The Synergy Communicator

The final thread

2012-02-06T09:53:00.000-06:00

I want to leave you with two pieces ofadvice.

The first piece of advice is don’t wait untilyou’re ready. You’ll never be ready. It is never a good time. I don’t care howmany times you face the demons, the next one is just as scary.

Secondly, go only as fast as you can. This isan evolutionary process, not a revolutionary process. Enjoy the process. Everytime you face the truth, it’s another experience of joy. Stop and appreciateit, enjoy it. Every time you heal your fear through love, you feel a littlelighter and freer. Stop and enjoy it.

Feel good about the progress you’re makingrather than bad about how far you have to go yet. There’s a difference there.It’s kind of like, if you keep doing it daily, tenaciously, lovingly,truthfully, open-heartedly, then it happens. It just does. We can trust it.It’s kind of like when you walk by a mirror and you see yourself, you my seeyou need a haircut, my hair has really grown. You didn’t notice it, but it washappening all the time. Well occasionally, you walk by a mirror and you look atyourself and say, I really am walking closer to my path. I really am livingmore to who I thought I was and that is a most glorious feeling! That’s not toobig of an adjective to describe it either.

I’m closing this thread with one last simplequote and although it specifically addresses women, I feel it applies to allhumanity.

When a woman tells the truth she is creatingthe possibility for more truth around her.

– Adrienne Rich

Thank you for reading my blog. New topic coming soon.

Deathbed regrets

2012-02-05T23:36:00.001-06:00

To live your life through programming and recycling thedrama; and maybe if you’re really lucky, on your deathbed, you’ll wake-up. Onyour deathbed, you look at it and say, “Boy, if only I hadn’t let this person,or this career, or these obligations, or this disease, or this lifestyle, oryou fill in the blank. If only I hadn’t let them rule my life.

This process that I’m talking about does take courage. Itreally does. It takes heroics in some cases. But the interesting thing is, isthat you have courage. You have heroics in you. We all do. And ordinary people,when they’re faced with the big trial, the big challenges, the big losses, thebig moral dilemmas, they find out what kind of courage they have. And it’soften through crisis and only through tragedy that we get to find that out.What I’m talking about is to realize that consciously, and drawing on itconsciously. And, it does take that kind of courage. Do you know what else ittakes? It takes suffering too.

The interesting thing about suffering is that it doesn’thurt. It’s like God said in Romans 8:18, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time arenot worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Sure life may include suffering, but knowingthis, we can dance through it. That’s the interesting thing aboutsuffering—when you really turn and look at it, suffering doesn’t hurt. Itdoesn’t even hurt.

I think great line by Herman Hesse, “…love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion thathurts, nothing else.” And again, what the alternative to suffering? More drama,recycling, more screwing it up and fixing it, and more neurosis.

I think of another great line from CarlJung--Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering. How’s that! That’swhat they are. Legitimate suffering takes you somewhere. Suffering is pain withmovement, pain with meaning and neurosis is a substitute for that. That’s why alot of us are neurotic. But, it’s worth it.

I talk a lot about pain and suffering. I geta little tired of it myself, if you want to know the truth. And, what the otherpart of that is, is that there’s a lot of joy out there. You know, it can be areally great life.

When you’re moving in the direction of whoyou are, you realize that. You’re alive, you’re not tired, you’re notmuddle-headed in the day. You don’t need a cup of coffee in the morning to wakeup. In fact, you’re blown away by the amount of energy you have. You work iseasier and you are blown away at how good at it you are. And, as you areunfolding yourself, you’re connecting with various parts of yourself; you’reblown away at who you are! You’re really great. What a wonderful revelationthat is.

Why is it so terrifying?

2012-02-03T11:11:00.000-06:00

When you look, you see connections. You see, I think one ofthe things we are doing right now is we are connecting the left and rightbrain. We are seeing that logic and science can only take us so far. We arereconnecting with the intuitive.

Another thing we’re doing is that we are making connects ofwhat happened to us when we were three-years-old and how we’re acting now.That’s some people didn’t do before. We’re making connections of what we sprayunder our arm and the ozone layer in Antarctica.People never did this before.

We’re making connections between East and West. We could nolonger look at each other to see the differences any more and so when we sawthe connection, what happened? The walls came a tumbling down. And it happensin fits and sparks; but, it’s happening. And it’s exciting! It’s the responsiblythat we all have.

We talk about facing the truth, and when we talk about healingfear with love, and we talk about looking at who we really are and movingstep-by-step towards it; it’s exciting on one hand and on the other hand, it isterrifying. It seems like a big responsibility. We have knownthe feeling. We just want to go back to sleep again. It was easier then in someways, but, we can’t. We can’t go back to sleep. And so, we face it.

I had a woman one time I was talking about this and shesaid, “I’m facing it. I’m facing it already, and to my left I see guillotineand to my right, I see a firing squad, and straight ahead, I see a noose.” Youknow what? I sympathize with that. But what’s the alternative? To stay stuck.

It's a crazy world out there!

2012-02-01T11:23:00.000-06:00

What we have is a generation of people who are working onthemselves. Have you noticed this? In unprecedented ways: in seminars, throughtherapy, though church, though things like this. And we have resistance tothat.

In fact, I went to a wedding some years’ ago and sat next to a woman who wasin her late 60s or early 70s and we were talking a little about the wedding andshe said, “I don’t get it.” She asked, “What’s going on here? Why is everybodyin therapy? We didn’t need any therapy when I was a kid.” She said, “Why iseverybody drugging up their childhood? Let it lay.” She asked, “What is it withthese women? What do they want? Why don’t they stay home with their kids wherethey belong? She asked, “Who let the homosexuals out of the closet?” She thenasked, “What do the animal rights people want?” She said, “Every time I lookaround, I see a starving kid on the television. The world’s going to hell.” Andyou know for her, the world is going to hell. For me, it’s going in the otherdirection.

Because what we are doing as a society is exactly appropriatefor the observing consciousness. We’re looking at it! We are as a societyconducting a fearless moral inventory and we’re drugging it up. All thehumanity, all the poverty, all the problems, all of the ugliness, we areholding it up and as is the want of human beings, we’ve gone way too far. But we’redoing it and for that I think we can only be grateful.

There have been people observingfor a long time. The poets, the Saints, the philosophers; this is nothingterribly new. What is new is the scope of it. What is new is that it is more ofa mass consciousness; particularly in our society and other societies throughoutthe world. And what happens when you observe? Well, what happens when youobserve is you start to see connections. And what are connections? Love. And that’swhat I see as the next level of consciousness.

Check back tomorrow for some more shocking comments.

The evolution of consciousness

2012-01-26T22:42:00.000-06:00

So of the next few minutes, let’s look at the evolution ofconsciousness and where we’re at as individuals and where we’re at as a societyand as a species and how it all relates; to do that we need to go back to ourearly days. I’m talking about our very early days, like as we first borne ashuman beings. You know when we thing back, our evolution as humanity as been asseries of awakenings. Humanity as a species has constantly woken up to new waysof using its mind.

To look at this, let’s go back starting at the dawn of time.Now the interesting thing is about the evolution of humanity is that itrecapitulates our own individual evolution, and the comparison toundifferentiated consciousness in early human beings is the infant. Infants arenot self-conscience. Often when you walk an infant by a mirror they don’t lookat themselves. When they go in their little diaper, they don’t worry about it.As long as their needs are being met, life is one blissful pleasant moment. Andsince that time that is how we lived.

Just as an infant is related to the undifferentiated, thisnext level of conscienceless is referred to as “dream consciousness” or “magicconsciousness”; past and present and future is all melded as a infants as itdoes for two, three, and four-year-olds. Little kids, when they play superhero, they really think they’re flying over the tree. They really experience itthat way. If you’re little daughter breaks a cookie jar and blames herdoll, that’s a real experience for her. She’s not trying to get over on youwith it. So that’s “dream consciousness”

Now we move to the next level of consciousness. This is whenwe begin to settle down into communities and begin moving from all hunters andscavengers to adding making and forming agricultural communities.

Now, what do youhave to wake up to in order to be a farmer? Time; past, present and future. Youhave to realize that when I plant this now, I’m going to able to harvest itnine months from now.

Now the three and four year-olds, have really no hugeconcept of time. You can tell them, “We’re going to plan a Disneyland next summer.” What do they ask? “When aregoing to Disneyland?” The next day, what to they ask?“Are we going today?” The next day, same thing. “Are we going today?” Theyreally don’t have a good grasp on time. It takes awhile to get that.

But when we got time, that was quite a revelation to us. Andso, we were able to build societies, and we did. We built great societies. Webuilt societies like the Egyptian societies, Greece,and Rome. And these are societieswhere basically superstition ruled. If there was a flood, it was because thegods were angry. Basically we were ruled by a big soap opera in the sky. Andthat’s how it worked for a long time.

Until the next levelof consciousness, I’ll refer to as rational consciousness. Rationalconsciousness happen with Jesus came on the scene. And what we realized at this point, is webasically woke up to our left brain. We woke up to logic. We woke up toscience. And we realized that the world is not ruled by superstition.

The worldis not ruled by the last virgin we sacrificed or how angry the gods are. But,that the world is ruled by natural laws; and not only that, but we can have somecontrol over these natural laws, we can use these natural laws. And, that wasquite a revelation that freed us from superstition. Now, looking at that onewaking up what it allowed us to do.

First of all, we were able to develop machinery. Machinerythat freed us from drudgery. We were able to develop mass communication, books.What did that do? That one single thing for the evolution of consciences?Suddenly people could see things, to hear things that happened outside of theirfive square miles where they grew up.

We develop medicine which basically doubled our life span.It was 200 hundred years ago the life span was 35 and 100 years ago it was 47.Now it’s roughly double that. What does that single fact do for the evolutionof consciousness?

What do people do in the last half of their lives? Well, ifthey’re lucky they develop some power of observation! They teach what theylearn to the younger generations. And that sped us up even more.

So we then move in to the next level of consciousness andmay I say also that when I talk about the evolution of consciousness, I make itsound like it some lock step process; it’s not.

More descriptions soon.

Overview of commitment

2012-01-24T12:08:00.001-06:00

Step four inself-empowerment is commitment. And commitment means taking the self-empowerment process to the streets. It means actively focusing your mind on thetruth at every moment or at least every moment you remember to and the more youdo it, the more you remember to. It means holding your commitments up to inspectionas you are living them. It means hauling your doubts up front and center tofind out what they have to tell you. It means keeping your commitments alive by continuously and adjusting them to your deepening levels of self-awareness. Andwhen you see that one isn’t alive anymore, tell the truth about it, to yourselfand to others and do it lovingly. And truth that if you do that, that everybodyinvolved is served even if you can’t see it in the short term. So, that’sself-empowerment.

Step one- Self-awareness

Step two- Truth

Step three-Love

Step four- Commitment

In its simplest expression,self-empowerment is the process of moving from living your life though unconsciousprogramming and more of your life thought conscious choice. In other words, thinkabout it. Self-empowerment is the evolution of your own consciousness. As such,it is a journey, not a destination. Maybe a more appealing way to look at it thatit is a journey where every step is a destination; a destination where you havethe distinct pleasure of meeting a new part of yourself; destination where you getto stop and celebrate and rest before mustering up your strength move on.

It’s a beautiful process and it gets even more beautiful whenyou look around and see that it a process that doesn’t end with us. In fact, itseems that the evolution of consciousness is not only taking place within us a individuals,but it’s also taking place within humanity as a species. As a species we’removing from unconscious programming to living more through conscious choice. It’sa most fascinating concept, the evolution of consciousness.

Let’s follow this more in the next segment.

Recaping truth and love

2012-01-23T11:45:00.000-06:00

Let’s look at steptwo, truth. Truth as we’ve look at it in this series is far more than honestyand accuracy, it is a force, a force that leads us step-by-step to our ownself-empowerment. Every moment life offers us an opportunity to either tell thetruth or not tell the truth. To see it, all we have to do is look. If we tellthe truth, we get to take another step towards our self-empowerment. If wedon’t tell the truth, we get to recycle the drama which we will continue to dountil we do tell the truth. We can recycle certain dramas our whole life if weare tenacious enough about staying unconscious about it.

Why do we stayunconscious? Simple…fear. Sometimes it’s the screaming terror variety. But moreoften it’s simply the numb fear of someone who has spent their entire lifealone and neglected in a cell; which in a very real since what we do when welive in fear. In fact, that’s our definition of fear—separation. So, fear keeps usfrom facing and telling the truth.

Now how do we overcome fear? The way weovercome fear is love, step three in the path of self-empowerment. Love isconnectedness. Connectedness heals separation. That’s why I say love healsfear. So, love, like truth is a force and like truth, it is a force much biggerthan the everyday definition. Love heals fear. Really think about that.

When you see yourconnection to other people, when you love them, you are automatically moretrusting and confident, less suspicious, less hostile, less fearful. When youfeel connected to your work, when you love your work, it is a joy and you are amaster. When you see your connection to the world at large, to the general flowof life, when you, indeed, love life, you feel safe and secure. Your life hasmeaning beyond yourself. When you connect to yourself, when you love yourself,you come home. To borrow from T.S. Elliott, you see the place as if for the first time. That’sstep three in self-empowerment--love.

Reviewing the four steps of self-empowerment

2012-01-22T14:36:00.000-06:00

Let’s take a quickglance back at all four steps of self-empowerment and how they fit together. Thefirst step as you recall, is self-awareness with its two component parts: self-responsibilityand the observing consciousness. Let’s look at self-responsibility. When youare self-responsible, you know, you understand to the deepest parts of yourselfthat nothing and nobody controls you, but you. It may seem that they do. But abig part of lives lesson is looking closely and seeing that they don’t. Andthat’s where the second part of self-awareness comes in, observing consciousness.

The observing consciousness is the vantage point from which you can see yourthoughts instead of be our thoughts. You can see your emotions instead of be youremotions. You can see your actions instead of be your actions. And when you seethese things objectively, if you will, then you can see options as well. Andwhen you have options, you can choose. You can move though living your life thoughunconsciousness programming to living your life though consciousness choice.

The self-awarenessprocess then is seeing thought the observing consciousness and acting throughself-responsibility. Those two things together make up the engine ofself-empowerment. And seeing, or the observing consciousness, is inextricable tiedto acting. Remember? Consciousness is optional, but once your consciousnessaction is mandatory. So that’s self-awareness, the first step inself-empowerment.

Check out next post for the followup.

Living your life through conscience choice

2012-01-21T19:17:00.000-06:00

Let’s take a coupleof minutes to do an exercise that will help you. Look at a commitment in yourlife; think of one now. Your commitment to your job, for instance, or to nothave another child, to your marriage, to playing the piano, to losing 30pounds, to making $100K/yr, to caring for your aging parents, to being aconservative, to traveling the world.

Are you committedout of conscience choice in this moment? Is this commitment serving the truthfor you? Is it taking you where you’re going right now, in this moment? If so,great! You have a commitment that is alive. If you’re not sure, great too! Because,now you get to look at it. Let’s do that right now.

This exercise willtake about five minutes. And like most of the exercises we’ve done takes placemostly in your head. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a paper and pen in caseyou want to write your insights down.

Start by bringinginto your mind a commitment that you’re not so sure about. We’re going to lookat that commitment for a moment. I will ask you a series of five questions. Between eachquestion, you have 60 seconds to look at it, to think about it, to bring thetruth into consciousness. Give each question at least 60 seconds. Even if youthink you know the answer already, just keep looking. Is there anything elseyou’re missing? On the other hand, if you need more than sixty seconds, justcome back to it as you prepare to move on.

Now just relax. Emptyyour hands. Sit or lay back. Take a breath. Bring thecommitment in question to the front of your mind. Look at it. Open yourself toreally looking at the truth about it. Now follow this commitment into thefuture. Where does it lead? What will things look like one year from now if youkeep this commitment? What will it look like five years from now? Twenty yearsfrom now? How will it look? Take at least 60 seconds and look at it. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply and slowly.

Question two. Howdoes your commitment feel? Check outyour body. When you think of your commitment, do you feel warm? Serene? Relaxed?Or do you feel stress? Fear? Anxiety? These feelings may be subtle. Take at least 60seconds to check them out.

Question three. Imaginebreaking your commitment. Do you feel a loss? A sadness? Or a liberation? Exhilaration? Or a little of both? Which is stronger? Look at it from different angles. Take atleast sixty seconds.

Question four. If noone else would be affected by you decision, what would you do? This is not tosay you shouldn’t think about other people, but simply that you need to getbeyond other people to get in touch with yourself. So again, if no one elsewill be affected by your decision, what would you do? Take at least sixtyseconds and look at it.

Question five. You’reon your deathbed. You’ve kept this commitment your whole life. Are you at peacewith this decision? Or do you wish you had the courage and tell the truth aboutit and release yourself from it? Look at it from your deathbed. Take at least sixtyseconds.

I hope that thisexercise has brought some clarity to your decision about making one of the mostimportant commitments of your life. Chances are, however, if it’s a particularlycomplex commitment or one that you are particularly ambivalent about it,chances are that you’ve just begun to look at it. Keep looking. Write about itin your journal. Talk to people you trust about it. Try therapy. Pray. If youkeep looking, then you will know what to do; probably sooner than you think. Thenall you have to do is do it. Use this processfor all the important commitments of your life.

So, that our look atcommitment, step four in the path of self-empowerment. Remember,self-empowerment is the process of living your life your way. It’s your pathback to yourself. It’s the process of not living your life through unconscious programming.It’s the process of moving from living your life through unconscious programmingto living your life through conscience choice.

Consciously keeping commitments

2012-01-19T10:59:00.000-06:00

So the goalobviously is to get up-to-date on the truth behind all of your commitments; tostop playing them out unconsciously, to regularly hold them up to light of day ofconsciousness, of attention and see if they’re still alive in the presentmoment. If they are, great! Recommit and bring them back to living breathinglife. If they’re not, adjust them so that they do come alive. And if thatdoesn’t work, abandon them.

If you’re not sure,well then, just look more closely and you’ll see. That’s the process. Throughconstant simple observation; moment by moment by moment, your commitments stayalive. They have integrity. And you know what else? You do to.

You have theintegrity of somebody who is living their life their way. It shows and whatpower it has! People are attracted to it. Integrity is riveting. Do you knowpeople with integrity? If you do then you know what magnetism and charisma theyhave. You know what I’m talking about.

And, beyond all that stuff—integrity,keeping your commitments conscious and alive is just flat out an easier andmore productive way to live. It’s less complicated. You don’t get bogged downin so many ridiculous dramas. You get out of bad situations quickly andcleanly. The situations you decide to stay in are richer and more rewardingbecause you’re there by choice. You’re there with your eyes open. This is theresult of keeping your commitments conscious and alive through simpleobservation.

Closer examination of commitment

2012-01-18T13:28:00.000-06:00

Now, when you startlooking at your commitments very closely, before you make them, two resultswill take place. One is you’ll make fewer commitments because you’re payingmore attention to them. Two is that the commitments you do make will bestronger. Why? Because as you’ll see, as you do this more and more that theonly appropriate commitments are commitments based on the basic principals oflife. Not commitments that based on details or outcomes.

