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Weekly Tidbit: Adventuring

1/27/2010

I named my coaching business "Conversations For Change" because I believe it is in our conversations that we hold the keys to how we create our life on a daily basis. We are constantly engaged in conversation with others and with ourselves that promote change or argue for the status quo. Some of our most powerful conversations are inside our heads and many of them occur beneath our conscious awareness as we focus our attention on the activities of the day.

These inner discussions are rooted in our survival beliefs, often fear based, and they serve a purpose. They may transpire as dialogues with your mind playing both roles or simply the reiterating of a story or belief. Many unconscious thoughts are repetitive 'conversations for no change' that strive to maintain stability and security. Or perhaps the illusion of security, according to Helen Keller who said, "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."

Daring adventure does not necessarily mean sailing around the world or parachuting out of airplanes. It can simply mean thinking new thoughts, trying new behaviors. A friend wrote me: "Inner life can be quite an adventure...quite a big world in there. Inner life in the sense of connecting with others, that is, in a heart-to-heart land." Relationships with others are often where our most hidden beliefs and fears manifest, and they can take us on what sometimes feels like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. A wise therapist once said to me that relationships are the ways in which we work out our own internal conflicts. It can be a daring adventure to really connect with yourself, to look at parts that have been hidden from view that may indeed control the choices you make in your life. The willingness to bring some of those underground conversations to the light of day, to share them with another, allows us to engage in the innovative process of change. It brings conscious intention to unconscious programming, and expedites our ability to let go of beliefs that no longer serve us and to create new conversations for change.

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Weekly Tidbit: Feeling Bad about Feeling Bad

1/20/2010

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Feeling bad about feeling bad usually leads to more feeling bad. These are two separate issues that are often jumbled into one. Feeling bad in response to a physical or emotional wound is a normal response and appropriate for a period of time. Part of having all of our emotions includes permission to feel bad. We need to acknowledge suffering and we need to allow it to be finite, to be able to differentiate feeling and wallowing. It is not an easy task to determine that fine line, especially for those of us who tend towards "all or nothing" thinking. Pain can easily become all consuming. It can become our identity: I am a person who suffers. And if that is how I see myself, suffering is then something I do well and frequently.

Sometimes people live a huge part of their lives in bad feelings about their pain, and the regret, bitterness, or self pity can become bigger than the original injury. They may identify with the role of victim or martyr or sick person and the self judgement perpetuates the pattern of the experience. When you are in it, it can get confusing and sometimes it is necessary to find someone to help you separate the two. Confusion, by the way, is usually a good thing. It means you are thinking rather than just repeating in your mind what you already think you know. And be aware that "bucking up" or "sucking it in" does not work very well. Trying to just turn off the pain often means that it will go underground and show up in other ways, some of which may be totally unconscious. New body pains, cranky attitudes, accidents, punishment to self or others may result.

One of my teachers used to say that pain is like ringing telephone, something to get our attention. It is part of our inner guidance system and learning to use our GPS helps us make choices that lead to different outcomes. Often to avoid uncomfortable feelings we blame others, self medicate, or insist that reality should be different from what it is. Sometimes pain indicates that there are things we need to change about what we do in order to change a situation. Diet and exercise in order to improve a health condition is an example of this. Other times we are powerless to directly change a situation other than changing our thoughts about it. "The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one's freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given circumstance," wrote Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor.

Whether it is physical pain or emotional pain, you can choose to put your attention on something that you feel better about in order to differentiate 'who you are' from 'the pain that happens to be with you right now'. This does not mean that we deny or minimize the pain, but rather acknowledge that we are more than just the pain and recognize when it is time to move our thoughts in a different direction. If we look at the parts that function well we can put the pain into perspective that allows us to see that there is 'other than pain', that pain is not all of who you are. Being grateful for the parts that work, the parts that don't hurt, creates a good vibration and this better emotional state allows us to move forward. There may be a time when it feels like the pain is all there is and it is challenging to open to an opportunity to be more than our pain. One of my clients in California was a women whose young daughter had been killed. She told me that for the first few weeks there was no part of her that did not hurt, that did not resist and struggle, and that she eventually came to a place where she realized that she needed to surrender to the reality of her loss. That she need to let go of her resistance and simply accept what was. Then the next step became clear to her, and she began to rebuild her life.

Pain serves a purpose: it invites news ways to look at things and new behaviors, and it confronts our fear of change, our fear of letting go. It can motivate us to be creative or it can invite resignation and despair, and we make that choice whether we do it consciously or unconsciously. The Japanese symbol for crisis is the same as the symbol for opportunity, and painful situations are usually rife with opportunities to learn and grow. Make it paramount to raise your emotional vibration, to seek new perspectives. Practice gratitude for what you can and choose where to shine the light of your attention to minimize the degree of your suffering. You shape your life by your thoughts and your choices; make it more beautiful.

