Of course the next moment could be different, and it probably will be, but the real change happens when we make peace with this moment.  One of my favoritest (not a word) quotes is from Marianne Williamson.  Use whatever name you like, reality, God, life – she says, okay, here’s how it works: #1 – God’s plan works.  #2 – Yours does not.  The end:).  It’s amusing how we think we know best how things ought to be.  I mean how can you know?!  And how exhausting to try to control how things “should” be. 

Last word about acceptance.  I had a heart to heart with myself today, okay, and like everyday, which sometimes gets irritating.  Digressing…  I was curious about my definition of love.  What is yours?  What does love look like to you?  Is it someone behaving in a certain way, is it someone not behaving in a certain way?  Is it having your needs met?  I really would love to hear your feedback.  Well, when I examined what love looked and felt like to me, I was slightly alarmed.  My view of love looked more like what Martha Beck calls “Spider love”.  A spider thinks it loves flies, when in fact it just wants to trap them and suck out their innards for sustanance.  Nice.  Okay, totally not trying to beat myself up here, but my experience or view of love involved a lot of conditions.  After some reflection, my new definintion of love is acceptance.  Acceptance of our situations, our resistance, our joy, ourselves, and others.

Not all of us got that modeling as kids, likely because our parents didn’t get it either.  But now is a great time to teach an old dog new tricks.  And as always, it starts with ourselves.  Once we start to notice that internally critical voice and lower the volume, even just a little, we allow more love in.  It doesn’t have to come from anyone else.  It’s already there.  We just need to clear some space for it.

Okay, sorry if this was sappy, but I suppose that’s what I needed to hear and write.  Here’s to a little more acceptance and a lot more love.

Okay, so today’s post is very personal.  Only a handful of very privileged people know about “covers” but I’m putting it out there today, for the sake of  humanity.  I know, I know, so selfless.  Here goes… Covers are what lay-people would call my security blanket.   However, they are not that.  They are Covers.  And yes, they are plural despite the obvious fact that there is only one of “them”.  Perhaps their plurality represents the infinite, abundant universe, or perhaps I was 2 when I named them and didn’t yet have a strong grasp of the English language.  Regardless, throughout my life, Covers has been a sacred, almost holy entity in my life.  On many levels Covers represents love, security, comfort, and well love.  Needless to say, when my now ex-boyfriend used them to wipe his face I COMPLETELY freaked out.  What the hell man?!  Yes, at age 33, I freaked out over Covers.

While I was upset at his misunderstanding of the sanctity of Covers, I quickly got over the whole ordeal and we had a good laugh.  That lightheartedness, however, was not exactly easy to come by.  Which reminds me to get to something of a point with this post.  So in my quest to make feeling good a priority on this 34th year, I have been diligently and almost annoyingly getting curious about anything and everything that bothers me.  “What’s that about?” has been a recurring question in my head.  On one level I know that everything that bothers me out there always comes back to something in here.  When I can clear up the misunderstanding within myself, the outside world tends to become a kinder, gentler place.

So, having ended a long-ish relationship in the not-too-distant past, I’ve been having a LOT of opportunities to ask myself, what’s that about?  And then repeating ad nauseum.  What I figured out was that in my past relationship I had quite a lot of attachment going on, which upon further exploration appears to stem from the false perception that the relationship was meeting a need that I myself didn’t believe I could meet.  Hmm… is that true?  Basically there was a lot of neediness and I’m not sure about the love part.  Not that there wasn’t love, but it seems I mistook needing for loving.  Not uncommon in our society.  Interestingly, if you think about it, “need” is almost by definition a lack of love.  Well, it certainly is a lack of something, which is what I felt much of the time.  Having this clarity around the situation now is kind of painful.  I mean what happened to me in there?  I didn’t start out needy at all, but something switched and it triggered all sorts of grasping, attachment, and well, suffering.

