A month ago..(gee it went fast)..I made a vow to no longer have fear rule my life.
Fear is not a bad thing. It is very good to have when you are being chased by crocodiles. But to have it become the background fabric of your existence is not very useful, or healthy.

I have often thought of Victor Frankl, author of A Man’s Search for Meaning, and survivor of Auschwitz. While I simply cannot begin to comprehend the type of environmental conditions he lived under, I use his life as an example of the ability to transcend pervasive, long term fear. I am guessing people who have been diagnosed with a very serious illness may know this fear in their own way. I am daily reading Mark Nepo’s beautiful “Book of Awakening” which is a day book written as a result of a ten year cancer challenge. Such great art and poetry often comes from the depth of fear and darkness. It reminds me that beauty is found everywhere, if we but look.

What I have learned in this process over the last month, in no particular order.

*I had to catch myself in the moments of fear. This required vigilance and the ability to self observe, to be witness to my own process. A constant practice towards personal mastery in any form. And personal integrity.

*I had to find something to switch to when I became present to my fear. After trial and error, I found the right emotion and feeling. “I feel so lucky” was the switch that worked best for me. Lucky is a feeling I am cultivating.

*I found myself feeling into ‘lucky’ as a mantra. It has had an immediate affect of lifting me to a lighter place. I say it maybe a thousand times a day…on some days.

*I also examined my fear by sitting in an inquiry of what I was afraid of…
Going down this rabbit hole lead all the way to a disconnection/abandonment by God/great spirit. And of course, this is not true. Feeling lucky immediate reconnects me. As does ensuring my heart is open and not contracted. Or the simple act of watching a bird in the tree in my courtyard.

*In my daily practice I have two small but key visualisations that I use. One, to imagine a stream of golden light enter my head and fill my body, my being, my every cell, and then flow through me, a constant source of infinite supply. I love this practice as it reminds me daily that there is indeed an infinite supply. When I was walking on the beach the other day, as the sun peaked over the Pacific, I felt the infinite supply of sunlight, and all of its contribution to my aliveness. There is no scarcity. Life affirms this when we truly see it.
The other practice is to remember who I really am. During a guided meditation with energetic coach Emily Gendron, she had me meet my essential self. Given that I am a highly visual person, I can see her now. She is light, joy and beauty. And did I mention, about 10 feet tall!!! I forget the truth of who I am most of the time, so remembering as a practice is a good thing, one moment at a time. She is definitely worth remembering.

*I have been in action. Fear is a good motivator. I would prefer a different motivation. The time is now to choose that I be motivated by desire and passion, rather than by fear. This is my next level of development. To this end I am really connecting to my deepest desire of expression. Hard to find this when fear has been the constant.
I have crafted 3 keynotes speeches, and landed 3 confirmed speeches to date, but likely 5 or more. I have been going to networking functions and meeting really great people. As an introvert, it is easy for me to stay IN. But I need to get out. Intuitively I know that I need to get out a whole lot more….this is the threshold between what we know is right, and our own smallness. In our internet age it is very easy to hide behind the web/social media etc.
My work is out/it is live/it is speaking and working with groups of people. I have resisted this for a long time.
I am, slowly but surely, stepping into my purpose and path, which is to restore integrity to humanity. I forget just how important this is.
I am working on a community project around kindness and plenty.
And a few other things…massive work on the Positive Deviant web site…crafting some new products…including a series of free audio interviews with Artisans of Integrity.

I do feel that something deep has shifted. I will not allow myself to fall into the dark of fear like this again. I know how to stop it.

I feel that the world has opened to me, because I have opened to it.

I feel lucky.

Thank you so much for coming on the journey with me. I would love to hear from you of your journey.

Drop me a note. Leave a comment.

I feel lucky, oh so lucky…the words from this very memorable song play a constant mantra in my head.

As an exercise towards my own personal mastery and personal power I looked at what I want to feel on a regular basis…not what I wanted to have, or do…but feel. I recommend this exercise.

Here is my list, sitting above my desk as I write.