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Weekly Tidbit: Observation

1/13/2010

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I remember a day that I was undergoing a root canal and had planned to use self hypnosis to deal with the pain of the surgery instead of chemical anesthesia. My dentist had become so accustomed to me using hypnosis for minor dental procedures that he assumed I was ready to go before I had put myself in the necessary mental frame. With a mouth full of dental devices and an approaching drill, I felt a moment of "not ready!" panic and then let it go in order to find a place in my body that was pain free and as far away from my mouth as I could get. I intuitively dove as if off a high dive in my mind down to my ankle and observed the operation from that perspective. I knew what was happening, I could hear and feel the vibration of the drill, but I was not "in" the experience of the root canal surgery. I was in the pure "observer" place, away from physical and emotional pain.

This is an interesting example of how our mind creates the reality of our experience. While you may be thinking that you could never have a root canal without anesthesia, I assure you it is possible if (and this is a big if) you were willing to believe that you could do it and took the time to learn the skills. Perhaps the most difficult part is the willingness to suspend our limiting beliefs, especially the ones that are unconscious. Research clearly shows that beliefs affect outcome. What people expect to happen tends to happen, in clinical research and in everyday life. Learning to use this human phenomenon to our advantage and becoming aware of our limiting beliefs allows us to expand our possibilities for change and growth.

The position of "observer", a place of detached attentiveness, allows us to notice things that might otherwise go unseen because of emotional reaction or ego or cognitive involvement. There is no judgement, no fear, no ownership, but simply a pure state of awareness. It is a surrender to what is, an allowing of things to be, and allowing them to be okay. I was not actively participating in the experience of the root canal; I had stepped outside the event to have a different experience of the event. This process created an altered reality for me, one with no pain.

In Native American tradition, medicine men often fast in preparation for training experiences because of their belief that you can only take in new information when you are not already full, that fullness is a form of distraction that obscures our ability to observe and learn. And so an exercise to obtain wisdom might be to sit still in a meadow or on a hilltop for a day or two and just notice what goes on around you. We may not be willing (or believe ourselves able) to create the necessary arrangements to sit in a meadow for a day or two. Our lifestyles tend to be very full of distraction and busy-ness that seem to preclude taking that much time "off" to observe. But we can utilize smaller chunks of time and shift our perspective to a place of observation in a way that encourages the practice and can free us from unwanted pain. Next time you are sitting in your car at a railroad crossing or standing in a line, instead of distracting yourself with what is next on your list of things to do or being annoyed at having to wait, use that time to just notice what is around you. Stop thinking for a few moments and just observe, just notice, just breathe. Cultivate this practice at intervals when it is convenient to the situation. Then cultivate it daily, making time for it for a few minutes in your day. For many people, this process of observation serves as a powerful tool to seek wisdom and understanding in order to solve a problem, decrease pain, or gain new awareness.

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Weekly Tidbit: Celebrating Personal Diversity

1/6/2010

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We humans are pretty amazing creatures with our continuum of diverse abilities. Our basic nature has the dual essence of physical life and spiritual connection, and the construct of our brain and body allows for a multitude of talents from gymnastics to rocket science and everything in between. We can think, we can feel, we can do, we can be, and most of the time we are engaged in more than one experience at a time.

Difficulties often occur when we get stuck identifying with one particular component of our being to the neglect of other aspects. One way to look at personal diversity is with the idea that we each have a repertoire of different roles in our lives and that it is of benefit to explore and develop those roles that may be under utilized. Expanding our role repertoire allows us to be all that we can be, to enlarge our capacity for experience. When we become overly identified in one role, it is easy to become lopsided and out of balance in our lives and relationships. The busy professional person who loses connection with family and friends, the parent who over involves with a child to the neglect of self or spouse, the person with a disease that becomes their identity.... these are examples of how we can lose balance and perspective. This is not to say that professional success is undesirable, that involved parenthood is not admirable, or that disease does not require our attention. It is more an issue of balance, of staying connected with all our parts even when we deepen our involvement with one in particular. It often requires us to recognize and challenge the human tendency to engage in "all or nothing" thinking and let go of the idea that any one role can really define us; we are by nature multidimensional.

At times being locked into one role or one experience does not seem like it is a choice. When chronic pain or a serious disease or a major life change takes us away from living as we know it, it seems that our life can be swallowed whole by that experience. Our thoughts seem stuck and we forget that the pain or disease is only one fraction of who we are, that we can still choose where we aim the light of our attention even though there is a part of us that continually demands the spotlight. To find a moment to be grateful for the kiss of the sun on our cheek, the caress of the breeze in our hair can mitigate the extent of the pain in our neck, whether that pain is physical or emotional. Choosing to find something to feel better about differentiates who you are from the pain that happens to be with you right now. Focusing on something that brings joy actually produces chemical endorphins that act as pain killers. You bring the role of someone who is experiencing joy into the room with the role of the one who has the problem and the dynamics change.

Honoring our personal diversity can be as simple as stepping outside our usual pattern of action or thought. Do something different, preferably something that brings you to a place of appreciation and joy. Make a list of all the roles you have in your life and notice if there is one that could use some extra attention. Ask for help if you need it. Recognize that you are more than what you do, more than any experience that happened to you, more than your story about who you think you are, more than any limiting belief that you picked up on the journey. Discover other parts of yourself and open yourself to having more love and appreciation for all of you, all of us.

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Weekly Tidbit: Adventuring

Weekly Tidbit: Feeling Bad about Feeling Bad

Weekly Tidbit: Observation

Weekly Tidbit: Celebrating Personal Diversity

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