Let me give you acouple of quick examples if what I’m talking about. This is the differencebetween a commitment based on a life principal and a commitment that is basedon a specific outcome.

First, I promise tolove you for better or for worse. Instead of I promise to love you for betteror for worse, live close to your mother in Seattle, we’ll have three kids together and here’show we’ll split the money if it doesn’t work out. Do you hear the difference betweenthe commitment based on principal and a commitment based on a specific detailor outcome?

Here’s another one.I am committed to being of service to my customers. Instead of I am committedto coming out with two new projects over the next three months. Hear thedifference?

Here’s another one.I am committed to creating value to myself and my organization. Instead of I’mcommitment to being the best in my field within three years.

Now, as you readthis and as you relate it to your own life, you may be noticing that we’regetting to something here and we are. And that is in fact the only things wecan ever really commit to and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we’ll neverever change our mind are the basic principals of life, such as self-awareness,truth and love in all of their many glorious manifestations.

In a sinceeverything every thing else is just a detail. And the details are not just aptto change, I can guarantee you that they will. As John Lennon said, “Life iswhat happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” This doesn’t meanthat we shouldn’t make any plans or even set goals. Goals are great. Activatethem. As long as we remember that a goal has one purpose and one purpose onlyand that is to lead you to your next step. One step and one step only. At thatpoint, you look around again and see what you see. You observe, you payattention. Do you still want it? Should you adjust it a little here? Tilt it alittle there?

Now, there’s abeauty to this because in one since goals can help us keep our commitmentsspecific, focused and tangible. They can help us work with our commitments on adaily basis. And on the other hand, they can keep our commitment alive anddynamic so they don’t calcify and turn into just another prison.

Let me sum it up.Commitments are truth in action. And remember, the truth faced courageously andtold lovingly create commitments that may not take you where you thought youwere going, but they will take you somewhere better—every time. You can counton it.

Blasé truth

2012-01-17T20:42:00.001-06:00

So, the overridingcommitment is to the truth, as to who you really are and another way to look atit that we want the detachment from goals or outcomes. But, we still wantcommitment to who we are. So, we’re looking for commitment without attachment.But commitment without attachment, commitment to the truth, commitment to yourtrue self without attachment whatever the outcome may be and that might looklike blasé and the truth is, it is. I don’t know where I’m going to be later. But Iknow one thing, I’ll be more of who I am in the process and that’s what mattersto me. I don’t care. I am totally blasé about it, the outcome.

In the process ofviewing life in from a detached vantage point you try to determine what is moretrue in your personal nature. To your true self as you know it at this pointand as you’ve seen it through your past history and that’s the choice you take.

As we’ve seencommitments only work, if there are based on solid self-awareness. What doesthis mean in daily practice? It’s simple. It means thinking, attention,observation. It means thinking long andhard before you even make a commitment; before you even think about making acommitment. It makes making commitments a serious thing.

In other words, beforeyou get caught up in the heat of the moment and start wanting to make a promisewhether it’s to return someone’s phone call or love them forever, just stop andremind yourself of a very simple fact and that is that times change. It’sreally quite a great thought. Times change. Remind yourself that life is notabout painting some picture of some ideal future then spend the rest of yourlife trying to crowbar yourself into it.

Life is for growth,for stretching, for exploring, for growing, for unfolding, turning toward thesun and blossoming. And you don’t know what that’s going to look like inadvance. You just don’t know.

How to know which way to go

2012-01-16T13:30:00.000-06:00

If you are viewinglife from a detached vantage point as perhaps an author might writing about athird person about your viewing yourself in the third person. It would seem tome that sure, you can see all the author things available to you and whichcourses you may pursue, but you become so detached that they’re perhaps couldbe a problem with saying, well, in a 100 years or 200 years what does it allmatter?

I have these threechoices and take either one of these three options and at this point I candetermine which of the three options are better. Each will lead down adifferent road and what’s if for me to say which of the three roads I shouldtake? Each one is an adventure, so why should I worry about it at all at thispoint. So then you become fall back into a fatalist type attitude towardsthings. So sure, you can see these choices. They may appear very clear to youor you come very detached from it, but then you have sort of blasé attitudetowards things.

Let me just tellyou how I see what I just described. When I see roads diverge and I don’t knowwhich ones which to to take, my goal,if you will, is to take the one that is most truly me. So my overriding goal(also, I don’t have a five year goal for instance). I don’t know where I’mgoing to be in five years except one thing. I know in five years, I’ll be more SheilaStewart than I am right now. I don’t know where that’s going to take me. So insome ways we need to detach from hard fast goals, because goals can stop usfrom letting ourselves unfold. And it can stop us from letting a new depth ofself-awareness show us what’s really true.

So what do you do when you don't know what to do?

2012-01-15T17:23:00.000-06:00

If you viewing lifefrom a detached vantage point as perhaps an author might writing about a thirdperson about your viewing yourself in the third person. It would seem to methat sure you can see all the author things available to you and which coursesyou may pursue, but you become so detached that they’re perhaps could be aproblem with saying, well, in a 100 years or 200 years what does it all matter?

Let's say that I have these three choices and take either one of these three options and atthis point I can't determine which of the three options are better. Each willlead down a different road and what’s if for me to say which of the three roadsI should take? Each one is an adventure, so why should I worry about it at allat this point. So then you begin to fall back into a fatalist type attitudetowards things. So sure, you can see these choices. They may appear very clearto you or you come very detached from it, but then you have sort of blaséattitude towards things.

Let me just tellyou how I see what I just described. When I see roads diverge and I don’t knowwhich ones which, my goal, if you will, is to take the one that is most trulyme. So my overriding goal (also, I don’t have a five year goal for instance). Idon’t know where I’m going to be in five years except one thing. I know in fiveyears, I’ll be more Sheila Stewart than I am right now. I don’t know wherethat’s going to take me. So in some ways we need to detach from hard fastgoals, because goals can stop us from letting ourselves unfold. And it can stopus from letting a new depth of self-awareness show us what’s really true.

A further point isthat when you follow the path of self-awareness and you follow the path ofself-empowerment, it may not get you where you thought you were going, but itwill get you someplace better.

Commitments do change

2012-01-14T14:26:00.000-06:00

Some commonconcerns and observations about commitments:

Probably the reasonwe take issue with the word commitment in our society is because we equate itwith “no change”. Sometimes it seems like when I talk people I’ve known looklike they actually reject commitment, but they are probably more committed inmany ways than people I know who do not make changes and appear to be verycommitment oriented. This is such a different perspective. And I think what itmeans is we must release ourselves from some grand plan and grand scheme forour lives. And again, stop trying to change ourselves and mold ourselves intowhat we think we ought to be and just keep our commitment to the truth whateverit may be. And the truth will lead you what is right for you and it may notlook like anything where you think you are going.

A lot of concernsis the fear of the unknown. They are a lot of things I’d like to commit to andsay okay I don’t like my job; I want out of it, but I’m in a situation wherefinancially I have someone to support and so on and so forth. Okay I’m going togo by the truth. I’m going to go by what I really want to do in life and what’sgoing to give me self-fulfillment and all those things, but I want a guaranteethat I do that and I pursue it the fullest that I’m going to be okay and notout on the street in a year because I thought that was there to take care ofme. So how you do get past that fear?

If you want aguarantee I’ll give it to you. Follow the truth and you’ll be okay. I guaranteeit. If it doesn’t work, I’ll give you your money back. You know, there are alot of things we can doubt in this world. We can doubt whether or not the commagoes inside outside the quotation marks. We can doubt sacrum, but never doubtthe power of truth and love. It always works every time; leading saints agree.

I want address fearagain because I think sometimes can be very much afraid of change if we look atthe entire picture at one time and you want change about so quickly in yourlife, if you begin to look at it and break it down to a step-by-step process ofyou as an individual can handle. Some people can handle a lot of changequickly. They have that element of courage already. Others can’t, and if youbreak it down to a step-by-step process that fits your own individual needs itdoesn’t have to happen overnight; simply inch by inch.

Sex in the road

2012-01-13T00:44:00.000-06:00

Okay, I've been on a little break, but I did a video blog this week.
Enjoy!

Dried up and hollow committments

2012-01-10T15:31:00.000-06:00

So how do weextricate ourselves? Well, there are a couple of ways to do it. One way is to,first of all, commit in your own mind to what you know the new truth to be. Onthose dark nights when you’re wondering about it, when your fears are engulfingyou, remind yourself of why you are doing it. Remind yourself of the truth.Remind yourself that you’re moving in the direction of being more who you are.

Next, tell thetruth to the other person. Tell the truth in the since that, if you were lyingto them, cop to it. If you weren’t lying to them, say that you know that when Ipromised this, I meant it. I was kidding myself as much as I was kidding you.

I can’t do thisanymore. That’s what we do when we tell the truth. I can’t do this anymore. Theother thing we do when we tell the truth is bring them in on it. Don’t go inwith some final verdict. If you’re having trouble with your marriage, ask. Letthem know that you’re feeling like the commitment is gone. You’re feeling likethe love’s gone, what do you think? Instead of saying, “I want a divorce, I’mout of here.” When you go in with the final decision then there’s nonegotiating, there’s no room to move.

You find when yougo in and involve other people in the truth or involve other people in thedecision is that you have an outcome of what is better than expected. That’sthe interesting thing about the truth.

The truth will notalways lead you where you think you’re going. But the good news is, it willlead you somewhere better.

Breaking commitment lovingly and consciously

2012-01-09T13:04:00.000-06:00

As you can see, it reallydoesn’t pay to ignore a commitment you realize is no longer true for you. The onlyappropriate choice when you realize that is to extricate yourself from that commitment,to break it.

Now, I realize that there’s a serious problem with this, and thatis commitments generally involve other people, and let’s face it, what lookslike pursuing your self-awareness and your own truth for your life to yourselfcan look to other people like flakiness or worse yet, down right betrayal.

Nobody said this was going to be easy. But take heart, ultimately, if youreally following your truth and your truth is based on self-awareness and you’retelling the truth lovingly then everyone around you will benefit. It may notlook like it to you at the time and it may not look like it to them at thetime. But that will be the outcome.

Think about it andyou’ll see that it’s true. In the long, run staying with the commitment that isdry and hollow causes far more pain for everyone involved than breaking it consciouslyand lovingly ever could. But still that’s not to say that it will ever be easy.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about specific ways toapply consciousness in your life

Outcome #3

2012-01-08T10:37:00.002-06:00

That’s outcome #1and outcome #2. Not too great, but either of them are far superior than outcome#3

Here’s Outcome #3

You’re a strongperson. A particularly strong person; self-disciplined. You know life is astruggle. It’s suppose to be, and one of the things that makes it worse is allthese people in this world who can’t hunker down and deal with it. They’renever satisfied. Sure your job is tough, but you have a family to support, youhave commitments to keep, you can gut it out. Your dad did. His dad did.Besides, beginning a high school teacher wouldn’t be such a day at the beach either.

So that’s how youthink about all this. Those are your judgments about it. And you hold on toyour judgments like a bulldog. You are like a dedicator in your own mind. Nodescending thoughts will be heard. And, they’re not. And you just keep on trudging;doing, as you put it, the best you can. And slowly, you don’t even reallynotice it, but you begin to wither. You begin to deaden, but what fortitude youhave! You never give up! You’re like an old dog with a bone. And even thoughyou hardly notice anymore, the years are rolling along too. Like old man river.

And you alsowithout noticing are just getting sicker or number or maybe drunker. And ifyou’re really, really lucky you’ll live long enough to retire.

So that’s outcome#3.

Outcome #2

2012-01-07T11:03:00.000-06:00

Here is it. Youslowly, steadily, move from merely disliking your job to hating your job. Everyflaw takes on gargantuas Technicolor proportions. You start seeing all of theevidence of your industry is corrupt; that your company can’t be trusted; thatyour boss is out to get you. You start seeing all the people around you as beingfrauds and sell-outs. Brick by brick the walls go up. Only this time, you’redoing the building; busy as a bee. People start persecuting you, or at least,that’s how you see it. And it seems that you’re constantly broiled in someconflict or other. It’s getting harder and harder for your bosses and coworkersto support you.

Every night you gohome with a new story with your spouse and family. They eat it up. They can’tbelieve the jerks you work with. They can’t believe what you have to gothrough. And they fuel your fire.

Now, at this point,if your company is at least semi-conscience this is about the time you getkicked out for your insufferable negativity. More likely, however, you’re bossand co-workers adjust themselves to you; the poor unwitting things.

And you,you with the grim determination of a brick layer continue to separate yourself.Day after day, after day, after week, after month, goes by. And one day, afteryou’ve managed to work yourself into an uncontrollable froth, you create some wildand unconscious drama and storm out in a blaze of self-righteousness.

Well, atleast you got what you needed. You have unnecessarily poisoned yourself andnumber of perfectly nice people in the process, but at least you’re out. Nowyou can be a high school teacher.

That’s outcome #1and outcome #2. Not too great, but either of them are far superior than outcome#3.

Outcome #3 tomorrow.

Outcome #1

2012-01-06T10:03:00.000-06:00

You usedto be good at your job, but lately, you don’t know. You just can’t seem toconcentrate. The work you had to do just really doesn’t interest you. Peoplecome at you with problems and crisis and you try to get excited, but it’s aact. And at some level, people always know when it’s an act. And you have thatsick feeling that you’re not fooling anybody.

You’re distracted for hours at atime. Procrastinating on work that is important. You tell yourself, you’ll getcaught up this weekend. But when the weekend comes you stare at yourbriefcase. You can’t even bring yourself to get near it. And it stares back allweekend long. You don’t know what’s wrong with you. You have no energy. Nothingexcites you all you want to do is sleep. You go to the doctors, but they findnothing.

At work, thinksjust get worse. Eventually, it become quite obvious that it’s be a long timesince you’ve come up with a good idea. In fact, what you’ve become more knowfor are your mistakes and generally messing up everything you touch. Brick bybrick the walls are going up.

You’re bosses talkto you, give you action plans and warnings. Your co-workers begin to distancethemselves. This is how it always happens you to you. You tell yourself, you’venever been able to exceed in anything. You’ve be worthless along. It amazingthat you’ve able to fool these people this long. By now, you’ve lost all hope,all caring, you can’t even bring yourself to try. Let the enviable happen, youthink to yourself. The sooner, the better. And it does. You’re fired. Andcarried out by some poor perplexed manager for feeling vaguely guilty forhaving failed to motive you.

Well, cheer up.It’s over! Now, you can be a high school teacher. At least, maybe after a fewyears of good therapy. That’s outcome number #1.

Tomorrow, we'll look at another outcome to this scenario.

Life is full of compromises

2012-01-05T13:36:00.000-06:00

Follow this post as a setup to the different outcomes we may see here. Over the next three days, we'll exam each of them. It may feel weird, but just hang with me here.

Let’s say, youdon’t like your job, but you can’t bring yourself to leave it. You’re a managerin a hard driving company, you do it well, everybody likes you, but over thepast year or so, you’ve come to the realization that all you really want to dois teach high school. The mere thought of it excites you. You daydream aboutit. You’ve always wanted to teach. And, hey; you’ve been around the block a fewtimes with jobs. You know yourself a little better now and at this point youdon’t have many doubts that teaching is exactly where you ought to be. Now,this realization is turning out to be a big problem for you. In fact, you wishyou could just shake it from your mind.

There’s nothingwrong with your job. You do it well. It’s secure; your prospects are good.Besides, you’ve made commitments. It’s hard you know? You’re making good money.Certainly a whole lot more than you’d make if you started over as a high schoolteacher. And truth be told, you’re kind of use to that money. And you’re familyis kind of use to that money. And you kind of need it to keep the monthly beastfed.

Why can’t you justrelax and leave well enough alone? Life if full of compromises, maybe youshould have been a high school teacher, but not you’re 20 years into yourcareer and it’s way too late to be thinking about that now. So, just be an adultand forget about it.

Well, you canforget about it, or at least try. Just don’t look at it anymore. That’s alwaysan option when you have a commitment that you begin to realize that it’s nolonger serving you, but you’re not willing to break it.

Just forget about it.Go unconscious, again. If you choose this option, one of three things willhappen:

Outcome #1 I'll discuss tomorrow.

What happens if your doubts are stronger than your commitment?

2012-01-03T16:14:00.002-06:00

Today we are looking at dynamic opposites of the commitment. We’re going to talk what if maybe,just maybe that your doubts are stronger than your commitment. Then whathappens?

So that’s all welland good. But what happens when you have doubt about a commitment and when youlook at it, you see that your doubts are stronger than your commitment? Thatyour commitment isn’t alive for you, and further, you don’t really want it tobe. What do you do then?

Well, what you do then is begin the process ofbreaking your commitment. I hear you gasp! But, it happens! And sometimes itought to happen. Whether it’s a job, a career, a friendship, a marriage,sometimes, yes, sometimes the truth is best served for all concerned if the commitmentends.

This thought, thisvery thought scares us. It scares us because we try to build our lives on commitments.They are the foundation under our feet, so we want to think of the them asbeing unshakable.

But they are shakable. And appropriately enough, we can’texpect to lead increasingly conscious empowered lives if we are forever boundin commitments that we made we were at a lesser level of consciousness. Whythat would be almost as bad as spending your life in a career you hate just becauseyou decided to major in when you were seventeen. Positively unthinkable! Exceptit happens everyday.

We do find ourselvesentwined in commitments that no longer sever us. Let’s not pretend that this isnot true or that is it somehow legitimate. Because if we do that, then we arenot able to approach the whole situation consciously. And you know what thatmeans, if we can’t approach it consciously then we have to approach it unconsciously.

You know what Imean. It’s the way the world works. If we’re not allowed to do what we have todo overtly, we’ll do it covertly. We’ll bring on a crisis from the sidelines. We’llforce the commitment to end. All the while looking like a mere victim of circumstances,even strangely enough to ourselves. All because, once again, we refuse to facethe truth consciously; or we’re afraid to be the one to tell it, just so we don’thave to take responsibility. Just so we don’t have to be bad or wrong.

Tomorrow, I willgive you an example of what I’m talking about.

Fantasy land again, easier, but no less valuable

2012-01-02T13:00:00.000-06:00

Let’s say, justbetween you and me about your fantasy about the sweet young thing wasn’t justentirely demolished? You know what I mean? What do you do then? You know whatdo to then—you look at it! That’s what we always do. And you see that your fantasygot you in touch with something you needed to see.

For instance, maybeyour fantasy showed you that you’re a little board in your sex life. That’scould be a new avenue of self-awareness for you. That’s new level of truth thatyou know about yourself now. Now, what doyou do with it?

What do you do when you’re in an alive committed relationshipand you learn something new about yourself? Well, if you want it to remain analive committed relationship, you share what you learned about your partner. Andso, you go to your partner and you confide that you’d like a little more excitementin the bedroom.

Now, this may not be easy to do, but remember, you understandthe power of truth. You understand that sometimes takes courage and havecourage, and you believe that if you tell the truth lovingly, things alwaysworks out for the best. Remind yourself of this. And, once you do it, once youface your partner, once you tell the truth, a couple of things might happen.

Chances are goodthat you mate feels the exact same way. He or she, too, has noticed that you’vegotten into a rut and now that the truth has been told, you can look at it togetherand do something with it; resulting, quite possibility in a whole new level of excitementand intimacy in your relationship.

