Opposites Together

I’ve been watching the US Open Tennis Tournament for the past few weeks and am amazed at the talent, strength, and athleticism of the players, not to mention their dedication and desire to win.  During an especially close match, I catch myself choosing one player over the other.  Inevitably, when I do this, I am disappointed if the player I wanted to win, does not, and I usually pick the underdog, so I am usually disappointed!

At times, I have not picked a winner or a player.  I have stayed the unbiased observer.  I have taken in the intensity of both players, enjoyed the back and forth of the game without any expectations, and at the end, found myself having a richer and more profound experience.  No, it is not the same as the excitement and high that follows when your player wins, but it doesn’t have the disappointment of defeat either.  In fact, it is not about winning or losing, it is about the opportunity to participate as an observer of this fantastic opportunity to watch two extraordinary humans who have dedicated their whole life to this one moment, battle it out.  It becomes so much more than tennis.

When we live in duality always taking one side or the other, we invite drama in.  Drama is fun, but it can burn you up and like a sugary treat, it doesn’t really satisfy you in the long run.  Furthermore, it blinds you to other possibilities.  It does not allow for you to participate in other aspects, understand the other side, or know anything other than your own opinion. 

Life is truly a brilliant mosaic made up of so many shapes, colors, and angles, and none of it is wrong or right.  It is how they all play together.  If we could just step back, become the observer, and watch without expectation or attachment.

(This post was inspired by a beautiful poem I recently read, called Fire by Judy Sorum Brown)

Fire

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs packed in too tight
can squelch a fire, can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water can.

So building fire
requires tending in a special way,
attention to the wood
as well as to the spaces in between,
so fire can catch, can grow, can breathe,
can build its energy and warmth
which we so need in order
to survive the cold.

We need to practice building open spaces
just as clearly as we learn
to pile on the logs.
It’s fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible,
let it develop in the way that’s
possible when we lay logs in just the way
the fire wants to go.

Then we can watch it as it leaps and plays,
burns down and then flames up in unexpected way.
Then we need only lay a log on it from time to time.
Then it has life all of its own,
a beauty that emerges
not where logs are but where spaces can invite the flames
to burn, to form exquisite
patterns of their own,
their beauty possible
simply because the space is there,
an opening in which flame
that knows just how it wants
to burn can find its way.

Questions to ponder:
1)    Have you ever been the observer in your own life?  If so, when and how did it feel?
2)    Is there drama in your life?  How do you handle drama?

Try this experiment: if you are in a super busy and crazy place like an airport or stuck in rush hour traffic, detach from your reasons for being there (traveling, etc.) and just become an observer as if you have nowhere to go, but be there.  What happens when you do this?

Take some time to think this over or ponder with a friend.  If you feel the need to talk with a spiritual life coach, email or call me and we can discuss what you are afraid to give up when you become the observer in your own life.

The Journey

This has been a summer of road trips.  My husband and I have discovered that we actually prefer traveling by car on our vacations.  It has been less stressful and liberating when you can go when you want to and take as many pieces of luggage as your car can handle without paying those pesky airline fees.  Your destination is where you decide at the last minute and you can see what is around the corner, and even stop to take pictures. 

What I found enlightening is the transition from one state or location to another.  You get such a better feel for the Midwest for example vs. the high paced life of the East Coast.  And when you are gradually going through the transition by car, you can actually appreciate it more.  When you are not focused on why isn’t the plane taxiing to your gate already, you notice the kinds of vegetation, the hills and valleys and even the pace of life.

This summer, I enjoyed getting to our destinations. 

Looking at life from the same perspective, I can feel the same way about the journey as I do about the destination.  These days, the destination is becoming more and more blurry.  The journey on the other hand is palpable and immediate.  It includes all the ups and downs, boredom, excitement, and everything in between.  If life was just a series of destinations without the transitions in between, it would be kind of scary not to mention incredibly hard to handle. 

Transitions or journeys give us the opportunity to adjust, absorb, and truly experience the destination.  In other words, it is what life is all about.  When I hear my clients who are going through a tough divorce wish themselves into another relationship as quickly as possible, it is as if they are not honoring the journey.

 As difficult as a transition such as divorce can be, it is the opportunity to celebrate a good decision, make a change, say no to victimhood, and even appreciate what you have learned.  Just like the road trip, if you are focused on the pain to go away or familiarity to set in (by jumping into a new relationship), it is like the kids in the back seat repeatedly asking if we are there yet. 

Pain and suffering are real only to those who are focused on the destination.

