FEAR

Why is it that we are so quick to believe that we’re weaker than we really are?   In every respect, whenever there’s even a possibility of something new crossing our path, the vast majority of us, run shrieking in the other direction.

WALK/TALK

When you have integrity everything jives.  Your talk and your walk are headed in the same direction.  When integrity isn’t a priority for you, your talk goes one way and your walk goes in another.  Don’t think we can’t see the difference a mile away.

EMOTIONAL MUGGING

It’s a phrase coined by Martha Beck and we’re all guilty of it from time to time.  Usually we do it when we hurt someone’s feelings, or when we lash out at the messenger when in reality we’re really pissed at the message.  It’s important to be aware of it and make amends immediately.  A heartfelt apology preserves our integrity.

Here’s the thing.  While an apology might help soothe someone’s hurt feelings, the real insight is in making sure we don’t do it again.  As Karen Armstrong says so beautifully, 

“Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.” 

OBLIQUE

When something comes at you obliquely it doesn’t come straight at you, it comes at you sideways, sometimes from the periphery and at other times, from a direction not readily visible.

So too with dysfunction. It does not come at you as what it is.  It manifests as a symptom.  Addiction* for example, is not what it appears.  It is not the representation of an individual’s illness, lack of willpower or questionable character.  And while addiction can bring about all of these things, addiction is about pain.  Not about the pain of being addicted, but pain that you can only see obliquely.  Only by seeing to the side and underneath of an addiction can you uncover the genesis of the symptom.  

*It’s important to broaden our reference when we mention addiction otherwise behaviours and ways of thinking that are just as ‘addictive’ as any illicit drug will not resonate for most of us who don’t have issues with illicit drugs but are addicted nevertheless to ways of being (like addicted to a myopic way of thinking, addicted to behaviours that continuously get us stuck in unhealthy relationships, addicted to magical thinking like when we think that someone will rescue us, like being addicted to hoping without doing, etc.,) that don’t present as harmful addictions when looked at straight on.

SUFFERING

99.9% of our suffering is created by listening to what our mind is telling us.  What our mind is telling us is an exaggeration and a misinterpretation of reality.  It does this not because it’s diseased or damaged, it does this in a perverse way, to keep us safe.  The only way we can mitigate the suffering created by our mind is if we take what it’s telling us and compare it to what reality is telling us.  When you do that you will see two very different things.

Denial produces suffering because we refuse to see this distinction.  It’s not that we can’t see the distinction because we can, it’s that we make the decision to pretend we don’t see it.

FAILING

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth the risk of failing.

We need to get over our fear of failure. 

The reality is that without failure, success wouldn’t exist.

TODAY

If your sense of self worth has taken a hit because you’re not in a relationship today, or haven’t been asked for a date today, or don’t have a significant other in your life today, then you didn’t have any real sense of self to begin with.

Who you are is not dependent on whether you’re in a relationship with someone else or not.  Who you are is dependent on the relationship you have with yourself.  That’s the only measure of your sense of worth.  It’s the only way you’ll know that you are indeed, enough.

LOVE

So if we can all agree that nothing from nothing is nothing, then we must also agree that you can't give something to someone that you haven't got for yourself.

The thing is people get confused by this, by what having love for ourselves actually means.  Society thinks that it means I deserve a break today, I deserve to buy whatever I want whenever I want it; that bigger is better, that lots is good and more is almost enough.  But what does all of this ‘need’  actually tell you?  That you lack.  That you are missing something.

So how do we get love for ourselves?  We already have it.  How can we tell?  Do something nice for someone without them knowing it’s you.  Send love on ahead, in the form of well wishes, a little prayer of comfort to the planet or the squirrel in the trees when you step out the door in the morning.  That warm, uplifted, content like a hug sensation - that’s what love for yourself feels like.  It’s not needing to take, demand, or extort, because when you recognize the love you carry inside and lead with love in everything you do, you have so much it shows up everywhere in your life.  You have so much in fact that you can afford to give it away.

DROUGHT

Martha Beck brilliant as always:

"Think of a current 'drought' in your life.  For 10 minutes, just trust that it will all be okay.  Trust that you're being guided.  Trust, against all odds and evidence, that you are safe.  When I use this exercise on my drought fears, the strangest thing happens: I feel it raining inside myself.  I become a microcosm of the life-giving rain that, someday, will bring California back to life.  Or so I trust."

SEALED

It never ceases to amaze me the small little box we think ourselves into.  We seal ourselves up with long held beliefs that reality is telling us are faulty, limiting and/or just plain wrong, and tape the flaps down tight. 

REPETITION

The power of repetition is that we get better.  Doing things over and over again is the way we achieve mastery.  Here’s the thing, if we’re invested in the repetition we should make absolutely sure that what we’re repeating we actually want to master.

AMPLIFICATION

Just because something takes up a lot of space in our mind doesn’t make it important.  How often do we amplify the trivial?  Make mountains out of mole hills?  Stir up tempests in teapots?  

The fact is, we all do it a lot.  We weave stories into the future of a given problem or situation as a way to assuage our fears, calm our nerves and prepare ourselves for the worst case scenario. The irony is that worst case scenarios usually catch us off guard, they happen unexpectedly.  And the thing we’ve been working ourselves into a lather over, turns out to be nothing at all.

Amplification is exhausting. Surely we can use that energy more productively.  The truth, as Martha Beck says, is that, “[e]verything always passes, and everything is already okay.  Stay in the place where you can see that, and nothing will resist you."

HONEST

Speaking honestly is speaking with compassion from our heart.  If we’re not speaking from that place we’re speaking with ego and ego will always have an agenda that is less than honest and more often than not, self serving.