Right, Covers.  After this big realization, and subsequent attempt to not completely feel like shit about it, something else occurred to me.  A memory of Covers snuck in and blew me away.  When I was in 6th grade my family went on a short vacation and I somehow forgot to bring Covers.  It was horrible, I couldn’t sleep well, I felt empty at night, just completely off.  When I got  home and back to Covers I had a serious talk with myself.  Approaching womanhood and 7th grade, I knew something was weird about my relationship with Covers.  I was completely attached.  I couldn’t really function or go to sleep without them.  Something had to be done.  Somehow at age 13, I made the decision to go a year without covers.  I told myself that after a year without them I could bring them back into my life, sort of like reintroducing lion cubs into the wild.  On some deeper level I knew that needing covers didn’t serve me, and it certainly wasn’t loving towards Covers.  In fact it was needing; loves subtle opposite.

My 14th year was difficult at first, not sleeping with Covers, but I did it, I made it through the entire year.  And then at the end of the summer I took Covers out of my closest and brought them back into my life.  I knew I didn’t need them, which made having them back so sweet.  My love for them wasn’t tangled up in all the needing.  It was just love, take em’ or leave em’.

I’m serious.  Turns out I don’t want to be happy.  Fascinating, right?  How incredibly interesting that the more I pay attention to myself, the more I realize how many a time I lean towards sad, lonely, and plain crappy stories.  It’s like a bad Spanish soap opera replaying in my head.  Only without the Emmy-award winning acting.  So okay, what the hell am I talking about?

Basically, I’m out taking a walk on a fine Saturday night (which may or may not have contributed to the happiness quotient), when some heavy thoughts drift into my head.  Nice night,  no work, no worries and there it is.  I’m suddenly unhappy.  Missing people, feeling sad, sorry for myself, and who know’s what else.  But something about it feels so right.  Maybe even a little bit good.  Huh?  This time, instead of letting the rerun roll, which I usually do, I got curious.  What is this all about?  Why does it seem that I’d rather be stuck and unhappy versus carefree and happy?  The more I questioned myself the more I noticed a whole lot of resistance to feeling better.  I didn’t want to give it up, like a little kid who won’t let go of his hot wheels car.  Or as my gorgeous and hilarious niece Grace used to say, NnnnnnOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!  She’d have a 15 second build-up on the “n”.  It was awesome:).

My hunch is a lot of us out there do this.  There’s the old saying, “would you rather be right or happy?”  Okay, but this is slightly different.  The question I had to ask was – - what am I getting out of hanging on to this story?  Why would I rather feel sad and lonely?  We all say we want to be happy but throughout the course of our day, how many of us actually chose it?  Lots of questions.  Well, I had a really hard time answering my question.  Some of the answers I came up with were - I get to stay stuck, there’s less risk (of what I don’t know), it’s familiar, and even, it’s sort of my identity.  That last one really struck me.  Hmm, it was my identity.  If any of you haven’t read “A New Earth” by Eckert Tolle, read it.  Seriously, if you “get it”, it will change the way you experience life; at least it did for me.  The book talks a lot about ego, and by ego, not in the traditional arrogant sense, but defined as a sort of conglomeration of insanity.  Mild insanity mind you.  Basically, the ego (in my words) is this pseudo-identity all of us hang onto.  It’s constructed from a mass of beliefs and thoughts, likely passed down to us by our families, cultures, media, etc…  Call it Karma, or your issues, whatever.  Some egos are all about arrogance and attention, other egos are all about victim-hood and bad breaks.  All are ego.  All serve to make us feel crappy and to separate us from others.  I’m right, he’s wrong.  But importantly, the ego does not want to die.  The more we identify with our egos, the more staunch we stay in our positions, mainly because we mistake our egos for ourselves.

The end result is hanging on like mad to any story or position that separates us or makes us feel bad.  Which is exactly what I was doing.  My ego did not and does not want to die, so to speak.  But strangely, or not, when I realized what was going on, when I was able to name it, letting go of the story was easy.  Okay, easier.  Naming a thing is powerful.  You’re no longer fighting some invisible, nebulous force.  Tends to be less scary that way.

So the real title should be, “My ego does not want to be happy.”  Fortunately I do.  Want to be happy.  I am not my stories, nor my hurts.  I happen to think that the reason we’re all here is to figure out how to be happy.  It’s time to take the wheel away from my ego and steer towards better stories.

Next weekend I will attempt to go out on Saturday night.  That could also help:).