Or maybe you’llfind out that your partner feels differently than you do. Maybe they’reperfectly satisfied. Maybe they’re not willing to go as far as you’d like. Whatdo you do then? Well, you look at that—together. And thought the power of truthand love, you come to an understanding, a compromise. You’re a little dissatisfiedhere; they’re a little dissatisfied there; and both of you a perfectly satisfiedwith the whole. See what I mean?

You’re quite clearthat compromises you’re making are acceptable and on balance and you have awonderful thing going. This is theprocess, this is how commitments stay alive; not by ignoring doubts, not byhiding from them, but by bringing them up quickly and courageously and through truthand love, actually using them to take you a step closer to yourself.

It’s a paradox. Doubts,viewed consciously are what actually keep your commitments dynamic and growing. Doubts, viewedconsciously are what actually keep your commitments from becoming splinteredand fractured.

Tomorrow we willlook at dynamic opposite of the commitment. We’re going to talk what if maybe, justmaybe that your doubts are stronger than your commitment. Then what happens?

Commitments with emotions

2011-12-30T11:39:00.000-06:00

If you choose compassion instead of anger, you becomea passionate person. If you choose courage instead of fear, you become a lessfearful person. If you choose commitment instead of whims, you become a morecommitted person. And that’s what we’re talking about here, making yourdecisions to support your commitments. Contrary to popularbelief, commitments are not static things. They live just like we do becausethey are a part of us. And, like us they grow and change.

Let’s look closer.What do we mean by a commitment that is alive? A commitment that is alive is onethat is re-enforcing itself constantly. Not because you ever doubt it. Not becauseyou push doubts from your mind. But because you do the precise opposite. Becauseyou notice your doubts quickly. Call them up, front and center, and look at themdirectly in the eye.

For instance, you’rewalking down the street a happily married man or woman, and some sweet youngthing walks in front of you and before you know it, you’re off in a fantasy in immenseproportions. A typical day, right? The problem is you’re in a committedrelationship with somebody. What are you going to do? Are you going to feelresentful that you’re not allowed to taste this forbidden fruit? Are you goingto try to replace your fantasy with thoughts of a cold shower? Or are you goingto feel guilty? Because if you believe that you were really happily married,you wouldn’t even have fantasies about other partners.

If you’re conscious,if you are committed to a live committed commitment, you’re not going to do anyof these things. In your mind, you’re going to turn and face your fantasy consciouslyand your going to hold it up and ask yourself, “Even if I could act on this,would whatever pleasure it gave me be worth jeopardizing what I have over herewith my spouse? The years we’ve been together? The depth and understanding andtruth we have for each other. The kids and what we’ve built together, our plansand dreams?”

And even if you think you could get away with a little infidelitythat your spouse wouldn’t find out. You do realize that there’s no getting awaywith anything. You ask yourself, “DoI really want to lie to the person who I love? Do I really want to put walls upin my own heart, between me and the person I am committed to?” And, you holdthis fantasy up and you compare it with the deep, rich, alive committedrelationship that you have with your spouse. And you really look at it and whenyou do, you realize that there’s no comparison. The fantasy is demolished.

So what have youdone by really looking at your fantasy consciously? You have, strangely enough,used it to actually strengthen your commitment to your marriage, instead ifhaving it undermine your marriage. Which what it would have done if you had notlooked at it consciously. Do you see the mechanism? At least that’s the easy scenario.

Next time we’lllook at something a little less easy.

Examples of commitment

2011-12-29T14:22:00.001-06:00

Another applicationof commitment: if you’re an environmentalist, you have to think about “Whatdoes that mean for you?” Most of want to have a beautiful environment and wewant all the conveniences of modern life. You can’t have both. You just can’t,and so, and if you’re an environmentalist yes that means that you pack your aluminumcans out even when you’re camping or hiking so you don't leave them in a roadsidedisposal.

That means that you turn off the water and turn off the lights evenwhen you’re staying in a hotel; even when it absolutely nothing to do with yourelectric bill or water bill.

That means thatwhen you buy a car you look at the mileage being just as important as how fastit accelerates.

Or depending on howyou define being an environmentalist, you might be like some of my friends. Youmight find that it is not appropriate to own a car. They take bikes and buses,but until you think about it; until you make a decision on what’s appropriate foryou, you’re fractured with people.

Keeping your word. Ifyou’re somebody who keeping your word is important then you think twice beforeyou make a promise. You may say no to somebody even when you want to say yes.But you say no knowing that sometime down the line they’ll find out the truth.So you make your commitments consciously.

When you listen tosomebody, you really listen. Your mind isn’t wandering all over the placebecause you’re making a commitment in that moment. You’re making a decision. You’refocusing your thoughts.

I’ll give you anexample dealing with emotional commitments tomorrow.

OMG! More commitment!

2011-12-27T20:34:00.000-06:00

The applications ofthis are endless. For instance, as a leader in your organization, you have tobe committed to something. If you area manager or you are a leader in yourworkplace, you have to ask yourself, “What do I stand for? What am I committedto?” and you can’t do that unless you’re conscience, unless you make decisionsbased on real self-awareness and chances are you will decide one of the thingsI stand for in my origination in my department is great customer service. That’swhat most of us need stand for in the world these days--great customer service.So, when you make that kind of commitment the decisions are easier.

For instance, whenyou make the commitment you going to be great a customer service then you talkto customer’s regularly. Maybe you set up systems where your people talk tocustomer’s regularly. Maybe you do surveys. That’s a way of making a decisionto support your commitment. When you're committed to costumer service, youdon’t tolerate jokes being told about customers among your people. You don’t tolerantlittle white lies being told to customers. You’re decisions support your comment.

When the budget’stight and you think you might want to cut back on some services, but you think twice or three times about doingthat, because you know your commitment and your decisions have to support yourcommitment.

If you don’t botherto commitment. If you don’t bother to think about it; clarify it in your headthen you’re at the mercy of the next wind that blows. That’s commitment.

We’ll get intoanother application of commitment tomorrow.

Facing commitment in a head-on collision

2011-12-22T09:58:00.000-06:00

Another example: Weall want to and most of us love to eat. Don’t we? I love to eat. I love newrestaurants. I love to cook. I like Häagen-Dazs. I like fat and salt, potato chips. I likefat and sugar, ice cream. I love it! And, I want to have a nice body.

When we look at ourbodies, what do we compare our bodies to? Most of us compare our bodies to thepeople on television who advertise health clubs. You want to know who I compare my bodyto? Jennifer Lopez or Cher (and that isn’t even her body). And I musttell you that I am a sad disappointment.

You men, you compare your bodies tothe Soloflex man. So what is it? How can you have it. both? And again, when wewant both, when we want to look like Jennifer Lopez and we want to enjoy foodand go to a restaurant and have Häagen-Dazs? What is it again when we want both? We getneither.

I know people whohave never looked in the mirror in the last 30 years and liked what they saw,and they have never had a bite of food that they have enjoyed guilt free at thesame time. You want both, you get neither. So what do you do? You get conscienceabout it. You realize again where's the pain in my life, where’s the frustrationin my life? Let’s look at it. Let’s tell the truth about it. The truth is, Ican’t have both. And so, you solve it. You become conscience, you make a decision.

You say to yourself, “Okay, well, maybe I don’t need to look like Jennifer Lopezor the Soloflex man. Maybe I need to get a new vision of what I need to looklike in my head. And I think most of us would be very well served by getting anideal view of our body in our mind that is about 10 pounds heavier than wethink what our ideal body ought to be and look like. Just picture in your mindyour ideal weight is about 10 pound heavier and look at those little rolls offat. Just look at them and think how healthy you are. And look at yourself andthink how lusty I am and let it be okay; because until you do, you can’t haveanything. What I’m talking about is looking at what is the appropriate groundfor you.

If you areprofessional model, maybe the appropriate ground for you as you look at itconsciously, is to not eat any Häagen-Dazs and to work out two hours a day. If you have a joband you have a family and an occasional novel you want to read maybe theappropriate balance is working out three hours a week, and having theoccasional treat. But until you decide what it is for you and for you it is acompromise, for most of us it is, you can’t enjoy anything.

The problem thatI’m saying is that most of us want all of those things and never stop to thinkabout what is appropriate, and so we’re fractured in our consciousness.

How is commitment developed?

2011-12-21T08:54:00.000-06:00

Let’s look at howwe develop commitment. First of all, what stops us from being committed? Well,what causes us to be uncommitted is our splintered or fractured consciousness.

We want it all. Don’t we? We want the career, we want the home life. You knowwe all want a career that’s really happening, where we’re really making themoney. Where we’re really buying what we want. We’ve got the big house, we’vegot the world travel and we’re doing something. We’re written up in the paper,and it’s great! We all want that kind of career.

We all want aloving home life; closeness with our children, a loving relationship.And, we want to read novels and take an occasional weekend retreat byourselves; and go bowling and play bridge, or go golfing and we want all ofthat.

The problem is youcan’t have all of that! Something’s got to give. So, you look at youcareer…Maybe I can *gasp* past up that next promotion. Maybe I don’t make toneed as much money as I thought I needed to make. Maybe I really would behappier in a two bedroom apartment, reading an occasional novel than in a fivebedroom house where I have a briefcase of work every night. Maybe I reallywould be happier. But, something’s got to give. You can’t have it all.

Or you look at yourhome life and you think well, maybe I don’t have to hang around with thesefriends so much. Maybe I don’t have to play bridge this much. Maybe my housedoesn’t have to be this clean. And you make a decision around that.

Here’s the interesting rub about this, until you decide what is the appropriate balanceand what you want and what you don’t want, then you get nothing. You don’t getthe great career because you can’t focus on it and you don’t get the happyfamily life because you’re too guilty to enjoy it. And you get nothing untilyou decide what it is and then when you decide what it is and you can only doit by being awake and conscience and observing and looking at it. Until youdecide what it is, all you can do is to be buffeted around by this whim or thatwhim, or the last person you talked to, or the last television commercial thatyou watched. And that’s where so many of us are!

We’re at the mercyof our own wimps and society’s wimps. And there’s no shortage of people who arewilling to tell you what you should want. But, until you have a commitment, untilyou paid attention, you’re at their mercy. And you’re going crazy!

Commitment

2011-12-20T10:39:00.000-06:00

Self-empowerment

Sept 1: Self-awareness

Sept 2: Truth

Sept 3: Love

Sept 4: Commitment

We’ve just lookedat love. Love means connection. Connection to other people, to your own workand purpose, to the life process itself. Remember, connection overcomesseparation. Or in other words, love heals fear. Fear is what keeps is fromtelling the truth and truth is what leads us to self-empowerment. Got it? Good.

Now let’s move theforth major step, commitment.

Commitment simplymeans consciously focusing your mind on the truth. Consciously choosing thetruth and when you do that, your life transforms automatically.

Let’s look at howwe can create a life around us. Now to do that, let me give you an example. But first let me ask, what’s a very common example of commitment in our world? You know the answer.It’s marriage.

Now what do we do when we get married? We commit tofaithfulness. What we are saying in essence is, if I see somebody reallyattractive, I might look, but I’m not going to touch. If fact, they are notgoing to mean anymore to me than looking at Angelina Jolie or Brat Pitt on thescreen. Yeah, I’ll look at them, but there’s no way. I’m committed to you. I’mfaithful. That’s a commitment.

What’s anothercommitment we make? For better or for worse. What does that mean? You faults,your flaws, I kind of like them; and if I don’t kind of like them, I cantolerate them. That’s a committed relationship. And that’s beautiful and itworks. Except, when it doesn’t work. And what happens when one day we wake up fromunconsciousness and we realize that our commitment’s gone in that relationship?When the next pretty little person walks by, we don’t just look, wethink to ourselves, “Well, what if?” and, “Why not?” I’m not getting what I needat home.

And the next timethe little flaw or fault shows up it kind of grates, and we think, “Why do Ihave to live with this?” “Why does this person have to inflict this on my life?”

I have a friend whotalked about this. She said, “When I first got married, my husband snored and Iused to cuddle up and snuggle up to him like he was a little bear cub.” Shesays now, “I feel like I’m sleeping next to a pig.” Well, I can tell you rightnow, the commitment is gone. And when the commitment’s gone, our mind wanders.

So, what do we doin this kind of situation? Well, we get conscience. We observe. We look and werealize that our feeling of commitment is gone. And we look at it and we askourselves, “Is this fixable? Is this tolerable?” And we bring it up to ourpartner and we bring it up with our partner with to a therapist. We do whateverwe need to do in order to get to the bottom of this.

And then we make another decision.Am I committed or am I not? And we move on. But the decision is necessary.

That’s where we getinto the problem, when we don’t get conscious enough, we don’t look closelyenough to make a decision. So let our fractured mind move from one thing to theother like a ping pong ball.

I have a friend, Judy, who gave me a wonderful example of this. She married a very wealthyman who was free to travel. He works. He does projects, but he travels a lot. Andhe often wants to travel at the drop of a hat. And she has a career. She doesn'thave a career where she’s free to go whenever she wants. And she was wondering.She was torn. Should she keep her career or should she go into this marriage. orshould she leave her career so that could travel and be free and loose?

And shewas thinking to herself and this is the dilemma, “I want to live the kind oflife with him that we’ve dreamed about, that we’ve talked about. But, what ifthe relationship doesn’t work? And I’ve let go of my career? What should I do?”

She when to atherapist who gave her very wise advice and that advice is, “Make yourdecisions as if the decisions of the commitment you made is going to work.”Make your decisions to support your commitment, even the big ones. Stop hedgingyour bets so damn much! When you hedge your bets, nothing happens. You stayfractured. That’s what causes a lack of commitment.

My very first speed dating experience

2011-12-20T02:25:00.003-06:00

Today's video blog is on speed dating.

How do we connect with life itself?

2011-12-17T10:49:00.002-06:00

So far we’ve talked about connection to other people. We’vetalked about connection to work. Let’s look at the connection to life itself;connection to the world at large; and I don’t quite what to say about this but,sometimes it just happens. You know that feel of connectedness when you’redriving down the road and you look and you see the mountains, or you look atthe rivers, and my gosh—the colors! And just that feeling ofeverything’s okay?

The birth of a child can bring that feeling up. Or maybe areconciliation between a parent or loved one that you’ve been estranged fromfor years. One time it happened for me and it lasted a long time. Ilearned this lesson fairly well at that point.

I remember one day, I was talking an adventure walk. I don’tcall it a hike because it not actually. And I remember following the trail backinto a little piece of serenity. There’s a beautiful flowing stream. Now, thiswas not the Grand Canyon or some wondrous valley in Hawaii;nor was it Somas Passin California. As a matter offact, it’s just down the road from where I live.

One day, I remember looking at the beautiful trees and thebeautiful sky with the beautiful clouds. Everything was so green and theflowers were abundant in their colors and I was just overwhelmed by the beautyof this scene. And looked down and I saw this rock I was standing on with thismoss on it. I was overwhelmed at the beauty of that rock. There was a vinegrowing along the rock and I looked at this vine and I was blown away by thebeauty of this vine. And the vine led to my foot. I look down at my foot and Iwas overwhelmed by the beauty of my foot. It was that kind of a moment.

I can remember I was picking up tiny little pebbles out of the stream andI was letting the pebbles fall though my hands and just watch it glisten in thesun. I started looking at the pebbles and how beautiful they were and then I startedlooking at the individual pebbles and they were beautiful. Every one Ilooked at was beautiful. I did not find one ugly pebble or stone in that wholestream.

That’s that connection to the world at large and nature isour access point for that. You don’t have to travel 6,000 miles to see it. Youdon’t have $4000. You don’t have to spend anything. You can look at itanywhere. And that’s what I realized. That’s the lesson I bring home from that.

My daughter who lives in Seattlecan relate to this because Seattle isalong the same latitude as Holland and has similar weather patterns. When I went back to visit my relatives in Holland, where the sun rarelyshines. It’s just gloomy a lot of the time and I always felt so smug about fleeingthat environment. But the last time when I went back to Holland, I was blown away by howbeautiful those gray days were. I was blown away by it!

I think of the poem by Joyce Kilmer, the Trees poem. Ithink that I shall never see. A poem lovely as atree. Well,do you know what that means? Do you really know what that means? When was thelast time you looked at a tree and thought of it as being the loveliness thingyou’ve ever seen? Really? Any tree, any random tree; any shrub outside whereyou live, you can look at it and you can see it as being the loveliness thingyou’ve ever seen. But you have to SHUT UP for a minute and do it. You have toobserve it. You have to step off the treadmill and you have to open yourself upto it. Because what I’m talking about goes beyond language.

And,again I think of line by Gertrude Stein, A rose is a rose is a rose. Well that always buggedme. Of course A rose is a rose is a rose. But what she talking about here? She’stalking about when you see a rose stop rhapsodizing about its intoxicatingscent and exquisite beauty. SHUT UP! That’s it. Stop talking about it. Don’tuse words—connect. When you do that in the world, when you see the beauty thatis absolutely everywhere in this world, it’s hard to feel hassled and threatenedand victimized. It just is.

Everything’s okay. It’s all going to be fine. And itis, of course, we forget that, but it’s all going to be fine. You can’t lose atthis game. So, connecting to the world at large is another expression of love.

Fantasy land - not really

2011-12-15T09:03:00.000-06:00

Already I can feel the tension rising. “But my life is sodifferent than that,” you say. Don’t worry. To achieve your ideal work, yourideal life, you don’t have to turn your current life upside down overnight. Infact, you don’t have to do anything; except look at it.

Don’t force it to besome great life revelation, but simply a life observation. In fact, may Isuggest you do the last exercise again. Right now, if you like. Rewind it. Onlythis time reinforce what you know is right. Where you weren’t sure, make somedifferent choices. See what they look like and how they feel. Then look at yourlife as you lead it now. Why the difference? Don’t’ beat yourself up. Don’tfeel guilty, feel good that you’re finally looking.

What moves can you make to get closer to your ideal? Wheredo you feel trapped? Look closely and again, you’ll see that it’s not a trap,but a lesson. Make it part of your consciousness as you move through your day.Stay conscious. Stay awake. Do this regularly.

Your fantasy of your ideal life will change as yourself-awareness grows. And best of all as you move towards it, as you see realprogress, as you learn to believe in yourself, you will realize that this isnot a fantasy at all. It’s your purpose; your mission. And you are to create itno matter how imperfectly, messy, difficult, Looney Tune, real life world weall live in.

That it’s worth holding in your mind, and working for, andfighting for, and indeed, dedicating your life to, and at that point you’llwonder how you could have ever lived any other way.

Where will YOU be five years from now?

2011-12-14T10:50:00.000-06:00

There is a quote from a greatdancer and choreographer, Martha Graham. It’s a beautiful relationship about whatwe’ve been talking about in connecting or loving your work.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. ― Martha Graham

Let’s do an exercise that willhelp you to connect to your work and to other aspects of your life as well. Forthe next few minutes I’d like to lead you on a visualization of your ideal workin life in general. Just follow along in your mind. Throughout this visualization, you are in control and you should give yourself a few minutes to pause and crystallize your vision. I you everwant to take more time to follow a particular interesting daydream, go ahead.Don’t rush. After all, what could be more important? So, relax. Empty yourhands. Breathe. Sit or lay back. Just relax.