Deeply valued... check

Infinitely abundant in every way…. check

Free flowing ….   check

Empowered from source … check

After I completed this exercise I caught the end of an interview of someone relatively famous. She said that she wakes up every morning feeling like the luckiest person alive. Yes, I want that feeling. Exactly that feeling.

So I am cultivating the feeling of being lucky. There is a playfulness to this that I find very attractive. It has a lightness as well as a positivity. It suits my dynamic energy.

I am lucky that I have 2 legs that work, 2 arms, my heart beats, I am alive.

I am lucky that I live in Australia, with the kinds of freedoms we have.

I am so so lucky that I have an amazing incredible, beautiful daughter.

I am lucky for my friends and family, all around the world

I am lucky for having 15 mins to sit in the warm autumn sunshine while eating my lunch.

I am lucky for all the opportunity that is at my feet.

I am lucky to have you guys reading this.

I am lucky for so many things…too many to list in one day.

While I have held a daily practice of gratitude, there is something about practicing the feeling of being lucky that sits very well with my psyche.

And in the hours I am not feeling lucky, if I am alive, I can still find something to feel very lucky about…no matter how bad the circumstance.

Of course, what we feel most is what we attract… lucky works for me. I am the lucky one.

How about you? What do you most want to feel?

Today, a public holiday in my state, started with the “super” moon lighting me as I lay in bed.  Its quite lovely to be dozing/sleeping in full moon light.

Then a walk on the beach, there in time to catch the sun rising over the Pacific. One of those perfect days, hardly a cloud, warm autumn sunshine. The king tide however seemed to have purged all the garbage we humans had so recklessly thrown. I spent much of my time collecting rubbish. Every bit of plastic made my heart hurt…for the sure knowing that this was the death of some of the sea creatures, the birds, their exquisite ecosystem.

I just couldn’t walk blindly over the bits of plastic bags and countless plastic straws, knowing they would be the death sentence for some innocent creature.

After my walk I sat in the warm sunshine and reflected on life…on how our litter, our random throw away society, is harming so much. Not just physical rubbish, but our trashy thinking, our emotional and verbal toxic thoughts.

That to be vigilant of our toxic waste as individuals is such a full time job.

New job description…..What do you do? When asked at my next cocktail function. Well, I am a full time garbage collector. Forever catching my own and others garbage and transmuting it.

And my fear….the good thing about fear is that it can be quite a motivator to action. The pattern I am recognising is that when the fear is not there, I tend to waft along…with less focus. So the next level of learning is how to keep in sharp focus out of motivated passion and aligned intent…a moving towards…versus being motivated by moving away. Quite a big distinction.

Finally, when reflecting on the my life long patterns, and the patterns of my mother and her mother, I recognised that we have been carrying the DNA of ‘life is hard’. Quite a heavy little way of being.

That to break this pattern is not so much moving away from fear, but living in enchantment.  Cultivating the enchantment, the miracles, the mystery, the beauty. In all things, in how I dress, what I read, how I write.

Revised new job description….Enchanted garbage collector...I can just see me now, stepping right off the pages of Midsummer Nights Dream, with wand and faery dust, collecting all the toxic residue and turing it into light. I like it. Its whimsical, and very positive deviant. With a twist of Puck.

Are you motivated by fear, or paralyzed by it?

I need to up my own integrity, which is no surprise…if I choose integrity as my platform, then it will be where I am most challenged.

Specifically, to do what I say. Or don’t say it. To the minutia. Big stuff like making appointments on time..this is easy. But its the little agreements with myself I am making that need a new level of rigor. It lives in language, and the language is precise. It needs to be precise. When I am working with clients on their people skills as a leader, I teach a level of precision in communication that leaves no room for error, assumption, or misunderstanding. (For an example of this see this article ) There is a time and a place for this level of precision in our own personal interior comms. “I will do this. I won’t do that. I may do this. I would like to do that but I won’t.” To tell the truth about what is true. To not do so is self deception, and we are all masters at self deception in some way.

Its time for me to do some self deception house work. To up the anti on my own little games.