Okay, not exactly birthday blues.  Although a little bit, which is a good starting point for what’s ahead.  A friend of mine told me about a website/blog called the Happiness Project.  It chronicles a year of one woman’s quest to become happier.  Great blog, great ideas.  Mine is similar but with a twist.  And for legal purposes, I swear I had this idea independently of the Happiness Project.  No matter, moving forward anyway.

So, in hanging around some pretty sharp women, i.e. Martha Beck and her “Master” coaches, I had a bit of an ephiphany.  Well, to be honest, I heard these women saying the same thing repeatedly and outloud, but as my head can be thick, it took several times hearing it to get it.  What they were all saying, and living really, was that their first priority was taking care of themselves.  Come hell or high water, the most important thing was feeling good and being personally responsible for feeling good.  Lightbulb!

Today’s my birthday, yes, yes, thank you very much.  I know you’re all happy I’m here:).  And… I have decided to make feeling good my #1 priority for the entirerty of my 34th year.  This is my experiment to see what comes out of making feeling good a priority.  I seriously don’t have much of an agenda other than that.  It’s kind of exciting to see where this will lead and what will transpire out of feeling good.  And it’s a seriously large task.  I’m really going to have to work at this because there are plenty of times when it seems that I’d rather feel bad and wallow in that blah-ness.  In order to overcome, move past, break-through, whatever, this pattern, here’s what I’m going to do:

• Self-coach myself like a mad woman (but in a gentle. loving sort of way).
• Chronicle what I’m doing to feel good and hopefully not whine about it too much (which is totally not the point).
• Share what happens as a result of feeling good.
• Inspire you to join me (your choice).
• Okay, I’ll probably also share whatever the hell else I feel like, so long as it feels good:)

That’s the gist.  For your information, I recently recieved my life coaching certification from Martha Beck herself, so I do have lots of tools and awareness to use for said endeavor.  The catch, as with many of us, is that I’ve spent many a year focusing on crap, feeling bad, feeling sorry for myself (like tonight, for example), and other unhelpful activities.

What this blog is NOT about is Suzy Liar-Pants-on-Fire Sunshine.  Seriously, I’m not about pretending that all is peachy-keen, but I am of the belief that I get to decide, in any given moment, how I feel, regardless of circumstance or whatever.  Not to say that some circumstances are way more fun than others, but the point is that I’m going to work my butt off to get through unhelpful, painful ways of looking at stuff, and practice retraining my brain towards thoughts, beliefs, and experiences that feel good.

So there we are.  Or there I am.  While my blog website is called ” money means”, pretty much I don’t feel like focusing on money just now.  However, I bet that money will come into play in all of this, but my hunch is that it will come as a result of me feeling good.  Again, we’ll see.

Lastest thing, I promise.  As far as consistency, accountability, all that good stuff, my intention is to write a blog post 2x’s a week.  Lord help me – busy with work, etc…  But that’s the intent.  With anything it’s practice and accountability.  You’re welcome to hold me to it.

Here’s to feeling good and happy.  I’ll end with two of my favorite quotes:

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”     – Joseph Campbell

“The greatest gift you can give anyone is your own happiness.”    

- Brooke Castillo (I think)

Well, almost.  I can taste the other side, can you?  Yesterday was a day of big break-throughs for me, and frankly it’s a little exhausting.  As a result, my blog today is going to be a little less general and a little more about me.  Yay.  Who doesn’t love to talk about themselves, I mean really?  Okay, back to me.  Perhaps I need some clearing out and fortunately or unfortunately, you’re along for the ride.  Although it’s not too late to abandon ship…

In my last blog I talked a good bit about the Law of Attraction and have since started to put it into practice.  Even before the practice part happened, my awareness about how I speak, what I think, and how I act spiked.  Which was actually quite disturbing.  Awareness is funny.  At first it can be really painful to have a clear understanding of how I’ve been going about my daily life, telling certain stories over and over and focusing on well, a lot of crap.  My initial reaction is to feel like crap personally followed by several hours of self-deprecation.  Not to be confused with self-defecation, which I’ve actually said out loud a few times.  I have since found a new way to describe beating myself up:).  Okay, focus.  So awareness can really sting at first.  Feelings like shame, anger, embarrassment, and even regret surface and sometimes we sink a little deeper before moving forward.  It’s sort of like good zit-cream.  The doctor usually warns that it’ll get worse before it gets better, but that’s a good sign because all that old gunk is coming up to the surface to be cleared out.  I thought I’d run with my self-defecation comment and add acne to the mix for kicks.

