I didn’t know exactly HOW my creativity would be expressed. But by making the vision board I connected with images and words that captured how I knew it would FEEL to be in that place of expression.

I let go of the HOW, because I didn’t – and couldn’t – know at the time what the exact steps would be.

I breathed deeply into the feelings of my own creativity, and allowed images to attract me without needing an explanation or a meaning or a concept. They were just images that I loved, for no “reason” at all.

Here is the vision board I made:

I have it as the wallpaper image on my laptop, so every time I open my computer, the images enter my consciousness. Most days, I don’t sit and deliberately stare at every image on my screen, but I know they are there.

I haven’t thought about that vision board in many months. I have gone about the business of living, of staying in my Core of Peace, of letting some things go, and picking up other things, of planting seeds and watching them grow, all the while noticing that I cannot force growth to happen any faster than it already is.

Last night I looked at it again.

It was with a sense of amazement that I noticed how many of the images had actually come into my reality during 2011. In other words, my visions had come true!

While I was holding the intention to express more of my creativity in 2011, I lived by the mantra, “First Feel Free.” The actions that resulted from that feeling included walking away from a commercial lease, and six months after that, downsizing my belongings by about eighty percent and moving out of my two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment, and into my boyfriend’s two-bedroom, one-bathroom house, with a kitty and a big backyard.

We started a vegetable garden.

We climbed to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite, after months of training with progressively longer hikes every weekend.

I fell in love with the outdoors, and discovered a new interest (er, obsession) in backpacking.

I also fell in love with spoken word, and began accompanying poets with live violin improvisation during their readings.

I accompanied a dear friend on violin while she sang her heart out in a burlesque show, observing the self-empowerment potential for women to love (and even flaunt) their own bodies exactly as they are.

Our band, Chinese Melodrama, stumbled into a new niche combining our love of supporting local businesses and the taste of wine, by providing music at local winery and wine bar events.

I got so busy living that my writing and videoblogging could no longer keep pace with the rate at which I was accumulating experiences. I let go of my need to report on every single learning and observation I had about the world, and began to just fully soak in the experience.

Meanwhile, another dream came true, with the opening of a brand new yoga and healing arts studio just a few blocks away from my new home. It was also another example of letting go of my grief over “not having a yoga studio anymore” and allowing the magic of life to arrive at my doorstep. I now find myself on the roster of musicians for the Sunday evening yoga and healing sound classes (starting in September, I’ll be playing the second Sunday of every month), and working with the studio to coordinate events with my community of healing artists, musicians, and poets.

Looking back at my vision board, I can count the images that have arrived in my reality since that day last year. I have found myself in the woods, on the top of mountains, at the rocky shores of the ocean, standing in awe of a sunset, opening my arms to the expansiveness of the sky, praising the stillness of the forest, celebrating my own beauty, and playfulness, and togetherness with a companion.

All of this, once just a vision, is now my reality. All of this is who I am and how I feel when I express my creativity, letting go of the HOW and opening to the expansive mysteries of the earth and life.

The old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for.”

I say, “Be bold about what you wish for.”

And brace yourself. Because you just may get it.

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Is your creativity dead?

I honestly believe that few of us – regardless of whether we work as “creatives” or not – intentionally set out to kill our own creativity.

We may just gently turn our backs on it, dismissing it as something reserved for children, or as something only “irresponsible” adults indulge in, or as a waste of time that could never serve a purpose in society (ie, getting paid money for it), or as something only “talented people” get to do.

I’m here to say that none of those is absolutely true.

Creativity is not limited to art…

So, let’s say you’re longing for a more creative life. That could mean anything from having more freedom and flexibility in your current job, to finding a way to support yourself while expressing your own creativity.

I don’t define creativity as being limited to “artistic” activities like painting, dancing, singing, or sculpting pottery. I define creativity as our innate human ability to connect with the unseen. By this definition, I see every human being as creative, by virtue of our brain’s ability to spontaneously form images that are only seen in our mind’s eye.

How you choose to use your creativity is a different story.

And this is where many of us have killed our own creativity, or least left it for dead.

How Creativity Dies

Let’s say you don’t believe that you ever killed your creativity. But somehow, it just died.

Why would it be useful to spend any time thinking about how it died? Shouldn’t you just move on, get over it, and start creating?

I could have written an article on how to practice creativity in your life right now. I actually did that, and maybe it spoke to some of you.

But what I’ve found with more time talking to adults in life transitions is that in order to recognize how we want to change, we need to talk about what gets in the way of that change. Focusing on the big vision is important, and looking directly at the obstacles in our own minds is important. Only when we see what’s standing in our way can we shift our attention toward a clear path through.

The Voices That Kill Creativity

In my own journey, I’ve discovered that there are at least three characters in my mind who show up whenever I am step into my creative self.

I’ve named them, because it helps me form a humorous mental image of these characters and – importantly – recognize them as “not me”

Voice #1: “The Slavedriver”

I picture a relentless tyrant, holding a whip and demanding every ounce of energy and focus on the tasks he has deemed urgent and important. He shouts: “Work harder! You need to be making more money! How will you pay the bills if you don’t work more? You’re nobody if you’re not working hard all the time!”

Voice #2:  “The Critics”

I picture the guys in the balcony from The Muppet Show, Statler and Waldorf. “Hohohoho!”, they sneer, reveling in their elevated status, far removed from the performances they are critiquing down on the stage. “THAT’ll never fly. No one will ever take THAT seriously. THAT’ll never be worth anything. What a waste of time! You’ll never make it!”