We are going to forward in timeto today’s date five year’s from now. In the last five years, you have tenaciously,courageously, and lovingly told the truth and it has paid off. Now you findyourself in your ideal situation. You’re who you are. You’re who you ought tobe. You’re doing the work that is right for you.

It’s morning on today’s datefive years from now. You’ve just had a great night’s sleep. Now you’re wakingup. Stretch. Now open your eyes. Take a look around your bedroom, slowly. It’sanother beautiful day. Just go with whatever vision you’re having. Look around.Look next to you. Who’s there? How does he or she look? Or are you alone?

Now, get out of bed and lookout the window. Scan the view what do you see? Countryside, cityscape,seashore? What do YOU see? Don’t worry about picking the right answer just gowith something. Explore whatever appeals to you at this moment.

Now, walk into the bathroom toget ready for work. Before you bathe, stand in front of a full-length mirrorand take off your robe or pajamas. Look at your body. Really look at it. What doesit look like in your ideal self five years from now? Be realistic, you’ll befive years older. Give yourself a break and choose to love your body howeveryou see it.

You bathe and now you’regetting ready for work. What are you going to wear? What is it? A beautiful tailoredsuit? Jeans? Casuals? Scrubs? A uniform? What do you wear to work in your ideal life?

Now, you go to work. Where doyou go? Do you stay home? Do you have a home office or studio? Do you go to anoffice in the city? Do you go to a school? To an animal shelter? Where do YOUgo?

Now, arrive at work and look atsome of the scenes. This is your ideal work. This is your expression of love onearth in concrete form. What does your workplace look like?

How about your own personalspace? What are you doing? Are you alone? Or with a small committed team orpart of a bustling organization? What kind of projects are you working on? Thinkof some of the most thrilling moments you experience throughout your day. Look atthem. Run them like a movie in front of your mind. Feel the connection. Feel theexpression. Feel the creativity. When you’re doing your right work, it’s easy. You’realive and, you’re a master. If you wish, just pause for awhile and have alittle daydream.

Now you go back home, or if youwere home all along, you move into your leisure phase, if you choose to haveone. What’s an ideal evening in your ideal life look like? Are you reading abook? Taking a class? Spending time with family and friends? Do you have a homeoffice? Workshop? Are you in a romance?

Pick something. Anything thatappeals to YOU in THIS moment and look at it. Just look at it. Run the scenesin front of your mind.

Before you go to bed you pickup the days’ newspaper. In it you find an article about YOU. Look closely. Theyeven have pictures of you. What are you doing in the pictures? What do theylook like? Look at them. What does the article say?

Now, you’re off to bed. As youlay there alone or next to your sweetie, you feel the security and serenity ofbeing exactly where you where meant to be. You feel the connectedness…the loveand the peace of mind of being exactly who you’re meant to be. And slowly, yousink deeper into the warmth. And you sigh and you cuddle and you drift off tosleep.

When you’re ready, no hurry,come back to the present moment.

Changes in the business world

2011-12-13T13:01:00.000-06:00

There’s a lot of changes going on in the business world in general in this country and around the world. And what is happening is that we are moving toward a realization people are our most important product. That is not just a cliché. That is not just a slogan.

The companies who are making it these days in business are the companies where the employee’s are turned on, and excited, and creative, and finding some purpose in what they’re doing at work. These are the companies who people come to work more than just to make money. And that’s how we compete these days. Which companies can get those kinds of people.

Now the only way you can keep people like this happy, the only way you can keep them in your organization is to free them. And that is what is happening in our organizations these days. We’re moving from an orientation of rule to an orientation of judgment. So that people are free to make judgments as to how things ought to be done. They can do them their way. They make their own decisions. They don’t have to get approval from above. They don’t have to look it up in the rulebooks.

This is happening simply because of competitive pressure is making it happen, because in other words, companies who are making things happen are eating the lunch of the companies who aren’t. And that is simply an expression of trust.

We’re moving from an ordination of control to an ordination of trust in our working environment. We have things like self-managed teams. This would have been unheard of, this would have been heresy 30 years ago. But trust is essential to competition, to having a competitive edge these days. And that is simply an expression of connectedness in business.

We trust each other. We have a basic connection. We operate from connection rather than from separation. We realize that we’re all fair. We’re all honest. We’re all here to do the right thing. And that, friends, is a direct expression of love in the workplace. And it is inspiriting. It’s exciting to see this happen.

And, if you’re waiting tables in a restaurant and you have a vision that you would be a great sales person, how do you move from one to the other? Well, rather than be a cyclical, embittered, victimized waiter, what you do is you put on your best show. You get to know your customers. You ask about them. You connect with them. You find out who might have a lead, who might know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody. Who might somebody that might have a job. You impress them.

People who hire are just a frustrated finding good people as people who are looking for jobs are looking for good jobs. We tend to talk about each other rather than to each other about it. But, that’s the case.

I know in my situation I’ve seem someone who was a great clerk and said hey, you want a job in another company? You want to take a step? And it works. It works for them and it works for me. So, we can do that.

If you’re a manager and you find that you’re a people person and not a project person, look at how you can delegate those projects. Look at how you can minimize those projects. Look to see if they have to be done anymore and how can you maximize. How can you increase your contact with people.

You make find that you move out of your company slowly. You become an independent contractor and sell your services back to your company. That can happen. And if you’re moving in the direction of your own as Joseph Campbell would say, “Your own bliss.” Then the company with have to corporate with you because you’re so damn enthusiastic, and creative, and productive they would be stupid not to.

So that’s how it works. Connection to your work. Connection to your purpose.

More news!

2011-12-12T14:20:00.000-06:00

Here's today video. Enjoy!

Connecting to work

2011-12-11T11:56:00.001-06:00

Let’s look at the next connection—connection to work. KahlilGibran said, “Work is lovemade visible.”

Do you remember when I talked about Caroline, the woman whocleaned my house. Caroline was somebody who was connected to her work. Carolinetook pride in her work. Caroline was proud. Caroline was gratified to be ofservice to other people. She wasn't a servant, but she was of service. And thatwas something that fulfilled her on a very deep level. And that’s a wonderfulthing.

It doesn’t have to be some exalted profession in order for you to havethis kind of a feeling. In fact, it doesn’t have to be any profession at all,necessarily.

I got this forum post from one of the womenthat in my college class. And she wrote it about her life’s purpose, becausethat was one of our assignments. This is her post (used by permission) and how she connects to herpurpose and her work. She writes,

I began this note over a week ago. I’ve not been ableto finish it until today because I’ve spent this week taking care of the ones Ilove. Oh no, nothing dramatic like saving lives or caring for the terminallyill.

But, I’ve been fulfilling my life’s purpose by spending my time talking tomy friend whose lover had turned suicidal. I also took my friend’s eight-year-oldto the zoo, as her daddy had just returned home after 60 days in an alcoholicrehabilitation center. I spent countless hours on the telephone this weekreassuring, comforting, and just listening.

I’ve always been amazed at peoplewho just know what they are best at, and pursue it faithfully. I am notextraordinary at anything. I’ve always viewed myself as an ordinary lookinggirl with average intelligence, normal talent level, basic life survivalskills, nothing special. I was beginning to believe that I would never discoverthat niche in life that would make me special—different from everybody else.

Ialways viewed in awe the artist, the writer, the athlete, anyone whospecialized in something or has a passion for one particular thing. I felthopeless and useless. Then one night I was lying in bed praying to God. I am aChristian, but not an exceptional one. Suddenly, it was though a curtain hadbeen lifted from my thoughts. I knew it. At last, I had found my purpose. Mypurpose is not to be the best musician in the world, nor am I to be a famousspokesman for the White House.

I’m here simply to ease a little pain where everI can. I’m here to do my grocery shopping on Tuesday afternoons, so I can helpolder folks in the store without hurting their pride. I’m here to send goofycards to people who seem lonely. I’m here to take my friend’s children rollerskating. I’m here to buy a home permanent for my elderly neighbor who likes tolook nice for Bingo on Thursday. I’m here to bake birthday cakes.

I have themost delightful purpose there is because I can never run out of new ideas. Therewards are unbelievable! At time, doing my job is not easy and a person canfeel really tired. But, somehow you never completely lose the will to keepgoing. I now know the true meaning of the phase, labor of love. Love issomething that may weaken, but it will never break.

Wow, this is the stuff of sainthood! This is somebody who’sliving her life with a purpose and it’s nothing particularly exalted, at leastfrom the outside looking in.

We’ll look at this more detail on Tuesday.

How do we come up with these thoughts?

2011-12-10T15:45:00.001-06:00

It was few years ago, I was in Floridadoing a craft show. After the show I was at the beach and I was walking alongthe Boardwalk. I stopped to look at the sunset and I saw an old ladysitting on a bench next to me in front of a hotel.

She was a sad case. I mean,she was in an ill fitting dress, her hair was a mess, she was unkempt and shewas just sitting there just kind of talking to herself and shaking her head.And, I felt a lot of compassion for this woman. I know there are a lot of oldpeople in Pensacola. It seemed thatshe was Jewish and I got this vision of how she fled the concentration campsand there she was on the Boardwalk because she was living in some squalledapartment, it was too hot and she couldn’t afford air conditioning; and herhusband was dead and her kids had moved away and there she was all alone. Ifelt proud of my compassion.

You know, I created the whole scenario about thiswoman. And then this young man comes up in a blazer and a badge. He leans downand starts talking to her and I thought that he was going to make her move. Andthey were talking back and forth. Then he got up to leave and he turned andsaid, “Okay, doctor, I’ll get right back to you on it.” And I thought, doctor?I stopped him and I said, “Excuse me, do you know that woman?” He said he did.I asked, “Who is she?” I’m sorry I can’t remember her name, but there was aconvention of astrophysicists at the hotel and she was visiting from Franceto address the convention. And I though, woe! What a wonderful world this iswhere a bag lady can be turned into an astrophysicist!

When I realized this and there is not magic wand involved here; the only thing that had changed was my perception of this woman had changed. Myseparation from this woman, my judgment, my story that I told about her hadbeen changed. And suddenly I realized that this woman is purposeful, andcreative, and alive as I was on my best day and certainly a lot more so than Iwas at that moment. That’s a good lesson for all of us.

As we are meeting otherpeople, instead of cataloging them according to their differences, look at whatwe have in common, even if it just our base humanity. Even if it’s just that.And when you’re making up stories about people as we always do, at least makeup good ones.

When I go to the mall or when I go to shopping, I see peoplenow. I look at them and think thoughts like: Oh, I bet she’s a wonderfulmother. I bet she’s just a great poet. I bet he knows everything there is toknow about the civil war. Now, chances are I’m wrong. But I was wrong when Iwas making up bad stories.

So, when you are connecting to people at that base level ofhumanity, it’s hard to feel hassled and threatened. It’s hard to put up thewalls. It’s hard to have the hard outer shell. It’s hard to be separated.

So, love…connectedness heals fear and makes life a loteasier and a lot more fun.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the next one – connection to work.

Step Three - Love

2011-12-09T11:23:00.001-06:00

Welcome to step number three on your journey toself-empowerment. Love.

Love is connectedness. Love heals fear. Now, just attruth is more than honesty and accuracy, love is more than romance. Love ismore than kissy-face. Love is more than Valentine’s Day. Like truth, love is aforce. It is the force in the world that heals fear. It’s the force thatovercomes separation. It is the force that connects us. Now let’s look at some of the ways that love connects us.

First, let’s exam how love connects us to other people.Next, we’ll see how it connects us to our work and our purpose. Third, we’lllook at how love connects us to the world at large and life itself.

First of all, love connects us to each other. So often whatwe do all day long when we’re working with other people, or shopping, or livingour lives, sometimes when we meet people, we immediately catalog them accordingto their differences. For instance, you’re older than I am. You’re a man. You’revery handsome. You look like you make more money than I do. Okay, so what’s thedifferences? I call it the “Ooh Woe Syndrome”.

The Ooh Woe Syndrome. Everybody we meet, it’s like Ooh, she’sfat. Or Ooh, he’s funny looking. Or Ooh, she’s beautiful. Ooh, he looks richand powerful. I don’t care whether you’re comparing yourself favorably or unfavorably. Where does it leave you? It leaves you separated. It leavesyou with a wall between you and that other person. And isn’t that how we liveour lives too much? Too often making judgments about other people; positive ornegative?

The healing of that is seeing the connection. I don’t care whether itwas Saddam Hussein, or Leona Helmsley, or Donald Trump, or weird people, or uglypeople, or whatever it might be. There is something that we all have in common,and that is we’re all fighting a pretty tough battle.

The Greek philosopher Philo said, “Be kind, because everyoneyou meet is fighting a hard battle.” And seeing that, seeing that baseconnection with other people that we’re all human beings doing the best we canwith a pretty tough battle here, is one way of finding that connectedness.

It’s kind of like that great philosopher, David Byrne, fromthe Talking Heads, he said, “Sometimes it a form of love just to talk tosomeone you have nothing in common with and be fascinated by their presence.”That is a wonderful form of love. They are unfolding another piece of humanity for you. Andwhat a wonderful gift that is.

Stay tuned for the next personal story.

Negative Emotions

2011-12-08T10:31:00.001-06:00

Now, for a moment, let's think outside the box. Let's look at some other things that might cause fear.

For instance, anxiety has nothing to do with being late.Anxiety has everything to do with being exposed to the unlovely little cur youare.

Greed has nothing to do with who earned what. Greed haseverything to do with there isn’t enough to go around. I’m going to be leftwith nothing.

Jealously has nothing to do with who flirted with whom.Jealously is I’m afraid I’m unlovable. I’m going to be abandoned.

Anger has nothing to do with who did what to whom. It haseverything to do with nobody’s listening to me. I don’t matter.

And if you look at your fears. If you look at your negativeemotions. If you look at your negative thoughts and actions and followthem…observe them. You will see at the core, there’s a two-year-old who haswoken up in the middle of the night afraid that he’s or she's been abandoned; and that’sat the base of all of our fears.

Now, when you live in that kind of a place, when you areseparated, when you’re alone, when you are unloved, then the world is a veryunfriendly place. The world is a place where you have to scramble to get allyou can. The world’s a place where you have to keep your guard up to protect it.The world’s a kind of place where you are hassled and threatened by otherpeople. And the world the kind of place where you occasionally do get around tolooking at yourself, you don’t like what you see there either, and you questionyour own motives, and you watch yourself bluffing all the time.And that’s where a lot of us live to some degree. That’sfear and that’s separation.

Fear, it keeps us separated. It keeps us from facing thetruth and telling the truth. In other words, it keeps us from our self and ourown self-empowerment.

So, what’s the cure? What heals fear? What is theantidote to separation? That’s too easy. What heals separation? Obviously, connectedness.And connectedness is just another word for love.

Fear

2011-12-07T13:25:00.001-06:00

Let’s take a look now at the mechanisms of fear. What is it?How does it work? Let me start with two simple definite statements.

Statement #1: Fear = Separation

Statement #2: Fear is a cathartic of every negative thoughtyou have, every negative emotion you experience, and every negative action youtake.

Now, allow me to explain further starting with a quickexample.

Here’s an example of what I am talking about. A couple ofdays ago, it was just a normal day for me. Often I will work at home in themorning doing my college work and projects. Then in the afternoon I do moreresearch, but occasionally get out of the house for sanity’s sake.

This was on of those days I was on out of the house on amission. I was on my way to Birminghamand I really wanted to leave about 4 o’clockso I could get there around 5:30, orat least that was my plan.

But as is my want, I kindka doodled here and there and Ididn’t get into the car until about 4:30.It was raining. It’s had been raining most of the day, but because is wasn’t awork day, I didn’t figure on any after work traffic. However, the other thing Ididn’t count on was the number of wrecks. What should have taken 1.5 hoursdrive took over 4 hours!

I realized that there was nothing I could do about it. Ilooked at alternate routes, but they would have taken just as long. I didn’tknow how long I would be stuck in traffic, so I stayed. And, so I was ascreaming manic. I do that regularly. I think I need a hit of my own adrenalin,you know what I mean? But at any rate, I do create that circumstance from timeto time and I did again.

And I sit and sit and there was nothing I could do, I wasgoing to be late and at this point I was enraged. And you know, even Ioccasionally remember this stuff. And I did. And I said okay Sheila, “Isn’t itinteresting how your buttons have been pushed?” The observing consciousness wascoming out. How frenzied you are today,Sheila. So I looked at that and I asked myself the question and you can doit too. Anytime you’re feeling a negative emotion or thinking a negativethought, or doing a negative action ask yourself since negative actions arefears, “What am I afraid of?”

That’s an interesting question to ask when you’re angry. You don’tnormally associate anger with fear, but it is. And so I ask myself, “What areyou afraid of?” and my answer was, “I’m afraid I’ll be late.” So the next question is, “Why amI afraid of being late?” Well, I’m afraid if I’m late everybody with think I’munorganized and unprofessional. Well, why am I afraid of being seen as unorganizedand unprofessional? Well, I teaching organizational and communication skills aswell as professionalism. And if I’m unorganized and unprofessional then peoplewill think I’m a hypocrite. Well, why am I afraid of people thinking I’m ahypocrite? Well, I’m afraid if they think I’m a hypocrite, they’ll reject meand I’ll have to leave. And that’s the fear.

I recall an old Far Side cartoon that showed a giantcockroach sitting on Skid Row bemoaning his fate, saying, "I use to be aCEO with my own company, power and authority; then, one day, someone yelled,"Hey, he's just a big cockroach". Hey, that’s my fear that somedaysomeone will realize it. So, that’s it. And, if you look at it, that’s the baseof fear, that separation, that rejection of not being loved.

And if you look at all of your negative emotions, you willsee too that they are rooted in fear.

We’ll look at more examples tomorrow.

Top 5 Dumb Crooks

2011-12-07T00:13:00.001-06:00

This week’s top five stupid criminals.

I would have had this sooner, but youtube was down for maintenance.

Demons are just gods that we haven’t recognized yet

2011-12-04T10:05:00.001-06:00

I remember listening to a tape of an interview with JosephCampbell who is a celebrated anthropologist, mythologist, wonderful thinker,just an incredible man. He and the interviewer were talking about the nature ofevil. Well, there’s a topic for you.

I remember Joseph Campbell sayingsomething that hit me right between the eyes. He said, “Demons are just godsthat we haven’t recognized yet.” What does that mean? That means that anxiety you feel, that anxiety that never quite goes away, you know inyour chest or your stomach. Or the tension in the back of your neck that neverquite goes away. That’s a demon.

He’s talking about the anxiety attacks wehave. He’s talking about the nightmares where you wake up in the middle of thenight and can’t get back to sleep. He’s talking about that feeling hostility where somebody pulls out in front of us at an intersection and we’reenraged and we wonder where did that come from.

He’s talking about the sadnessthat we feel. He’s talking about the dread that we have. He’s talking about thedepressions that we have, low level, virtually chronic all the time. Those aredemons that when you look at them they become gods. They become your friends.In fact, they are red flags that there is something you need to look at.