Moving on.  What came to the surface for me was how while I thought I’d been focusing on what I wanted, all this time, I’ve actually been focusing on the exact opposite.  And getting it.  Only every time.  Example - one of my deeply rooted thoughts is that I’ll never find a career I like, let alone love.  Long story, but to dwell in the here and now, I’ve been focused on not being happy at work.  I’m so afraid I’ve chosen another “wrong” career that all my attention is on high alert for it being “wrong”.  And guess what, I find plenty of evidence because I’m constantly looking.  Thoughts like, “I don’t know if this is right for me” or “I should really be doing something else, like coaching in the jungle” come up.  I end up feeling stuck or even a little betrayed by myself.  Basically I feel bad, which leads to negative energy, which leads to fewer clients, which proves that, yup, this is not the right career for me.  Break through #1 – It doesn’t even matter!  Hear me out… When my priority is focusing my thoughts and my energy on what I do want and how I do want to feel, I feel good.  Who cares what it looks like?!  It doesn’t matter.

Break through number two – relationships.  For any ex’s out there, I am deeply grateful for our time together and this is really about me, not you, so please don’t take anything personally.  And good luck with that:).  So, I’m at the point where I’d like to find the right person, potentially get married, and start a family.  In my generalized relationship experience, I’ve noticed that while I thought I was focused on what I wanted – getting married – I was in fact putting my energy and attention into its opposite.  Damn.  I mean, mystery solved, but Lord that was a steep learning curve for me.  All along I’ve been preoccupied with how I wasn’t married, how the other person probably didn’t want to get married, etc… Notice the negative (i.e. opposite of) words in both of those.  I was actually feeding the “not” married part of the equation.  Which didn’t feel good by the way.

Lastly, and maybe this will be a little depressing, but I’m learning, as in relationships and jobs, it doesn’t entirely (that’s my caveat) matter what your job is or even who you’re married to.  It’s how you choose to feel while you’re in either of those relationships and where you choose to put your attention.  If your attention is on the “not” of what you want, you will get it; mark my words.  But if you’re staying in your business, and by that I mean, making how you feel (and not other people) a priority, and practicing putting your energy into what you want, it’s all good.  Worst case scenario is that maybe your partner can’t stand how genuinely happy you are and will get the heck out of that relationship.  But again, who cares?!  You’re happy, it’s all good.

For those of you who think this is really selfish, and that maybe I’m a little bit crazy, you may have something there, but still, I challenge you to try it.  Again, this is not about believing one thing or another, it’s about what works.  If it works for you, great, if not, move on.  Back to selfish.  Hate to break it to everyone, but we are individuals at least in the way in which we process our experience.  And like it or not, we want things to happen or not happen because of how it will make us feel.  We want Mary Jo to be happy and loose that extra 450 pounds, because frankly, it’ll be a whole lot less stressful for us.  It’s all about us and there’s nothing wrong with that.  Why?  Because when you feel good, you do good and everyone benefits.  Put it this way, would the world be better or worse off if everyone took responsibility for their own happiness, and as a result were a lot more happy?  Happy people don’t start wars.  Happy people don’t rob.  Happy people are super-cool.

Join the party!  Okay, it’s not like I’m there yet, but baby steps.  Feeling better just feels better than feeling worse.  It’s that simple.

Cheers!

What do you do when nothing’s going right?  You feel so weighed down by life, and circumstances, and your prospects, that it’s just not worth getting out of bed for.  Heavy stuff, I know, but most of us have been there, so let’s discuss.  I’m reading a new book and it’s one I’m sure many of you have heard of, maybe have even read – Money and the Law of Attraction.  Turns out it’s not really about money, in that the same “Law” seems to hold for just about anything.

