The Solitude of the Open Road

I have traveled at night in such darkness that it left me to feel as though the road had fallen away. Feeling my heart rise up, I took a leap of faith that I had not been abandoned, that there would be more than air to greet me, and that I was safer than the fear whispering in my ear. It was a long journey that moon less night with only the stars for company . . . Or so I had thought, until I was greeted by the dawn of a new day.

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.

To Thine Own Self be True

If even through small, gradual steps, find the courage to be seen, to speak your truth, your journey matters. Only you, can bring you to the world. Courage doesn't mean not being afraid, it means the truth is more important. Be authentic. You are not alone, and though you may feel afraid, know that, … "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

~ Maya Angelou

Your Food May Be Killing You and Your Taxes Are Paying For It

New proteins have been engineered and introduced into our food to improve the profitability of the food industry. NO human studies were conducted. These proteins were approved not because they were safe, but because no one had proved them to be dangerous. 1 in 17 kids now have a food allergy. The US has the highest rates of cancer in the world, 1 in 2 men and 1in 3 women are expected get cancer, 1 in 8 women have breast cancer, but 9 out of 10 of those are NOT genetic, they are environmental triggered. Your tax dollars support these industries.

These industries have HUGE lobbies and spend literally millions to keep you from knowing what is in your food and what it is doing to you and your family.  The food industry say it would cost too much to change their labels, and/or to reformulate the food, but they have already done this in other countries through out Europe and in Japan. 

You may be thinking, but eating organic is so expensive! This talk explains why, and what needs to change to fix that problem.

If you live in America you, and your family need to watch this together. 

Robyn O'Brien's TEDX Talk

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."

Heart Broken Open

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi

Love may not be all you need, but if you have everything you need and you don't have love, you don't have much.

I don’t know about you, but this last month has been a big time for skkome pretty deep reflections. A time for old wounds for the past that were never fully understood, that never really healed, but were just crammed down deep; time to be broken open, broken down, moved out and healed. It’s been really painful and challenging, but the healing has been a gift. I am still struggling with understanding why for me, and I’m guessing I’m not alone in this; it has been easier to forgive others – sometimes terrible abuses, than it has been to forgive myself. To forgive myself for living someone else’s idea of who I am, of living trying to make someone else happy hoping that if I tried hard enough, if I was good enough, they would love me, and that I would matter. I’m learning to forgive myself for living a lie, for being so afraid, for not believing I was good enough, but then again who was there as a child to tell me that I was good enough? Forgiving myself for not asking what I wanted, because I didn’t know that it was even okay for me to ask, much less believe that it could ever be possible for me to want something, and actually have it, at least not without there being a heavy price to pay. I have held myself to impossible standards, but settled for less than I wanted, less than I deserved. I have stayed in relationships believing if I just gave enough, loved enough, did enough, that the other person would see my value, would love me, but it was like a sun falling into a black hole and all that came of it was whole lot of pain, suffering, betrayal, and some really hard lessons. I have learned that comparing myself to others is toxic, and that in judging others, I leave myself open to be judged. It’s going to take me some time to get this down because I’ve been comparing and judging for such a long time, but seeing a problem is the first step to reaching a solution. I will never be the daughter my parents think I should be, and my parents will never be the parents I wished they would be - that is just the reality of things. I don’t know why my dad can’t say that he is proud of me, or why he has never been able to say he is sorry for anything to me, maybe he just doesn’t know how, I don’t know, but what I do know that it does not mean I am unworthy, or not good enough – that is a lie in who’s shadow I have lived within for far to long. I also wondered why I felt compelled to be “the strong one”, why I had to work so hard to be get everything just so, to not open my mouth unless I had a good grasp of the “facts”, to be almost fanatically through so that I could explain every little detail of any decision thinking that maybe, just maybe if I covered all the bases I would be okay, I would be safe, and if I was really lucky admired or better still appreciated. Right now I know that I matter. I am hard at work letting go of all the garbage I have been carrying with me for so long and learning to live my truth, and it is a painful process – both physically and emotionally, but I cannot complain because it is leading me step by step to my best life ever. It was just last year that I finally realized that I was not irreparably broken, and this year that I am realizing why I even believed that in the first place. It is now that I can tell myself that I deserve to be happy. I’ve got that part in my head and little by little it is breaking through, and seeping into my heart. Gradually I am starting to allow myself to dare to dream of what I want, and learning that I can accomplish it with hard work yes, but not with the necessity of terrible suffering.

I’m writing this on my computer and I’m wondering how many others out there have felt the way I’ve felt; if you have, you are not alone, and a better future is possible, but it has to start with you making the choice. I think a big part of it for me was deciding that there was nothing I wouldn’t let go of if it stood between me, and being happy. In making the choice so much, not all at once, has come to the surface; each step brings me closer to the life I deserve, each clearing out (breaking open, being in the truth, forgiveness of myself and others, letting go of the idea that things could have been any different than they were, and ultimately healing) make more room for more joy, love, and happiness.

What are you focusing on? Is it what you want or what you want to avoid? Are you living in joy and inspiration, or fear and avoidance?  My goal is to live more present in the moment so that I can develop a greater awareness of what I put out into the world because strength comes from practice, and I know that what I focus on, what I put out into the world (my thoughts, feelings, and actions), is what is going to come back to me, and I’m ready for something amazing. What about you?