Obligation Nation

There Goes Da Judge

David Sonatore — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:31:56 +0000

I wanted to share some words that came to me from a Brainspotting inquiry that I recently underwent:

You cannot be judged by someone who has their eyes closed. And if someone is judging you, rest assured, their eyes are indeed closed.

Silence that part of you that’s obligated to recoil from the fear of being judged. It’s a debilitating practice.

Some ABC’s for the You’s and Me’s

David Sonatore — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:02:04 +0000

Nothing can help you to avoid being accountable for your own stuff like having a significant other to blame everything on. Getting them to change so it fits your plan for happiness can be the mother of all energy sucks.

Rather than take flight with the above plight, try first to: [A] “Accept” your partners action (bonus points for doing so without judgment) and [B, C] “Be Curious” about your own reactions instead. Sure enough, what they’re doing may fall well on the wrong side of awful, but the opportunity to understand you gets missed if you snap into habitual, patterned action.

“Accept” helps you take a necessary moment. “Be Curious” allows you to look inward when you’re most exposed. Adding this step before letting ‘em have it can help inform effective, meaningful and lasting change. Relationships help bring forward the parts of ourselves that still require some compassionate and enlightened futzing. Reveal, deal, heal, repeat…

The Smarter Martyr

David Sonatore — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:14:54 +0000

Have you been displaying OR exaggerating discomfort OR distress in order to obtain sympathy OR admiration? Hard to admit, I know, but if you are and can own it, take a look at one of your formulas for life:

Displaying/Exaggerating + Discomfort/Distress = Sympathy/Admiration

Don’t these words exhaust you? Try to think of sympathy and admiration as the flat tires on the road to your best life. Don’t do things for sympathy or admiration. Do things because you want to make a difference and/or because you love doing them.

The recalculated formula:

Martyr = Harder

–

The Storm Before the Calm

David Sonatore — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:14:41 +0000

When watching actors, especially on the big screen, we tend to focus on the one doing the acting as opposed to the other who’s doing the reacting. Unless it’s exaggerated, reacting doesn’t demand our focus. When it comes to dealing with those who consistently create drama in our lives, try shifting your focus to the reactor — i.e. you. Like doppler radar, you’ll see your own stuff move in over your brain with varying intensities, most of which you can choose to let blow through OR let stall to unleash a deluge.

What kind of storms are you creating for yourself in the presence of someone else’s upheaval? What things are you telling yourself and what actions might you be taking that have nothing to do with what you really want in the moment? If you seek true calm in others, it really helps to first have it in yourself.

Hocus Focus

David Sonatore — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:51:32 +0000

What happens when we get too narrowly focused on a single outcome? Perhaps the better question is, “What doesn’t?” I recently summed up one of my past single outcome concentrations with this parable:

I’m just some guy in mid-1800′s America, who just traversed the length of the country to land in Eureka, California. All I’m trying to do is dig a hole for the foundation of my new house, but all this f—in’ gold keeps getting in my way!

Adopt a wide-view when it comes to your pursuits and you won’t miss the treasure that can surface during the course of your journey. For example: you are looking at a computer screen right now, but surely you can see what is on either side of you. Not clearly, but chances are I just brought more of your awareness to that fact. If we were certain that our desires were pointing us in the precise direction we were meant to go, perhaps we could ignore the periphery. But they often don’t and it is what happens along side of our well-intended efforts that can help us true our course, especially in uncharted waters. Bon voyage…

Curiosity Chilled the Cat

David Sonatore — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:03:11 +0000

Are you one of those people in a tizzy over what it is you’re supposed to do with your life (a.k.a almost everybody)? Many talk about this eternal question in terms of “passion.” But “what’s that?” our minds ask? Like love, passion is a difficult thing for the mind to understand. To bridge this gap, I offer the much maligned concept of curiosity. You know, that nosey compulsion that’s supposedly ended in many a feline fatality. Don’t let a baseless, fear-driven fable cheat you out of an incredibly valuable tool for unearthing passion. Chill out and embrace the question, “What are you curious about?” With the opposite of curiosity being disinterest, you can see how quickly the things you spend your time doing start to gravitate under one column or the other.

Familial expectations, peer pressure and, of course, the mind-spinning Media can do a convincing job of making us think we want to take part in something that we actually don’t. For instance, the flurry of entertainment and “news” shows we’re bombarded with would suggest that being an actor/celebrity is where it’s at. But are you truly and deeply curious about Meisner technique, political punditry or perhaps being so despicable that you’re famous? If yes, go forth and prosper. If no, try being guided more by what feels good rather than what looks, sounds, or pays good.

It’s hard to feign curiosity because it bubbles from within and, if you’re honest in your assessment of it, you can harness this pure energy and ride it off into a sunset overflowing with purpose and meaning. Meow…

Who’s Your Fatty?