Voice #3:  “The Teacher’s Pet”

I picture the perfect student, eagerly listening to the teacher’s every word and raising her hand at every opportunity to give the right answer. She says, “I need to ask for permission or receive approval before I act on anything. I need to know it’s OK to do before I do it. I need to know that everyone will like me if I say what I want to say. I need to know that I have the right answer before I raise my hand, step forward, or speak up.”

For me, the dance goes something like this:

When I open my eyes in the morning, The Slavedriver makes a long To Do list, ensuring that the number of items on the list is not humanly possible to complete in one day. That ensures I’ll always end the day a little dissatisfied…and keeps the Slavedriver employed.

I manage to quiet the Slavedriver down long enough to create space for my mind, body, and breath to connect, and to hear the silence of a clear mind. I perform a morning ritual reminding me of space in my mind, body, and breath. From this silence, my creativity starts to speak through me. I hear words, I see images, I envision metaphors for how I can relate differently to a particular challenge, or I notice how tightly I am gripping and attaching to certain thoughts. I receive guidance that feels calming, freeing, and truthful.

I hold that guidance long enough to put the ideas on paper. That means I’ve successfully ignored the Slavedriver’s unrelenting wrath for another few minutes.

Now it’s time for the Critics. As I step back to admire and assess my work, I hear them immediately chime in with, “HA! Like THAT’ll fly! Good luck with THAT…not! Hohohoho!”. Their sheer delight at mocking my tender creative attempts is enough to stop me in my tracks, or at least send me running toward the nearest distraction (in my case, opening my internet browser and checking e-mail, scanning Facebook, or looking at the pageview statistics on my blog).

Once I’ve unfrozen myself from the stupor of clicking endlessly back and forth among the five or six open tabs in my browser, I wake up to the fact that the Critics have been running the show for me. It’s time to put something out there already.

Enter The Teacher’s Pet. She’s such a nice girl, so polite and well-behaved, so eager to be called on when she has the right answer that no one else does. She is SO afraid of putting a creative piece out in public when she doesn’t KNOW whether she got it “right” or not. She is terrified of losing her status as Teacher’s Pet, perfect student, A-plus girl. She grabs a hold of my shoulder, clinging with tiny fingers, begging me to wait until I know more.

So there I am, with my creativity gasping for breath, stuck between the ongoing cries for productivity from the Slavedriver, the sneering Critics’ seeds of shame, and finally the doubts and fears of the Teacher’s Pet.

How To Resuscitate Your Creativity

If you’ve never faced a problem with your creativity, then please stop reading. Go back to your prolific output of one-of-a-kind masterpieces in the making, and don’t change a thing.

But if you’re anything like me, and experience periods of creative “flatlining”, read on. You might be thinking that with all this chatter in my head, it’s a miracle that I even made it this far in writing this blog post.

You’re right. It is a miracle. And here’s a process that really works to bring my creativity back to life, just when it seems to be slipping away.

1. Acknowledge the characters in your head. What are the voices killing your creativity? Hear what they have to say. Ignoring them doesn’t work. Pretending not to hear them doesn’t work. They want to be heard. Sometimes that’s all they need before they begin to quiet down. Really listen, and try writing down or saying out loud what you hear.
2. Name them. This helps you recognize them as “not you”, and to see when they are running your show.
3. Form a relationship with each character. Now that you’ve stepped back and noticed that these characters are not who you are, talk to them from the place inside your heart that knows your greatest truth and creative power. Treat them with the kindness and gentleness you want for yourself, not the criticism and judgment they appear to hold against you. For me, this involves saying to the Slavedriver, “Thank you for your concern. You’re right, I need to make money, but there are many different ways to make money with the gifts I have to offer. I don’t have to struggle. I notice all the ways in which money arrives effortlessly.” When the Critics chime in, I notice that they’re not on the stage with me, and they’re also not the whole audience. They only occupy two seats in a huge auditorium that is my potential audience. Let them laugh and sneer, because there are (or will be) plenty of other seats in the house for supporters and fans. To my beloved Teacher’s Pet, I offer reassurance that life is not a school classroom, and I don’t need to know before I raise my hand. I thank her for all the times her niceness served me, and stand in the trust of my own power.
4. Create space for silence and solitude each day. Finally, the best antidote to quiet and calm all of these characters is silence and solitude. I find and create space for this each day, whether through meditation, yoga, singing, walking in nature, writing, gardening, or reading inspirational wisdom. As I soak myself in the open space of silence, and feel my body in the freedom of solitude, I gradually learn to trust my own creative power, and the characters in my head become more cartoon-like and less real. I can observe them and laugh, and know that they have only the power that I grant them in my mind.

When I practice these four steps, with patience and gentle persistence, I always find an opening for my creativity to flow. You may notice that I haven’t done anything to “eradicate” the voices. I haven’t killed the characters. I also don’t wait for them to go away. I treat them with creative energy, and that’s what I receive in return.

Try this with your own creativity. But only if you’re prepared to be surprised.

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So, for those of you who still haven’t read the whole book, and may even find yourself getting sick and tired of all the “Tiger Mom” and “Tiger Cub” stuff being thrown around the web, here’s something that might ease your suffering. Amy Chua wrote a column in USA TODAY entitled, “Here’s how to reshape U.S. education.”

First of all, it’s short and very readable in a few minutes, honoring our short American attention spans, a la USA Today.

Second of all, Amy “follows the rules” and wears her academic hat here, citing historical geopolitical examples, statistics, and all those other techniques that make our rational brains feel taken care of. She sounds smart, succinct, and very put-together. To draw a wardrobe analogy, she would be wearing a navy blue suit and high heels in this article, while in Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother we saw her with no makeup, maybe some running shoes, and her “fat jeans”. In other words, she wasn’t so pretty and polished.

