The Heart's Voice

How to Be Your Own Fear-Whisperer

2011-10-06T00:56:16Z

I’ve been saying for years that fear & resistance are the hardest things to work with in yourself because they have the power to shut off your thinking brain, and once that happens you can no longer work with them effectively on your own.

Yet, at the same time, I absolutely KNOW that it IS possible for you to get to the bottom of your fears, doubts and resistance and permanently transform them – because I do it myself on a regular basis and I’ve worked with many others who can now do it too.

This is what I’ve come to call “fear-whispering”.

The biggest surprise to me, since I started this blog, has been how hard it’s been to get people to believe me when I say that this can be done permanently (and its shown me how much more learning I have yet to do around how to communicate this stuff well!)

People either think I’m making some kind of magical claim or that it’s a superpower only I possess or that it’s a quick fix and therefore it falls under the heading of “too good to be true”.

So here’s the secret:

It’s not a quick fix…it’s ALL about the right SKILLS!

There are 3 skills required to become your own fear-whisperer, and you definitely can learn them.

However, they do require practice and you won’t necessarily get to the bottom of your deepest fear on the first try – just like you wouldn’t expect to be able to play a violin the first time you pick it up.

But once you get even a little bit good at this, your results are permanent and you can calm and work through your fears anytime, anywhere – which is TOTALLY worth the effort, in my book.

Here are the 3 skills:

1. The ability to STAY – to stay with your breath, stay in the moment, stay in your body, stay with what you’re feeling. This means gradually training yourself not to run away inwardly from whatever is going on.

2. The ability to SOFTEN – this is all about compassion, kindness and letting go of the need to MAKE something happen or rush the process.

3. The ability to NOTICE – this is an inner curiosity that leads to awareness of your thoughts, feelings, sensations, needs, desires, etc. This also helps you to step back and not identify completely with whatever you’re experiencing – so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming.

That’s it!

I’ve combined these 3 skills into a step-by-step 3-10 minute process.

If you practice this even 10 times, you’ll start to see a major difference in your awareness and ability to stay present with fear and keep it from taking over your life and your actions!

Then you learn to use your compassion and curiosity to open a conversation with your fear and that’s when you start to get to the bottom of it and understand what’s it’s been trying to protect you from and why.

But the process isn’t meant to END with the conversation!

This is the biggest mistake I see people making when it comes to opening a dialogue with their fear or their scared inner child or their inner monster.

The conversation ends up being an endless negotiation in the mind that gives the fearful part WAY too much power to determine your course of action.

And when the fearful part gets to stay in ANY kind of control, it ends up demanding a certain amount of your energy all the time, to manage and deal with it and keep it from getting in the way.

The only part of you strong enough and spacious enough to fully RESOLVE a fear is your heart.

Your heart generates an electromagnetic field that’s 5000 times stronger than the field of your brain, where your fear comes from! (Thanks to Doc Childre and the HeartMath Institute for figuring that out.)

That’s why the process I use trains you to stay in your heart and identify yourself AS the spacious, larger Self that lives centered there ALL the time.

From this place, you CAN permanently resolve any fear, doubt or limitation.

Because it’s ONLY your heart that knows the real truth behind the fear. And that truth is ALWAYS beautiful and loving and will carry you into your life, never away from it.

On one level, this is SO simple.

And yet, the more you practice this, the deeper you can go and the more easily you can see through and resolve anything that’s keeping you from what you truly desire.

So this is why my latest report called:
(click the link to get it)

9 Confidence Busters & How to Vanquish Them Once & For All

can talk about permanently releasing fears, doubts and confidence-limiting beliefs.

It really IS possible.

And I’m going to be teaching the Fear-Whispering process to a group for the very first time in the Brand New Confidence 8-week program starting this Monday, October 10th, 2011.

Brand New Confidence is the first program of it’s kind to help people who’ve been hiding out or holding back from fully promoting themselves and their business through building both a great outer brand AND the inner confidence to promote fully.

Of course, I’m bringing the inner confidence part (and the fabulous Pamela Wilson is bringing the branding) and we’ll be working through and resolving all KINDS of fears, resistance, doubts, and limiting beliefs and it’s SO exciting I can hardly WAIT to get started on Monday!

Want to join us?

Get all the details, plus a $100 dollar discount ’til this Friday, Oct. 7th (2011) at 10 pm Eastern.

Click Below to Get Brand New Confidence

It really is possible and I plan to prove it to the 50 people who join us before Monday!

Its Not Easy Being Seen

2011-09-28T00:53:52Z

For many of us, the thought of putting ourselves out there in the marketplace can be as appealing as jumping out of an airplane. That was certainly what it felt like for me back when I started promoting my coaching business in 1999.

However, it turned out that knowing WHAT to do was only half the journey, because every time I tried to step out more fully, whether online or in real time, I had to walk through another inner wall about feeling really safe to be seen.

One of the things that helped me along the way was that every time I found (and applied) some good, clear advice on how to make my marketing materials look and sound better, I got a little boost of confidence to help me take action.

