Making Magic in the Classroom and in Life

There are two key ingredients to magical teaching, and these ingredients can be applied in life beyond the field of education.

The first ingredient is that the magic isn’t in the teacher, it’s in the student. The more we recognize that there’s a creative, loving, and insightful genius within each of our students, the less our job becomes about getting somewhere in a lesson and the more it becomes about supporting students to unleash this genius. Once we realize that we all already have everything we need to thrive in life, we can simply respect, honor, steward, and support the perfection already within others and ourselves.

The second ingredient of magical teaching (and living) is to adjust to the terrain in front of you, no matter what the map says. Teachers have objectives, intentions, and goals in mind when working with students, and these goals are like a beacon in the distance. When we create a lesson plan, we have expectations that the class will follow the plan as designed and we’ll arrive at the beacon of understanding together.

However, the actual terrain of the journey can surprise us, and we’ve got to be aware and willing to adapt in the moment. We need to adjust to the bumps, sinkholes, mountains, and rifts that show up along the way. All it takes is to be aware and willing.

Try these ingredients in your own life, relationships, and commitments, whether you're a teacher or not. Trust me, they're magical.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

The Many Trailheads Into Healing and Wholeness

I asked a new client at the start of a conversation: “What’s present for you?”

She shared her feelings about her current situation - the tough ones, the challenging ones, the ones she felt stuck with and saddened by. She shared her thoughts too - her judgments, concerns, and regrets about the past; her fears and insecurities for the future for herself and her family; and her lack of clarity and direction in the present. 

And with each additional “What else?” question I asked, more came out. 

In any moment of our lives, there are potentially many ripples of energy moving through our minds, hearts, and bodies. And all we’ve ever been taught or modeled in life is how to react to them! 

My conversation with my clients always begin with getting present to “What’s so” in our experience. 

If we’re sailing a ship, it’s best to get present to the wind and the currents before directing our sails and rudder. This is the difference between sailing and not-drowning - a life of reaction is a life of not-drowning, whereas getting present to the what’s so in our experience gives us access to intelligence and wholeness in our responses.

Getting the what’s so of our experience loosens the sometimes jumbled knot of our experience. And when we separate those different threads, we can be with them individually, giving them the attention they may deserve. The challenges of life become much more navigable.

Any one of those many threads is a trailhead, a way in. 

A way into compassion. A way into forgiveness. A way into healing and wholeness. A way into beauty and holiness. A way in to showing up our best.

All healing and wholeness begins with getting present to what’s so.

Thank you for reading my work. ❤️

In My Knowing or Betraying Myself

As I’ve wrapped up my morning meditation lately, I sometimes say this beautiful prayer that I came across a few weeks back:

“I am in my Knowing. What do I know that I could be better at living, embodying, and honoring?”

Today on a call with a client, I asked her this powerful and insightful question: How are you betraying yourself in this situation?

We all betray the self sometimes - some of us more than others.

Maybe we hold back and don’t express something that we’re called to express. Maybe we say yes when we want to say no, maybe we say no when we want to say yes.

I did that in a big way in high school. A friend asked me a question, and every part of my being was saying no. Instead, though, I looked at the steps we were walking up and said, “Yes.”

(That experience, by the way, I regretted for years. And then I learned the power of compassionate self-forgiveness and the event became one of the most beautiful and powerful lessons in how to unconditionally love myself. Related: just today I said to my 15-year-old son that regret is always a choice. He said I didn't know what I was talking about. 🤷‍♂️😂)

I don’t think self-betrayals are wrong. I don’t think they’re evil. I don’t think we’re bad or wrong or flawed when we betray the self.

There’s something holding us back sometimes, something pushing us to betray the self, something holding back the true self from fully expressing itself in being and action.

That part of us is hiding the authentic, true self from others. It could be hiding our fears or our "nastiness," but it could also be our joys and our curiosity that it’s hiding.

That part of us that betrays the self, it’s doing that for us. To protect us. To help us be liked. To keep us safe physically, or emotionally, or socially, or all of them all at once. It’s not an enemy. It’s a friend.

It's for us, it’s just a bit misguided at times, that’s all.

What do you know that you’re not living, embodying, and honoring? Where are you betraying yourself?

It doesn’t have to be big and earth-shaking. It can be small and simple too. Here are some examples:

• Habitually staying up late 

• Habitually binge watching

• Drinking that second or third glass of wine or coffee

• Smoking pot nightly

• Ignoring your alarm clock

• Not moving the body as much as you’d like to

• Not following through on your commitments to others

• Habitually watching pornography or other topics that may disturb your psyche

It needn’t be hard to live in our knowing, to be in our knowing. 

In fact, that might just be one of the key lessons in our own spiritual curriculum: to learn how to live in our knowing, to embody our knowing, to honor our knowing - at all levels of our being.

Choose: be in your knowing or betray the self.

That’s what I’m here for - in my own life and as a support for others. If you’d like support in living in your knowing and giving up your tendencies to betray yourself, schedule a conversation with me.

Much Love. ❤️