Here, she only briefly hints at her own vulnerability, her own flawed human condition, by stating that she “learned her lesson the hard way” when her younger daughter (NB: the daughter who does not yet have a blog, and has not yet gotten into Harvard…she’s only a freshman in high school) rebelled. She also hints at the vulnerabilities of her attackers – you know, the parenting bloggers and other self-righteous jumpers-on-the-bandwagon who feel the need to polarize every story into a right-versus-wrong debate – by saying this about parenting in particular, and why it’s such a hot-button issue:

“We all desperately want to get it right and never know for sure whether we are. Perhaps it’s because the stakes are so high, and it’s terrifying to admit a mistake.”

Ultimately, in the final paragraphs, she boils down her point of view into a very tidy philosophical statement of “East Meets West”, imagining an ideal borrowing from the “best of both worlds” – the structure and discipline required in early childhood to establish a foundation of learning, and a gradual opening in the later teenage years to allow ample exploration of individuality and creative self-expression:

The great virtue of America’s system is that our kids learn to be leaders, to question authority, to think creatively. But there’s one critical skill where our kids lag behind: learning how to learn.

East meets West

If in their early years we teach our children a strong work ethic, perseverance and the value of delayed gratification, they will be much better positioned to be self-motivated and self-reliant when they become young adults. This is a way to combine East and West: more structure when our children are little (and will still listen to us), followed by increasing self-direction in their teenage years.

When I read these words, they sound familiar. I agree with them.

They were the ingredients I intended to bring into fruition when I started a violin school for toddlers in Silicon Valley back in 2004. With starry eyes and the willingness to put everything on the line (including a partner-level job in venture capital) for the creation of this dream, I set out to provide the ultimate combination of Eastern and Western philosophies. This was to be “more than violin lessons”. It was to be “lifelong learning”, using the vehicle of violin to teach discipline, teamwork, leadership, collaboration, listening, sensitivity, confidence, and mastery. Everything I could think of could be taught through the journey of learning to play violin and performing around the world.

I actually used the term “learning how to learn” in my parent seminars and recruiting presentations.

And I did attempt to teach people – parents mostly – how to practice. I designed “practice charts”, created videos, held evening seminars complete with PowerPoint presentations, hosted summer camps with guest teachers, invited high school seniors as “examples of success” other than myself, traveled with entire families (our peak was 76 travelers and two full-size motorcoaches) from California to Chicago each year to perform at Orchestra Hall.

By trying to put Amy Chua’s eloquent words into real-life practice with real-life people, I realized that no one person, no one system, can “make” anyone learn. People learn exactly what they learn, when they learn it. When they are ready to receive a particular lesson, they do. No sooner and no later.

Amy Chua’s lessons came to her when her younger daughter was a pre-teenager, when everything fell apart in her tightly controlled, perfectly planned world.

My lessons came when I realized that I could not create THE perfect learning environment for every child, no matter how carefully I honed my interviewing, recruiting and selection process (designed to screen for parents who knew how to learn), or how much energy I poured into the individual dynamics of each child-parent-family system.

I could not teach anyone “how to practice” if they were unwilling or unable to go through the messy learning process on their own, make mistakes and admit to them, ask for help, try things and fail, and be willing to let go of attachment to outcomes. Including myself. In the end, the greatest lesson I learned was exactly how unwilling I was to be open to the outcome that my school would be imperfect, that it might not match up to the expectations and image I had created in my mind for what I would be able to achieve.

And so I gave up. I let it go. I quit. I had given all I could give, based on who I was at the time.

And now, more than a year after letting go, I am saying my first words about it in public, with some level of honesty and self-compassion.

Amy Chua talks about the “perfect” education system as combining lots of structure and discipline in the early years – when the children still listen to their parents – followed by opening and letting go in the teenage years. The challenge I found, when trying to put this into practice with real people, is that the “Eastern” parents couldn’t trust the process enough to let go and watch their children learn from harmless mistakes, and the “Western” parents wanted to allow teenage-like behavior to blossom at age seven or eight.

I was at a loss for words, or programs, or activities, to address the diversity and complexity of issues that were playing out in front of me. Everyone seemed to need a different message, a different balance, and yet when the kids were put in front of the parents as a group, no one could stop themselves from comparing and despairing. The insecurities kicked in. The measurement of progress relative to other kids. The need for recognition in terms of trophies and plaques. In other words, all the things that kill learning and stop creativity in its tracks.

Since I had taken it upon myself to try to create one learning environment – one culture – that would meet the needs of every single student, parent, and family, I failed. I failed at an impossible task.

Worst of all, I was alone. I had created no community of support in terms of other practitioners who were “on the same page” as educators, facing the same challenges. I found a non-profit organization, called “Positive Coaching Alliance”, that was doing parent and coach education in the arena of sports as personal development. I sponsored a workshop by their organization for the parents in my school, hoping to draw out the many comparisons between sports and music in their children’s education.

But it was too late. I was stretched thin in terms of my energy, I was entangled very deeply in some toxic and manipulative relationships with a few very vocal parents in my school, and I had no one to confide in, except my own journals and blogs. I had no outlet for discussion of the harsh truths, the difficult emotions, the tenderness of the situations I was dealing with, the courage I was being asked to call upon – which I could not find.

The advice I got from my own teacher amounted to this: “Well, you just deal with it. That’s the way it is. You’ve got no choice. This is what you’ve gotten yourself into. And your parents are ten times better than the ones I’ve dealt with my entire forty-year career, so be thankful.”

It didn’t feel helpful, and I couldn’t find the feeling of “thankfulness”, no matter how much I believed I “should” be thankful.