It’s just like I told a story in a earlier post about me andJane, my friend who hassled me with emails and the phone call when I was onsabbatical. I was so angry that I gritted my teeth literally for 10 hours. Iwas being eaten by that demon until I turned a faced it and called Jane, toldher about it, and then what happened? It was my friend. It lead Jane and I to alevel of closeness that we never had before. So the demon becomes the friend.

It’s like a woman I know that worked with another company severalyears ago She was a graphic designer in the creative department. Everyone lovedher. She was a wonderful lady. She was nice to be around, but she wasn’t a very good graphicdesigner, and she didn’t get her work done on time. She was very touchy tocriticism and it got tot be a drag even though I like her. And one day her bossrealized that he had to do something about this.

Monday morning came and her boss had a meeting with her andsaid, “Hey, it’s not working. Let’s split.” And she was upset and she cried andit was a typically firing. It’s no fun. But she left and six months later shesaid that getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn’thave the courage to do it quit myself, but I realized something that day, andthat is “I’m not good graphic designer” That’s not easy to realize when you’regetting paid to do one, is it?

So she realized that I’m not a good graphicdesigner, but you know what I am? “I’m a hell of a good potter.” And she openeda pottery studio which had be her dream for years and was selling pottery atthe craftshows and was already six months later making as much money as she made asa graphic designer with the company she was with. And now, eight years later, Iwould guess that she’s making 10 times as much. She makes the kind of potterynow that goes into lobbies of the Marriot’s, if you know what I mean. It isbeautiful, elaborate, extravagant art.

So the demon becomes the friend. And it’s beautiful how thatworks. It’s terrifying, but it’s also beautiful and don’t forgetthat part. And the people who have faced it. The people who have dismantled alife that wasn’t working. As terrifying as it is, as much as the people intheir lives kicked and screamed, the people who did it are among the happiestpeople on earth. Why? Because they’re one step closer or maybe one mile closerto being who they are. And how can you even compare that to staying stuck?There is no comparison. So it is ultimately a beautiful process. But, don’t befooled. That demon if it is not faced is a demon. It is a demon and it willeat you up.

I think of a saying I can’t recall from where, it but itgoes like this: “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you willsave you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you willdestroy you.”

Bring it forth, it will save you. Do not bring it forth andit will eat you alive. And that’s the process.

So those are your choices. Pretty easy choice. I mean wehave the choice to year by year grow older and more loving and more who we areand more connected and more creative, and happy and alive. Or, we have thechoice to year by year grow more angry, and cynical, and embittered, and brittled,and confused, and unconscious, and separated. So those are your choices.

If you don’t think you can face the pain of looking at thetruth then you just want until you get what’s coming to you. And that’s thepain of not telling the truth. Actually, what that turns into for many of us isnot some sort excruciating screaming pain, it turns into numbness, anddeadness. And that’s a whole lot more excruciating if you think about it.

So a stumbling block, fear. Truth leads you closer toself-empowerment. Fear keeps you from telling the truth. Obviously, a big partof self-empowerment then is overcoming fear. In order to overcome fear, we mustfirst understand it.

Tomorrow, I plan to video blog and on Tuesday will look at some of the mechanisms of fear.

For one Joseph Campbell visit here:www.mevio.com/episode/92858/the-power-of-myth-with-joseph-cambell

Please note that I do not expressly believe in all the viewpoints Joseph Campbell.

First half recap on self-empowerment

2011-12-03T10:07:00.001-06:00

We’ve examined the first two steps of self-empowerment, self-awareness and truth. Next we’ll be looking atstep three, the power of love.

In the meantime, let’s look back over the distance we’vetraveled so far starting with step one, self-awareness.

Self-awareness has two elements, the first isself-responsibly. Until you see your roll in your life, until you stop blamingyour mother or society or whatever you are blaming. We all have our victimrolls. Until you stop that, then you can go forward. Self-responsibly, what’syour roll in your drama? The only thing you can change is your point of power.

The second element of self-awareness is developing the observing consciousness.That place in our head or deep within us where we stand and look at ourselves.Where we look at our thoughts. Where we look at our emotions. Where we look atour actions. And, that’s the vantage point for self-awareness. That’s where wesee what’s going on instead of be what’s going on. Not only is it the vantagepoint for self-awareness, it is the access point for self-empowerment. Becausewhen you can see your options, thoughts, emotions, and actions, then you canmake choices. And you can make healthy choices for yourself in terms of how youthink and feel and how you act. You are no longer triggered.

Now, does this mean we can’t feel anymore. Does this meanthat this is some dispassion state that we are trying to get to? No. we canstill feel. We can still even feel bad things. You can still be angry. You canstill be crazy. The deal is, you have to watch yourself be angry. You have towatch yourself be crazy. And simply by watching, to see your drama is to befreed of your drama. That’s the process. Simple attention, attention,attention, paying attention. And things change of their own accord. In otherwords, stop trying to change yourself so much and start trying to understandyourself a little better. And things will happen of their own accord. So that’swhat we are talking about with self-awareness.

When we talk about self-awareness and unfolding yourself andall that stuff. We talked about some methodologies. We talked about therapy, wetalked about self-therapy, which is simply thinking; stepping off the treadmilland looking at yourself and saying, “Hey, what’s going on here?” We talkedabout journaling. These are all things where you find out about new parts ofyourself.

Recap of truth

Truth is more than accuracy. Truth is more than honesty.Truth is a force in the world. And it is the force that will lead you step bystep to empowerment. The signage that leads you on your path to yourself,virtual, every moment in our lives we have the opportunity to either tell thetruth or not tell the truth. If we tell the truth, we get to move on to thenext square. We take another step on our path to our self.

If we choose not totell the truth, we get to recycle that drama. And many of us recycle, andrecycle, and recycle the same drama. We must like it! Right? I think partof us does. It’s at least comfortable. Many of us would rather stay with whatwe know even if we don’t like it rather than try something new.

So, the truth is a most wonderful force in the world. Itleads us to who we are. It leads us home. Now, there’s only one tiny littleproblem with all this. I would be a bit surprised if some of you, as I have,when you looked at the truth fearlessly. And when practice some of themethodologies of self-awareness, you came to realize that there’s some thingsin your life that need changing.

You may have realized that you’re in arelationship that isn’t working, at least now it isn’t. It needs someattention. You may find that in your career that you are a square peg in around hole. You may find that they’re parts of your life where you are fastasleep. You may find that there are parts of your life that it would bedirectly in your interest to dismantle and that is a most terrifyingrealization. Yes, it could very well be that it’s in our best interest to dismantle a portion of ourlives. That is a hard thing to look at. That’s a hard thing to swallow. And ifthat’s true for you then here’s my advice…go for the juggler. Not in terms ofaction. I’m not talking about rash action. In fact, don’t do anything forawhile. But go for the juggler in terms of your attention. Look at it. Look atthe monster. Look at it thought the therapy, though the self-awarenessmethodology that we talked about, but turn and look.

When you force yourselfto turn and scream and open your eyes, you will find to your amazement thatthere’s no monster there at all. You just thought there was going to be amonster. What you will find there is a friend. What you will find there is aguide who has a very important lesson to teach you about yourself. And somevery important directions on your path to self-empowerment.

Journaling?

2011-12-02T18:55:00.001-06:00

Actually, I’m a little nervous about inthis business; this self-improvement business, because, in some ways itdistracts us from the fact that everything’s okay, just the way we are. It’sreally okay.

And we want more. More, someone called it a disease -- Moreand it is. The fact is that everyone reading this, I would guess, has morematerial wealth. I don’t care if you’re cleaning houses. You have more materialwealth than 99.9% of the people who’ve ever walked the face of this planet.

So, with that in mind, to what degree is it appropriate todedicating our life to entering the 99.9 percentile? To want more, and more,and more. And sometimes it is such a relief to stop and breathe and say “Hey,this is enough. This is okay. Let’s enjoy this right now, in this moment.” Whyis that so hard?

One reader wrote in:

One point that always kinds of gets in my hair is having apossessive personally. I’m a member of 12 step program. And I get obsessedabout food or work or you name it. I can obsess about observation. Just what wewere talking about. I’ve often said to my friends, this issue feels like a badperm. It’s completely over processed. And sometimes I wonder when is the fineline of observing and feeling what going on with you and when are you obsessingabout it, constantly rerunning the tapes. How did I act and what are myemotions? And, it confuses me.

That a interesting statement, and it one that I’ve thoughtabout to, because when we talk about observing ourselves, the fact is, many ofus observe ourselves to distraction already. You know, we’re conscienceof ourselves of every moment, of thinking about ourselves every more we make.

At a party all we can think about is ourselves is that looks like observingconsciousness, but what it really is, is programming. Its unconsciousnessprogramming that is masquerading as observing unconsciousness. And when thathappens, observe that happening from the observing unconsciousness. Because itsbogus. Watch yourself. Be conscience of yourself being self conscience.

I hope you are enjoying the blog and gaining a betterunderstanding of self-empowerment and what it means to be yourself and to liveyour life your way.

As you now know self-empowerment takes place in four steps:

Self-awareness
Truth
Love
Commitment

We’ve examined the first two steps. Next we’ll be looking atstep three, the power of love.

Discover anything?

2011-12-01T08:39:00.001-06:00

After Monday’s exercise did you have any revelations?Do you have any deep dark secrets you’d like to reveal to several hundred thousandstrangers?

One person wrote in:

I write relativity regularly in a journal and I am verycritical for some reason. I’ve hidden the ones I’ve finished with and mygirlfriend has promised to burn them if I die so no one will read them. But bydoing this tonight and when you said make it really bad and gave me permissionto just write it was just was a lot more truthful. A whole lot more truthful.

When you said that you write negative things, what doyou mean by that? You write things that are down on yourself or what?

I mean that in two ways, I mean that in thinking that Idon’t want people to know what I actually know and I don’t always write as wellas I think I should technically. So, both ways. It’s such a relief to just free ourselves. You know, justbetween me and myself, let the critic rest.I needed you to give me permission to do that.

Well, now you can do it yourself. And it’s true and I knowthat its funny thing when you say, “I don’t want anybody to see it.” And Idon’t either. Well, fair enough. And, so now we get to observe “Why don’t wewant anyone to see it.”

What is it about ourselves that we’re trying to hide? And,we all are; I’m not saying its bad, or wrong, or negative. It’s justsomething to look at. It’s more grist for the mill.

Tomorrow, I share another reader viewpoint.

Cyber Monday late breaking news!

2011-11-28T18:25:00.001-06:00

We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog to bring you late breaking new.s

Another method of discovering your true self

2011-11-27T09:03:00.001-06:00

I’d like to experience a morestructured way of knowing the truth. It’s called journaling. One of the besttools for self-empowerment is a journal. Now, what do you put in a journal?Well, everything you’ve written down so far if you’ve been following this blogis a good place to start. If you’ve tried and never succeeded to keep a journalperhaps it’s because you’ve tried to make it too perfect. If that’s the casewith you, think of your journal as more of a scrapbook, a personal scrapbook.

Ifound that the best kind of journal for me is s three ring-binder. That way I canwrite anything at anytime on whatever’s handy and just throw it in. I even haveenvelopes that are three hole punched and I just them to hold cards or mementosor anything. There are a number of journaling exercises you can do. There are anumber of good books that can help you. One is The Creative Guide To JournalWriting by Dan Johnson. Published by Gateway Publications.

Now, let me share with you themost powerful journaling exercises I know of. It’s often called free writing. Here’show it works.

There are four rules:

Rule #1

Don’t ever stop writing. If youget blocked, write “Why am I blocked? What can’t I think of anything? I cannever think of anything. I can remember when I was a kid, I could never thinkof anything.” And then it goes on until you get through the block. Keep the penmoving. Rule # 1.

Rule #2

Start anywhere and let it goanywhere. Any topic will do. You can write about high school chemistry class. Youcan write about muscles. You can write about why you feel especially sexytoday. And let it goes where it goes. You may start by writing about blind dateand end up writing about the crumbs in the leaf of the table in the kitchen. It’sthat kind of stuff that makes this exercise so interesting and revealing. So,don’t worry about setting goals for your writing. Don’t worry about where youthink you’re going. Rule #2.

Rule #3

Ignore rules about grammar, punctuationand spelling, about making sense in general. There are two modes we operate inwhen we are writing. The creative mode and the critical mode. Unfortunately,for many of us, we have a way over developed critical mode. You’ll notice itwhen you’re sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper or an empty computerscreen and you can put one sentence down. Why? The critic is sitting on yourshoulder saying, “That’s not good enough, they’re going laugh at that.” Andwhat does that do? It shuts down the creative. So just for this exercise, bindand gag your critic, okay. Put him or her away for awhile. Suspend his judgment.It’s a relief. So, rule #3, ignore rules.

Rule #4

Burn it when you’re done. Or atleast write it as if you where going to burn it. In other words, let it be okayto write the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Even the stuff you don’twant anybody to see. Even the stuff that politically incorrect. Even the stuffthat scares you. And if you really do want to burn it when you’re done goahead. You’ll still be miles ahead more than if you never wrote it at all. Butchances are, you won’t want to burn it, because if you really forge ahead courageouslyin this exercise, you’ll see that what you thought was going to be scary or embarrassingwas simply liberating. And into it trusty journal it will go; another piece ofthe wonderful puzzle called “you”.

So let’s do some free writing. I’mgoing to ask you to finish the following statement.

The truth about my life today is____________________________

Write for 10 minutes. If you havea digital watch, set the timer, otherwise look at the clock. Go for 10 fullminutes. And remember the four rules.

Don’t stop writing. Keep thepen moving. The pen has a mind of its own. Let it go.
Don’t worry about where yougo. Let the writing go where it will.
Ignore the rules. Suspend thecritic.
Write as if you were going toburn it when you’re done

Ready?

The truth about my life today is ____________________________

After you’ve done this, I see youback on Tuesday.

Tomorrow is Video Blog day! Tune in for updated Turkey news and the cyber blackout. Yes, you read it right BLACKOUT.

Who is your best self?

2011-11-26T12:56:00.001-06:00

Who is that person? Sit and getin touch with him or her from time to time. Again, the mechanism here, or theprinciple here is to step off the treadmill and observe, look, take some timeto think. It’s a big problem for us in these days, is taking time to think.Getting a little solitude? How do we do that? We have our jobs. We have ourfamilies. We have our traffic jams. How do we find time to do this? Well, I canthink of a number of ways.

One is to do it in your car. Notwhen you’re driving, leave for work 10 minutes early and go and sit under atree or in a parking lot and think. Nobody can get you there. It’s a good timeand place to do it.

Another one is during your lunchhour. Rather than speed to a restaurant, stand in another line, whiff downanother meal and speed back to your workplace, bring your lunch. Take a walk.Sit under a tree and think. It’s a lot more valuable lunchtime.

In the bathroom, that seems to bethe one place in most of our homes that on one can get us. Pour a nice bath,put a lock on the door.

That reminds me of a funny story. I used to read DearAbby. They were have a series about having sex in the shower. One woman wrotein and said, “Sex in the shower? My husband has made me do it in every room inthe house.” She says, “The one place I get away from in is in the shower. Donot talk to me about sex in the shower.”

I love that! Because that’s one of myfavs.

I’d like to experience a more structured way ofknowing the truth. I'll be sharing that tomorrow.

What's caught your attention lately?

2011-11-25T12:20:00.001-06:00

Another exercise that you can observe is what’s caught yourattention lately? What’s sticking in your mind? There’s great power in this. Ithink of a wonderful quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson and it deals with thisdirectly. He says, “A thousand strangers walk by the front of my house and Ipay them no mind, but when a stranger knocks on my door, I answer it.”

A few antidotes, a few traits of character, a few people, a fewincidents; all have an emphasis in your memory all proliferating of theirapparent significance. You do notice this? They relate to your gift. Theyrelate to your purpose. Let them have their weight and do not reject them. Whatyour heart thinks is great, is great! The soul’s emphasis is always right.

What’s caught your attentionlately? Look at it. A million things have sped past your mind. Why is this one,or two, or ten things? What made them stick? Look at it.

Another one…facing a dilemma?Think about it. Take some time to think about it. Step off the treadmill. Askyourself, “What would my best self do in this situation?” What would my bestself do; the one who isn’t afraid of failing; the one to whom life is anadventure; the one who lives out their true values and know who they are. Whois your best self?

Self-therapy

2011-11-22T15:08:00.001-06:00

Another avenue to self-awareness is self-therapy. This is alittle bit about what I dissected about what most talking therapies are, whichis merely developing or exercising the observing consciousness.

I have a good example of self-therapy from a man that someof you may have heard of. His name is Scott Peck. The wrote The Road Less Traveled, which as bechained to the best seller list for 13 years, as well as other books on therelated subject matter. Scott Peck has written many best sellers, including onof the best seller’s of all time. He speaks all over the world. He doeslectures. He writes articles. He founded the Foundation of CommunityEncouragement, which is a non-profit organization that does community buildingseminars and workshops. He was a husband. He was a father. He was a veryaccomplished man. And I’m always fascinated by this.

A question was asked to Scott. “Scott, how is it that youget so much done?” He replied, “I get that question asked all the time and myanswer surprises people.” He said, “I accomplish so much because I spend anhour a day doing absolutely nothing.” Well, the good doctor overstates his casejust a bit. What he did may look like absolutely nothing, but it was not. Whathe did is for an hour after he woke up in the morning is that he went and satand thought. He didn’t read. He didn’t eat breakfast. He didn’t write letters.He didn’t answer mail. He didn’t talk on the phone. He thought.

What did he think about? He thought about things like, whoam I? Well, there’s a question for you. That’s an interesting question to stepoff the treadmill one day and ask yourself. Who am I? What’s going on here?What a question that is. What are my opportunities? What are my problems?What’s in front of me? And of course, a man like Scott Peck had 10 times theopportunities that he could ever take advantage of, as do we all. Don’t we? Andso when you think, things come to you. When you ask yourself questions likethat.

I'll talk about another simple exercise tomorrow.

Other means of therapy

2011-11-22T12:23:00.001-06:00

There are other means of therapy and they are proliferating every where. One of those means is a support group. A support group is a group of people who get together to talk about problems that they have or a problem that they have in common.

We have cancer patient support groups. We have single parent support groups. We have support groups for people with Alzheimer. There are support groups for everything these days. Find one. Go. Talk about yourself. Hear what other people are doing. It’s an amazingly effective means for self-awareness.

Another easy, cheep avenue to self-awareness or therapy, if you will, is the 12 step programs. The programs based on the Alcoholics Anonymous methodology, which is a 12 step program. And, there are all kinds of them.

I remember reading on the web about a year ago that back in 1973 there were eight 12 step groups in Denver; last year there were 470. They are going like weeds. Why? Because they work.

And we have them for everything. We have them, yes, for alcoholics; we have them for children of alcoholics. We have them for drug addicts. We have them for overeaters. We have them for compulsive gamblers. We have them for sex-alcoholics. We have them for shop- alcoholics. We have them for everybody. Yes, you can laugh at it. But the fact is, they work.

They are a means of self-awareness. So, therapy works.Other means of therapy that are very predictable and valuable are the personality profiles. You can take them at any university. The Myer’s Briggs will tell you things about yourself that will blow you away. Other similar test can be found by doing an internet search for personality profile test.

The Myer’s Briggs well recognized and yes it does cost something and it takes a little time, but it will tell you things that blow you away. They really work. They’re really quite well developed.

