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…

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…

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…

What is it about the mind that has us continually going back to it for validation, approval, and diagnosis?  Is it really the resident expert on how I am doing on a daily basis?   Is it the best resource on the progression towards my goals?  And most importantly to me, does my mind really understand the deepest longings of my heart and the beauty of the path that I am on?  Can it truly grasp the arc of my growth and comprehend the depth of my transformation?

The process of transformation is layered, dimensional and mysterious.  It is not fixed.  There are leaps forward and setbacks.  There are intense growth spurts followed by periods of stillness or stagnation.  And all of it is vital to the process.   Transformation can happen in an instant and it happens over a lifetime.  It is a force at work.  It is like a river carving its way through hard rock.  To the casual observer (the mind), it might appear that nothing is happening but take a look at the fossil record and quickly you see that the force that is that river has most definitely transformed that rock. Read more…

We do not live out our lives in a vacuum.  In the arc of each lifetime there is a line between everything; a thread that connects each of the paths we’ve taken, the choices we’ve made, the jobs we’ve had, the friendships won and lost.  When you follow this thread back to its source you discover that it connects us to who we are, what we want for ourselves, to what lights us up.  Everything expressed within a lifetime is manifested from the individual, the self, the soul.  I believe our choices are born from our values; the very things that we desire and live to express.  Each choice has at its base a connection to something meaningful to us.  The art is to follow the connections, to see the relationships between our choices, to discover what they reflect about us and then to see where they’ve been pointing us. Read more…