The Value of the Destructive

Set clear boundaries. If something is making you feel uncomfortable, it's probably pushing your boundaries. Sometimes it's a good thing, such as when circumstances, or people, are challenging us to move beyond our current perceptions, and step outside of our comfort zone. Often, it's people being disrespectful. Still it's all boils down to ego. 

Have you heard of a book called, "The 4 Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz? I definitely recommend it. One of the agreements is; Don't take anything personal. One way I've learned to do that, is by learning about ego, and how to recognize it. The best way to recognize ego is to learn about your own, and how to perceive when it's being triggered. The advantage is the more you can recognize your own ego, the easier it is to realize when other's egos are being triggered. This recognition creates the opportunity for emotional detachment, because you realize that what is happening has nothing to do with you, and thus you don't take it personal. 

There is a distinct difference in removing people from our lives who are destructive and always trying to tear us down, and people who challenge us. If we end up in rooms with everyone who is just like us, that would not only be immensely boring, but very destructive for our personal growth. Peace doesn't mean that everything around us is calm and in perfect flow. Peace is when we are inwardly grounded and not easily swayed or distracted. So, view those "fugnazis” as a gift - an opportunity for you to become so grounded, self-valued, and confident that even when you get knocked down, you have the resilience to get back up. 

Anyone can have a bad day, and in a moment create a terrible first impression. We never know the battles that others are facing. A raw diamond is a rather rough, and unattractive rock. It takes a lot of sharp cuts, and filing for a diamond to become a refined, brilliant, shining stone. Human being are a lot like diamonds in that respect.

A Hummingbird Life

From a very young age we are prodded by society to pick one specific thing; What we want to be when you grow up, What are you going to major in in college, What career are you going to pursue . . . but as we are discovering more and more, some of us aren’t wired that way.

I know that many of you are struggling because you feel that you don’t know what your passion is, and for some of you it’s because you have a variety of different interest. I remember when I was in 6th grade, and my teacher told the class that we were going to do a special project, for a yearbook. We had to pick what we wanted to be. I didn’t really know what I wanted to be, I struggled, and I felt pretty uncomfortable. Most the other kids seem to have all kinds of idea of what they would love be doing when they grew up, but not me.

I’m a very curious person and I have always had a lot of different interest so I ended up picking journalist; I loved writing, telling stories, meeting new people, and traveling. Needless to say I’m not a journalist, but I am still writing, traveling, and meeting new people.

I want to share with you this video, made by Elizabeth Gilbert, I love this woman, and hope to meet her at some point. You might know her from her internationally successful memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love”. You can find her on Facebook and see all the delightful and utterly authentic life stuff she shares. I think in watching this video, though I didn’t completely realize it at the time, that  God/The Universe, or as I like to call The Divine, was giving me a prelude, a sort of nudge to stop worrying, that things were going to be okay, that I was going to be okay. In this Liz talks about that maybe some of us need to put the idea of a passion; an all consuming drive to fiercely bare down on just one all consuming thing, aside. That for some of us, it is about living a curious driven life, rather than a passion driven life. Check it out, I think some of you will not only identify with this, but start to feel a sense of relief. That maybe you too can start to realize, that’s it’s all going to work out, that it’s going to be okay.

http://www.supersoul.tv/supersoul-sessions/elizabeth-gilbert-flight-hummingbird-curiosity

While  to some my life may appears as meandering and chaotic career path, there have been advantages. The last business I owned was a large fine art gallery. I represented over 78 different artist. In running that gallery I was able to make use of all of my previous professional experience; cooking at a country club - to catering gallery events, making, buying and selling jewelry - helped me be highly successful in picking pieces for the gallery that my clients would love, graphic design, marketing, photography - for doing the layout of the gallery, designing and shooting the advertising, direct mail marketing, and bookkeeping for, well you know. It was a really amazing place for a number of years, and it’s closing, as I later came to understand, had a notable impact on the community.