That’s why I’m very excited to introduce Pamela Wilson to you, and to feature this interview so you can get to know her a little better.

Pamela and I have spent the last several months creating a new program that combines confidence building with business branding and I have to say, I wish this program had been available for me when I needed it!

We decided to interview each other for our respective blogs so both our audiences can hear how our unique journeys have sown the seeds of this unusual program.

Click here to get our report, “9 Hidden Confidence Busters & How to Vanquish Them Once & For All.”

Susan’s Confidence Journey, and What to Expect on Yours

PAMELA: It’s unusual for a marketing expert and a personal development coach to band together to create a course. What made you realize this combination would offer something special?

SUSAN: What I learned from my own personal business journey is that confidence and self-promotion go hand in hand. Since childhood, one of my deepest instincts has been to hide or be invisible. So the whole process of building a business and realizing that I needed to market and promote it has been an inner call to come out of hiding — and in my work I believe that our soul always calls us down the exact pathways that will uncover our fullest, most essential self.

What I’ve seen in myself and in the many others over 14 years, is that every time there’s an increase in confidence and self-esteem, our comfort level and willingness to be seen and known goes up as well. And not just our willingness changes, but we start to experience a safety inside that tells us we won’t get the reactions that we used to fear from being so visible, or that if they do come they won’t shatter us after all. We’re OK no matter what.

PAMELA: Is the process of moving past these inner blocks painful?

SUSAN: I don’t see it as a painful process at all. I think inner work has gotten a bad rap in general, because people have gotten stuck in their emotions or haven’t had a process and structure to move them out of the past and into a chosen future.

Yes, there can be some emotion that comes up, but my process specifically trains people in how to identify with their larger “authentic self” or heart, and that’s a very spacious place. The blocked places in us feel small and painful, but our larger Self knows how to make space for every part of us and bring kindness and compassion to it and that’s what actually does the work of resolving the old blocks and limitations.

PAMELA: What kind of transformation should people expect to experience from the work they do in your part of the course?

SUSAN: The most important change in people who do this kind of work is that they gain the ability to be a best friend to every single part of themselves that’s hurt or afraid. When that happens, they cease to be afraid of their own fear and emotions and they actually have the ability to work with them constructively in any moment when they come up.

“They won’t be at the mercy of their own procrastination, self-sabotage or resistance anymore …”

That means they won’t be at the mercy of their own procrastination, self-sabotage or resistance anymore and they’ll actually have the awareness to first see it and then compassionately work through it to keep going on any path they choose, whether it’s promoting their business or skydiving.

Pamela’s Branding Obsession, and How You Can Benefit From It

SUSAN: What does going through the branding process actually do for people?

PAMELA: The branding process allows a business owner to crystalize the vision they have for their business, and communicate it in a way that it will resonate with their target market.

In some cases, a person may have a business brand already, but they know it’s not communicating their offerings as well as it could be. They’re simply not seeing the sales they’d like, or they’re attracting the wrong audience.

In other cases, they’re starting from scratch. They want to create a brand that will have a long “shelf life,” and will represent their company now and well into the future. But they don’t know where to start!

Once they’ve done the work, they feel great about promoting their business. They’re happy to get out there and spread the word, invite people to their website and pass out their business cards.

SUSAN: How does building a strong brand help a business grow?

PAMELA: Well, all the promotion that naturally happens when you’re happy with how your marketing materials work is good for business!

“Well-designed and well written materials tend to attract the right kind of customers …”

Well-designed and well written materials tend to attract the right kind of customers, too. When your business looks polished and professional, it’s seen as trustworthy, and you can usually charge more for your products and services.

SUSAN: What has made you care about branding so much?

PAMELA: I’ve been helping people brand their businesses for almost 25 years now, and I never tire of seeing the transformation that happens when good marketing materials are put into place.

Employees sit up a little straighter, you know? And owners feel great about getting the word out about their business. It’s just amazing when the message and the way it’s delivered align perfectly. It’s very powerful!

All these years, I’ve offered this service to larger organizations at a high price. But through programs like ours, I can work with people in a group format so they can benefit from this information without having to pay thousands of dollars for it.

Click to get our report, “9 Hidden Confidence Busters & How to Vanquish Them Once & For All.” You’ll find first about our Brand New Confidence course, and you’ll get first dibs on the limited number of spots available.

Many thanks to albany_tim on Flickr for the perfect photo.

When Your Resistance Isn’t Yours

2011-09-10T00:08:21Z

My definition of resistance is anything, in us or in our life, that pushes back when we try to move forward.

When it happens, it’s so easy to feel like resistance is “your fault” no matter where it’s coming from. But there’s a very subtle category of resistance that LOOKS like it coming from inside you, but it’s NOT actually yours.

It’s what I’ve come to call “ancestral resistance” or “ancestral programming”.

And it’s VERY hard to spot until you know to look for it.

A dear friend of mine called in distress a few days ago and she’s given me permission to share a bit of her story to illustrate this . (I’m often the one my friends call when the SH*T hits the fan, because I can see through it to what’s going on underneath and help them navigate a path out of it.)