I didn’t want to look forward to another x number of decades in this state of unrest, grappling for control, and feeling so responsible for the outcomes of so many lives (yes, I really did think I could make that big of an impact through violin). I knew firsthand – from my own childhood experience – the many toxic emotions that could be cultivated in a violin school, how comparisons, competitions, and insecurities could bring out the ugliness in even the most well-intentioned people. And I did not want to repeat that experiment.

I wanted to part of a solution, not part of a problem.

So I stopped.

My solution was to get to know myself better, to dive into my own vulnerabilities, to explore what was possible for myself when I allowed my own creativity to flow, and to really learn for myself what peace, joy, and freedom felt like. My solution also involved learning to see my own responsibility for creating the situation I found myself in, facing the painful truth that my thoughts and beliefs drove me to act in ways that caused my own suffering.

Reading Amy Chua’s seemingly definitive answer for “how to” reform education in U.S., and seeing the many readers who, only now, are willing to acknowledge her wisdom, I’m reminded of our collective discomfort with the unknown, and our voracious appetite for certainty.

Now that I am at some distance from my career as a violin teacher, I feel less certain of what I would say to a parent about “how to” do that formidable job – the one where the stakes seem to be so high, where we seem to be so afraid of “doing it wrong”. I feel less attached to sounding put-together and having pat answers to complex questions.

But I also feel more trusting of the process of life. I feel less afraid of other people’s (and my own) reactions in the face of uncertainty. I feel more compassionate toward the pain and fear of looking our own vulnerabilities in the face.

Why? Not because I went to Harvard. Not because I made partner in a VC firm. Not because I “followed my dream”, and built a business. Not because I now call myself a “life coach”.

But because I’m committed to learning. To the complex, sometimes messy, sometimes difficult, sometimes ugly, and ultimately rewarding process of learning.

I’m now discovering, in small steps each day, what it’s like to live life for the joy in each moment. I’m walking the talk. For me. I’m making my own mistakes, learning my own lessons, and loving myself more every day.

And that’s the perfect education for me.

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Here it is:

Does all the woo-woo, positive psychology, self-help talk make you feel a little queasy or, at best, skeptical? Does an email with the subject line, “You can do it!”, make you want to “Report spam” faster than you can hit “Delete”?

When I worked with parents and their children in a coaching/teaching environment, I learned that there are many ways we adults try to encourage our kids. We all have a default style of communication that is a product of the various influences in our lives – our own parents, our many teachers, our older siblings, our bosses, our mentors, or even a conglomeration of all the ways we DON’T want to be like any of those people. What I’ve learned about effective coaching I first saw by watching children who were actually allowed to learn. It’s simple: all a kid wants is to know what it feels like to try, and to know that they’ll be OK if they fail. If you give them those two things, they’ll try over and over again with great enthusiasm, and pretty soon (or maybe a lot later) they will succeed.

The second half of this – letting them know they are OK even if they fail while trying – is tricky. I saw so many adults sit beside their child and just watch, hands folded across their chest, while their child tried, making no attempt to help, and remaining motionless in response to anything the child did. Sure, they were “there”, but I would sometimes wonder if they were actually in the same room as we were. I’ve also seen the other end of the spectrum, where a parent would literally lunge forward and want to take over, rather than allow their child to try something that they might not “get” on the first attempt. They preferred not to witness a failure than to allow the child to try.

I never figured out a way to coach parents to see their own tendencies in these situations. First of all, I was too busy trying to do my job coaching, witnessing, and encouraging the child. Second of all, I was frozen in astonishment at some of the parents’ behavior, not knowing how to address these things in the time allotted, or in front of the child.

These are, of course, excuses. The truth is I did not know how to hold the space for adults to really open up to what was going on. In some ways, it takes more skill and more patience to get an adult to open up than it does for a child. Despite a great deal of one-on-one time and attention for each student-parent dyad, I did not create a structure that allowed me to address holistically all the influences that are at play in a child’s learning. I had annual “review” meetings with parents, but these were perceived as “performance” reviews for the parents, where they would wait expectantly to receive some sign of approval or validation from me. Only rarely did anyone feel safe enough during these meetings to actually share their fears, their inadequacies, or their deepest questions about the purpose of their enrollment. It was mostly a veiled love fest, a hopeful yet sometimes tentative confirmation of everyone’s desire to continue with the relationship as it was. There were always a few cases where I wanted to discuss some of my real concerns about the appropriateness of continuing as the teacher for a particular child. Somehow, it never felt safe for me to voice my truth in these meetings. I would agonize over these for many days and sleepless nights leading up to the meetings, and would search for the right words, which rarely came to me at the right time. Why was it that I had never created that kind of relationship in which the truth could be told without blame or judgment? Why did I not have those skills?

By the time I started waking up to these truths, and learning how to hold this kind of space, I also saw that it was beyond the scope of my work to heal entire families, especially under the auspices of producing a children’s violin performing group. Some might say that I gave up. Maybe. But what I know now is that nothing changes until you accept things as they are. And, healing happens one person at a time, starting with myself.

My discovery of the healing capacity of the mind and the body came not from my medical school education ten years ago, but from a more recent search for my own inner peace and joy, which was catalyzed by my physical body sending me signals of debilitating pain. Something was not working in my lifestyle, and I could have chosen to ignore it and power through, or remain curious enough to explore it. I chose the latter. It opened me to a path of mental clarity and inquiry that I know will continue as long as there are thoughts running through my head. I did not take pills. I did not see a doctor or therapist. I slowed down. I rested. I created space in my life to ask the questions I was genuinely curious about. I tried new things. Simultaneously I recommitted to my yoga practice that had been abandoned during the same period of time that my body developed its pain. The combination of mind and body training, which focuses on gentle, consistent work on flexibility, balance, and strength, is what awakens me every day to the calm energy of joy I have within me. I love this kind of training because it is training for life. Not just “modern” life, or American life, or life as a woman, but being fully alive as a human being on this earth.

