We reach for relationships because we long for many things. We long for acceptance, affection, companionship andappreciation. We want to be seen. We need to be heard. And so, we reach. We reach to form relationships so that these beautiful needs, our beautiful needs can flourish. We reach so that we can know love.

How do we achieve this? How do we create the kinds of relationships that fuel our lives? How do we cultivate deep connections? It begins with us. It begins with our willingness and our ability to create a deeply connected relationship with our self.

Acceptance experienced from another is born out of our acceptance for our self. Appreciation from the ones we choose to love has it’s genesis in our appreciation for ourselves.

In fact, the more we are able to meet our own beautiful needs, the more the people in our lives have to build upon. When we refuse to meet ourselves within our own heart, when we starve ourselves of our own love and attention and companionship, our loved ones – no matter their commitment to us – are rendered powerless.

In order for us to feel their love, it has to have fertile ground upon which to fall. That fertile ground is tended by us. That fertile ground is our responsibility.

When we take beautiful responsibility for our own beautiful needs, when we become stewards of our own inner relationship, a space gets created for the relationships in our lives to actually begin to move in powerful new ways.

So how do we get from here to there? Read more…

Recently at a lecture I attended, the speaker relayed the following story from her life: A six year old girl was asked, “Pretend you were in a room full of scary tigers. What would you do?” The little girl paused for a long moment and then responded, “Well … I’d just stop pretending.” 

Ah, the power of the mind. Just as it can conjure the scariest of scenarios, so too can it release them. Hold that thought for just a minute or two while you read on. What I want to chat with you about are the three wicked step sisters, Fear, Doubt and Worry (well, that’s a little dramatic but I think you get the point) and how to change the way you relate to them. 

To set the stage, a little gift from the poet Rumi entitled, “The Guest House:” This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice - meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

The premise: We all deal with fears of one kind or another but most of us haven’t a clue what to do with them or how to be with them. Mostly we employ the strategy of fight or flight. When we feel a worry, a concern, a doubt or a fear, we either go to battle with it or run for the hills (how’s that working out for you?).  BUT alas, there is another way. There is a way to be with the heavier side of our emotional selves; a relationship that redefines what it means to be the glorious feeling being that you are.  Read more…

We hold and we hold and we hold; our grip so tight, the blood leaves our hand … and in one of those breathless, gripping moments we wonder … why am I not seeing the very thing I am longing to bring into my life? It never occurs to us that the very thing we’re holding on so tightly to is the very thing blocking what we long for in our life. It might be a belief we hold about ourselves or a habit that no longer serves or a relationship that has long since atrophied. Whatever it is, we’ve become more committed to what has been leaving no space for what we’ve dared to dream of. There is a story about a little monkey. He gets his hand stuck in a jar because he won’t let go of the nut he’s grabbed onto. This little monkey has made his little nut more important than his liberation, more vital than his freedom. He doesn’t get it. Truth be told, sometimes we don’t either. Because truth be told, most of the time we don’t even realize what’s happening; we don’t realize that we’ve prioritized what’s in our hands over what’s in our hearts, what’s here and now for what might be. And the rest of the time? Well, we’re just plain greedy, we want the old and the new. But let’s take former and leave the latter; the greed, for another time. Let’s explore how to break through, to get unstuck, to unleash the beauty that lives in our own imagination and in our own hearts. Let’s explore how to bring what is in our hearts and minds into the world.

I say it all the time; we’re wired to evolve, to change, to dream, to reach, to want, to transcend. It’s in our DNA. But too, we’re wired to resist and hang on and fear the very things we find being born in our hearts. It’s a bit of a paradox and it can be maddening, that is, unless you simply accept the contradiction as a sort of necessary tension to the whole birthing process. But let’s say you haven’t gotten this far yet. Let’s say you’ve simply identified something you want to change or bring into your life. And let’s say in spite of the best laid plans, you’ve had little luck at the manifesting part of your vision or idea or longing. In short, you’re stuck. Two things you know for sure: you know what you want and there’s no sign of it. What are you supposed to do? How the heck do you move past this point?

Entering stage left, our hero:  The Well Placed Question. Read more…

What do you want more of in your life? How ‘bout more happiness or good God, how about greater ease in relationships? What about clarity and confidence in your choices? Belief in yourself and in the world? The answer to all of this is kind of simple. Just tweak what you’re feeding yourself on a daily basis. Eliminate some things and add others. Mix it up.

• You have a creative self. What are you feeding it?
• You have a spiritual self. What are you feeding it?
• You have an emotionally intelligent self. What are you feeding it?
• Many people believe that God, Spirit, the Higher Self dwells within. Do you connect to it?