So therapy is one avenue to self-awareness.Another avenue to self-awareness is self-therapy.

Breaking Turkey News

2011-11-21T20:24:00.001-06:00

I've interrupted my blog to bring you this breaking information.

Some avenues to self-awareness

2011-11-18T20:13:00.001-06:00

The first one is therapy. This is the first road toself-awareness. I have been in therapy since my divorce. Nuts and proud, kindof like the bummer sticker. I tell my mother and she says, “You’re not in therapyagain, are you?” I say, “Yes, I am.”

In my mother’s day you had to be sick ornuts to go to therapy. These days you go to therapy because you want to move alittle quicker. You want to find out more about yourself.

I remember thefirst time I went to my therapist. I recall the first session very clearly. Thetherapist said to me, “So, what’s going on?” And I said, “Well…this is goingon. She said, “How’s it feel?” I told her how I felt. She asks, “What can youdo about it?” I said, “Well, I could do this, and I can do that.” She said,“How about this?” I said, “Oh, I can do this.” She said, “What would happen ifyou did that?” I said, “This.” She said, “How would this feel?”

What’s going on here? What was I doing? I was exercising theobserving consciousness, but I was doing it with somebody else. That’s largelywhat therapy is. And, that’s not to diminish the roll of the therapist. Theirroll is very important. But, for most of us, developing our observingconsciousness on our on is too simple. It doesn’t cost enough. We have to pay$70 so we can take it seriously enough to sit down for an hour an do it. Andthat’s what therapy is. And it’s valuable. And people are doing it. And itworks.

Now, if you’re not into paying $70 an hour or $35 orwhatever it costs you, there are other means of therapy is a support group. I'll share more tomorrow.

The Scenarios

2011-11-18T19:59:00.001-06:00

What should Jack do?

Scenario #1: He should stay with her. He should do it. Hey, passion fades. It’s just the initial rush of the relationship. Afterthings wear on, she’ll calm down and everything will be okay. She’s too good tolet go. Scenario #1: He should stay with her.

Scenario #2: He should leave her. This woman is trouble.This is just the tip of the iceberg. If this woman is like this now, in 10years she’s going to be hopelessly shrewish. This woman will be hopelessdependent on him. Scenario #2: He should leave her.

Scenario #3: He should stay with her. Why, because thisisn’t her problem. This is his problem. She’s just having a natural reaction tolove. This is normal. It’s his problem. He’s the kind of guy who loves thepursuit, but the minute a woman turns around and says, “Okay, you caught me,”he turns around and runs in the other direction. It’s kind of like that greatquote that says “I want no part of a club that will accept me as member.” Doyou know what I’m talking about? So, Scenario #3—he should stay with her.

Scenario #4: He should leave her. This woman is atemptation. This woman is Delilah. She looks beautiful. She looks perfect inevery way. But if he listens to his gut, his gut tells him the real truth. And,if has the strength to follow his gut, to follow his personal truth and to turnaway from this woman as tempting as she may be then he will open himself up tohis true love, to the perfect relationship. So, Scenario #4: He should leaveher.

So which is it? I don’t know. But, I do know how Jack canfigure it out, and that is through the methodologies of self-awareness. And,there are some.

Self-awareness does not come free. It does not come cheap. It’ssomething we have to put some energy towards. There are a number of avenues toself-awareness that are very concrete and predicable; and they work.

I’m going to talk about four of them beginning tomorrow.

Jack and Marsha

2011-11-18T19:51:00.001-06:00

A friend of mine visited over Thanksgiving a few years ago.His name is Jack. And Jack has a problem. Jack is about my age and Jack hadbeen corralling for years. Jack thinks it’s time to settle down and have kids.

He was talking to me about it and he had found this woman who is beyond hiswildest dreams. I met her and she is quite wonderful. Her name is Marsha. AndMarsha is one of those women who’s drop dead beautiful. She’s the kind of womanthat when she walks into a room people turn their heads. And the better thingabout Marsha is that she kind of doesn’t know it. You know what I mean? She’sreal down to earth. She’s real open. She’s real easy to be around. She’s thekind of person that when Jack saw her, he thought “She’d never be interested inme.” But she is. In fact, that’sthe problem. She’s too interested in Jack. He said, “I can’t walk through thehouse without stopping me and wanting to go kissy face.”

He said, “Every time we do anything all she wants to do istalk about our relationship.” He said, “I have to get out of bed early in themorning before she wakes up or she’s all over me.” Now, this not something thatJack would have considered to be a problem. In fact, it’s a perfect example of“be careful what you wish for because you’re apt to get it.” And he has gottenit. And he talking about this and he doesn’t know what to do about it, becauseon one hand, she’s fabulous—more than he ever dreamed. Everybody loves her,everybody thinks she’s perfect, everybody’s saying, “Marry her.”

And on the other hand he has this problem. It’s serious andit’s eating at him. And so we thought about it and we looked at it and wetalked about it. And we came up with a number of scenarios.

Come back tomorrow to see what we came up with.

Breaking the shackles in your life

2011-11-18T08:51:00.001-06:00

There are a number of levels where the mechanism of truthcan operate. As I stated in a previous post, in your work life this is quite powerful. Ask yourselfif you’re not happy in your job or you’re not happy in some aspect of your job.Am I a people person in a numbers job? Am I a numbers person in a people job?Do I have a problem with my boss or co-workers? What is it? Look at it. Tellthe truth about it.

Look at your personal life, courageously. And, you may see that Iwant to be married, or I don’t want to be married. Or I want to have a kid or Idon’t want to have a kid. Or I want to live in Huntsville or I don’t want to live in Huntsville.Or you might look at your life and say, “I’m in a fog all day because I drink toomuch every night and it’s controlling me, instead of me controlling it.” Anduntil you look at it, until you really look at it courageously then nothinghappens. You get to stay stuck. And that’s, again, the mechanism. Telling thetruth, looking at the truth is a systematic way of breaking the shackles inyour life.

So the mechanism then so far as we have unfolded it is thatwe must observe ourselves. And we must tell the truth about what we see becausethe truth takes us step by step towards our self-empowerment.

Now, it’s one thing to believe in the power of truth; it’sanother thing to know what the truth is. That’s the problem often times. I’mwilling to tell the truth…what is it?

I’ve kept this post short today because tomorrow I have astory to tell you about Marsha and Jack. Check back for the juicy details.

Evaluation time

2011-11-17T11:36:00.001-06:00

Obviously, it is important to both know and tell the truthto the people you manage. To make sure you do this, it’s a good idea formalizethe process. Chances are, you already do in performance appraisals. If not,start. But even if you do performance appraisals, try doing your whole team atonce. Why not do it now? I shouldn’t take more than 15-20 minutes.

Start by identifying the qualities that are important to youand your organization. Productivity, quality, working relationships,creativity, new ideas, organization, communication skills, or whatever. Thenrate each of your people on a scale of 1 to 5. You’ll get a clearer pictureinstantly of how each person is doing and how you can help them do better.

If you don’t want totake the time to do that, try this quick and dirty approach. Imagine that theteam of people you work with right now is about to be frozen. Right this minuteyou get to say whether you want each of these people on your team for the restof your life.

Think of each of them individually. If you had to chooseyour team that you would have for the rest of your life, would they be on it?If not, what are you doing working with them now?

So again, the truth brings you closer to who you are. Itbrings you closer to the people you ought to be with, the things you ought tobe doing.

Every time you tell the truth it’s another step in your pathof self-empowerment. Every step you take is another step toward liberation.Every time you chose not to tell the truth, you get to stay stuck, recyclingthe same drama. You get to stay suffering.

So we begin to see then that it is the mechanism at playhere. And that’s what we’re looking at this the mechanism of self-empowerment.

We begin to see that if we observe our life, if we exerciseour observing consciousness, then we can see the areas in our life where we arestuck, and we are in suffering and we are in pain. And when we see that, we canask ourselves, “How am I not telling the truth here…to other people. How am Inot telling the truth to myself?”

Tomorrow, more the mechanism to self-empowerment

Announcement

2011-11-16T20:23:00.001-06:00

Today, I became a member of the International PressAssociation.

I have changed direction in my life and hope to turn my newdream into a profession. Because I am serious about my gig (which is yet to berevealed), I believe this organization affords me the credibility that goesalong with my new profession.

Find out more at http://internationalpress.com

I'll get back on my self-empowerment blog tomorrow. Just too much to do. Thanks everyone for supporting me.

The Yard Sale Show

2011-11-15T10:53:00.001-06:00

Sorry, I was so late with this. It's not quite as funny, but I'm learning my equipment and software.

Enjoy.

Solid Citizens

2011-11-13T18:23:00.001-06:00

Solid Citizens are great! And we have a lot of them. You,know, their most important thing is not necessarily their career. Theyhave families, they go to church, they have girl scout troops, but when theyare at work for the eight hours they are there, they’re creative, and they'reproductive, they handle their customer’s well, and there are innovative andthey are a lot of fun to be around. We love our Solid Citizens. And we areloyal to our Solid Citizens.

And what else we realized is that we have a lot of Learners. These are peoplewho are new. They haven’t gotten their footing quite yet, or these are peoplewho have just been promoted and they’re faltering around a little bit untilthey get the ropes. And our job is to be as good as possible at making them as goodas possible; at teaching them. And, we love our Learners.

Then we realized another thing and that is that, yes, thereare a few people in the company who qualify as Deadwood. And that wasn’t so badeither. Because what we realized when we really looked at it, was that we loveour Deadwood. We love our Deadwood because we realized is that they’re notDeadwood. As one of our manager’s said, "Nobody’s Deadwood. God doesn’t makeDeadwood." And we realized that too. And we realized that, sure, I’ve been inthis situation and maybe you have too, there are just some people who are justnot cut out for the job. They are square pegs in round holes. And they’retrying and they don’t get it and they are conscience of it.

But, they’re not succeeding. And it’s obvious they’re not succeeding.They’re afraid that other people are noticing that they are not succeeding. Andother people are going to think they are Deadwood. Then, maybe they begin tothink they are Deadwood. And that’s an awful thing. We as managers can changethat. And we committed to do just that. We’ll go back to these people and justtell them the truth about themselves or about they’re performance in thisposition. One two things happened.

One was, we saw that is was salvageable. This person wasn’tright for this position, but they were perfect for this other position. And, wesaw that people literally overnight went from Deadwood to Stars. It happened onmore than one occasion. That’s a wonderful outcome of management and truth.

The other outcome is, its still not going to work. It wasquite obvious that some people are just not going to succeed in thisorganization. If they can’t recognize that truth; if they refuse to see it, wemust…insist. And we free up their future as we so delicately put it. And that’snot a bad outcome either. It’s really not. It can be painful. It can befrightening. But for people who have lived through it, who’ve woken up by it,find that it’s one of the best things that’s ever happen to them.

We’ve heard of more than one person, call or write or visitand say, “Thanks, I needed that.”

A Management Exercise

2011-11-11T09:55:00.001-06:00

One year, the company I worked for at the time, T.V.A.(Tennessee Valley Authority) had us participate in a management retreat. Therewas an exercise that we're to do that’s often done in management retreats. Andwhat it is, is when you look at the people who report to you and you grade them1 to 5 in about 20 areas. When you do that, you further categorize them into 4categories:

Stars
Solid Citizens
Learners
Deadwood

After this was explained to us, we did not want to do this.Categorize our people? Subject them to numbers? Remember, these are humanbeings! Nonetheless, we gave it a try. We all scattered to the trees and thequite spots, and we starting doing it. Everybody had the same story when wereconvened.

As frightening as it was, it was exhilarating exercise.Because, when we look at our people specifically, honestly and courageously, wesaw the truth. The truth was exiting.

What we saw is that we had a lot of Stars and I don’t knowwhy. I don’t know what makes a star. It’s just kind of that wonderful meetingof sweet spots. It’s where they are in their career. It’s where we are as acompany, but they are whirling dervishes. They go to sleep thinking about theirjob. They wake up with ideas in the middle of the night. And they are just asproductive as they can be as well as creative.

We love our Stars. The only thing I can say about our Starsis that I hope we can be worthy of them? This was a wonderful realization.

The second thing we realized is that we have a lot of SolidCitizens.

The first rule of truth

2011-11-10T01:10:00.000-06:00

The truth brings you closer to thepeople you love. The truth brings you things that are right for you. In fact, Ican state it as a law of the universe. The law says, the closeness of yourrelationships is directly proportional to the degree that you have revealed thetruth about yourself. That it. It’s that simple. It always works and it worksin all areas of your life.

Think about your job for a minute. To what degree do thepeople you work with know who you are? What your dreams are? Know what you’recapable of? Know what you want to contribute?

Even on a mundane level, to what degree does that person whostops you several times a day and wastes your time with idle chatter, to whatdegree do they even know how you feel about it?

On a personal level, to whatdegree have you really revealed yourself to what you love in life? Do they knowwhat your dreams are? Do they know what you really like? To what degree haveyou revealed yourself to them?

It’s kind of like a friend of mine who asks, "Do you know what couple do after they have a really big fight?" You know what they do. They havereally great sex! How many of you have ever experienced this? Exactly. Why? Because, the walls aredown. You’re laying it all out. The energy is released. You’re looking at eachother and you’re telling each other the truth and it is a turn on. You canforget the whips and chains. Telling the truth is the biggest turn on of all.It really is. It brings us closer.

Every time you choose to not tell the truthbecause it’s not the right time, or you don’t want to hurt their feelings orsomehow you just don’t know how to say it. When you do that, it is yet anotherbrick in the wall. And if you do that enough, you’ll build a solid wall aroundyourself and you’re isolated from other people and you’re cut off from your owntrue self. You’re separated from the things that make you happy. That is anexpression of fear, of isolation, of separation. And the truth frees us.

Often times, it’s more of an issue in our work life because thoseof us who are managers, not only have to tell the truth about ourselves, that’stough enough, but as managers, we have to tell the truth about other people.And that’s even tougher, isn’t it?

At TVA we had an exercise that was quite revealingabout myself. I’ll share that with you tomorrow.

Dealing with Truth

2011-11-09T08:49:00.000-06:00

Here's a real life example that brings it down toearth. About 14 years ago, I decided I needed a sabbatical. I was always aworkaholic since running my own business. I decided I needed to dis-attach. Ineeded disconnect from work. I decided I would take about three weeks and go tothe Netherlands.I stayed with my sister and her family who live near Amsterdam.

And before I went, I was talking to some of my friends aboutit and so forth. And I have a very good friend who is a business associate. Her name isJane. Jane and I are very close, like sisters. And Jane was very supportive.Jane said, “Sheila, this is exactly what you need.” She said, “Make it work foryou. And here’s what do to help make it work.” She says, “Tell your friendsthat if they want to talk to you *wait* until you come back. You’ll callthem, tell them not to call you. If they need you in an emergency, they cancall you. Make sure you finish all your projects before you leave the store andif you don’t, finish them up in the first week and then forget about it. Let themgo, but don’t leave strings hanging.” It sounded like great advice and I took it.

I told all my friends, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Ifinished up most all my projects before leaving and the ones I didn’t, Ifinished within the first week of being there. And it worked for me. It was awonderful sabbatical! I’d seen and done things I never experienced before. Ilistened to different music. I listened to the wind and I walked on the trailsand rode the trains, and developed that equilibrium I was looking for. And it was wonderful; justwhat I wanted.

And then one day there arrives a message and I felt theanxiety rise in my chest. I hate messages that are pages and pages long. Thisperson did something to that person and this had happened and this is justexactly the political stuff that I didn’t want to be dealing with at thispoint. I was skimming through it and I looked who sentit and it came from my friend, Jane. Yes, the one who had given me all theadvice. And I thought, “Jane, what are you doing?” and I replied, “Pleaseremind Jane that I’m on sabbatical.” And I never read it and I didn’t give itanother thought.

And, the days went by. And one night I was sitting on my bedand was listening to classical music and I was doing a jigsaw puzzle amongother things. But, I was enjoying it. I was having a good time. And then camethe jangle of the phone. Now this is the phone from hell because I didn’t wantto talk to anybody. So I answered, “Hello,” in a firm voice. And I hear a voicesay, “Hi, it’s me, Jane.” And I thought, “Jane, what are you doing?”

And I said, “Hello.” And she said, “So tell me everything. Ibet you’re having a great time!” I said, “I’m working a jigsaw puzzle.” She said,“Oh, I love jigsaw puzzles! I always do jigsaw puzzles when I’m on vacation.” Isaid, “Hum, okay.” She said, “Sheila, you don’t sound so good, is everythingokay?” And I chose that moment to not tell the truth. I said, “I’m fine.” Shesaid I was having some issues and I’d like to bounce a few ideas off you. And Ichose that moment to not tell the truth. I said, “Shoot.” And I must tell you Ihad another image in mind.

So she starting telling me who’d done what to who and how itwas unfair and how she was being victimized. The whole time I gave her my oneword snippiest answer in the sharpest tone I could. Finally, even Jane got it!

Jane says, “Well, I’ll handle it, just have a good time.”And I said, “Goodbye.” And I wasfurious. I was furious at myself for not telling Jane the truth. And, I wasfurious at her for calling me. An hour later I was furious. Two hours later Iwas furious. And when I was laying in bed in the middle of the night, I wasfurious. And I realized that it was getting morning back in Alabama,so I got up in the middle of the night and I called her.

I said, “Jane, this is Sheila. I’m calling because when youcalled me a few hours ago, I did not tell the truth.” I said, “I cannot believeyou called me and the truth is, I’m angry about it. What’s going on here?”

She said, “Oh, Sheila, the moment I heard your voice, I knewI shouldn’t have. But this project is so important and I don’t have anybody totalk to about things like that.” She said, “I thought you might be taking on alittle work, I’m really sorry.” And you know, you really know the power of theapology and I felt the anger flow from my feet. And I felt a lot better and Isaid, “You know, Jane, we all make mistakes. Have a good day.” And I was goingto hang up the phone and as I was hanging up, I heard her say, “Sheila, wait.”And so I put the phone back to my ear and she said, “Sheila, since we aretelling the truth, I’d like to tell you the truth."

She said the truth is, “I always call you. You never callme.” She said, anytime we get together outside of work, I’m always the one whosets it up. You never set it up". She said, “I am the only one putting anyenergy into this relationship”

And I thought to myself, this ought to be the battle cry of moderntimes…I’m the only one putting any energy into this relationship. And I said, “But,Jane, I don’t have the same needs.” The last thing I need to do at the end ofthe day to talk to someone about their projects.

She was hurt by that and she started crying, and she threwback another insult and I threw back another insult and for the next 15minutes, we laid it all out. Whatever we’d done to each other, every insult,whether real or imagined was laying out there looking at us.

And after we had gotten all that out and we were sittingthere panting, I don’t who it was that said it, but somebody said, “Hey, this islife." The fact is we do really like each other. We really do and we can makesome compromises and we usually do. You know, we laid that all out and talkedabout it from every possible angle and I can remember sitting there and it wasdawning in Amsterdam, talking toJane and I felt closer to her than I ever felt in my life.

Now that brings me to the first rule of truth. And that isthat truth brings you closer to the people you love.