Now just because I’ve gone through this amazing shift doesn’t mean I’m going to wave a flag at my clients and say, “You can do it!” and expect everyone to leap into their own states of bliss. I saw the many ways that parents say this to their kids.

The same words – “You can do it!” – might come out of one parent’s mouth, with a crisp, angular tone of voice suggesting something like, “You BETTER be able to do it, or I’ll look like an idiot for spending all this money on lessons and believing you could do this!”

Or another parent’s “You can do it!” might be said without much conviction and with more pleading, meaning something like, “I know you don’t want to do this, but would you PLEASE do it for me?? Just this once?? I’ll buy you anything you want after this if you just do it for me….please???”

Yet another parent’s “You can do it!”, voiced with some disbelief and shock, might be taken to mean, “Don’t make me look bad, because I know I spent all week sitting there practicing with you every day, and you could do it at home! Now DO it!”

The meaning behind the words changes when it is said from a place of genuine love and compassion, without attachment to outcomes. “You can do it” can also mean something like, “I am not you. But I’ve been exactly where you are, not knowing whether or not I can, not being able to see how I will ever get there, feeling the fear of pain, of humiliation, of not being enough. And having faced all of that and moved through it, I know you can do it. I’m saying it not as a command, not as a way to alleviate my own stress, not to make this all about you, so that I can transfer the blame if it doesn’t work out. I’m saying it so that you hear my belief in your spirit, in your ability to find it in yourself to do whatever it is you need to do, to take whatever time you need to, and to be wherever you are right now. I’ll be right here to witness you – to celebrate with you, and to catch you when you fall – as you learn to trust yourself.”

Said from a calm core of peace, love, and patience, there is no greater elixir when we are feeling afraid.

[Originally published on my Truth Love Beauty blog here.]

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I was reading the website of a prominent life coach the other day, and was feeling myself getting seduced by the promise of change. For me, this feeling is a little tug in my chest, accompanied by a little voice that says, “You could be like her! Why don’t you just try harder? You could be successful like that! You can have everything you want in your life! Just try harder!”

I was getting pulled in by her clarity, and her certainty, and her artfully written course descriptions and “How I Work With You” page. I was dreaming of what my life would like if only I were “as on top of things as she was”. I was reading through her punchy blog posts, which boiled everything down into three simple categories, a numerical scale, and a “toolkit” for achieving the state of bliss that she has apparently created for herself.

In her “About” page, where she introduces herself and tells her story of why she became a coach, she talks about “having been there”. Having been broke, miserable, in a rocky marriage, and not living her best life.

Later, she talks about how she finally hit “rock bottom” in her life and made a slow, messy climb out to attain her current dream life that includes financial freedom, working in her pajamas, and answering to no one except her fabulous, perfectly-happy-to-pay clients who just blow her away on a daily basis.

She says that the reason she’s put together her current offerings is to “save us the trip” to our own rock bottom, a place she’s sure we’d rather skip over and prevent from happening to us. So, sign up before the early bird registration deadline of TONIGHT at midnight, or stay stuck on your path toward rock bottom!

OK, so that last sentence wasn’t actually on her website. But this is at least the second time that I’ve read the words “rock bottom” in a coach’s story, and heard a similar sales pitch saying, “The reason I’m offering this program to clients like you is so you don’t have to go through the hell I went through! You can just shift right into your own fabulousness without all the hassle!”

I fell for that pitch once.

Twice, actually. I was wholeheartedly seduced into paying thousands of dollars for a program that promised I would “triple my income” and “quadruple my happiness” if I enrolled. It was an “upsell”, meaning I had purchased a lower-priced program from this coach and then was offered a free informational call about the next level program. There was such power, such clarity, and such a personal success story wrapped into the pitch that I fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker.

I actually dropped out of the program five weeks into the ten week curriculum.

The allure of having a weekly set of assignments, worksheets to fill out, boxes to check (literally), and papers to print out and put in a binder (I was obsessed with binders! I was a Staples and OfficeMax junkie!) lasted about three weeks. Then I started to realize that all this work and structure was speaking to the A-plus student in me, the one who for 21 straight years of my life (from kindergarten through medical school) sat in some sort of classroom environment, where there were grades, tests, papers, projects, reports, and things to finish on time and turn in. Her approach (at that particular time in my life, and given my particular history) fed into the part of me that wanted someone to tell me what to do, when in fact what I needed to practice was my self-trust and intuition.

Having her move from one to-do list to another each week gave me the illusion of control, but what I really needed for me to grow was to trust more in letting go and allowing.

And that program – with all of its promises and success stories (as defined by multiples of income achieved within months of completing the program) – was exactly what I did NOT need at this point in my life. I did not need an authority figure (this coach who, I believed, had everything I did not have, including the answers) to tell me “how to” achieve an assumed outcome of “more money” as the route to greater worthiness, peace, and happiness.

I realized that what I needed was real-life experience in the process of seeing that worthiness, peace, and happiness come from inner work, expression, and practice, which may or may not result in “more money”, but will lead to the feeling of having a life of everything I’ve always wanted. No matter what it is I actually have.

So I learned a HUGELY valuable lesson from the experience, it just wasn’t what I thought I had been investing in.

My journey right now is all about recovery. Recovery of a sense of peace. Recovery of creativity. Recovery of my self-trust. Recovery of my self-love. Recovery of a sense of acceptance. Recovery of my voice. Recovery of worthiness. Recovery of my sense of possibilities. Recovery of my ability to play.

What I’ve learned is that recovery happens gradually. At its own pace.

No one can “save you the trip” of walking on the path of your own recovery.