According to the book, when nothing is going right and everything feels heavy, it’s because your attention or energy or whatever, is focused on what’s going wrong.  And maybe that’s your reality, maybe everything is going wrong, which I find more difficult to believe because that might be a story, but no matter.  Law of Attraction (LOA) – which I studied in Physics back in college, har har – suggests that you actually bring into your life what you focus on.  So what if the only thing you have to focus on is crap?  Fair enough.  LOA is not about lying to yourself and saying everything is super-duper rosy when it’s not, but it’s about focusing on what you do want.  The key is to be clear about the reasons why you want what you want and to make sure your wanting is coming from a place of wholeness.  If you want something from a place of lack, or let’s face it, desperation, it ain’t gonna work.  And I seriously hate bad English, but I just had to.  For example, take the thought - - I am drowning in debt and I need to get a job because if I don’t get one I will be totally and utterly screwed (more bad English, just in a different way).  That is an example of coming from a place of lack.  Now, same situation, different energy – I would love to have a new job because it would be fun to do work I like, because it’s great to be valued for my work, and I’d love to take great vacations with my savings.  Same want, a job, but which person would you rather hire?  Which goes back to the Law of Attraction – the person coming from the better place is more likely to get hired, i.e. attract what they want.

So when things aren’t as you’d like them, focus on how you’d like things to be instead of how bad things are.  Get excited and happy about how wonderful it would be to find that perfect partner, or create a thriving business, or grill out with great friends.  The idea is that we want what we want because of how we think it’ll make us feel.  Get yourself aligned with that feeling now and you will attract what you want - people, circumstances, or success – in-line with that feeling.  Don’t believe me, try it!  And maybe I’m wrong, but so far, I’ve seen it in action a lot.  Mind you, I’ve gotten a lot of what I didn’t want because I focused on what I didn’t have.  So I know that side of the coin works, but I have seen the positive side too, just not as often:).  Working on that  now.

I happen to think that we’re all here to figure out how to be happy and how to love more.  Okay, that’s a different post.  But in terms of the Law of Attraction, do you feel better when you’re thinking about all the stuff that’s gone wrong, or is wrong; or do you feel better when you focus on what’s going right, what you’re grateful for, or what you’re looking forward to?  Usually the latter.  As a side note, focusing on what you’re looking forward to is a great exercise when you do it from the present moment.  Meaning, you’re not depending on a specific situation to happen before you can be happy, but you’re happy now just thinking about how great something is going to be.  Everything is grounded in the now, there’s just no way around it.

Lastly, a word about gratitude.  The title of this post is “Turning the Tide” and I believe gratitude is the key.  It’s about shifting your focus from what’s missing to what is perfect about this moment.  We have everything we need in this moment, and when we are not happy in this moment, it becomes a great teacher.  I’m a big believer in exercising my gratitude muscle.  Like any of this life coaching, self-help, enlightenment stuff, it always comes back to practice.  The more we practice just about anything, the more proficient we become.  This is especially true for gratitude.  The more I appreciate in my life, the more things I find to appreciate.  It just gets easier.  That and more things come into my life for which to be grateful.  Mind you, the wonderfulness of life is always there, I just haven’t always been very skilled in noticing it.  But when I practice, and when in this moment I choose to focus on what is good or what I’m excited about, instead of what is lacking, I begin to turn the tide.  It gets easier every time.

My recommendation to you is to choose something you want – more money, more love, or more security, whatever – and to make a mental note of your programming around this want.  If it’s more money you want, do you constantly tell yourself that you never have enough, or that you can’t afford this or that?  In that case, you may think you’re focused on money, but what you’re actually focused on is a lack of money.  And guess what, that is the exact opposite of money.  So notice if you’re in lack mode or abundance mode.  My sense is that if it’s something you want, but don’t have, you’re in lack-mode, otherwise you’d have it and wouldn’t want it.  Therefore, your assignment is to become very aware of your thoughts around the thing you want, and especially how you talk about it out loud.  Once you’re clear on how you talk about money (or whatever), start to focus on what you do have.  Maybe you have $4 to your name.  Wonderful, celebrate that $4.  Think of all the things you can do with $4.  If you’re just pissed off at me right now, here’s another idea.  Pretend that you have $100 bucks and mentally spend it throughout the day.  Each day add a zero to your $100 – i.e. $1,000 the next day – and mentally spend it.  The idea is to eradicate your lack-mentality around money and shift into a place of abundance.  Whatever works, you know?!

Good luck and let me know how it goes!