Truth

2011-11-08T13:13:00.000-06:00

Now let’s turn our attention to the second step in self-empowerment, truth.

We’ll start by revisiting first grade and what was for manyof us our first formal lesson in truth. Do you remember the George Washingtonstory? George Washington chopped down the cherry tree. Do you remember this?

He committed a completely malice act on a Cherry tree. Hechopped it down! His father came up to him and said, “George, did you chop downthis Cherry tree?” To which he replied, “Father, I cannot tell a lie.” At thatpoint his father beat him within an inch of his life (just kidding). But that’shonesty. Truth is honesty. Truth is accuracy.

I did some calculations one day and I said, “I know thesenumbers are true." Truth is accuracy. What I realize is that truth is farmore than honesty. Truth is far more than accuracy. What I realize is thattruth is a force in the world. And it is a force that can lead us from where weare to a more empowered state.

Tomorrow, I will share an interesting story with you. pleaserevisit for more on truth.

BREAK - Video Blog - Part 2

2011-11-07T10:15:00.000-06:00

Today is a break from the written blog to present you avideo blog. I think since Monday’s are the hardest day of the week, need a little lift. ENJOY!

The observing consciousness

2011-11-06T17:35:00.000-06:00

The observing consciousness is not to be seen as something thatis other than ourselves, it’s a place where you chose your thoughts andfeelings. It doesn’t mean you divorce yourself from them. It’s where you chooseyour actions, but you still participate in them. You know, it can seem asseparation from ourselves and when we operate from our observing consciousness,but actually it is a rejoining to ourselves and that’s what the observingconsciousness is.

It is a realization of who we really are. I have peoplesometimes say, “Well you know I like getting out of control. I like gettingreally angry. I like getting really exhilarated.” And, I do to. But there’s adifference in having those feelings unconsciously and having them consciously.

I think of something that Richard Pryor said after he lithimself on fire and he quit his smoking of crack. Some came up to him and said, “You knowRichard, you’re not as funny as you use to be on drugs.” Richard says, “Youknow, the truth is my highs aren’t as high, but my lows aren’t as low either”.And there’s something to be said about choosing consciously who we are and howwe feel. It doesn’t mean that we can’t feel any of those emotions.

Self-empowerment—granting yourself the power and thepermission to be who you are. To make you’re unique contribution to living yourlife your way. As we’ve said, self-empowerment takes place in four steps:

Self-awareness
Truth
Love
Commitment

We’ve just looked at two components to self-awareness,self-responsibility and the observing consciousness.

Now let’s turn our attention to the second step, truth.

Before we do, I'll be posting another video blog. My goal is to have the VBs on Monday, because that's the start of the work week and we all need a good laugh. So check out tomorrow's video blog before we precede here.

More thoughts on self-awareness and Dybbuts

2011-11-05T16:49:00.000-05:00

A funny thing happens when you start observing yourthoughts. To your amusement and horror, you find that in many cases these thoughts arenot even yours. They are from people who raised you, the people who taught you.They are from society at large. There’s a charter in folklore called the Dybbuk.Dybbuks, according to folklore are the souls or our ancestors living within us.Do you know what I’m talking about?

Have you ever yelled at your kid and your mother’s voicecome out of your mouth? Have you ever spouted off a political philosophy andthought, that’s my father talking? I have Dybbuks. We all have Dybbuks. I havea Dybbuk that I got from my father and he got from his father and it goes backa long way.

Now my father is a very sweet, kind, gentle man. He reallyis. Except for one circumstance, that’s when he’s fixing something that’sbroken. And of course, in my father’s household, you don’t call a repair personwhen something is broken. You fix it yourself. And, I always watched him.Whenever he was fixing something and something didn’t go quite right, and ofcourse, something always doesn’t seem to go quite right, he would take it as apersonal affront, and he would start swearing and slamming things around. Andyou know what? I’m the exact same way.

I notice this about myself. And maybe you do to. Like whenyou are making a phone call and the call doesn’t go through, and you have tohang up and punch then numbers again you punch the numbers again. I find thatsecond time I really punch those numbers. If that call doesn’t go through thesecond time, it’s all I can do to keep from slamming the phone against thewall.

One day my computer crashed. And felt myself tense up andget that really sick feeling. Having work I did get blown out by acomputer…that can still send me over the edge! That’s my attitude. That reallyis my attitude. It just doesn’t make sense, that all. And when you look at it,when you really stop to observe it, you see that it doesn’t make sense. Life’stoo short. And the more you look at it and the more you observe it, the lesspower it has over you. I don’t think I’ve kicked a computer for years now.Dybbuks, that how it works.

Tomorrow, more on the ability observe your own mind.

Three steps in observing something that is going on in your life

2011-11-04T16:19:00.001-05:00

The first step is to observe your emotions. The emotions aregenerally is the first red flag that something is going wrong. Now, what werethe emotions I wanted from my hike? I wanted serenity. I wanted solitude. Iwanted peace of mind. What were the emotions I experienced? I was frustrated. Iwas angry. I was anxious. Now, what do you do in a situation like this in youremotions and you ask yourself, “What are my thoughts?” What are the judgmentscausing these emotions? Emotions are caused by our thoughts. And, my judgmentwas when you go out on a hike, you want solitude and serenity. Well, fairenough, but not on Labor Day Saturday. Not on a popular trail. Another judgmentI had was that parents should control their kids. Well, if you can’t let yourkids run wild in the wilderness, where can you let them run wild? And, so Irealized, are these judgments serving me? Are they healthy choices? I realized,they weren’t.

So, the mechanism again:

Check your emotions
Check out your thoughts or the judgments causing your emotions
Look at your options. What can you do?

Until you stop and think, you just continue to play out theprogramming unconsciously. When I looked at my options and I had a couple. One was, I could use this as an exercise that is grist for the millfor me. I could spend this day working on changing my attitude, my judgmentsabout what this day was going to be about. Enjoy it for what it was instead ofwhat I wanted it to be. This is one option; not a bad one. But, there was amore appealing option. I stopped to think. When I stopped to observe it, Irealized that there were a few trails that when off from the major trail. Itwas far more strenuous. It went over a major ridge. Not the kind of trail youput kids on, but it was okay for me.

So I needed the exercise and so I turned to my friend and let’stake this little off shoot. He said, “Great idea.” So we did. In five hours wemay have seen seven people. So I did get what I wanted, ultimately. But until Istopped, until I snapped out of the drama, until I stepped out of theprogramming, I was not able to see it. I was not able to choose. That’s theobserving conscience, that’s self-awareness, that’s self-empowerment.

More tomorrow observing thoughts, self-awareness andDybbuts

How to handle conscience choices

2011-11-03T22:39:00.000-05:00

It was one Labor Day and I had been working really hard Ireally needed some time off, or so I had convinced myself. So I was reallyexcited about the three-day weekend. I needed some solitude. I needed someserenity. I needed to renew myself by connecting with nature, communing, youknow what I mean? I called a friend and said, “Hey, why don’t we go hiking upto the national park on Saturday?” He said, “Great idea.”

So we got in the car. We got all our sandwiches. We got ourstuff together. We got excited. And as we were driving up to the park, Irealized that there was a lot of traffic on the road. There was a lot oftraffic going to the park. So, I feel myself tense up, because I wantedsolitude. I wanted serenity.

I thought, Sheila, who knows, it's a big park and we’ll just relax.And I looked at my friend and he was exactly oblivious to this drama. And so wegot up to the ranger station where you pay your money and there was a lineabout a 12 cars deep and began to feel myself tense up again. And I said, Sheila,just hang on, we’ll and see what’s going on.

As we drove our way to the trail, the sign said parking areaFULL. And, I felt myself tense up, yet evenmore. And my friend didn’t notice. And, I didn’t want to ruin his day. Let’sjust go and see what happens. We have a plan, let’s execute it.

So we drove into the parking area anyway, and just as wepulled in a car was pulling out, and I said “Yes! God is on my side and He wantsto commune with me too.” So, we got out of the car. There were a lot of peoplestarting the trail and we let a lot go a head of us so we don’t walk too closeto them. As the line started out and we were walking, and I didn’t want to gettoo close to them because I was there to commune with nature.

We rounded a bend and there was this mountain vista. Iforgot all about my problems. I was over them by the beauty of this sense. Igot out my camera and as was focusing on the viewfinder that there was a beachblanket setting there. And I couldn’t get my view without getting the beachblanket in there. I’m mad this time! I’m bringing out the big guns…I am goingto complain!

So, I turned to my friend and said, “It’s crowed out here,isn’t it?” And he said, “Yeah, it’s Labor Day Saturday. Everyone’s out onholiday.” And I said, “Yeah. That’s right. Everyone’s out on holiday.” Hey,it’s the forth of July. It’s the Boardwalk. It’s a parade. Let’s have a goodtime. And I realized -- that’s the attitude.

I was walking along and beginning to feel a little better about the situation, but now there is a problem with other people behind us not playing by the rules. Thepeople behind us were a little too close and the problem was that there wereabout seven kids all between the ages of 9 and 13. You know what I mean?They’re all like little sticks with mouths on the end of it. And there was thisone kid that was getting really close to us and every time he’d see something,he’d say “Yo, ma, look at this. Yo, ma, look at that”. And I was thing tomyself, “Yo, ma, you might as well be in the Nintendo department at K-Mart.”

Again, I couldn’t control myself and turned to my friend andsaid, “Boy, these kids are loud.” He said, “Yeah, their having a great time. It’sgreat that their spending time with their families out in the wildernessinstead of hanging out in front of the television or hanging out in the mall.”

And I said, “Yeah, that’s the attitude.” You know? And so wefinally got to the lake and we were sitting on a rock and of course they came upand sit on the next rock. And my friend turned to them and said, “So, youhaving a good time?” They said that they were having a great time. They saidthey were from Texas and they’venever seen mountains before. And they couldn't wait to tell their friends.

I and thought, “Oh, Sheila!” I thought about it for aminute. And so, I pulled out my little bag of tricks of the observingconsciousness. And there’s a little three step process that you need to observesomething that’s going on in your life. And I’ll teach you these tomorrow.

The age old question...What is the “self”?

2011-11-02T08:13:00.000-05:00

Self-empowerment...

It’s a funny thing because “empowerment” is the sexy word, but thereally important, or the operative word is “self”. What is the “self”? Andthat’s something, as they say, has been puzzling philosophers for centuries.

Who are we, really? Who are you, really? And when I think ofthat I ask myself that question, I come up with a whole hierarchy of responses.I my first response is what I call the cocktail party response.

"I am, Sheila Stewart, nice to meet you. I own Synergy Solutions and I am attending Jones International University seeking a Bachelor's degree in Business Communications. I live in Athens, Alabama."

And that works at cocktail parties, but when you think about it, if my namewasn’t Sheila Stewart, would I still exist? If I didn’t run Synergy Solutions,would I still exist? If I wasn't back in college, would I still exist? If I didn’t live in Alabama, would I still exist? Yes. So welook deeper. And we see that, oh, I know who I am…I’m me.

I’m my arm, my body, and my face. I begin where my skin begins and end where my skin ends. I’m my body. It’s kind of like a friend told me. She has a three year old son, Tommy, who was brushing his teeth onenight. And as he was looking in the mirror, he stopped with a revelation andhe says, “I’m not somebody else. I’m Tommy!” And what he realized is that thingin the mirror was him. And we realize that at some point.

But, if you think deeper, you think now I had a differentbody when I was three years old and I will have a different one yetwhen I’m sixty. And so, I’m not my body. My body is changing at the time.

And I look deeper and I see that, I know who I am. I’m thatperson in my head that’s looking out through my eyes. I’m my thoughts. I’m myjudgments. I’m my emotions. I’m my actions. I’m what I think. But, am I reallywhat I think? In other words, do we say things like “I think” or “I amthought”? And if we say things like “I think”, who’s the “I” doing thethinking? Who is it?

Who’s the “I” doing the feeling. We say things like, “I amfeeling,” or “I feel.” Who is the “I” that’s doing the feeling? And when welook at it even closer, we realize that there’s a level of identity that goesbeyond our thoughts, our feelings, our actions.

There is a place in our consciousness where we can stand andlook at ourselves, where we can observe ourselves. It is our vantage point. Andit is the vantage point for self-awareness. It’s the place where we can lookand we can see our thoughts instead of be our thoughts. It’s a place where wecan see our emotions instead of being triggered and being caught up in thedrama of our emotions, which we are so much of the time. It’s the place wherewe can see our actions, instead of compulsively playing out our programming.And we do both of those things, don’t we?

And it is not only the vantage point for self-awareness, itis the access point for self-empowerment. Because when you can see yourthoughts, when you can see your emotions, when you can your actions objectively,dispassionately, from outside of yourself then you can see other options. Otherthoughts that might be appropriate, other emotions, other actions. And that’swhat self-empowerment is all about, and that why we say that the observingconsciousness is the access point for self-empowerment. Because it’s the placewhere you can see your options and you can make conscience choices. And that’swhat we’re talking about here.

Living your life though conscience choice, making choicesthat supports who you are rather than living your life through unconsciousnessprogramming.

Tomorrow I will give you an example of how that works forme.

Happy whatever!

2011-11-01T09:28:00.002-05:00

What a day! Mercy! Not only are the Kardashian’s having trouble! Sunday, I worked with new hardware. Monday, (Halloween) my van had a rack and pinion steering replacement and a front-end alignment. I had a doctor’s appointment – PTL ALL is well with my health. Whether or you’re Kim or you’re Sheila, it all means the same thing.Today I took a break from the written blog to have a little fun. Here is my first video blog

I use some amusing prompts, so don’t think that … whatever it is you’re thinking.Remember, we will learn and have fun. And, you don’t even have a clue what’s coming! Some of the audio is not good, but I know what I did wrong.I want to do a weekly Vblog. This is the first. Sorry, but I'll get better. Feedback appreciated

Assuming self-responsibility

2011-10-29T09:42:00.000-05:00

Now, take what you wrote earlier (Oct. 27) about not feelingself-empowered and look at it again. Then make a list of two or three or ten waysin which you are responsible. What’s your roll in it? Be honest with yourself.If it frightens you, you can tear it up and throw it away, but before you do,write down what you could do to change the situation if you had a whole lot ofcourage. Now, stop reading here until you’re done writing. When you’re donecome back.

By assuming self-responsibility, by identifying your roll inyour life and understanding that you are your own point of power, you take astep closer to your self-empowerment, towards living your life your way. Youhave no excuses. Or to put it more nicely, there’s nothing holding you backbecause nothing can. Occasionally, I’ve heard from others different insights.I’ll share a couple with you:

I think a lot of it is old beliefsystems. Things that you don’t slough off as an adult that you’ve carried withyou since the time you were a child. And they are no longer valid beliefs, butthey’re still with you. So recognizing those and letting them go, realizingthat current reality is current reality and has nothing to do with what yougrew up with. And it’s hard to do that.

I think that’s interesting because it seems that life is notonly a learning experience, but an unlearning experience too. And, both areimportant. It sort of like when you run a business, part of it is growing yourthings and adding new bells and whistles. And the other part of it, the one we oftenignore, is simplifying and eliminating stuff that’s no longer useful. I’ll talkabout that later when I talk about dibbits. Keep that word in mind.

I think a lot of it is that weundervalue ourselves and so other people undervalue us until we can learn tobegin to value who we are and what we’re worth, we’re not going to get anythingback from anyone else.

Wow! What can I say? That was well put. I can’t add anythingto that statement.

Let's take a brief recap.

Self-empowerment in four acts:

Self-awareness
Truth
Love
Commitment

We’ve just looked at the first half of self-awareness, orself-responsibility. Tomorrow we will look at the second half ofself-awareness, the observing consciousness.

Driving it home on self-awareness

2011-10-29T09:22:00.000-05:00

Now we can see so far that Caroline is a problem solver.Barbara is an excuse maker. Caroline sees why things will work. Barbara seeswhy things won’t work. Caroline creates her circumstances. Barbara is thevictim of her circumstances. Caroline is self-empowered. Barbara isn’t.

It’s that simple. It’s a simple difference in orientationand it delivers radically different results. So, look at your problems. Look atyour drama. How are you responsible? How did you create it? What is the rollyou played in it? Think about that.

Your boss rejected your idea. Well, why? Was it a good idea?Or was it a half-baked idea? They’re a lot of those around. Did you communicateit clearly? Or was the boss just supposed to read your mind?

And, if you discover that, yes indeed, it was a wonderfulidea, perfectly communicated and your boss really doesn’t just like you, thenwhy doesn’t your boss like you?

Are you a good employee? Do you show up on time? Do you putin a good day’s work? Are you loyal? Do you take it seriously? Are youcreative? What’s your roll in your boss not liking you?

And if you look at it and realize that yes, I am perfectionincarnate and my boss is a jerk, then what are you still doing working for thejerk? In other words, what’s your roll in that?

Does your spouse or significant other ignore you or gruntsat you when you come home after a hard day’s work? How are you responsible forthat? What are you like when you come home after a hard day’s work? Are you anyfun to talk to? Or are you crabby or depressed? How are you responsible?

When was the last time you asked your spouse or significantother how their day was? Did you listen? Did you care? Did you response? Haveyou let your significant other or spouse know that you care whether or not theytalk to you when you come home? That you need it, or are they suppose to readyour mind too?

In other words, how are you responsible? And, if the fact isthat you’re married to a dummy, what are you doing married to a dummy? How areyou responsible? What roll are you playing?

Referring back to post on Oct. 26. You see the old bag lady walking with her cart. Don’t advertyour eyes. Don’t try to put it out of your mind. Look at it and ask yourself,“How must it feel to not know where my next meal would be coming from?” Howwould it feel if I did not know where I was going to sleep tonight? Really, howwould that feel? And ask yourself, what kind of a world is it where this canhappen? And how am I responsible? How am I part of the problem and how am Ipart of the solution?

I don’t ask you to do this so that you have yet one moreclub to beat yourself up with. I don’t ask you to do this so that you can go ona guilt trip. I ask you to do this because when you look at things like this,you get answers. When you ask questions like this, you get answers. And you maysee that the way you are part of the problem is that you’re not reaching inyour pocket and giving this person anything.

Or it might even more simple thanthat. You may see that what you need to do is give her smile and a kind word. Thatmight be even more valuable to her. It might have been a long time sinceanybody was nice to her. You may see that you might need to take her to ashelter. You may see that you need to take her home. Or you may see you needvolunteer for a shelter, or donate, or become Mother Teresa. I don’t know. Youmay see that you need to vote differently. Or talk to your friends differently,or merely think differently about this problem. Because when you do, you will realizesomething that self-empowered people know, and that is the only thing you canchange is yourself. That’s it.

People who aren’t self-empowered feel that other people andcircumstances control them, remember? Well, the other part of it is they feelthat they can control other people and circumstances. And, so they feelconstantly guilty about it, because they’re not very good at it. Self-empoweredpeople get rid of the guilt trip and that’s the funny thing aboutself-empowerment.

While it looks like you’re taking on the burdens of theworld, how am I responsible for homelessness? How am I responsible forpollution? How am I responsible for my boss? And you realize that while itlooks like taking on the burdens, it is actually the lifting of burdens. Becauseyou realize something self-empowered people know. And that is when you changeyourself then, other things change as if by magic. When you change the way yourelate to your boss, your boss’s behavior changes. When you change the way yourelate to the person in your life, their behavior changes. When you relatedifferently to the poor homeless woman, then the burden of that poor homelesswoman is lifted even a bit. And that’s self-empowerment. And that’s how itworks.

