Songs We Never Practice

He had an incredible insight about his relationship with his daughter. Then I reminded him what it is to be a song-writer: 

He writes songs. He practices them. He performs them.

We need to do the same with insights: practice them.

If you ask him and other song writers, they often claim that they didn’t write the songs themselves - the songs were written through them.

Insights also usually show up that way - insights come from somewhere else, but they sit like truth within us.

...Someone says just the right thing, in just the right way, at just the right time.

...We come across a social media post that resonates deeply.

...We read a line in a book, hear a line in a song, see a line spoken in a show...

And it resonates. It’s clear and we feel it. It’s Truth.

Here’s how we often treat insights, though: like a song we want to perform, but one we never practice.

Imagine writing a song from pure insight and inspiration, spoken to you with the light of Grace, then never practicing it. One day you get on stage to perform it, and it doesn't go well. 

We do the same with insights.

"I guess the song just wasn’t great!" "I guess it wasn't Truth I felt at all."

Or perhaps you just never practiced it.

I’ve heard it said that insights are a dime a dozen. Said another way, Insights are Cheap.

But insights aren’t cheap - we cheapen insights by not practicing them.

We cheapen them by not honoring them. We cheapen them by forgetting them. We cheapen them by thinking they'll work on us without us being willing to work on them.

We think an insight is one-and-done. A get-it-and-forget-it. Like an enlightenment that just sticks forever.

And if it doesn’t stick, well it just wasn’t truth then, was it?

That’s a myth. 

Like a great song, insights need to be practiced, rehearsed, memorized, embodied. Otherwise, it’s just a fleeting experience.

My client? Here’s what he took away from this conversation: unconditional love for his daughter, blessing and wishing her and others well, optimism and hope - they’re practices. They need to be repeated. They need to be worked into the depths of our being. 

How do you think we learned to be pessimistic and fearful beings? Getting that repeated all around us. Repeating all that within ourselves. 

Insight is a song that needs to be practiced. We can’t expect to live it out loud and on stage when faced with challenges and difficulties - we need to train the mind, the heart, the body (and it's nervous system) to live the truths we know are true. 

They’re not one-and-done. They’re songs to be practiced. 

Practice on. 🙌

Junk Food for the Soul

A client of mine in his early 60s was frustrated with his body. He can't run any longer due to pain in his knee.

When we look at our frustrations, we’ve always got great reasons for them.

Reasons for our frustrations are junk food for the soul. 

We use our reasons to judge parts of ourselves, others, and the world. And what do they give us? More of the same - a stomach ache and a life that hasn’t improved.

My client was attacking his body with his judgment and frustration. He was drinking the poison of judgment and condemnation, and he somehow expected that to help.

Reasons let us feel justified and right, but we end up feeling crappy about it. Reasons are empty calories.

Then when we’re feeling down, we attempt to make ourselves feel better. We complain to friends and family, we scroll on social media, we watch Netflix or read some fantasy, or we indulge in some actual junk food.

More junk food for the soul.

Those behaviors don’t resolve the underlying source of our problems, they just distract us from them.

I aim to bring a compassionate, open listening to everything my clients share with me. And then we explore what’s said and what’s unsaid, and what’s underneath and energizing it all. 

By the end of that brief conversation, my client had fallen in love with his knees. For over 60 years they’ve served him pain-free. They’ve moved him, they’ve supported him, and they did so with just about no acknowledgment or noticing. 

His knee pain had transformed from a source of frustration and sadness to a gateway to gratitude and love.

Our conversation tilled the soil of his mind and heart, and he now feeds his garden with gratitude, compassion, and love.

Now that’s some soul food.

Much Love. ❤️

Marching for Peace, But From a Heart at War?

For a period in college, I was a card-carrying socialist. It began with my frustration with the U.S. response to 9/11 and the politics leading up to the 2003 Iraq war.

I went to a handful of anti-war rallies during that time, and one of them was with the socialist group I was a member of. My membership didn’t last much beyond that rally.

When I met up with the group, I was given a stock sign to hold with a stock message and a socialist organization logo on it. Then, as the march began around the Washington D.C. mall, our chapter leader got quite aggressive in keeping the 30 or so of us in a particular order as a group to communicate discipline, organization, and seriousness. 

And I saw something in him, in myself, and in others that day.

We may have been marching for peace, but many of us were doing it from a Heart at War.

Here was a disagreement of politics, and we thought we were on the moral side, the side of peace, the right side. (So did the “other” side, by the way.)

Yet we weren’t feeling at peace. We weren’t being at peace. We weren’t coming from a heart at peace. 

I hear it today too: pessimism, judgment, venom, and hatred, supposedly in service of peace, well-being, and a world that works for all life.

Peacemakers, be at peace. From there, and only from there, enter the conversation.

Self-righteousness, sarcasm, and insult aren’t the path to a better future for humanity. It's not healthy in the classroom, it's not healthy in the family, and it's not healthy in society.

Let there be Peace on Earth, and let it begin with me - in my heart, in my mind, in my body, in my relationships.

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.” - Gandhi

Much Love. ❤️