Okay, I’ve been performing a big, meaningful experiment, on yours truly.  The question I’m seeking to answer is how to feel better or how to be less self-critical (and therefore less externally critical), and how to do this consistently.  Here are my findings.  There seem to be two big components to making progress, and by progress, I mean the opposite of progress.  What the heck is progress anyway?  I strongly dislike the term “self-improvement” or “becoming a better person”.  Bull-onie.  It’s not about becoming better or improving, it’s about acceptance!  When you try to become “better” you’re subliminally saying that you’re not good enough as you are, and what does that lead to?  Not feeling better!  If I were speaking this at you right now, I would be all worked up.  Which, come to think of it, is not the point.  Okay, calming down.  Ahh.

Back to my experiment.  By making progess, what I really mean is self-acceptance, which ultimately (in my experience) leads to feeling better, and probably for the “self-improvement” folks out there, happens to look like you’re becoming a better person.  But really you’re the same old same old without the whole beating-yourself-up-for-doing-or-saying-stupid-stuff thing.  This in turn leads to giving other people a break too, which leads to world peace.  Awesome.

It turns out I’ve been trying to be a better person this whole time, and frankly, it just sucks, and more importantly, it doesn’t even work.  There are two things that have worked and continue to work for me.  Numero uno, awareness.  More often than not, I’m able to bring awareness around feeling pissed or irritable, angry or sad - instead of getting lost in my emotions.  Oh how interesting, I want to kill that man.  Hmm.  The kicker is staying with the feelings, not pushing them away but not getting sucked in, and most importantly, dropping any judgements.  Staying with icky feelings without blaming or spinning a story of how you were right and they were wrong can often do the trick, and it can start to release some serious tension.  Now if you want to go further I recommend getting curious.  While in the midst of those unpleasant feelings or even after they’ve passed, notice the thoughts behind all that ickiness.  What was it that put you in a bad mood?  Right or wrong, consider if those thoughts were helping you feel better or worse?  If the answer is worse, get some new thoughts.  Sometimes, heck most of the time, we’re more hung up on proving our point and being right than feeling good.  I mean, why is it that any of us wants to be right?  Seriously, think about this.  My guess is that we want to be right because we think it’ll somehow make us feel better.  But does it?  I’ve found that most of the time it does the exact opposite.  So it’s your choice, do you want to be right or to you want to feel better?

Awareness is a great first step, but if you use awareness as a means to beat yourself up for how horrible you are, then you’ll likely get stuck in a painful, deep rut.  Still, I happen to believe that if you stay in that rut long enough, something will give.  Eventually you’ll move out of it, but if you’d rather not hate yourself for the next 5 years, I suggest you start practicing compassion.  This is the brilliant part.  When we have compassion for ourselves it diffuses bad feelings rather than exacerbating them.  This happens on a macro level as well.  Take the German people after WWI.  The Allies imposed some serious sanctions on those folks for inciting the first World War.  Justice right?  Well, what was the result?  Bigger and badder horrors, in the form of WWII and Hitler.  The German people were so beaten down, destitute, and even self-loathing after all the badness of WWI, that they started to believe any old raving lunatic – enter Hilt er – who promised to rescue them from their despair.  Please don’t do this to yourself.  Don’t beat yourself up more than you already have.  The end result could be a monster like Hitler, and an internal WWII.

In my experience, the only real way out of this viscious cycle is through it.  Someone needs to step up to the plate and give someone a break, so why not you?  The next time you’re a nasty jerk, or do or say something your regret, try allowing.  Allow yourself to be angry, happy, ugly, mean, sweet, generous, selfish, whatever.  Hold off judgement.  Give yourself some space.  Speak to yourself as you would your best friend.  The more compassion we can direct towards ourselves, the more compassion we have out in the world.  Which, again, helps with the whole world peace thing.

To summarize my super-scientific research findings on how to feel better:

• Step 1 – Awareness: Notice how you feel without pushing bad feelings away.  Stay with the feeling but drop your story (i.e. thoughts) about right or wrong, blame or fault.  Stay with the feeling, but don’t get lost in it.  Getting lost in it is the opposite of awareness.  If you are the feeling, you don’t have any awareness around it.  Also, get curious.  What are you telling yourself about this situation?  Are those thoughts helping you feel better or worse?  Sometimes we think that if we’re not angry with someone we’re letting them off the hook.  But really it’s you you’re letting off the hook.  You’re the one who suffers when you think painful thoughts.
• Step 2 – Compassion: Give yourself a break already.  Let yourself feel how you feel, overreact, get angry, act like a fool.  We all do it, it’s part of being human.  When we’re super hard on ourselves it’s only likely to increase those unpleasant feelings or undesired behaviors.  Giving yourself a break and having self-compassion allows you to have more compassion in the world.