I have felt like I had lost my passion, that didn’t have any dreams anymore. I felt lost and like I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I was really struggling and sometimes I felt depressed, and that there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t just pick one thing and stick with it. Until recently when I started working with Michael B. Beckwith and Brendon Burchard. Michael helped me reignite my joy and enthusiasm, and Brendon reminded me that I love helping people. It’s something I’ve done much of my life, whether is was on a weekend out on my bike back when I was in junior high school and I helped save two young kids who had been playing with matches from a house fire, or helping people who had been abused and were suicidal, being in the right place and time to insure that a young Vietnamese guy didn’t die from appendicitis, or helping a woman who had suffered a traumatic brain injury during a brutal attack, lost her career, and a long term relationship, start to heal the inner wounds, and move back toward having joy in her life.

Every time I’ve had the deep honor and privilege to help someone come through a time of great difficulty and vulnerability into a place of thriving, it has always been a very humbling experience of serving divine grace. It’s about being open and willing that when the occasion presents itself, to step up and serve. It doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers. It means having the courage to care, and the willingness to try, to make a difference. I highly recommend it.

I don’t even remember how I ended up working with Jeff Walker and Product Launch Formula (you may have heard Brendon mention him), then I happened upon Brendon Burchard and his New Year's Day talk, which led me to sign up for the High Performance Academy, then dropping everything for the 4 intense days of free Thought Leader Roadmap training, while also working online with Michael Beckwith in his live Visioning series, and soon to be apart of Expert’s Academy, I feel like I am really developing skills and discovering tools to move forward with . . . something.

Little by little as I took notes and shared them, for which I got some really great feedback, things started to come together. I got my Twitter page up, and more recently my professional Facebook page up and running, became a group leader, and started writing down things that I know can help others, ideas started to form, a direction is emerging.

Then this morning, I saw another video that I want to share with you. When I watched it I jumped up, YES! That’s Me! It felt great to see someone else up on a stage saying Yes! There are people like me, people who struggle when it comes to having that one specific passion. I know I’m not alone, and for those of you like me, I want you to know the same thing, that there is nothing wrong with you, and you aren’t alone. If you are not familiar with TED talks, you are in for a treat. So, here it is the TED talk I watched. I hope it brings you joy, or at least some send of relief: http://www.ted.com/talks/emilie_wapnick_why_some_of_us_don_t_have_one_true_calling?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=talk&utm_term=social-science#t-734431  

Thank you Emilie Wapnick, thank you for that term Multipotentiality. We are in good company . . . Other notable multipotentialites throughout history are Averroes, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, René Descartes, Sir Isaac Newton, Aristotle, and Archimedes.

The Message is Simple

   Regarding all the negativity concerning the weddings held at the Grammy’s Such behavior is certainly not a Christian act as Jesus was a living example of love one another, and don't judge (ego) lest you be judged. If you are pointing the finger, you are looking in a mirror. If you want to go Old Testament then the 10 Commandments said to Love your neighbor as yourself - there was no preamble, no "but only if they look like you, think like you, believe like you  . . ." The message is simple and profound – Love one another. 

   People deserve the right to love whom they choose to love. No, an adult having lustful, sexual feelings toward children, or animals is not love. Love is caring, nurturing, protective, not psychologically and physiologically destructive to one another, so don’t attempt to throw that foul ball here. To suggest that is as if equating rape to love and it isn’t; rape is about power, an ego trip of horrific proportion.

   If all the extreme right wing people were really smart, instead of fighting so hard against gay people wanting to get married they would have moved heaven and earth to make sure that gay couples could have the right to have their loved ones covered by their insurance, to have access to their loved one when they are admitted to the ER and/or ICU, to be able to pay their taxes together with the same benefits, to basically have all the rights, and privileges that married couples enjoy. Just because they want to be together, and have these, and other rights, and privileges doesn’t mean they are forming an attack on you, or your beliefs. It does mean they believe differently than you, and that is their right under the law – freedom of religion. 

   When you point your finger at the gay community, condemn them, and say they are attacking my values; that is exactly what you are doing, and more. You are attacking their values, their rights, and freedom to believe as they choose, and you are oppressing them with “your religious beliefs”. For those of you who may not realize this, that is called religious oppression.