Return tomorrow for...

The other friend

2011-10-28T17:44:00.000-05:00

My other friend is Barbara. And what Barbara does for aliving is, well, Barbara’s on welfare. And Barbara hates being on welfare.Barbara hates taking something she didn’t earn. Barbara hates when she goes toa cocktail party and people ask her, “So what do you do?” And she has to fumblefor some answer.

Barbara hates the way they treat her at the welfare office.She said, “They don’t treat me with any respect.” And so I go to Barbara. I sayBarbara, look what Caroline is doing. Why don’t you clean houses? And Barbarasays, “Well, I’m not going to beanybody’s servant.”

Well, I guarantee you that Caroline was not consider herselfto be anybody’s servant. And, if you were to treat Caroline like a servant, youwould have exactly one opportunity to do so. Because she would drop you like ahot potato. Because she has a waiting list ten people deep of the finest homesin New York and she charges aboutfifty percent more than the going rate. She has more work than she can handlebecause Caroline takes it seriously.

Caroline may not be a servant, but Caroline is of service.You know what that means? Do you know the difference? It’s fundamental. Infact, Caroline has cards that she had printed and they are beautiful. I lovethem. It has Caroline, in beautiful script. The domestic you’dswear was imported. Isn’t that nice?

Caroline has discretion. If she found something under yourbed that’s a little embarrassing, she keeps her mouth shut. If a message comesover your machine, she keeps her mouth shut. Caroline, God forbid, she shouldclean your house and not leave a little chocolate, or a little flower, or alittle note, because she takes it seriously. She’s a professional. She is ofservice.

And I’m telling all of this to Barbara. And Barbara’s saying“Well, I’m getting old fast enough as it is. I can’t deal with those detergents,I can’t deal with those solvents. Look at these hands.”

So I go to Caroline and say how about the solvents? Howabout the detergents? She says, “They’re horrible!” She says she has to userubber gloves.

So, I go to Barbara and say “rubber gloves”. Barbara says,“How am I going to get around? I can’t afford a car. How am I going to get fromhouse to house?”

It occurred to me that Caroline didn’t have a car, so I ask,“Caroline, you don’t have a car do you?” She says, “No, I don’t choose to putmy money into a car right now. They are very expensive. I choose to put mymoney into my art and my travels.” She says, “I take the bus.”

So I go to Barbara and say “the bus”. Barbara says, “Haveyou ever tried to read those bus schedules?”

So, you begin to hear thedifference, don’t you? Between somebody who is self-responsible and somebodywho is not self-responsible.

Tomorrow we will exam more closely the distinct differencebetween these two.

Introspection and thoughts

2011-10-27T13:52:00.000-05:00

Okay, I’m going to assume that you’re ready to do someintrospection. If you haven’t already, please get some paper or a notebook.Take just a couple of minutes to do the exercise that I described in the lastblog. Write down an incident where you didn’t feel self-empowered or area ofyour life you consistently feel un-empowered. It doesn’t have to be somedefinitive statement on your life. A simple paragraph will do. Hold on to whatyou write. You’ll do some more work with it later on.

Now stop here and compete the exercise. When done, continuereading.

Remember, self-empowerment consists of four steps:

Self-awareness
Truth
Love
Commitment

Let’s look at the first step, self-awareness. We divide it into two halves. First, self-responsibility and second, the observing consciousness. Remember, following along in this journeyas I lay it out will help you.

Let’s turn our attention now to self-awareness and the firsthalf of self-awareness, self-responsibility. I think the best way to describeself-responsibility is to tell you a story about a couple of friends of mine.

One, is Caroline and the other is Barbara. Now, Caroline isquite the self-empowered woman. And I use Caroline as an example of anempowered woman quite deliberately. Because she’s not somebody you would lookat and say, “She’s self-empowered.” She’s not a caption of industry. She’s notfamous. She doesn’t make tons of money. But, Caroline is self-empowered. WhatCaroline does for a living is quite curious. Caroline cleans houses.

Caroline cleaned my house for several years while I wastraveling so much, until I moved. And Caroline was quite the self-empoweredhouse cleaner. She arrived at my house every other Wednesday, promptly at eight o’clock. Looking like a million bucks.Wearing quite literally the latest Vogue fashion. I’m talking $500 and $600outfits. Now, Caroline, on a house cleaner’s salary cannot afford the latestVogue fashions. But what can Caroline do? Caroline can shoplift—NO, justkidding. But seriously, Caroline can sew. And Caroline does sew. And Carolinehunts the fabric shops. They all know her. They love her.

Whenever they have a remnant of cashmere, or silk, orsomething special, they put it in the back room for Caroline. When she shows upshe gets it for twenty cents on the dollar. And she throws it in her back room.And once a year for about two weeks, she pulls out the sewing machine and shesews until, as she puts it, “The thought of another stick makes me want topuke.” But, in that two week period she sews five or six beautiful multi-hundred dollar outfits that cost her a fraction of that amount. Now,Caroline lives in a beautiful apartment in New York,overlooking a park, hardwood floors, two bedrooms, high ceilings.

Caroline has an art collection that’s worth something over$20K that she’s been collecting since she was in college. Caroline goes to Parisevery year, at least once, sometimes twice. She has friends there. She’sworking on her friends. She has this wonderful double life that she leadsthere. And then she comes back and cleans. So Caroline’s doing quite well.

Tomorrow I will talk about my other friend, Barbara andcompare the differences in these two women.

What slows us down to becoming self-empowered?

2011-10-26T16:45:00.000-05:00

Outside circumstances is another force that slows us down.Relationships, careers, lifestyles, promises, obligations. These are veryresistant to change. Have you noticed that? They can feel like traps sometimes.Sometimes it feels like they’re controlling us more than we are controllingthem. But, self-empowered people know better. Self-empowered people knowsomething about what Charles Dickens wrote over a hundred years ago, and thatis, “We forge the chains that bind us.” You know the funny thing is when welook at those chains, when we really look at those chains, truthfully, andlovingly, and courageously, we see that they’re not chains at all. They’relessons. They’re what we’re here to learn. They’re gifts. And like signpoststhey can lead us along on our path to self-empowerment.

So, force number one that slows us down, other people. Number two is outside circumstances. Number there, ourselves. We get in our own way too.Have you noticed? Self-empowerment is about self-awareness. I’ll talk a goodbit about self-awareness.

Self-awareness means knowing who you are. Or it means havinga better idea of who you are. It means knowing where you’re going. It meansknowing your values. It means knowing your purpose. And the problem with toomany of us is that we have too many values. We have too many purposes. Some ofwhich are mutually exclusive.

Let me tell you about a values problem that I’m strugglingwith right now. I want, and I really do, I want to live simply, so that othersmay simply live. I love that bumper sticker. And I also want my swimming poolto be heated to about 82 degrees. That would be about perfect. So, what do I doabout this? Well, self-empowered people know the answers to questions likethis. And I have a sneaking suspicion that it makes life a lot lesscomplicated. So those are the things that slow us down. And those are thethings that maybe slowing you down too.

What I’d like to do now is ask you to do now, is that you doa quick exercise. It won’t take more than a minute. What I’d like you to do isthink about an area in your life where you don’t feel empowered. Think about anincident in your life where you didn’t feel empowered in the last few days or inthe last week. Maybe it was when your boss rejected your idea. Maybe it waswhen you came home after a hard day’s work and your significant other or spouseignored you. Maybe it was when you were walking down the street and saw the oldbag lady and her shopping cart and you felt sick and helpless. Maybe it waswhen you trusted your GPS and it failed you. Think about it.

I know what you’re thinking. “I’ll do this later.” But,don’t. Don’t cheat yourself this way. A major premise of this blog is that tobe self-empowered, we must actively exam ourselves and our lives. Like anythingelse, this doesn’t happen without some time and effort. So please, take thetime and effort to do this self-examination exercises I ask you to do. It’llbring the information home to you like never before.

You’ll need a quite place and something to write with.If you’re driving, just pull over. Your car can be the perfect place to dothese exercises. If you can’t do them now, I won’t be offended and may Isuggest that you not turn on the radio or music. In fact, use this time tothink for awhile in silence. Look around. You could sing to yourself, or countyour blessings. In other words, try something different. Then when you’reready, when you’re comfortable, when you’re ready to do some introspection, I’llsee you tomorrow.

What is self-empowerment?

2011-10-25T11:28:00.000-05:00

I’d like to start by using a definition, so we all know whatwe’re talking about here. What is self-empowerment? Self-empowerment is to betaken quite literally. Self-empowerment means granting yourself the power.Granting yourself the power and the permission to live your life your way. That’sit. It’s that simple and that exciting!

When I talk about living your life your way, I’m not talkingabout selfishness; quite the contrary. Self-empowered people are among the mostselfless and giving people on the earth. When I talk about living your lifeyour way, I’m also not talking about self-containment. Self-empowered peopleare often the people of the deepest faith.

So what am I talking about? Living your life your way meanssimply being yourself and everything that flows from you. It means being withpeople who love you for yourself; just the way you are, not for something theywant from you, and not from who they want you to be.

And you love them back for the same reason. When you’reliving your life your way, your work is a joy. It comes easy to you. You’re amaster at it, and you are rightly compensated for it. When you live your liveyour way, every moment is alive. You don’t need a cup of coffee to wake up inthe morning, if you know what I mean. Everyday is a new exploration of theworld of yourself.

Do you have problems? Do you have setbacks? Of course, youhave tons of them, just like now, just everybody else. But, here’s the difference,when you’re self-empowered, you face them with your eyes open, secure in thefaith that if you are true to yourself things will always workout for the best.Always. No exceptions. Even if you don’t know what the best looks like. So, living your life your way, self-empowerment.It sounds pretty good doesn’t it?

Compare it to how you’re living your life now. If you’relike the vast majority of us, chances are you’re falling just a tad bit shortof this ideal. Welcome to planet earth! And don’t worry about it.

Self-empowerment is not to be thought of as some exhaustedfinal condition, even though, I suppose it is. Self-empowerment is best thoughof; however, as a process. And, when we understand how the process works, wecan empower ourselves literally daily.

Everyday, we become more of who we are. Everyday, we canlook ourselves in the mirror and experience a deeper recognition. That’s quitean exhilarating recognition.

What we are going to do over the next few weeks is look athow self-empowerment works. Look at the process, the mechanism, the naturallaws, if you will. And look at how we can apply this process. How we can put itto work in our own lives.

So, let’s start by looking at why don’t we live our livesour way. What stops us? What slows us down? I’ve looked at it for sometime andI’ve been able to identify three things that get in the way.

The first is other people. Right? Spouses, significantothers, bosses, co-workers, family, friends, society at large. They all havegreat plans for you. Don’t they? I think it’s one of the sad inevitable walksof life that if you don’t have the courage to pursue your own dreams, then youare a sitting duck for the multitude of intuitive people that would only be toohappy to recruit you to pursue their dreams. And, to give the benefit of thedoubt, to recruit you to pursue their dreams for you. They may have your bestinterests at heart. Or at least, they think they do. So, other people impedeour progress.

What’s another thing that impedes our progress?

Come back tomorrow for number two: outside circumstances

Being a self-empowered communicator

2011-10-24T13:23:00.000-05:00

I feel like in order to help you be a better communicator, Ifirst want to relate to you the importance of having self-empowerment. I’m SheilaStewart and I’m very happy that you will be joining me. The segment is designedto help you, quite simply, become more of you who are. The thesis of thissegment is that quality of your life is directly proportional to the degreethat you are living it true to yourself.

The idea is that, yes, there is a true you. Beyond otherpeople’s images of you, beyond your job description, beyond your social status,beyond your own confusion about yourself. There is an authentic you. A you whoknows exactly who you are. A you who knows exactly what your gifts are, exactlywhat you stand for, exactly what your purpose is, exactly how you ought to beliving your life.

Self-empowerment is the process of growing into this person;of waking up to this person. I will tell a many stories about the people in mylife, so protect them and to protect me from them I have changed their namesand an occasional detail.

From time-to-time, you will be called on to do eithermental or written exercises. I encourage you to do them. The value of this segmentwill be multiplied if you do.

I have divided self-empowerment into four steps, or fourphases:

The first step is self-awareness
The second step, truth
The third step, love
The forth step, commitment

Now, I realize that these are fairly philosophical issues. Andas such, they unfold endlessly.

You can look at them from an infinite number of angels andnever be board. We will take, however, a rather direct route through these principles.But as you follow along I will no doubt occasionally raise more questions inyour mind than answers. Let that be okay.

A big part of self-empowerment is realizing just beautiful andcomplex mystery that you are. And you are. So, self-empowerment in four simpleeasy and occasionally not so simple and not so easy steps. I really am glad you’vejoined me.

Follow me tomorrow when I describe what it is to be self-empowered and gaining the means to liveyour life your way.

Are you ready for a blog that deals with truth, love, and commitment?

2011-10-23T19:40:00.000-05:00

Do you want your life to reflect who you are?

Do you see your work as a way to make a contributions, aswell as money?

Are you interested in the deeper meanings of life?

Granted, truth love and commitment and not the usual topics you across on most blog sites. Yet, these are the controls that get to the core of ones self-development.In fact, these issues are the forces that empower you. Once your recognize the areas you are weak in, then the next step is to take a plan of action to strengthen them.

Truth: Truth is much greater than accuracy or honesty. It’sa force that can systematically release your from the areas in your life whereyou are stuck. Through an understanding of truth, you can move step by stepto the exhilarating freedom of being who you are.

Love: It’s so much more than hearts and flowers. Like truth,it is a force – one that can heal the fear that is at the root of all yournegative thoughts, emotions and actions. It is the force by which you can help healthe world as well.

Commitment: Without commitment, you are rootless. The resultis a bitter cynicism. Or a desperate need to please other people. Or a liferuled more by whims than conscious choice. Have you ever noticed this inothers? Have you ever noticed it in yourself?

These are heavy issues and I hopefully I will be helping youunderstand. Somehow just asking the questions gets your closer to theanswers. And, that alone will bring your some practical results:

You’ll be less anxious and fearful, and far more courageous
People who try to manipulate or intimidate your will have less power of over you
Your eyes will open wider. You’ll see (and hear and taste and smell and touch) more of the exquisite beauty that life has to offer
You’ll feel less hassled. You’ll be more purposeful, and waste less them on things that don’t matter
You’ll exert far more control over your thoughts and emotions – and communicating will be much easier
You’ll be more motivated, creative, productive – and just plain fun to be around.

In other words, you’ll live a more empowered life, at home,at work – and most of all within yourself. By being self-empowered, you seeyour entire life change around you. Now don’t think I’m going “fruit loops” onyou, but you will see how you communicate with others in a whole new why andexperience relationships that will amaze you, once you become more self-aware.

So, visit tomorrow as we begin to explore how and why youcan achieve your potential though self-awareness. The manifestation of thisblog will gratifying to me when I see you keep coming back and to find somethingwe can explore and achieve together.

Moving too fast...

2011-10-22T11:10:00.001-05:00

This is a nice little story and illustratesall kinds of interesting things. Today I’d like to comment on relationships and theillogical progression of how you went from meeting that someone to being intimate sofast. Now, at first glance, this makes absolutely no sense at all.

The secret of building andsustaining a powerful long-term relationship with the person of your dreams isall about one thing -- becoming a master of emotions. It's about learning howto read and react to the emotions of the person you want so that you cancreate a deep, powerful connection that's built to last. Most people nowadaysare so caught up in themselves, their career, their this or their that, that emotionalconnections are rarely being made that are strong and long-lasting.

I encourage you to relate to othersmore. Get off your butt, and go out there and meet someone. Connecting withsomeone could be just as simple as saying “hello” to the cashier or someonestanding in line with you. You simply must get started today!

It’s fun. You’ll build your self-esteem.And you’ll relate to people on a whole new level.

Side note for men

Understand that just because awoman is saying that "she doesn't usually do things like this", thatit doesn't mean she doesn't want to. Try to make her as comfortable as you canand allow her to express herself. Let things build slowly. You won’t regret it.

In this segment we see how someone maybe perceived as “moving to fast”, but understand that our emotions are largely howwe communicate with each other and we don’t even realize it.

Whenever we see someone we instantlyperceive them in a certain way. Next, time allow yourself to open your mind andexplore the possibilities of thinking differently. What you think you see maynot necessarily be what it is. Be open and explore the possibilities of notonly being perceived as being confident, you will be.

Communication and perception

2011-10-20T18:38:00.000-05:00

Communicationand perception skills aren’t inborn, they’re learned. In this blog, I will sharewith you the specific techniques and strategies that will help you communicatemore effectively while being less misunderstood. You’ll learn some interestingand eye-opening concepts in the course of this blog.

Topicscovered:

• How to effectively communicate

• Discover how to increase sensitivity inperception

• Tips on how to enhance your communicationskills

• A look at in-depth ascertaining to “see” or“know” the “real thing”

• How to compensate for “one-dimensional”telephone communicating

• Listening techniques that actually increaseyour credibility and influence

• Special communication techniques that arewonderfully helpful for daily living

• Are you seeing what you “think” you see?Tips on how to take a second look

• Check yourself for subtle mannerisms thatsend the message “I’m not paying attention.”

• Never misunderstand anyone again (no matterhow poor his communications skills may be!)

• Real-life rules about gossip: how to stayaway from it and avoid becoming part of the problem

• Learn how to establish “feedback loops” andgain a reputation for always getting the message correct

• A sound strategy to avoid “communicationbreakdowns” and the mistakes and oversights that come with them

Why notreap the benefits of proper communication rather than reap the pitfalls? Thismay be the most productive, enlightening blog you will ever experience. We’llhave lots of fun learning, too!

The followup

2011-10-19T20:06:00.002-05:00

If you're like most guys, there's something that happened in your past that's responsible for all of your success or all of your failurewith women. Therefore, if you're having trouble attracting women or makingyour move with them or satisfying a woman in the bedroom then we need to talk.

When a man is confident plus funny in the right mixture he triggersan unstoppable emotional response in a woman. These are feelings that she'salmost helpless to resist. Once a woman feels these emotions, she can't stopherself from wanting to be with the man who made her feel them, even if shewanted to.

And, as I study, I find that more and more men who were highly successfulwith women and dating, I noticed that they shared two traits in common:

1) They weren't afraid to "have fun" with women.

2) They always came across as cool, confident and assertive rightout of the gate, but always in a smart, funny, sensitive way.

These are feelings that she's almost helpless to resist. Once a woman feels these emotions, she can't stop herself fromwanting to be with the man who made her feel them even if she wanted to!

But, of course whenever one guy stumbles on a good thing, a bunchof others will inevitably step in, take things too far and ruin it, right? In the case of using humor and confidence with women, this meansthat way too many men are just plain coming off as obnoxious. Or offensive. Orarrogant. Or worst of all... as ignorant and insensitive.

That in mind, here come the keys toacting confident and funny with women while NEVER, EVER coming across like a"jerk". It is simple: BE CONFIDENT... YETSENSITIVE.