In this process of commitment to vows, I am also moving from a kind of ‘poor me’ disposition, which I suspect has been sneaking in to my space over the last few years, so subtly that I have not really seen it, to a place of simply being grateful every moment, even if I don’t like the moment. Now this is a practice worth practicing. Its not the denial of the emotion, or the experience, but the recognition in the moment that I can choose how I respond. Does my energy become heavy and stinky/sucky, like a black hole, (which is the direction I sense it has been heading) or do I observe the emotion/experience, and recognise that it is not true, and refer back to what is true about who I am.

Reading a piece by Caroline Myss yesterday, she quotes. Darkness is not despair or a punishment but an invitation to withdraw from thoughts, ideas, beliefs and inner patterns that are dead in me.

Finally in this last 24 hours of self reflection, I have observed that my own voice is not very strong. When we see a great performer on stage what makes them great is that you know they have left nothing of themselves behind. They took a huge risk and brought their whole selves to the performance. This is what gets us off our feet. It doesn’t even matter so much how perfect their voice is, or if they made a mistake. It’s that they gave their all. Every last ounce.

And the audience is wanting them to do this. Willing them. We want to get on our feet. We want the goosebumps.

So in closing this little epistle, this is my question. Are you bringing your whole self to your work/your art/your life?

And if not, why not?

Photo Credit: Kamakshi Sachidanandam via Compfight

Photo Credit: Josh Bartok via Compfight

Sunday. Awake and aware that the work of not allowing old thinking is taking some remembering. How easy I fall back. I need to craft that rote learned affirmation to switch my thinking into a mantra that does not allow the temptations of habits past to take hold.

During my morning pool session, a place where I regularly get time to eavesdrop on my thinking, I found myself in some really pathetic conversations….small minded, mean and so so unnecessary. I was happily swimming along, as I have done for the past 8 or so Sundays as I recover from a foot injury, when a team of girls arrived to practice water polo. All fine. But then they tell me they want my lane. Oh dear. Did my little ego arch up and go into melt down…fortunately only in my own head, although I am sure they would have picked up my energy. I did manage to pull my very small immature self into line, and recognise that the world would not end if I moved lanes, that it was OK that the pool had not advised us regulars…and all the other tragic melodramas that were playing out in my head. Righteousness, scarcity thinking, egocentric tantrum throwing pap. That was my moment of glory. Not.

I also caught myself with thoughts of the girls playing water polo. Many of them were rather large girls. I wondered if I am able to look at a human and see a human…not a fat human, or a thin human, or a x, y, z human. How quickly I see a person and put them in some category. Instantaneous. What do we see first…a human, or the size of the human, or their colour?…..and do we see this to judge, or compare, or simply as an observation with zero attachment?

It makes me really mindful that I need so much to be so focused on a purpose much greater than me, to put and end to silly thoughts like these. Much work to be done on my interiors.

Day 13 Minus Fear

Definitely feel like I am failing at this. The blues were ever present. Even when I had some good news. I felt I needed to do the ceremony again, as I did on day 1. Writing this now, in the evening, I recognise how I sabotaged this inner urge….pushed it down and just got on with things.

Before I lay down to sleep, I will renew my vows. And I am getting that it would be wise to renew them everyday.

This exercise is showing me so much of my small self. My sabotaging mechanisms. Useful. Painful. Ugly. Worthwhile.

Deep breath….begin again….

I do believe Mark Nepo’s “The Book of Awakening” landed in my lap perfectly timed.

Today’s read, which I did before arising, hit my heart with the force of beauty and truth that left me gasping. I had to re~read the opening lines multiple times, mostly because my brain/heart/mind froze with a simultaneously deep recognition and an implosion of beauty.

In the end, it is not enough to think that we know. We must live it. For only by living it can Love show it self as the greatest principle.

The way that heat allows the ice to thaw and irrigate the earth, so our capacity to embody what we know ~ our quite need to bring what lives within into accord with how we meet our days ~ this ancient act of integrity allows Love to show itself as the deepest sort of gravity.

This is how I have held integrity.  I have not had the poets words to be able to describe this with such precision and beauty.

Bucky said that Love is metaphysical gravity.

Like many people I know, I have been searching for a purpose as to why I am here. Something clean and clear I can articulate. A deep yesness. The consistent thread has been integrity.