If life was just about the destination, then it would be a fast paced movie with the highlights being points that got us closer to the end which is inevitably, death.  I am trying not to rush through life so I can get closer to death.  These days, I am enjoying and accepting every moment including all the so-called flaws and imperfections, so I can finally live.  I just wish I knew what I know now 20 years ago!

Questions to Ponder:
1)    What area of your life do you find yourself focused on the destination?  What is so uncomfortable about the journey?
2)    What was a perfect event in your life?  Which moment in that event was the perfect one?  What made it perfect?
3)    If you still think it is all about the destination, what are your perfect or ideal destinations in life?  Start from the beginning and list the destinations.  Now, how do you plan on going from point A to point B?

Spiritual life coaching is a journey to help the client dismantle stuck old beliefs that just don’t work any more.  It is a client driven process where you decide what area you’d like to focus on.  If you are not sure how to get unstuck or could use my support, please contact me for a conversation that might help you find the journey you want to take.

On Being Good

Have you ever noticed how obsessed we are with the concept of good? We use the word all the time, we greet people with a "good morning" and end the conversation with "have a good day" or "goodbye". We tell our babies how good they are, or the dog how good he’s been after doing his business outside.

Goodness naturally spills into righteousness. Doing good work becomes doing the right thing. Being responsible is a good thing. We want our children to be good and work hard and be responsible adults. It’s all about being good.

Does anyone teach their children to do bad things? They probably do, but I guess they do it thinking it is the right thing. This is where it gets messy. What is good to someone may not be to someone else. What I may think of as healthy affection towards my baby, might come across as spoiling him to someone who thinks you need to be stern with children so they grow up being humble and do good. This is all tied to being good.

In fact, I am going so far as saying that we have built lives out of our obsession with being and doing good. This obsession at times feels like a prison. Its walls are so thick that we can’t see what’s going on outside. We have barricaded ourselves in our prison cell with what we think is good and sometimes it gets stifling and claustrophobic.

Feelings of unworthiness also can come out of that same prison. When bad things happen or when what you try so hard to achieve does not, then you go into your unworthiness corner. It happened or did not happen because I was not good enough.

Other belief systems that stem from this obsession with goodness include: competitiveness (I have to be even better or I have to be the best), righteousness (X is good, Y is bad), rule of life (if I do good, good will come to me), criticism (not good), perfectionism (not good enough), justice (if you do bad things, you’ll be punished), etc. It seems that everything we’ve been taught has been about being good.

I would not be writing this article, if our belief in goodness was all that we needed to navigate through lives that have been hit hard by loss, and unprecedented bad times. I am reminded of the conversation I had with a previously religious person who believed her father was a saint and had done nothing but good to drop dead just when he retired and finally had some money to live a comfortable life. She was angry at God, the same God who her father had prayed to daily and gone to church for every Sunday. She could not understand or forgive God. Being good had not earned her father any points on earth. So, why bother being good?

It all comes down to choice. If someone told us, “do good only because you want to, not for any other reason” then it wouldn’t become a prison. Better yet, if someone told us, “do whatever you want, it doesn’t matter”, then what would we choose to do? When I tell myself that, I tend to freeze. It is as if, nothing makes sense anymore. And I am reminded that what supposedly made sense, was just what I had believed in, that goodness mattered.

Today, I believe that goodness matters. It matters to me. I don’t try to be good for any reason other than it feels good. When it stops feeling good, when it becomes an obligation, a judgment, a heavy responsibility or burden, is when I stop doing what I believed to be good. It makes sense: the moment it stops feeling good, it isn’t good anymore!

I am learning to navigate the world of shifting realities, endless potentials, and softly held beliefs gingerly and with eyes wide open…

Questions to Ponder:
1) What is one belief that you have held on to most of your life? How did it become yours?
2) How has it served you?
3) Are you willing to give it up? Why?

Take some time to think this over or ponder with a friend. If you feel the need to talk with a spiritual life coach, email or call me and we can discuss what your beliefs mean to you or where you might be feeling stuck.

Entitlement

I used to think that people who had a strong sense of entitlement were also infused with a huge ego.  Recent encounters with more people who behave as if the world and all of its other occupants are here to serve them, has lead me to believe that what they are actually inflicted with is a very narrow vision that together with a huge ego, can run over others like a tank.

When you think that you and your needs or desires are at the center of the world, then naturally everyone else is here to serve you. 

I’ve seen this in the case of my teenage son, and as teenagers go, it seems that they have this type of vision in common to some degree or another.  As a parent, by teaching him about the world and showing him as much of it as I can and inviting him to read about places and lives he knows nothing about, I hope that it will expand his view.  With this expansion of his narrow vision, hopefully he will be cured of his sense of entitlement.