When we first spoke, it looked like she was days from being evicted from her home and it seemed like her worst fear was coming true -
“It’ll all be taken away from me”.

When I heard her say that, it rang a little bell inside me, and I said “Do you think that’s your fear or does it go back farther than you?”

Suddenly, she realized it was her grandmother’s fear.

In a flash, so many things about her grandmother AND her mother made sense to her. Why they held on to things so tightly; why they were so protective; their constant vigilance even in good times, etc.

And then she saw it all in herself.

How tightly she was holding on to a run down house she knew wasn’t her right place to be.

How, every night when she went to work, she was afraid she would find out that they didn’t need her the next day.

How this fear running through her life and her mother’s family was about to become a self-fulfilling prophecy in her eviction.

That’s how “ancestral” programming works.

By influencing our thoughts, feeling, words and actions, this type of internal programming eventually causes us to repeat the very pattern that our ancestors lived out.

But how do we acquire them?

We don’t carry family fears in our DNA, do we?

No, they’re not hanging around in your genetic material – although having similar genes to your ancestors makes it easier for you to follow in the footsteps of their thoughts, emotions and actions.

You can think of ancestral resistance or programming as something we pick up almost by osmosis – meaning it’s as though it’s in the very air we breathe around the dinner table as children.

Later in life, we find ourselves saying the things our parents and grandparents said; expecting the same kinds of things they expected; reacting to situations in the same ways – EVEN WHEN WE TRY NOT TO!

That’s the real kicker here!

These programs operate unconsciously and that’s why they’re SO hard to spot…we think they’re US.

That’s what makes my friend’s realization so important.

FINALLY, she saw through this fear and knew that it wasn’t hers…in fact, it wasn’t even ABOUT her.

That’s the first BIG relief people experience, when we’re working together and we uncover an ancestral program that’s creating resistance in their life.

Oh, thank GOD, it’s not ME!

That realization immediately ends the criticism and “wondering what’s wrong with me” cycle.

Then, we took a moment to breathe together in this new understanding and the knowing that it wasn’t her truth. That allowed her to take a few steps back from the whole experience and see it in a more objective way.

I also did a little energy work with her to take the stress off the situation and get her out of her fear brain and back into her heart again.

Then she remembered the LOVE.

She remembered that she’d always wished her mother and grandmother could’ve had an easier life and could’ve had the freedom to pursue their dreams the way she is now.

Together, we remembered that we have the power to end these ancestral programs and in doing so, redeem the lives of our ancestors and their un-lived possibilities by fully living into our own.

She said could feel her grandmother and great-grandmother cheering.

She could also feel the fierce love in her own heart. A love that was willing to stand in a new truth and end the old cycle – as much for them as for herself.

I left her with some homework to do to clear the last remains of the old beliefs and the fear she’d been feeling and then we hung up.

The next day she called to tell me how it went.

Once she’d done her homework, she said that when she sat down and calculated everything, it turned out she had most of the money she needed to keep from being evicted after all!

She just couldn’t see it before, because the old family fear was so overwhelming.

That’s what happens when we get out from under old family fears and programs. We can finally live the truth of our own hearts instead of just repeating the cycle without even realizing it.

So if you’re up against a big fear or resistance that you think is yours…it might not be after all.

If you could use some help getting to the bottom of a fear you’re experiencing and you’d like to find out if it could have roots in your ancestors’ lives, just send me an email: susan AT theheartsvoice DOT com. For the month of September (2011) I’ll be happy to explore it with you by phone for 30 minutes FREE!

Can you see any places in your own life where ancestral resistance or programming has been running the show? Or is this pure hogwash? Join the discussion in the comments below.

Why Resistance Gets Worse When You“Work On It”

2011-08-19T21:48:33Z

So many things in life get better when we just do a little “work” on them…

…like the yard, the car, our taxes, the kitchen counter, the cluttered closet, etc.

So how come with resistance, its the reverse?

I got an email the other day from someone in The Heart’s Voice community telling me how their resistance seems to have gotten “worse” ever since they started trying to “work” on it.

Here’s the deal:

Most of your resistance is trying to protect you from something.

This isn’t true of ALL your resistance.

(My current research is showing me that some resistance is just your brain’s way of saying “I don’t have a neural pathway for that yet.”)

But MOST of your resistance is coming from your wise and noble defence system and it’s VERY protective of you.

And like any good defender, when something or someone tries to get past it, what does it do?

It defends harder!

In fact, this “push back” mechanism is a great way to tell if your resistance is the protective kind or not.

If your resistance gets stronger when you try to get past it, you’re up against your defence system – and likely an imprinted fear or experience.

If it doesn’t work harder or push back, you’re probably working on something new that just needs more practice or more neural pathways built for it.

So what to do about the push back?

I tell all my clients that the first step is to stop pushing.

But I’m not saying to give up or let go of your intention for change.

The only way to break this impasse – and avoid totally exhausting yourself with all the pushing – is with new insight and understanding.