I know as well that this time is asking me to raise from within me something that has been dormant, something my fear has kept hidden. Indeed, the fear has been a form of distraction, not allowing me to see what lies underneath. The most authentic and truthful expression of who I am. What I am most called to do.

In reading Mark Nepo and David Whyte, two contemporary poets, I am now feeling into what that is, always a constant path of refinement.

In simple terms, to restore integrity to humanity.

At all levels, and in all domains.

Integrity of our heartfelt personal expression, integrity of our relationships, integrity of our operating systems~governance, financial, economic, of design, of our expression in the world, of our considering the whole in design….

And God knows we need this. We need me and others to step up and hold self, people, governments, business, to integrity.

It is no small task.

I am not an inventor, like Bucky, or an original thinker. I am, as Bucky would often say, and average person.

But I know at a cellular level, and with the ability to use senses we have not yet named, how to recognise integrity, or lack of. I know how to guide people to their most integrous self expression. I know when a business falls from integrity, or a person, usually, one little atrocity at a time.

And I know well the yearning of people to craft their life and work as an expression of that deep feeling within into how they express their days. To follow their bliss, as Joseph Campbell would often say.

For now, I shall rest in this…

Photo Credit: Hartwig HKD via Compfight

Day 8 Minus  Fear April 25th, ANZAC day in Australia

This is one of my favourite Australian holidays. My daughter and I have for many years risen early to go to our local beach to be part of the 5.15 am dawn service, in commemoration of the landing of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli in Turkey. I find the experience of remembering all the men and women who gave their lives, their limbs, their hearst for us deeply moving.

Its hard to have fear on a day like today. Or to think about my petty worries. It goes to show how easy it is to move from self to other, if we really want to.

Day 9 Minus Fear, April 26th

I was noticing a small level of fear creep in…pushed it aside with busy~ness. The day was a blur of work on my business. Finished with a great client call that definitely opened new doors.

Day 10 Minus Fear April 27th

Oh dear…started with waking at 3.30 am…not so bad because I am up at 4.30. But I woke with foreboding. That foreboding sat with me most of the morning, through my swim session, which normally shakes the blues off.

While I lay awake I thought about my fear. What exactly am I afraid of? I wanted to go deep on this. Am I afraid of being homeless? No. Being broken? No. Of what people will think? No…I write about this stuff all the time for all the world to see.

I am afraid of not being loved by God and the Universe. I am afraid that I have been forgotten. That there is something wrong with me, that I just don’t seem to get. That I have dedicated years and years of my life to this, and still have not connected the dots, or found  the path. Am I a fool? Or blind? Oh ye of little faith. It always comes back, for me, to trust. And surrender.

The Book of Awakening arrived in the mail. I turned immediately to the entry for today’s date. April 27th.

Let there be light

Just trust yourself
then you will know how to live
Goethe

And then the story of Edison and the light bulb…and did he ever get discouraged with all his failures. No. Never…he kept going, knowing that the light would come. Literally.

Hmm. What do you think? The Universe sending a direct message? Pretty direct. Powerful, potent.

I was feeling like I couldn’t keep my vows for even a week. That I was again failing. And then I get a visit from Edison and Goethe. Not bad.

I was planning to spend some time in contemplation, but actually just got down to work. Moving where the flow took me. Before I knew it, I had completed most of the projects that had been hanging over my head for weeks, plus written 3 keynote speeches  and sent them out, called people, and wouldn’t you know it, completely shifted my energy.
By the time I sat down for my contemplation it was late in the afternoon.

On the way, spoke with a friend in Sydney on chat…he told me straight that things were changing for me in powerful ways. He is that kind of guy, plugged in always to the larger Universe. I trusted his words. Another gift.

And my daughter sent me to a link for an internet dating site…kind of interesting, my daughter…sending me this!!…posted this on Facebook and had all kinds of comments from people I haven’t spoken to in years.

Finally ended the day supporting a friend in need. Always good to do. Helping others.

Breathing again, into life. Trusting…relaxed. Feeling supported.

This, the rollercoaster of a day.

Going to bed now with the magnificent book, Crossing the Unknown Sea, by David Whyte. Now that is pleasure.