David Sonatore — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:09:31 +0000

Back in the early seventies, Sheldon B. Kopp wrote a book called, “If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!” You could perhaps stop reading at the book’s cover to uncover one of the most important shifts one can make to eliminate gobs of unnecessary suffering. The premise here is that if you’ve made someone, outside of yourself, more pivotal than you in your quest to realize fulfillment — well then, they should be eliminated because they are an impostor. Our Buddhahood, if you will, is within and any validation that we seek from the external world, is an illusion.

Are you defined by who you are in the eyes of others and is this because you perceive them as having something you don’t? We whither from this perspective of lack and we can find freedom in exploring who we are without our tenuous connection to outside influence or, in many cases, affluence.

So if all we seek is already within us, how can we start to bring this truth forth? Well, perhaps a good starting place would be to un-deify those whom we’ve over-bloated to buddha proportions and re-relate to them as they truly are — flawed folks struggling to find meaning just like us.

The Audacity of Nope

David Sonatore — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:20:54 +0000

Do you often say “Yes” when you’d rather say “No?” If you just replied “Yes,” well — there you go again. Wouldn’t you have rather answered “No” to this question? Easier said than done though, I know, but is it really audacity to speak this truth when it is warranted and appropriate? New Oxford defines audacity two ways:

1) the willingness to take bold risks
2) rude or disrespectful behavior

If you’re harboring the notion that it is bold, risky, rude or disrespectful to say “No,” then therein lies the misguided obligation. Ideally, no one should know what’s better for you than you and clearly stating such boundaries can be a healthy shift, especially for those who make people-pleasing an art form. Try to recall a moment when a clear “No” was brewing at your core, but by the time this “No” feeling made its way to your mouth, poof — out came a “Yes.”

Keep it simple and follow your body’s lead on this one. Practice with small and uneventful “Noes.” Pay attention and if you find that you suffer from trigger mouth with the “Yes” thing, then take a moment before you answer. Whoever it is can wait. This is your choice and an inaccurate offering can send off a cascading tide of misinformation, unmet expectations and resentment. Now who in the world has the audacity to do that?

Moola Hoop

David Sonatore — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:33:42 +0000

Person A is a single mom in her mid-thirties with school loans, working hard and forced to live with her parents. Her biggest worry: money. Person B has a small family living in a multi-million dollar home in an elite neighborhood, couple of cars, private school for the kids. His biggest worry: money. Two former clients, two divergent situations, one worry. Makes you wonder if financial “freedom” is actually attainable, or if it’s more true to say that for every monetary hoop we jump through, we just end up getting fitted for a new and, perhaps, roomier straightjacket.

Isn’t it curious that for such a quantifiable subject (penny, nickel, dime, quarter, dollar, etc.), we’ve managed to load it up so non-quantifiably with emotional baggage and fear-based irrational thoughts. Here’s the deal: Money works best when you own it, not when it owns you. Remember this while you’re busy fulfilling your obligation to compulsively compare and despair. I’m certain you’ll reveal a pattern of suffering that took root amidst a bunch of hopped-up and hollow hoop-la.

Mind Your Heart

David Sonatore — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:47:09 +0000

Here we sit in the wake of Valentine’s Day, a.k.a. the celebration of the heart. Funny how no such celebration is required for the mind. I’m guessing it’s because we seem to be celebrating that one every day in our hyper-rational world of formal education, credentials, IQ’s, SAT scores, etc. But one day is all we give the most useful navigational tool that we have for guiding us toward our right lives? Hardly seems right that a single silly 24-hour period of candy, flowers and greeting cards could adequately honor this incredibly under-understood organ, which ironically seems to be at the root of most all human triumph.

I recently had a reader who posed the question, “How do you know when what our heart tells us, lines up with what our mind says?” Well, I got to thinking, sorry, feeling that we just might have the hierarchy all wrong. Since the heart doesn’t speak in our native tongue, it doesn’t figure that it can lie to, or manipulate us like the mind can. On that alone it might become clear which is the more reliable source of counsel. Leadership expert Robin Sharma offers that “the mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master,” yet we’re obligated to flip this truth in the name of protecting ourselves from the foolishness of our hearts.

So, alignment of the two might be less important than the balance of power that we afford them through choice. If your heart aches to paint, listen and then use your mind to find the art store. If your heart aches to play the tuba, listen and use your mind to take lessons. The heart still knows what you’ve perhaps forgotten. Sure we’ve blamed it for things like gambling losses and disastrous romances, but if you look back at all the things you told yourself about these ill-fated decisions, you just might see that behind it all were stories fabricated by our minds. Follow your much vaunted brain and you’ll, at very best, end up with many many masters, i.e. everyone who’s ever filled your head with erroneous information. But follow your heart and your life, at the very least, will be your own.