Know that the push back is for a good REASON!

Even if you can’t possibly imagine there being any good reason for it.

Choose to trust that your own deeper wisdom is expressing itself through your resistance. And then seek it out, instead of fighting to control and subdue it.

Get curious, ask it questions, journal with it, dance it, go for a walk with it, talk to it (always with kindness!).

Make space for it as a valued member of your “inner team” – but at the same time, hold your intention and don’t let your defence system run the show.

You know I’ll never tell you to “just” get to the bottom of it – because I hate that kind of advice and there’s WAY more to uncovering these reasons that I could possibly share in a blog post.

But a simple shift from pushing to welcoming, from frustration to curiosity or from control to willingness can have surprising consequences.

Give us your thoughts and questions on why resistance pushes back and how you deal with it. Leave a comment below!

The Hardest Work There Is

2011-08-06T05:15:23Z

Tonight my heart is weary.

The last 2 weeks have been very full, with so many wonderful people, experiences and opportunities. I’m grateful for every single bit of it!

But suddenly, tonight, I realize that in the busi-ness of it all, I’ve veered off course.

I’ve been sped up and over-focused on the outer stuff. And that heightened pace has made it hard for me to slow down and get into my inner practices.

All day I couldn’t figure out why I was so snappy and irritable – on the edge of both anger AND tears.

Finally, tonight, it broke open.

The always-already-there glow of loving-kindness at the centre of everything, feels far away.

It’s really not.

I know that.

But my distance from my own centre is making it feel that way.

This feeling reminds me of the first poem I ever read by the 14th century Persian poet Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky.

With deep compassion, he sums up the depth of this feeling of both distance and longing in the simplest way and it always brings me to tears.

Here it is:
(read it slowly and B-R-E-A-T-H-E)

A Cushion For Your Head

Just sit there right now
Don’t do a thing
Just rest.

For your separation from God,
From Love,

Is the hardest work
In this
World.

Let me bring you trays of food
And something
That you like to
Drink.

You can use my soft words
As a cushion
For your
Head.

Hafiz reminds me how hard it is on our hearts and souls to feel this separateness that seems so natural in our modern world.

And his heartfelt desire to comfort us reminds me of how much we each need our own compassion, patience and understanding when it starts to weigh on us.

Tomorrow, I’m going up to my family’s cottage in New Brunswick for at least a week.

I had convinced myself to keep the holiday short and that I could justify it by taking things with me to sneak away and work on.

But tonight, my heart is saying No.

It says this is the time to drink from a deeper well.

And instead of work of do, I think I’ll take Hafiz instead.

What’s your antidote when your heart is weary?

I’d love to hear it in the comments.
(I might not be here to reply until August 15th or so, but I can’t wait to hear your ideas when I get back!)

Breaking Out of the Stuck Zone – Free Teleclass July 26th

2011-07-26T15:59:55Z

In 2004, I came across a book that changed my life .

Looking back now, I like to say that the book “outed me” in a way I’d never experienced before. While I was reading it I kept having the same thought, over and over, “How does he KNOW this about me?!”

Click the image to grab it from Amazon

The book, Your Own Worst Enemy – Breaking the Habit of Adult Under-Achievement, written by Dr. Ken Christian, thoroughly explores all the ways that we habitually limit ourselves and gradually create lives of settling for just a little, or sometimes a LOT less than we’re capable of. (And he delves fully into the way our school systems helps create this, too.)

Ken coined the term SLHPP’s which stands for “Self-limiting High Potential Persons”, as his work and research showed him that its the brightest among us who tend to do the most self-limiting.

This is where my inner cringing began.

He then goes on to describe 12 very distinct self-limiting styles such as “stop-shorts”, “floater-coasters”, “self-doubters”, “rebels”, “checkmates”, “extreme non-risk-takers” and “extreme risk-takers”.

When I saw my exact self-limiting style described EXACTLY in his pages, I knew that my days of hiding were over. (I was a very clear “stop-short” with low-risking tendencies.)

At the time, I was already engaged in very deep training with my own teachers in growing my awareness and my ability to work with any pattern or “program” I encountered in myself. So I brought these same skills I’d learned to the patterns Ken was showing me in the book.

In hindsight, this was the beginning of my work with, and deep study of resistance.

By 2009, I had developed an effective process including a map of resistance and the biological mechanisms behind it, and distilled that down into a distinct series of steps that could be facilitated and taught to others.

Somewhere along the way, I think I said to myself “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could tell all this to Ken Christian?”

Well my full circle moment has arrived!

In a moment of complete serendipity, a good friend and former coaching client of Ken’s contacted him in early March of this year to point him to my website, where his book was being proudly promoted in my sidebar.

And, because of who Ken is, after he’d checked out the whole site, he decided to just pick up the phone and call the contact number he found and say “Hi, thanks for putting my book on your website”.

We talked for an hour and a half!

Somewhere in the middle of that first call, we both had the thought “We should present something together one day.”

And here it is:

On Tuesday, July 26th, at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern, Ken will be hosting me on a special teleclass for his MaxPotential community called “Breaking Out of the Stuck Zone”.