But what about adults who behave this way?  It is more common than you think.  You probably know quite a few.  And then there is the accepted form of entitlement that most businesses practice.  From the entitled guests at your house who think they can do what they do in their own home at yours without asking if they can, to tele-marketers who call at night asking what your mortgage rate is,  everyone thinks they can have a piece of you.  And they can, unless you decide that you won’t play that game.

These days we also have the soft and gentle entitlement gurus.  That would be the salespeople who have obtained your phone number or email and keep on infusing you with messages, advertising, and special deals on all kinds of things that you just didn’t know you needed.  They act as if they are entitled to your time, your inbox,  and hopefully your money.

Hence, the young clerk at the cash register of the local store where you are buying an over-priced t-shirt made in a developing country for pennies, feels entitled to ask you in a loud voice so everyone can hear: your address please, your phone number, and your email, etc.  And when or if you say, I don’t like to give out all of this information, I just want to buy this t-shirt,  they look at you like you have horns on your head.  In fact, you look like you are being rude! 

When you say no to the entitled of this world, they don’t like it and it is highly probable that they will try to make you look like the bad guy. It is a great strategy and it works for them.  However, if you’ve had enough, you no longer want to be stepped on or even gently be pecked at, you can politely remove yourself from all those email lists and refuse to give out information or even say no to anyone who wants a piece of you.

It can be done without drama (you don’t have to slide out of a plane or yell out any expletives).  It is called reclaiming your own power.  And when you do, you’ll feel wonderful.

Points and questions to ponder:

1)    Take some time to observe your life and your interactions with others.  Do you mostly approach life and people as if they are there for your needs?  Examine the way you treat service people (waiters, sales clerks, etc.), do you treat them like they are someone to go through to get to what you want (dinner, your dry cleaning, etc.)?  Do you pretend to be interested in them to develop a relationship, so you can do business with them later on? Are you ever really interested in connecting with the people you come across in life?

2)    Have you ever been taken advantage of by someone else?  How did that make you feel?  What did you do about it?  How would you have like to have behaved?  What will you do the next time someone tries to feed off of you? 

3)    When and whom do you say no to?


If you are ready to reclaim your own power in all areas of your life, and think that you might need some help, contact me so we can talk and you can determine if a spiritual life coach could help you on your journey of empowerment.

Excuses

During a recent conversation with someone, I was once again reminded of how often we use excuses for not addressing the real cause of our true dissatisfaction.  She was expressing her regret at not getting a good education when she was younger.  She continued with how she would have been able to have a better job, make more money, etc.  I stopped her in her tracks and asked, “and what would that give you?”  She looked at me like I was crazy, “well isn’t that enough?  A good job with a good salary?”

So often we blame our outer circumstances for our unhappiness.  There are a good number of people with an education, a good job with a good salary who are dissatisfied with life.  For someone who does not have much or comes from a place of hard work and not having much growing up, it seems like a dream come true.

It is so easy to rationalize our dissatisfaction.  I am unhappy because I don’t have X, or if I had Y, I’d be happy.  Such simplifications at best keep people motivated to go for more, and at worst makes them envious of those who have what they don’t.  Either way, it keeps them on a linear path of the object they are missing, close to achieving it or far away with no hope of getting there.  Such obsessions become part of their narrative and the way they look at life and interpret whatever is happening.

We all look out into the world through our own lens.  The more hardship we experience the thicker the lens gets.  At some point we cannot see without our glasses.  What if we looked at this example differently?

Imagine you have perfect vision and then something happens in your life or you have to live with a difficult situation, you start wearing glasses because you can only see what you think you want to see with those glasses.  Every opinion you form, every judgment you pass, every pain you endure becomes another layer between you and reality.  In time, what you think you see isn’t even close to the real thing.
 
If you find yourself making up excuses for what you are missing in your life or blaming others, or different circumstances for what you are experiencing, it is time to stop.  Take off your glasses and see what is really there.  You might find that the story you’ve been repeating in your own head was just that, a story, an old and irrelevant story.


It is time to step out of your story and start living!

Questions to ponder:
1)    What is the tape you keep on replaying in your head when you are dissatisfied with something?
2)    What is it that you think you need in order to be happy?
3)    Have you ever been completely satisfied?  What did it feel like?  How could you feel that way again?

Spiritual life coaching is an open-ended process that begins and ends where YOU need it to.  Maybe you hang on to excuses in a way that keeps you from moving forward in your life, or maybe it’s something altogether different.  Either way, if you think you could benefit from working with a spiritual life coach, contact me.