So what would I like to tell people about the kind of coach I am, the kind of coach I would like to be?

I’m not trying to save anyone from hitting their rock bottom.

I’m not even sure if I’ve hit my own rock bottom! That’s not for me to say. I don’t get to decide how long I’m here on earth, or what I get the chance to do, or whom I get to influence. I only get to decide how I show up for myself in this moment. And then the next. And then the next. And if I’m lucky, there’s a next. And another, and so on.

After everything I have been through so far – in my 35 short years of living on this planet – I would not trade any of it for anything. It is mine. It is perhaps the only thing I truly have – my own experiences of this miracle and mystery called life. I’m sitting here on a warm, sunny day in March, typing on my own computer, using my own wireless connection, and that is no small miracle. I’m not attached to it, I just notice and acknowledge it for the brief time that these circumstances will be true. In another moment, the sun will change position, the light will change, and I may not be able to continue typing here.

So I keep typing, from a place of gratitude.

I have learned, in my zealous love affair with the idea of “changing my life”, that the only effective way to truly change anything is to become more fully present, more fully aware, and more deeply accepting of exactly how things are right now. In this particular moment. Which is gone in an instant, replaced by another.

Once you fully accept, everything begins to change automatically.

This may sound trivial if you haven’t tried it. But it’s no small task at all to practice being with all aspects of your own life, exactly as they are in this moment. It also doesn’t mean “resigning yourself to the way things are”.

Acceptance is about full acknowledgment. Without the editing and rehearsing that typically goes on in our minds, as we disconnect from our bodies in the present moment.

We all have these escape modes, when we’re not fully accepting our experience.

I myself have found that I spend inordinate amounts of time looking around and noticing what’s missing, what I’ve done wrong, what I should do differently in the future, or what I could be doing instead of what I’m actually doing right now.

Knowing this about myself is no longer a harsh criticism or indictment of my character, but is beginning to take on the lightness of simply being “good to know”. That has taken practice.

Which brings me back to that seductive website I was reading the other day. When I caught myself seizing up in the chest, being drawn in, almost clicking on the “Buy Now” button on one of those products, I was able to breathe and watch myself.

I didn’t say, “There you go again, Lisa! Falling for the old lines. Won’t you ever get over your approval issues??”

I also didn’t say, “A lot of nerve that person has for selling those promises! How dare she collect money for the illusion of a temporary fix!”

(Both of these would have been playing the blame game – one of my old favorites.)

Instead, I realized this was a chance to give a voice to what I am about, what is true for me (and perhaps ONLY for me…I’m prepared for that too, though I suspect this will resonate with some).

I realized that the truth is, I would never deprive anyone of their own journey in life, whether it takes them to “rock bottom” or the moon.

What I’ve found so helpful – and what I hope to put back into the world – is just witnessing, and creating safe space for myself and others to just be.

I don’t need to tell anyone what to do, or how to do it. It’s enough for me to pay attention to my own openness, my own self-compassion (so that I can truly say that I feel compassion for others), my own softness, and my own inner freedom.

It’s enough for me to offer myself in this way to whomever I encounter, whether they are a client or not, and whatever I do, whether it is work or not.

It’s enough for me to watch my experience of life completely change when I pay attention to these things.

These, in and of themselves, are precious gifts. They have worked magic in my own life and process, and I remember each and every one of the people who showed these qualities to me when I had forgotten how to recognize them in myself.

Change can be hard. But acceptance may be even harder.

Change can be easy to sell, because we all think we want it. But acceptance – the necessary ingredient for all change – is what we really need.

And that’s what I’m here to sell, all day long.

Photo credits: “Buy More Stuff” by Michael Holden

“This Is What Recovery Looks Like” by Portland Prevention

“You Are Free” by Chris Metcalf

All photos used under a Creative Commons license.

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It came in a box. There were 500 pieces and a neat image of the final product – what the solution was supposed to look like.

I had a partner while I was doing it. We didn’t discuss how we were going to tackle the problem, we just started working on it, each in our own way. There were no words. Things just began when they began, and ended when they ended.

I noticed that I wanted to follow some instructions that were somewhere in the back of my head about “how to” solve a puzzle like this.

“Start with the edges and corners,” was one set of instructions.

“Find the colored pieces first,” was another.

I tried both of those, but the puzzle was just so big, so complicated, with so many parts, that I quickly got frustrated with each of those approaches. I made a tiny bit of progress, but immediately got stuck following those two paths.

So I just looked at the pile of pieces, sifted them around a little so I could feel them. I began to notice certain things stood out to me – a pattern of white squares. Letters and words. Colored lines and arrows.

Then I turned to look at the final image. I started to notice that the pattern of white squares was specific. The numbers in the squares corresponded to exact positions on the circle that defined the boundary of the universe. Above those squares were the months of the year, spelled out in large, colored letters.

I would start by finding each of the twelve months of the year. As I proceeded this way, I experienced the excitement of completing one word at a time.

“Aha!” I would exclaim as I saw the letters of “OCTOBER” come together from three different puzzle pieces. I wasn’t paying attention to the shapes of the pieces, only the emergence of the word itself.

I attacked the puzzle in this way, building one identifiable word at a time, choosing not to worry about how these twelve words would form a complete circle, or how the center of the circle – which was a detailed map of the constellations – would come together.

I just focused on those words, one “Aha!” at a time.

After about six of these, I looked up to notice my partner working on the puzzle silently, without disturbing me at all, in his own way. I noticed that he wasn’t looking up nearly as much as I was. I noticed that he had lined up the pieces in front of him, and was looking more at the pieces themselves than referring to the picture of the final product we were supposed to be building.

I didn’t want to take my mind off my own puzzle solving, and what he was doing was not interfering with what I was doing, so I just kept going.