We have a LOT to cover on this call, and we’ll be discussing:

How the brain creates resistance
Why you can never “think” your way out of the Stuck Zone
What the latest research on brain plasticity can tell us
about how to get the brain un-stuck
How you can end the battle with your resistance
How to eliminate the guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy
that go with being stuck
Four words that can help you break any self-limiting pattern
Why breaking your old habits requires space not time
The missing ingredient in any action strategy
The 5 steps that I use to resolve the fears underneath resistance

And I’m sure we’ll get into a bunch more stuff that I can’t even predict right now. That’s just how our discussions tend to go!

Plus, I’ll be sharing some research I’ve uncovered where a California doctor has developed the very same steps I’ve been using on resistance and is using them to treat OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) VERY successfully.

I’ll be sharing why it works and the crucial 5th step that they’re missing.

Even if you can’t be on the call with us live, register at the link below so you can get this recording:

Breaking Out of the Stuck Zone Teleclass

(If you’re reading this post in your email, you might have to go to the website to get a clickable link.)

I truly hope you can join us and …to the friend of Ken’s who had the thought to send him here…I am eternally grateful!!

JUST Eliminate Fear… yeah, right!

2011-07-19T00:32:06Z

I saw this extremely helpful suggestion in a blog post today. It was number 1 out of 2 helpful tips for overcoming procrastination. It said:

“Eliminate Your Fear”

Oh, THANKS! Is that ALL?! I’ll get right on that… HA!

This makes me cringe, growl and laugh out loud, all at the same time.

If we could JUST eliminate fear, we’d all have done it by now.

The word JUST has become one of my biggest pet peeves (second only to “woo woo” of course). It’s often used in personal development articles that are attempting to give how-to advice on something.

But as soon as the word JUST appears, they’ve given you advice on one hand and totally minimized the steps and the amount of real work it’s going to take to implement it on the other.

Thus setting you up for failure or at the very least feeling like crap when you can’t seem to roll out of bed and JUST do it.
(No disrespect to Nike.)

When it comes to fear, none of us are supposed to be able to JUST eliminate it.

I don’t want this kind of advice and thinking out there convincing you that you are somehow not up to your goals or dreams or whatever task you’ve set yourself.

So listen to me very closely here…

You can’t JUST eliminate something that you have NO conscious control over.

Yes, you can eliminate all the black clothes in your wardrobe, or all the red meat purchases from your weekly shopping trips.

You have control of those and you have conscious choice.

But when it comes to fear you have neither of these things (at least not without training.)

Your brain’s fear response is a miracle of evolutionary brilliance. And it operates by shutting OFF your ability to think and choose.

You can no more eliminate fear than you can eliminate breathing. They’re both controlled by the same part of your brain.

So does this mean you’re doomed to live inside your fears forever?

Definitely NOT.

Lucky for us, we have the ability to bring things that used to be UN-conscious into our conscious control.

Anyone who’s been potty trained can do it.
(And truly, this was NO small feat for any one of us!)

So when fear comes up, here’s what you CAN do:

You CAN learn to become aware of the signs that it’s been triggered.

You CAN learn to maintain your ability to think and make clear choices when fear is present.

You CAN learn how to find the core imprint or memory at the root of your fear through spacious compassion.

You CAN learn how to resolve your fears by bringing their wisdom into the light of your awareness.

But I’m not going to tell you to JUST do any of these things.

You might get to the first two today with no problem.

But the second two will take lots of practice and time, not to mention skills, steps, knowledge and guidance.

Something the “JUST do it” articles are often pretty short on.

And knowing all that in advance is a GOOD thing.

That knowledge sets you up for success and for the long haul. It tells you to muster your desire and your willingness for something that will be eminently worth it in the end.

It doesn’t minimize the work OR the benefits of being able to achieve these things.

So next time someone’s blog or website tells you to JUST get over your fear, take that with a BIG grain of salt or, better yet… leave a comment and ask them to explain HOW.

I’d love to hear your thought on this. How do you take this kind of advice? And how does it make you feel? Let us know in the comments below.

And if it would totally jazz you to bring your fears under conscious control with compassion and awareness, shoot me an email at :
susan AT theheartsvoice DOT com
I’m currently thinking about how and when I’ll be teaching this and I’d love to hear of your interest!

How to Take a Holiday From Striving

2011-07-08T17:26:50Z

Many North Americans would say that striving is a good and noble thing.

But even though it might be taking you places, striving is actually a never-ending cycle that keeps you from ever feeling good when you get there.

If callings are the ”have to’s” of the soul, then strivings are the “have to’s” of the ego.

Striving mostly comes from a feeling of “not OK unless_______”, “not OK until______” or “not OK without _______”.

And most of these “not OK” messages are the same ones that gave rise to your emotional needs and all the striving and strategies that go with getting those met.

The funny thing is… although this works for your ego, this is a source of motivation that your deeper self tends to resist.

Your heart and soul know that the “not OK” message is a lie.