Optimism, Pessimism, and Reality

Are you one of  those people who appears to be looking at the glass as being half full or half empty?  The analogy of the half full or half empty glass is a funny one.  Either way, it does not change the reality of the situation. 

Typically, the person seeing it as half empty is described as being negative.  However, the person’s expectation might be for the glass to be full, so they are concerned about it not being the way they’d like it to be.  If you look at it this way, they are actually being positive. 

On the other hand, the one seeing it as the glass being half full, is perceived to be happy with a half full glass.  Does this imply that they never expected it to be full? 

Whatever your tendency might be (to be excited about whatever is happening or focused on what did not happen), the reality of the situation has not been affected by your tendencies. 

If you are setting goals for yourself and then looking back to see if you accomplished them, what happens?

Do you focus on what got done, embellish the facts and skip the part that didn’t happen?  Do you beat yourself up for what you did not accomplish?  Or do you objectively look at the whole picture and focus on what got done, what didn’t, and why?
 
Reality is never affected by our tendencies.  Our own personalities and moods are affected by them. 

If you approach every situation with the goal of keeping it real, you can be an objective attendee in your own life without the unnecessary drama.  So, the next time someone asks you if the glass is half full or half empty, just say, “oh who cares how I see it, it is what it is” and then move on.  That will give them something to talk about…

Questions To Ponder:
1)    How does your optimism or pessimism affect reality?
2)    What is reality?
3)    How would you like to approach life?

Take some time to think this over or ponder with a friend.  If you would like to speak with a spiritual life coach, email or call me and we can discuss how your attitude can affect your life or where you may be feeling stuck.

Surrender To Peace

While having lunch with an old friend today, our conversations lead to moments in life when we folded over and just gave up.  Laughing, we both agreed that in our younger days, we would have never given up or surrendered.  Our dog has to have surgery on his knee soon, and I am feeling helpless, not knowing if this is the right decision and I find myself once again in a state of surrender I remember being in before.
 
There was the time when my new born son had to have surgery and as they rolled him away into the operating room, I gave up and surrendered to something greater than the both of us.  Then there was the time when my daughter had to get stitches on her cut eyebrow and even though the surgeon kept reassuring me that she wasn’t feeling any pain, she kept screaming, I surrendered as I sat there holding her and attempting to calm her down.  There was the time when my father died and I felt lost, helpless, not knowing what to do, I surrendered and gave up trying to figure out what to do.
 
In all of these moments, I gave in to something much bigger than me or the situation I had found us in.

Looking back at all of these moments, what stands out is a great sense of peace that over took my mind and comforted my breaking heart each and every time. 

I can’t help but wonder why we wait for a calamity or something close to our heart to be ripped apart to surrender.  Surrender works when you don’t have the answers, when you have tried everything you could and still don’t know what to do, or why it happened, etc.
  
I wonder if we can access that peace that is beyond our human understanding in every moment of every day.  Is it always there and we are just too busy, thinking and doing our lives away to notice it?  Is it waiting for us to call out to it, to make itself accessible?  Or is it just patiently hanging out with us while we anesthetize ourselves with busyness and drama and then one instant when something doesn’t work out as planned and we get disconnected from our regularly scheduled programming, we bump into it and like an old friend we get reacquainted again and wonder why we haven’t kept in touch?

Whatever the case may be, I know that after all that you could do has been done, it is time to surrender. 

Surrender is not a sign of defeat, it is a request for help.  The term surrender is not one of my favorites, in fact, I remember a time in my younger days when I hated that word.  I would never surrender I thought. Surrender to what?  I thought I knew all the answers.
 
Life’s bumps and bruises have gifted me with a new appreciation for the concept of surrender.  I don’t have to know what I surrender to, I just need to know that I don’t know all the answers and that’s ok.  I need to know that it is ok to make what might seem to be a mistake from time to time.
 
It is ok to give up.  It is ok to ask for help.  It is ok.  All is well. In fact, it has always been and will always be ok.  There is a wisdom greater than what is in our heads that if we get quiet enough, we can tap into.  That is what true surrender means to me.  It is about stepping out of ego and into spirit.

Questions to ponder:

1)    What does surrender mean to you?
2)    Are you comfortable with the idea of surrendering?
3)    Have you ever surrendered?  What did it feel like?  What was the outcome?

Spiritual life coaching is an open-ended process that begins and ends where YOU need it to.  Maybe the concept of surrender is an issue that keeps you from moving forward in your life, or maybe it’s something altogether different.