I built the ring first – the pattern of white squares and numbers, representing the calendar days, and the twelve months of the year distributed evenly around the circle.

The rest of the pattern of constellations and their names were still too overwhelming for me to tackle, so I just kept working on the ring, matching what I was creating with what was printed on the box, noticing one tiny detail at a time adjacent to the ring I had put together.

By the time I had about three quarters of the ring assembled, I looked up, to find that my partner had constructed all four corners of the puzzle, which were mostly solid black, with no words at all. He had done this by looking at the shapes of the pieces, and fitting them together based on matching their edges. This was a completely different approach than mine, as I didn’t even notice the actual shape of each puzzle piece – I only saw the images formed after they fit together.

A New Model of Team Work

Miraculously, these two completely different approaches were resulting in a beautiful “team effort” that was getting the puzzle solved! My mind would not wrap around this subject because I was so engrossed in my particular approach, but I remember feeling such relief that we were not arguing or debating about what the best way to solve the puzzle – “as a team” – would be.

We were not weighing the pros and cons of each approach, trying to get each to adopt the best practices of the other. That was always my biggest nightmare about working “on a team” – that I would have to work in some way that was not optimal for me, in order to accommodate someone who was slower, weaker, or less competent than me.

I never considered the possibility that we could each retain our own styles of working, and accomplish things in our own way, while also contributing to a larger group effort. How liberating!

This was easy, peaceful, fun teamwork, that required no negotiation whatsoever. There was just a huge puzzle to be solved, and each of us was sincerely interested in approaching the solution in our own way, at the same time, together. It wasn’t a competition. There couldn’t be one. There were two many pieces, it was too complex, and no one could have predicted how the solution would finally come together.

It was an example showing that setting each person free to work in their own best way could also be in the best interest of the group effort. Imagine that!

Trying to understand, explain, justify, control, or influence another person’s way of working would not have been productive for either us as people or for reaching a faster solution to the puzzle.

Asking the other for help was also futile, since we were arriving at our own answers in such distinctly different ways – it was as if we were decoding the puzzle into our own particular language, which could not be translated in the moment.

Ultimately the puzzle of the universe took about five hours of work to solve. Not bad for a day’s work (with a dinner break!). We kept it out for our own mutual admiration for the next four days.

Taking the Pieces Apart

Today I decided it was time to take a picture, tell the story, and take the puzzle apart again.

I noticed that there was a tinge of that feeling of regret when we adults have to take things apart. Children – ones who are younger than school age – don’t seem to see the sadness of knocking over towers of blocks, messing up a stack of cards, or taking apart a train set. They love the destruction as much as the creation, if not more. They laugh and smile as things fall apart, just as when they get built.

Children are great teachers in the nature of impermanence and non-attachment. When is it, in the course of our “maturation” and “growing up” that we become so attached to the building, and so afraid, so avoidant, of the taking apart? Or the letting things fall apart? When does the story become a tragedy in our minds?

I tried to take the point of view of a child when I took the puzzle apart today. I tried to enjoy the process of crumbling the sheets of cardboard back into their factory-cut pieces, rubbing them between my fingers to encourage them to separate and fall. I took on the task with as much zeal as a child might swing their arm against a tall stack of legos, and watch with glee as they tumble down to the floor.

The pile of pieces fit neatly back in the box. The pieces – all 500 of them – awaited their next chance at being put into place, reconstructed into the same picture of the universe.

I took a moment to appreciate their alternate form – as just a pile of pieces in a box.

I took a moment to notice that there is as much beauty in chaos, as much opportunity to experience joy in the “falling to pieces” as there is in the building.

We just have to be willing to see it.

Photo credit: Baby with legos by Pink Sherbet Photography, used under a Creative Commons License

All other photos by the author

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I have this thing about repeating myself. In this Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/e-mail/YouTube day and age, there is no shortage of ways to “get the message out there”. I’m never quite sure who is reading what, or when. And frankly, most of it feels like I’m repeating myself. Or scattering seeds into the wind, with no idea where they will land.

I’ve surrendered to these facts: I will do what I can to keep putting my message out there. People will do what they can to receive the message when they are ready.

And I forgive myself for repeating the message over and over again.

I’ve come to this place because I realize how many times I need to hear the same message in order to “get it”. Sometimes, even if I’ve “gotten it” in the past, I need to hear the same message again, years later, with a totally different perspective under my belt, in order to “get it” yet again. In a totally different way.

And I give up control. I surrender. I acknowledge that there is only energy and precious life force in me to take care of what I can. The rest is not up to me. It feels like such a relief. Such a weight lifted. Such a freedom. I also know that with the number of people suffering, feeling absolutely stretched to their limits trying to solve every single problem, take care of every single person, make every single decision that comes their way, it is a gift to be able to show what letting go feels like.

This is my gift to me. And I am offering to share it with you.

So maybe you’ve read my Tweets, seen my Facebook posts, and checked out my new offering of “Name Your Price” Coaching.

And maybe you haven’t.

Either way, here’s my message again: I’m offering my coaching services for two hours every week on a “Name Your Price” basis. That means, you call me with an issue you’d like to be coached on, or even a question about coaching. We chat. Hopefully you get some value. We don’t discuss price. I just send you an e-mail afterwards with a link for you to pay the amount you feel right about. “Right” for you is a combination of where you are in your life, and the value you feel you received. That’s it. No more questions asked. More details on how it works here>>

For now, there’s no limit on the number of times you can utilize this service.

It’s first-come, first-served, which means you don’t make an appointment with me. You check this page on my website, or my Facebook page (click on “Events” or scroll down in the feed), for the dates and times I’m available. I’ll be posting two weeks of availability at a time.

