Our Battles Begin With Self-Betrayal

So many of us spend our lives preparing for war.

We think about what we’re going to say. We think about what we should’ve said. We amp up our anger, frustration, and intensity. We flood our nervous systems with stress, anxiety, and tension.

Of course we think we need to prepare for war - our lives are full of battles:

We battle with our parents.

We battle with our siblings.

We battle with our colleagues.

We battle with our boss.

We battle with our kids.

We battle with our spouse.

We battle with our neighbors.

We battle with drivers on the road.

We battle with the other political party.

We battle with our emotions.

We battle with our will.

We battle with our thoughts.

The truth is, however, we wouldn’t feel the need to prepare for battle if we didn’t already live from a Heart at War.

Now look, we already covered that I’m not an optimist, so I don’t want you to hear this as Pollyanna vision through rose-colored glasses:

It is possible for each of us to live emotionally free and at peace free right now.

Fundamentally, we are each whole, complete, free, and perfect. We simply have barriers to our experience and expression of it.

We think the world is flawed and needs to be fixed. We think other people are flawed and need to change, die, or be fixed. We think we are flawed and need to be fixed.

Then we resign ourselves that this is just the way things are. “No, I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist!”

This is why all our battles begin with self-betrayal.

We betray the truth about ourselves and then fight like hell to prove ourselves right.

We betray that inner knowing that a life of peace, love, and understanding is accessible to us all.

We betray the truth that Peace begins with me.

Once we betray the truth of our own capability and power, we can’t help but defend ourselves by blaming everyone else for the state of the world and our emotions.

But all our battles begin with self-betrayal. We wouldn’t be battling otherwise.

We’d be building a better life and world together now.

Thank you for reading. 🙏❤️

P.S. As a transformational coach, I help teens, adults, and organizations move beyond their self-imposed limitations to be their best and feel their best. If you’re interested in finding out how I can support you or your organization, reach out and let’s talk. 💌

It's Not Optimism: I Consciously Create

As my mind wakes up in the morning, it sometimes finds so much wrong...with me, my life, others, and the world.

Even throughout the day, my mind’s default thoughts are usually pessimistic and judgmental - about others, about the state of the world, about myself, about my abilities, about my decisions, and about my life.

Really. Judgment and pessimism.

Today was no different. I woke up to rapidly flipping pages of negative and pessimistic thoughts in my mind. Yet, by the time I finished my morning routine, here’s what I was present to:

Today is the best day of my life.

This is not optimism! It’s creation.

The mind is ALWAYS creating - we are ALWAYS creating. We mostly don’t see it as creating, though. We think of it as reporting The Truth about reality.

Our opinions, our judgments, our grievances, our insecurities - they’re not The Truth! They’re all just thoughts created by a mind preparing for a war we don’t actually need to fight.

The mind is constantly creating, and we’re usually unconscious of what we’re creating - we just react to the world our thoughts have painted in our mind.

The mind is perhaps humanity’s greatest gift. It serves us incredibly powerfully. However, most of us have never learned to harness the mind’s power to create a life we love and a world that works. Instead, we listen to our default thoughts based on survival, safety, avoiding looking bad, and avoiding being controlled or dominated.

Something else is possible.

I love my mind (on purpose), and I am becoming masterful at consciously creating.

Consciously creating is not really a straight-forward, formulaic process, though. It can be challenging, and it's almost impossible to learn it on our own. That's why I do what I do: transformational coaching and training for teens and adults who make an impact. I help people become conscious creators.

To make our biggest impact, we can't live lives determined by our default pessimistic and judgmental thinking. And we don't need to be optimistic either.

Today is the best day of my life - thank you for sharing in some of it with me. 🙏❤️

P.S. As a transformational coach, I help teens, adults, and organizations move beyond their self-imposed limitations to be their best and feel their best. If you’re interested in finding out how I can support you or your organization, reach out and let’s talk. 💌

What’s Really Blocking Your Peace of Mind

It’s too hot.

It’s too humid.

It’s too cloudy.

My task list is too long.

I’m too fat.

I’m too skinny.

I’m too old.

I’m too tired.

I need more money.

People are too selfish.

People aren’t kind enough.

My spouse isn't compassionate enough.

This is too much.

Our preferences get in the way of what we really want.

Really.

We ultimately have one problem in our lives: we think that satisfying all of our preferences is what we really want.

It’s not.

What is it that we all really want? Happiness and peace of mind. Satisfaction and well-being. Enjoyment and flow. Love and belonging.

The power of effective meditative practices and transformational conversations is that we move beyond the surface-level preferences that create our own personal hell.

When we move beyond those preferences and get in touch with what we really want, we can’t help but realize that we’re much closer to our goals than we think.

Preferences are the ego’s way of distracting us from the Truth: each of us is already whole, complete, and perfect.

Why would we want to be distracted from that?!

Because living in the moment can be terrifying...

Trusting ourselves and honoring the truth percolating up from the core of our being. Speaking with integrity. Acting with integrity. Living with integrity.

We betray our True and Authentic Self, and we resign ourselves to a life of fighting for our preferences. Yes it can be incredibly uncomfortable and unsatisfying living like this, but it’s oh so much safer.

The alternative is to be honest with ourselves and others. This would have us ignore the siren’s call of infinite distractions in this technological age. This would have us commit to being courageous and living life in alignment with the Divine voice that each of us has whispering to us throughout the day.

Try it out, for just a day: notice how your preferences are always pinging you, bothering you, distracting you from…something.

What is it that your preferences are distracting you from?

There’s gold here to mine. And believe it or not, our future and the future of the world depends only on our willingness to honor the ever-present whisper of truth flickering like a candle flame within us.

And it flickers within all of us. All. Day. Long.

Choose: react from your preferences or honor who you really are.

Thanks so much for reading. 🙏❤️

P.S. As a transformational coach, I help people and organizations move beyond their self-imposed limitations to be their best and feel their best. If you’re interested in finding out how I can support you or your organization, reach out and let’s talk. 💌