Life Isn’t Exhausting. Fighting With It Is.

A client was sharing with me her frustration with a family member. This family member was not showing up the way my client thought he should be showing up.

Frustration. Anger. Disappointment. Anxiousness. Sadness.

There are factors outside us and factors inside us that can cause these emotions to arise. These factors cause the primary ripples in our experience. 

It’s like we’re sitting calmly on a placid lake and a big branch falls into the water from an overhanging tree. That branch causes ripples that shake our little boat.

The falling branch is "the facts" of our experience. The things people say and do. The weather. The latest news. Emotions that seemingly pop out of nowhere.

Like the fallen branch, these facts often cause ripples within us - the initial impact upon us of these facts. Perhaps a feeling of sadness, surprise, vulnerability, or fear. That fallen branch, it could be a problem for us.

We often don’t leave it at that, though, simply being with the primary ripples, the stuff of our experience. 

No, we try to stop those ripples! So we swat at them with an oar. Stop it, ripples!! I don’t like this movement!

And by swatting our oars around and moving around in our boat, we create new ripples, secondary ripples, and more bobbing and tilting.

What started out as something simply showing up in our experience has now become much more complex within us. Story and reaction and judgment and the history of old wounds generate a reactive heat of more emotion and more thinking.

We layer on top of our primary experience all sorts of secondary reactions. We get angry. We get frustrated. We feel ashamed. Then, we get caught up, turned around, and exhausted by our reactions.

Life isn’t exhausting. Reacting to life the way we do, however, is exhausting. 

For my client, her family member is the branch that fell into the lake of her awareness. The primary ripples were the result of her judgments of her family member, sourced in her own insecure thinking and feeling as a mom. The secondary ripples - her frustration and anger - she made instead of being with the facts and her insecure thinking.

We do NOT like feeling insecure and vulnerable, do we?

What better way to protect against our own vulnerabilities and insecurities than to get frustrated! This is how we add secondary ripples to complicate our experience - we end up grappling with frustration because we don't think we can handle insecurity and vulnerability.

Spiritual growth is both a science and an art. It’s a science because there are clear distinctions we can make between the primary ripples (the facts; what’s happened) and the secondary ripples (our reactions to the facts, usually based on stories and interpretations from a place of insecurity and vulnerability). It’s an art because it takes an internal dance as we learn to navigate those ripples.

The outcome of mastering this beautiful science/art?

Freedom. 

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

P.S. There are three ways you can support yourself by working with me: one-on-one coaching, the Mind Mastery Experience happening on April 7, and hiring me to work with your team, group, or organization. Contact me when you’re ready. 💌

Our Thoughts Aren't Innocent

I've felt sad and worried about a friend.

I'd been seeing his diagnosis and healing path as a problem. I'd been seeing it as something that's wrong and shouldn't be. 

Sitting with him recently, I realized that those thoughts have an energy. I had been creating the energy of problem, sad, horrible, unfair.

That energy likely isn't conducive to healing! So I shifted the energy by shifting my thinking. 

Changing our thinking isn’t necessarily easy. We first have to really to distinguish what’s happening from our thinking about what’s happening. This is a critical first step, and one that opens the door to possibility. 

When we’ve collapsed what’s happening with our thinking about what’s happening, we’re certain that the way we see things is “the way things are,” and we leave no room for possibility.

I mean, how arrogant is it for me to feed with energy the idea that "This shouldn't be"?!?! As if I can possibly understand the infinite workings of the body, the mind, the universe, and the Divine.

So I intentionally created a new interpretation:

"My friend is healing. This is his path, and it's perfect. He has what it takes to move through this. He’s strong. We are strong. The human body is a miraculous vessel and it serves its role beautifully and powerfully." 

I'm choosing to intentionally feed with energy the idea that, "This is perfect, and my friend and the rest of us can handle this."

Our internal and external language is powerful and impactful. 

Mostly we’re blind to our language and its impacts. Even when we’re intentional about our language, the full breadth of our impact likely stretches beyond what we even think or see.

Our default judgments and opinions aren’t innocent - they have a real impact because they have a real energy to them. They’re also not original or creative. They’re inherited from our past or inspired by fear.

In many ways, we don’t have thoughts - our thoughts have us. Break this habit and master your mind. 

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

P.S. There are three ways you can support yourself by working with me: one-on-one coaching, the Mind Mastery Experience happening on April 7, and hiring me to work with your team, group, or organization. Connect with me when you’re ready. 💌

If Only You Saw It My Way

You probably know the story of the blind men and the elephant... 

A strange animal, an elephant, is brought to town. A group of blind people go to the animal to figure out what it’s like.

One of them feels the elephant’s tail and says, “An elephant is like a rope!”

Another feels the elephant’s leg and says, “No, an elephant is like a tree!”

A third feels the elephant’s trunk and adds, “Whoa! An elephant is like a snake!”

This story is around 4,000 years old and has shown up in multiple cultures. Why??

Because we ALL live as if we’re the ones who see things as they really are. 

You see it all objectively, exactly as it is, don’t you?!?!

Of course you do! So do I. ALL of us live as if what we’re seeing is the way it is.

This weather is bad! My boss is a beast! This really isn’t fair! I’m angry but it is justified!

And so it goes through our lives. We befriend the people who see things (or at least pretend to) the way we do. We divorce those people who can't see it any way but their own.

We see it the right way, and we're certain about it (at least in the moment, how we're being about it.)

Where there is certainty, there is no possibility. 

And we use our certainty to let ourselves off the hook.

It’s my wife’s fault, so there’s no way I can be more loving.

It’s covid’s impact on young people, so there’s nothing I can do about student behavior in the classroom. 

It’s poor leadership, so there’s nothing I can do except watch the ship sink.

I had a shitty childhood, so there’s nothing I can do about my own happiness.

I used to speak one of my daily self-creation statements like this:

"I am a leader in the transformation of humanity. I am creating a world that works for all life."

And while, to me, that’s a powerful statement, I realized that I am in no way creating such a world on my own. Instead, I’m co-creating it with others - always.

Every conversation and every interaction is a co-creation. I'm seeing a version of you in my mind, you're seeing a version of me, and together we're creating a version of something between us. And we each see each other and that thing between us a little differently.

Whether we like it or not, we’re in this together. When we start acting like it with integrity and compassion, we’ll give each other a lot more grace than we currently do. And with grace, space, respect, and honor we’ll really get moving somewhere together.

“I am co-creating a world that works for all life.” This is a daily reminder to let loose my grip on how I see things and be willing to give others more room.

Anything can be created in language, and anything can be cleaned up in language. It begins with the willingness to see more than the default perspective we walk around with.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️