Who knows how much longer I’ll continue this little experiment? Even I don’t know!

Everything is shifting…even the earth beneath our feet. So let’s stay open to all possibilities. And if you’ve been wondering about coaching, I hope to talk to you soon!

Interested in “Name Your Price” Coaching? Be sure to read the full details on How It Works here.

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One of my blog readers took the liberty of sending my video on Amy Chua’s book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, to Amy Chua herself! I never would have done this on my own, but that’s why I put my stuff out there for others to read!

Here’s Amy’s email which was sent to that reader, Denise.

Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 08:36:51 -0500
From: Amy Chua
Subject: Re: FW: The Music Within Us

Dear Denise:  Thank you SO MUCH for sending this to me — and yep, Lisa totally got my book and yep, she is totally right that no one else has!!  (Only correction is that I never choose or even saw and never would have approved the awful WSJ headline..)

I think Lisa is BRILLIANT, and I love what she says and the passages and moments she singles out.  She even gets it about my dogs!!!

I am setting up a website for my book, partly because to try to correct misunderstandings, and I will post this video.  Please feel free to share all this with Lisa!

Best, Amy

I am not posting this so that you can read something written by a published author calling me “BRILLIANT”. Although that’s nice and all, the reason I am posting this is to encourage you to GET INFORMED before you form judgments and opinions and join in the fun of media-generated controversies. Form your own thoughts and opinions, reflect on your own life, and learn your own lessons. Do not stop at what the journalists and media or others are telling you. Do not believe what others say until you have questioned it with your own body, mind, and heart. Know that you are always free to create your own story.

News or Entertainment?

The “awful” Wall Street Journal headline Amy’s referring to, which drew so much attention to the book, was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it generated huge amounts of controversy, and therefore discussion. On the other hand, it was a misleading excerpt that did not reflect what the book was actually about. After I read it, I laughed at the overwhelming number of “news” reports that interviewed Amy solely to ask the question, “So, are Chinese mothers really superior?” Anyone who has read the book would know that this is not what it’s about. A more informed journalist might have said, “Amy, your book actually had nothing to do with arguing for or against the superiority of Chinese parenting. So why the misleading headline in the Wall Street Journal?”

But that would require a journalist whose incentives were actually aligned with informing people of the truth.

It reminds me of something I learned a few days ago on a call with a news producer for one of the morning shows on a national television network (hint: not “yesterday”, and not “tomorrow”). She was teaching a group of life coaches how to pitch a news story and try to get more exposure for ourselves and our businesses. The summary of the call was, “Keep in mind that on television news, we are not trying to inform people, we are trying to entertain. Our objective is to produce television that will keep audiences from changing the channel so that we earn dollars from our advertisers. We want something controversial, and we want something that everyone is talking about. If you can’t package your story to meet those criteria, we’re not going to be interested.”

I appreciated this very candid look into the mind of a “news” producer. It’s not often that someone from within the corporate ranks of the entertainment industry will share information like this so openly. Maybe I expect “dirty little secrets” like this to be kept behind closed doors, so that we’ll keep tuning in and watching television and generating advertising dollars to pay the bills for the national networks.

But think about what she said for a minute. Isn’t she saying that everything created for television news is motivated by entertainment value, controversy, and popular opinion? And weren’t we taught at some point (in those halcyon days of our youth) that news was supposed to be objective, fact-based, and devoid of personal opinion?

Our world has changed. We have collectively created an environment in which there is no respite from sources of entertainment. It takes even more self-discipline in this kind of world to think clearly, independently, and creatively. At the very least it requires a heightened awareness to realize what we are consuming, when we’re told something under the guise of “news”, when we’re being entertained versus being informed.

Is it news, or is it entertainment? Can you tell the difference? It’s up to you.

Tiger and cub photo by Keven Law, used under a Creative Commons license

Amy Chua book photo by the author

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Last week I started a brand new blog called Bad Asian Daughter: http://badasiandaughter.com.

I came up with the idea and bought the url months ago, and even had a first attempt over at wordpress with http://badasiandaughter.wordpress.com.

This time, I knew what the message was going to be, and tumblr.com provides the best format for creating short, frequent posts in a variety of media – video, quotes, text, and my favorite, chats (sharing conversations in a screenplay-like format).

My intention is to create an inspiring, healing community for Asian American women who have tried their whole lives to be “good”, done everything they were supposed to do, achieved success in the forms they were told to, and still find something missing in their lives. Together we will discover all of who we are, and unlock the keys to our own unconditional joy, peace, and freedom….B.A.D.ness and all.

The inspirational quotes are the most fun, since I love getting a daily dose of the very inspiration that has gotten me to this point in my life.

But the personal stories – the memoir writing – are the most difficult to write! I’ve found myself wanting to find the humorous voice, not wanting to sound TOO bad, and editing myself for various reasons.

What’s interesting is that these many layers of fear are EXACTLY why this blog needs to be written, and why the voice of the “Bad Asian Daughter” – the person we are trying so hard to AVOID becoming – needs to be heard.

As long as we hide and sequester the dark corners of ourselves and label them “bad”, we will never be truly free. No matter what we achieve. No matter what we own. No matter who we are with.

So Bad Asian Daughter is about embracing ALL of ourselves exactly as we are, naming exactly what we believe we’re not supposed to say, not supposed to do, not supposed to want, and risking our own significance in the world by actually doing the thing we think we cannot do.

In the words of poet Mary Oliver:

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.”

B.A.D. is about the discipline of revealing to ourselves that we don’t have to feel “bad” for wanting what we want, and living our own lives on our own terms. We can free ourselves from the mental prisons that have kept us small and afraid…and unleash all our goodness in the process.

Visit Bad Asian Daughter blog now>>

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