You’ve always been OK. You’re completely OK right now, just as you are in this moment. And you always will be OK, even if you never do another thing in your life. Truly!

So any internal message that flies in the face of this knowing, however motivating it might seem, can leave you feeling resentful and resistant.

And even if you buy the lie and get motivated and accomplish something, it still leaves you with a “not OK” hole that needs filling. And so, the cycle continues….

Now you may be thinking:

“But if I stop striving, I’ll never get anything DONE!”

To your ego, that always feels like the truth. But a while ago, I pulled down the veil around that “truth” and looked behind it and found something startling.

I did my first experiment with non-striving in the summer of ’99.

A big part of me was convinced that if I just stopped altogether, I would lay around on the couch all day and never start anything again.

But in just a few days I noticed something that changed my mind for good:

Without putting any pressure on myself at all, I found myself naturally wanting to move forward in a more engaged and authentic way than before.

Instead of languishing on the couch as my ego had predicted, stopping had actually created just enough space for the true desires of my heart to come to the surface.

Your true motivation is often hiding just underneath your striving.

And when I say “true” motivation, I mean the kind that isn’t based on the lie of “not OK”.

True motivation comes from a place in you that always, already knows you’re OK and yet still sees a greater possibility for you, your life and your world.

We could call this heart’s desire, longing, calling or purpose.

Whatever we call it, it’s the most long-burning, sustainable fuel you have and its well worth making space for it to surface.

When you stop striving all the time, you open a space for joy to come in.

Let’s face it, striving all the time can take the joy out of anything, even your truest desires and the things you used to enjoy.

It tends to be tinged with urgency and panic, because your ego really believes you won’t be OK if you don’t get there.

And you can be doing the very things your true desires are calling you to and yet miss out on all the joy in them because they’ve been buried under an urgent layer of striving.

Here are a few clues that your striving may have taken over:

that “hampster wheel” feeling like you can never get off
growing resentment that you “have to” do anything at all
daydreams or fantasies of escape – whatever your particular version of “run away and join the circus” is
emptiness or lack of satisfaction when you complete something
difficulty winding down at night or on holidays
a constant feeling of internal pressure
a sense that you’ve forgotten WHY you’re doing the things you do

When you start to see this pattern for what it is, you’ll start to realize that its completely OPTIONAL!

Then you can begin to challenge your ego’s list of “have to’s” so that your heart’s “want to’s” have some room to move again.

Summer is a perfect time to take a holiday from your striving!

Things are moving at a slower pace anyway. Many people are away and the rest are pretty forgiving if you let your email, or something else, slide for a few days.

Here are a few ways to experiment with non-striving this summer:

Make a list of your “have to’s”. Question each one and what your underlying motivation for it is. Then see if you can let it go for a while, delegate it, outsource it or at least give yourself a break from it.
Give yourself anywhere from an hour to a day of non-striving and keep reminding yourself that you’re completely OK in this moment right now. Allow and notice any discomfort that arises and just breathe with it and reassure it that its OK.
Choose a period of time, like a few hours or days – maybe the holiday you already have scheduled – and do ONLY what you really WANT to do. This will call you to start asking yourself what you REALLY want, and that’s a wonderful habit to get into. You might even surprise yourself with your answers! (If nothing comes at first, just keep asking over several days and weeks and answers will come.)

So even if you don’t get to have a month off this summer, you can still create the same kind of peace and relaxation by just letting some of your striving fall away.

What’s your experience been with striving? How does taking a holiday from it sound to you? Hard? Easy? Let us know in the comments.

Happy Holidays!

How Social Media Drags You Into Your High School Brain – and What You Can Do About It

2011-06-22T04:16:39Z

So there you are, zipping along one day, moving purposefully in your world, sharing from your heart, having a lovely time connecting with people on your social platform of choice when BAM…it hits you!

Suddenly, something you’ve read or seen triggers you into a part of yourself that’s feeling hurt, betrayed, ignored, angry, spiteful, sad, overlooked, misunderstood, unappreciated or a host of other things (sometimes all at once!)

Suddenly, its hard to interact with any kind of intention or maturity. And if you’re triggered deeply enough…well, let’s just say your actions in those moments won’t be up for any Nobel Peace Prizes.

So what gives?

It feels a lot like Grade 7 doesn’t it?

But why?

I’ve heard social media compared to high school and middle school many times now, but today, in Part 3 of the Emotional Needs 101 Series, I’m going to explain exactly WHY social media tends to drag you into your Grade 7 personality and what to do when it happens.

Once you understand the underlying dynamics, you can actually USE social media as a tool for self-awareness and healing, allowing you to resolve your old patterns so you can do your best work in the world.

(If you haven’t yet, take a quick look at the first post in the series, so you’ll have an overview of what emotional needs are and where they come from.)

Its About More Than Popularity

Most of the comparisons I see between social media and high school assume that they’re similar because both places are about popularity.

On the surface, that seems true. But popularity, in both cases, is actually an indicator of something much more subtle.

Its all about “position in the pack”.