We’re all used to the concept of how what we eat impacts our physical and mental health, right? In this diet loving culture we live in, you can’t hardly go 22 seconds without a new study or perspective on the relationship between our diet and our wellbeing. On the one hand all this focus and attention can be maddening. On the other, maybe all this attention speaks to something much deeper. Maybe, it’s not really just about food and drink and exercise. Maybe the conversation takes center stage because as a culture, we’re waking up to the bigger conversation which is about how we’re feeding ourselves in all areas of our life. Maybe as each of us grapples with the undeniable facts regarding our food diet we will make the leap to consider how we feed ourselves mentally, emotionally and spiritually. If we can accept that a diet based solely on processed food leads to all sorts of yucky things, can’t we then see that a life lived in front of the television or on a steady diet of newspapers and entertainment magazines might result in some equally nasty things (actually, do an internet search on the connection between TV and depression – yikes)?

Can we become emotionally and spiritually anemic? Read more…

“Any resolution or decision you make is simply a promise to yourself which isn’t worth a tinker’s damn until you have formed the habit of making it and keeping it. And you won’t form the habit of making it and keeping it unless right at the start you link it with a definite purpose that can be accomplished by keeping it. In other words, any resolution or decision you make today has to be made again tomorrow, and the next, and so on. And it not only has to be made each day, but it has to be kept each day for if you miss one day in the making and keeping of it, you’ve got to go back and begin again. But if you continue the process of making it each morning and keeping it each day, you will finally wake up one morning, a different person in a different world, and you will wonder what has happened to you and the world you used to live in.”   Albert E. Gray (1885-1942)

If you’re headed out to make a change in your life, make sure you pack a bag with a few things because you’ll need them along the way: an understanding of the process of change, an engaging purpose or reason for the change, a healthy supply of desire, and a creative, tenacious and persistent attitude. Read more…

Fear. You can make it BIG or you can make it small. You can wrap yourself in it letting it suffocate you or plant flowers in the holes of each letter making it the fertilizer for your dreams. You can bury it hoping it will never rise again (oh and, this rarely works by the way. It’s sort of like one of those monsters in a scary movie that never, ever, ever dies. Ever.) or you can turn, look at it square in the eye and mess up its hair. You can dance with it or let it run your life, allow it to close you down or open you up so wide that the very Milky Way feels miniscule inside. You can use it as a signpost marking the important decisions in your life; always pointing you in the right direction. You can make it a trusted confidant calling it in close to you so that you can harness its energy. Know this: Fear is there for you. It is there for you. Decide how to use it … but one thing you can count on, Fear is a certain part of the mix. So you might as well get to know it. You might as well choose the kind of relationship you want to have with it. If you don’t … it will. And most of the time, it will choose the most obvious one; the one that shuts you down, that closes every door inside of you; the one that makes you feel small and frozen and incapable. That’s Fear’s nature at least when it goes unattended and unchecked. That’s not necessarily what it is intended for but like an unruly child, when Fear is left to its own devices, it tends to go a little bonkers.

 The one thing Fear does well is get your attention.

 Let it.

 Then you decide…

What to do next.

Ah, change, change, change. We’re all after change.  We want to change our hair or change our clothes.  Change our spouse or change our house. We gotta change the way we drink or change what we think. Decrease how much we eat and increase the time on our feet. We wanna change the way we pray and for God’s sake … change what we say. Change the time we go to bed or change our name from Bernardo to Fred. Change our job, change our face, change our beliefs, can I change my race? Stop this, start that, more of this and less of that. Change, change, change. And then just when we grow tired of changing ourselves our gaze does a soft slide to the left and then an ever slow slither to the right. Looking through the scope, we set our cross hairs on some unsuspecting fool next to us, press the restart button and begin the whole process over again.

We all buy into the need for change. Our culture is built on it. It’s like somewhere along the way each of us signed a contract to never (ever)be satisfied with ourselves, our lives or each other. We’re not enough or we’re too much. I should be more like you or even better, “can’t you just be like me?” Either way, we come out the looser. 

Here’s the deal, the way most of us come at change carries the imbedded implication that something (and most of the time it’s us) is wrong or broken; a nagging, ever present sense that something needs to be fixed (“I’m not sure what it is, but give me a minute and I’m certain I can figure it out.”).  And with that implication comes judgment, a nice dose of shame or guilt (you get to pick) and a sweet slow dance with self denigration (who invited her anyway?). When our core belief is we’re wrong or broken, then when we reach for change, we reach out of fear or disgust or worse, just plain ‘ol unconscious habit. Read more…