   All that being said here is my message to “gay groups” and other “groups”.  When I see advertisements like, “Are you ready for a gay social network?” My first response to this and all others like it is, “No.” Not anymore than I’m ready for a heterosexual only social network. Don’t call it a gay wedding; it’s a wedding – two (hopefully) loving, consenting, adults getting married. I didn’t call my wedding, my heterosexual wedding. Jeeze, isn’t that a mouthful. Okay, now I’m sure some of you are upset, but before you get your tail feathers in too much of a ruffle, let me explain something that you may not have considered. When you create things like the 'Gay Social Network' it conveys things like – separate, different, exclusive as oppose to inclusive, etcetera. These are all things that you are fighting against; being considered separate, and different from the rest of society, and not worthy of the same equal rights, of being excluded because of a label, and not as who you are; a fellow human being who just wants to love and be loved. If we want unity then we need to start working in that direction.

   NO! Please God do NOT think I’m saying we need to get rid of individualism. How about instead of all these different cultural days we have a, “Celebrate and share your culture week?” or “Celebrate the best of humanity week?” or “Celebrate your freedom week” or here’s a great one, “Celebrate love and kindness week”. When we separate ourselves we are falling under the illusion of Ego, which is fear based. When we separate ourselves from others and deny our connection to all (and I mean the frickin’ planet, plants, animals, people, the land itself) that is when we are truly acting in an ‘Unnatural’ manner because, like it or not, when it comes to physics we are ALL connected on an atomic level – everything pulls on everything else, just a bunch of protons, neutrons, electrons, etc. So, for all your uniqueness, whether you believed that God(s) made the universe, or nature/science did, your atoms are still no better than mine, and as a ‘matter’ of fact, like it, or not, we are connected so why don’t we try, and start acting like it.

Open Places

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you."

a Path, a Purpose

Photography by Nancy Falso

Hi everyone. Sorry it has been so long since I’ve written anything here, but that is likely going to be changing. This month I decided to take a writing sabbatical to try to make some significant progress on my novel and also an opportunity to make some real changes in my life and especially my health. I’m more than half way through this journey and it has lead me to some interesting places. The other day Jonathan Gunson posted to the Writer Unboxed group on Facebook the question of; “Are we writing for ourselves, or to be heard? A lot of us found this really thought provoking.

I write because I must. If I don't it will grab hold of me, wake me up in the middle of the night, and torment me until I give in and write it down. It’s been like this since I was a kid. For me the experience is like trying to hold back a river. For however long it chooses I am the path it flows through until it is done, and leaves me on some other shore - sometimes like a fallen, floating flower blown loose from some distant tree. At other times it leaves me shambled, bruised, and battered mess like earlier this week when I was writing about the death of my main character’s father. I slept over 10 hours that day. Living in the emotional state of one’s characters in an effort to be authentic and be a bumpy ride. I must confess though, for it is in its shimmering brightness that I find myself and allow myself to be seen by others. Still it leaves me wondering, how much of these stories are mine, and how much belongs to something unseen - something greater than myself? I find myself contemplating; how much does the land shape the water, and how much does the water shape the land? 

Lastly I want to leave you with this . . . Don't put your purpose and your passion in someone else's hands; it is your responsibility, and no one else will care about it as much as you. If you want to move forward then it is going to have to become a “Must!” for you. Stand up for your own intuition, because you know you, and do you better than anyone else. You are the person you have been waiting for.

It's a Wonderful Life

Do you remember the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life?” George gets to find out what the world would be like if he had never existed. You are amazing and unique and no one can do what you do in the way that you do it and because of that the world would be so much less without you. Is something dissing your courage (discouragement)? Take some time and consider what is bringing this into your life? Dig deep. If you aren’t sure and feeling confused, pay attention to your feelings because they are the most amazing toolbox you can use to find what is right for you. When there are people and things in your life that bring you joy, people and places where you can be yourself embrace those and let the rest fall away. No one knows you better than you, you are enough, and you matter, you REALLY matter. Do you know about the Brave Girls Club? Check out this video at: http://bravegirlsclub.com/archives/6618