Your High School Brain is Your Mammal Brain

Each level of our human brain evolved over millions of years to look after specific functions. The middle part of the brain, shown in yellow, is the part that evolved in our ancient mammal ancestors.

Among other things, it looks after your social identity, your likes and dislikes, compassion, empathy, emotional connections and…you guessed it… your status and rank within a group.

In High School Your Pack is Everything!

When you leave your immediate family and head off to grade school, you join your first “pack”. You’ll learn a LOT about the rules of social interactions there, but your family is still at the centre of life.

However, in middle school and high school , you’re beginning to define your identity in the world outside of your family. So the choices and interactions that determine your place in THAT pack will begin to shape the story of who you are, how you’re seen and who you might become.

Your Emotional Needs Determine Your Position in the Pack

The one thing that’s already in place when you leave home and head out to school is your unique set of emotional needs. (Remember, these are like “food groups” for your ego: approval, belonging, safety, control, importance, recognition, power, etc.)

In your family, your mammal brain has already helped you to carve out a role that gets your needs met.

Maybe you’re the quiet one, or the peacemaker and that makes sure you always get the approval you need; maybe you’re the jokester or the one who’s always in trouble and that gets you all the attention you need.

But with every new pack you will EVER join – from workplaces to online forums – you’ll need to figure out your position all over again. And this includes social media.

On Social Media, Your Mammal Brain is Obsessively Trying to Determine & Control Your Status in the Group

Just like in school, your brain tends to read every action, word and behaviour from others, trying to figure out what it means about your position and how you’re being perceived.

When your emotional needs are pretty topped up, you might not spend much time even thinking about it.

But when you’re feeling a little vulnerable or unsure – your mammal brain and your slightly empty ego will get together and soon you’re obsessing over your Twitter Klout or how many Likes your last Facebook update got.

Then, Up Come the Old Stories…

This is where you get triggered into a sudden emotional reaction out of nowhere.

Many of the negative, wounding or painful experiences you had in school, were imprinted into your mammal brain. And the ones that were repeated created a story about you.

Now that you’re older, you might think that you’ve completely outgrown these old stories but…

…often they’re still quietly running in the background, creating self-fulfilling prophecies.

So when you get on social media, and you automatically access your mammal brain to process all the connections and relationships, your old stories are right there waiting for you!

It’s easiest to see them in the things you’re always wishing for or hoping to avoid.

You might be always hoping for a flattering comment from a peer and hoping to avoid the experiences of “she dissed me” or “no-one cares”.

For me, I’m always hyper-aware of any signal that might mean”I’m rejected” and I’m always hoping for experiences that mean “I’m included”.

What’s so interesting is that, when I think I’m reading signals that mean I’m not included, I tend to retreat – making it even more likely that I won’t connect and be included next time.

So we interpret our triggers according to our old story and that tends to make us do things that make it even more true – that’s how it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Often, we can’t even see that it’s our own reactions that are keeping us from the very things we long for.

Can Social Media Really Be a Healing Tool?

Absolutely!

These old stories are not the easiest things to track down in coaching or inner change work.

So anything that naturally brings them to the surface is a powerful gift.

You can treat each one as a welcome messenger – a trail of bread-crumbs leading back to the places in your heart that are still calling for the healing balm of your compassion.

When I work with people one-on-one, I use a more in-depth process to get to the very root of these old stories and transform them. But for now…

Here’s a short practice to get you started:

1) When you notice a trigger, a reaction or an emotion arising, step back from whatever media platform you’re using and just breathe for a minute.

2) Use the phrase “a part of me” to name the experience you’re having. For example “A part of me is feeling ignored” or “A part of me is angry”.

3) Allow your higher self or your “grown up” self to breathe with the part of you that’s in distress and offer compassion, rather than judging it.

4) You can follow the feeling or the sensation in your body and see if any memories surface, or you can also ask yourself “Does this experience remind me of an earlier experience?” and see what comes up.

5) If an earlier memory comes up, keep breathing with that memory and offer compassion to the younger you that experienced it and fully feel the original emotion of if you can stay with it. If distraction comes up, that’s OK – just breathe and come back to it.

6) Look at the event with your grown-up eyes and help your younger self to see it more clearly and correct the old story that was never really true about you in the first place.

If the emotion isn’t that strong, you might be able to just name it and go straight to step 6, reinterpreting and healing the old story.

This Turns Social Media Into a Powerful Tool for Personal Evolution

By working with your triggers in this way, you’ll gradually release more and more of your old stories and outdated identities.

And you may suddenly find yourself showing up and connecting with others in a whole new way!

What’s been your experience with social media triggers and that “grade 7″ feeling? And do you think social media can be a vehicle for healing? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Why I’ll Never Say “Woo-woo” Again!

2011-05-17T22:16:18Z

Note: We interrupt the Emotional Needs 101 Series today for this special rant from our sponsor. And Life-Shifter Bridget Pilloud is offering a counterpoint rant called “Let’s Take Back Woo-Woo” on her blog. We hope you’ll read both and join the discussion in the comments!