Okay, that’s it.  Feeling Better Formula = Awareness + Compassion.  It’s that simple.  Oh, and practice.  Good luck!

Okay, this is totally my stuff, but maybe it’s your’s too.  By my stuff, I mean that I remember a time – okay most of the time – when I thought that if I just got one more degree, or ran one more marathon (some bragging here), or became the U.S. Ambassador of Togo, then I would finally feel happy or satisfied, worthy, accomplished, you know, all that.  Boy, I just couldn’t wait.  I could totally picture it, the prestige, the self-worth, the confidence, the cool limos with small flags.  It was going to feel sooo good.  If only I could get there.

Now, between those over-achieving days and today, I’ve learned a lot.  Or as Martha Beck would say, I’ve unlearned a lot.  At this point in time I appreciate and even experience happiness now, as things are.  Crazy indeed.  I mean, not all the time, but more than 50% of the time, which is HUGE for me.  But interestingly, I found myself slipping back into my “what if’s” this past weekend.  You see, I’m building my business as a financial planner, and it takes some serious work, more than I really realized despite, oh about 12 people mentioning it would be a lot of work.   Anticipating more work on Monday I started to day dream about some career alternatives – - like, I don’t know, becoming a wildlife biologist.  It would have been perfect - adventures in the jungle, freedom, nature and wildlife all around.  You know, a female Indiana Jones.  And then I snapped out of it.  What am I talking about, wildlife biologist?!  Am I nuts (totally rhetorical)!?  But, you say, maybe it’s what you were meant to do?  Maybe I shouldn’t snap out of it.  Isn’t letting go of our dreams a bad thing?  Well…

You may have a point, but here’s the rub.  I did that jungle thing.  I mean, pretty close anyway.  I joined the Peace Corps after grad school and went to, you guessed it, Togo, West Africa.  Seriously, I had to pull out the geography book when I read “Togo”.  You’d think you would have heard of all the countries out there, especially the one where you’d be spending two years (or uh, 3 months) of your life.  Digressing – that was a scary moment for another blog post at another time.  So yeah, I went and lived in the jungle (what was left of it) and signed up to do environment stuff.  And guess what?  I was totally miserable.  This was something I wanted to do since I was nine years old, and there I am in, what is this country again – Tog0 – completely unhappy, anxiety-ridden, and depressed.

The moral here is not that you should avoid dreaming, the Peace Corps, or even Togo (although yeah, maybe); but that what we think will make us happy or give us the freedom we so desparately crave won’t necessarily do the trick.  When I realized last weekend that becoming a wildlife biologist might not be the key to my happiness, I got curious.  What is it about being a wildlife biologist that is so appealing?  What brings me back to this daydream time and again?  So ask yourself the same question – what is the thing you dream of doing?  What would make you finally happy, free, secure, all that?  Now my recommendation is that before you quit your day job, leave your spouse, or sell all your worldly possessions, get seriously curious.

Understanding the why of what we want is BIG.  How do you do that, you ask?  Keep asking yourself why until you get to the bottom of it.  It may take some practice, patience, and compassion, but it’s that simple.  Why ask why?  Because when you understand what it is you’re after – usually a certain feeling – you begin to realize that there are lots of ways to feel that way now.  You don’t necessarily have to join the Peace Corps.  In fact, if you join the Peace Corps with your same old issues (i.e. thoughts & beliefs) you will feel EXACTLY the same, or possibly worse than you did in your gray cubicle.  On the same token, if you begin to bring awareness to your painful thoughts and start to dismantle them, and you still want to become a wildlife biologist, it might be just the thing for you.

Moral of the story: wherever you go there you are.  Someone famous said that, and it couldn’t be more true.  Until we work on our inner worlds, our outer worlds will continue to look and feel the same wherever we go.

Happy travels!