I’ve hated the term “woo-woo” for a long time, however I’ve lived with it and even used it myself once in a while.

But…NO MORE!

It’s a term I’ve been hearing a lot lately and it’s often used interchangeably with the word “spiritual”.

It’s always rubbed me the wrong way and when I heard it twice in 2 days, from two highly knowledgeable people whose work I respect and admire, well…I snapped.

When I looked it up in an online dictionary, here’s what I found:

woo-woo ['wu:,wu:]: -adjective

derogatory, slang based on or involving irrational superstition

No WONDER I hate it being used to refer to anything truly spiritual.

Well today, I’m making a vow never to use the term “woo-woo” again.

And here’s why:

1. It implies a level of flakiness, superstitious nonsense or un-grounded, pop-culture novelty.

Yes, there have been a lot of highly adventurous and less than grounded spiritual paths and teachers out there over the past 5 decades.

And yes, to the untrained senses, things like energy work and crystals might seem to fall naturally into that category. While the world’s major religions would not.

But flaky and un-grounded aren’t about WHAT is being presented – they’re about HOW they’re being presented and the intention behind them.

My definition of woo-woo is what I might call “shortcut” spirituality.

Things that:

Are fast, easy and/or simple
Let your ego stay in control of everything
Don’t challenge your habitual patterns
Promise magical results

So by that standard, going to church a few times a year, somewhere that never challenges you to look at yourself or your life, and telling you that you’re OK as long as you do that would be woo-woo.

On the other hand, with a clear and heartfelt intention, mindful awareness, a desire to look at ourselves and a willingness to bring effort and support to the process, anything from a crystal healing session to a swim with the dolphins could be a truly spiritual and transformative experience.

Woo-woo isn’t a category. It’s an intention, or lack thereof.

2. The term woo-woo completely trivializes true spirituality when it’s used to refer to it.

Anything truly spiritual, for me, implies connecting us more deeply to Spirit, Source, God, All That Is, The Beloved, Wakan Tanka, Allah, Great Sacred Mystery or whatever you choose to call it.

Its pure power + pure love.

And its profoundly transformative in even the tiniest doses.

A month ago, during my contemplative practice, something fell away inside – a wall or a defense – and suddenly there was a vibrant energy all around and through me – a loving energy that I had no need to ever defend myself from and I knew it.

It lasted about a minute.

And, yet, I was wired for next three days with a joy and aliveness that nothing could dim.

That’s Spirit. That’s power. And its anything BUT flaky.

Its also very scary for the ego and I think sometimes what people really mean when they use the term “woo-woo” in place of “spiritual” is “I’m a little scared of this really deep stuff so I’m not going to bother checking it out before I write it off”.

3. It’s confusing. I never know whether it’s being used to refer to “real” spirituality or the “pop culture” flaky stuff.

I can sum this up with one of my favourite tweets ever! (It came from Bridget, @intuitivebridge, last week and it’s part of the dialogue that launched this post).

“Most woo is true. It’s only the false woo that’s poo.”

The problem is that some of us who steep ourselves in the fullness of deep spiritual traditions, practices and lineages use the term woo-woo to refer to the flaky stuff.

But then, some people who are against or uncomfortable with spirituality often lump it all together as “woo”. I just don’t always know who’s speaking.

But here’s the biggest reason why I’m not using the term “woo-woo” anymore:

It feels like an apology.

Its being used by many of us (me included) as a way of apologizing for making people uncomfortable with anything spiritual or out of their comfort zone.

I know…I’ve done it myself. I’ve said things in my classes like “I know this might be a bit woo-woo for some of you, but…”

And this apology symbolizes a culture that’s been telling me since I started, back in 1990, that I shouldn’t be too “out there” or challenge anyone too much with all this “woo-woo” stuff.

Maybe the world wasn’t ready back then.

But I bought into this need to apologize and that’s kept me marginalized, fighting all this time for validation, bending over backwards to appear “grounded” and make sure I didn’t get written off as “just woo-woo”.

It’s kept me pulling my punches, not saying all of what I know to be true.

And because of that, it’s kept me from my right people – You! – the choir I’ve been preaching to all along – the ones I’ll never have to convince.

And there are SO many more of us than there were in 1990!

Back then, spirituality was spoken of in the same hushed whispers as “therapy”.

But we’ve come a long way since then, baby! And I guess it’s me that needs to shed this old idea of being on the fringes.

So today I fling off the “woo-woo” label and I choose to stand my deeply spiritual ground.

After all, we’ve had 20 years of Oprah, Rumi, Deepak Chopra and the Dalai Lama.

This is mainstream shit!

I’m done apologizing.

We’re over it…we’re ready…and it’s time!

What’s your take on “woo-woo”? Love it? Hate it?
Let us know in the comments and then go check out Bridget Pilloud’s post Let’s Take Back Woo-Woo and join the discussion over there.

(I also want to give a shout out to Jenny B for her post Is Your Higher Purpose Too Wooey, and to @AbbyKerr and @MarkHeartofBiz for being part of the juicy discussion!)