Insights From a Back-To-School Photo

My wife posted to social media a back-to-school photo of me and our kids.

I cringed a little when I saw it. I thought (and felt!), “this is not a good picture of me!”

(According to that judgmental part of myself, most pictures of me aren’t good pictures.)

Then I remembered my practice - to tell myself in pictures and the mirror, “Hey, I love you.”

That’s how that cringe-worthy picture became beautiful to me - I decided to stop judging the man in it and decided to love him instead.

Here’s a question one might ask: Is it authentic to say “I love you” when I don’t really mean it?

Well, really mean it! Love isn’t a noun, something we have or don’t have. Love isn’t a feeling, something we feel or don’t feel.

Love is an act of the will. Love is a verb. Love is created from the most authentic part of ourselves, the Self.

The most direct access to love that I’ve found: generating it in my thoughts, in my speaking, and in my relating to others and the world around and within me.

In fact, judgment can be a gateway to love. Where I’m judging, I can release the judgment and love instead.

Judgment is a perception that we project onto the people and circumstances of our lives. Forgiveness is the releasing of that judgment, and love naturally moves in to take the judgment's place in our mind and heart.

First, notice the default, judgmental perception. Next, forgive or release it. Finally, create a loving way of perceiving.

When I looked at the picture, there was a default reaction in my mind (and being) that was judgmental and repelled by the image. I noticed and then allowed that reaction to move through, and then I created love in its wake.

For me, self-love has become a lifelong practice - it deepens my access to the love of others, since I'm practicing being loving both outwardly and inwardly. However, we can actually begin to powerfully transform the nature of our relationship to love in a single conversation.

During the 4-week intensive Engineering course I taught at Johns Hopkins this summer, I had a conversation with a group of curious students during lunch about my my life and soul coaching practice. At the end of the course a couple weeks later, one of those students came up to me and said this:

“I wanted you to know that since our conversation a few weeks ago, every time I look into a mirror I say 'I love you' to the person in the mirror.”

Then the student added, “I had no idea how much I really judged myself until I started this practice!”

Another student recently sent me this message:

"I wanted to thank you again for the group discussion we had about philosophy of life. It really moved me and inspired me to start living authentically right away. I've been loving a lot more and thought you'd like to know that conversation changed my life."

The power of a single, loving conversation. 🙏❤️

Uncovering the default and inherited stories and judgments we’ve got about ourselves and others - deep in our minds, hearts, and nervous systems - can be incredibly freeing and empowering. It needn’t be hard. It needn’t be dramatic. It needn’t be painful.

It’s called healing. It’s called integration. It’s called “returning to love.”

Why is it so easy to love our kids (most of the time) and our pets? Because we have few judgmental barriers between us and them.

We cannot love and judge at the same time. 

Choose.

The more we judge, the less we love.

The more we love, the less room there is for judgment.

Practice being loving, and practice being happy. Find your own inner trailheads into love and happiness.

It’s either that or judge.

It’s either that or live from fear and insecurity (which are the source of judgment, by the way).

Reach out to me and let's connect if you're having difficulty with this. It's the most important skill most of us have never learned.

Much Love. ❤️

Busy Missing the Miracle

“Dear Great Great Grandchild,

I wish I would’ve grown more love, peace, and joy in my life and the lives of others. I wish I would’ve done more to heal and take care of humanity and the planet. I wish I would’ve loved and enjoyed it all a bit more. I wish I would've lived more fully in touch with the miracle of life itself.

But I was just too busy…”

I stepped out of a building on campus today and was struck by how perfect and gorgeous the weather was. 

As I started walking to the next building, I saw four adults in front of me, each walking while staring at their phones.

“Busy, busy, busy,” I thought. “They are missing the beauty and fullness of life within and around them.”

Then, myself feeling busy, I pulled out my phone to check my calendar for the day.

Seeing the irony of pulling my phone out in that moment, and after so self-righteously judging them, I smiled, put it back in my pocket, and thought, “Busy, busy, busy!"

What I then almost did was judge myself for being judgmental, hypocritical, and busy. Instead, I forgave myself, appreciated those inner parts of myself, and reconnected to the beautiful day I found myself in.

(Do you want to know a secret about Judgment and Love? Every time we forgive, bless, or otherwise release a judgment, we fall in love with what it was we were judging. So, in that moment, I got to fall back in love with myself.)

When we’re busy, we have important things to attend to! Who has time to breathe, to feel what the body feels, to be with what the heart is experiencing, to bring intentionality to our every thought?

Who has time to honor the profound beauty and sacredness within each of us and within each and every moment when we’re so busy, busy, busy?

And that’s one of the reasons why we stay so busy: it lets us off the hook.

I’m too busy to be responsible for my own well-being. I’m too busy to give my kids and colleagues the attention they really deserve. I’m too busy to be honest, to slow down, to pay attention and respect to the sacredness of my life and of life itself.

I’m too busy to feel and handle my fears of not being enough. I’m too busy to reflect upon and thank the Source of everything. (Gratitude itself is one of the greatest prayers possible.)

And when we’re too busy to be responsible for our experience of life, we get to blame somebody else for it.

Busy isn’t a doing. Busy is a way of being.

Here are a few alternatives to being busy. Before I share them, though, I want you to give up the right to say you don’t know how to do it.

So here are a few alternatives to being busy with a full schedule:

• Being responsible for my experience of life.

• Being intentional and engaged about my attention and focus.

• Being curious.

When Jesus said, “Heaven is among you,” he didn’t add, “unless you’re busy.” 

When we stop using busy as an excuse, we force ourselves to get real about the true source of our experience. 

Usually, the true source of our uncomfortable feelings are fear, insecurity, and lack.

And now we’re really getting somewhere. When done well, confronting these inner barriers to joy and wholeness gives us access to transcending them. 

Transcending our inner barriers to peace, love, joy, and wholeness matters more than living our great cultural excuse of being too busy to live our best life.

Much Love. ❤️

Rusting Bikes in Eden

I was on a call with a client a few days ago…

(As a form of shorthand, I say I have “calls” with clients. That’s not actually what we’re doing though.

In fact, none of us is ever just having a “call” with someone. 

Instead, we are being together. Always, when together, we're being together.)

So, I was being with a client a few days ago, and while she expressed her challenging situation, she referenced rusting bikes in the front yard as evidence that things are not going well. 

If only those rusting bikes weren’t there…

What are the rusting bikes in your life, those things that shouldn't be there?

What are those objects, people, or situations that stand as evidence that your life just isn’t as good as it should be?

Go ahead, answer the question! We've all got these rusting bikes in our lives, that if it weren't for them...

That problematic relative?

That drama at work?

That receding hairline?

That nagging worry in the mind?

For my client, it was rusting bikes in the yard.

What she got during our time together, however, was that yes there are rusting bikes in the yard, and the yard is no less an Eden because of them. 

It doesn’t matter what we look at. It’s what we see when we look at it that matters.

We are specks of life on a giant rock flying through space at 66,000 mph. A star 93 million miles from us is a key source of our life and energy. And no where else in the universe have we witnessed such an abundance of life that we see all around us on Earth. Even in gutters, in alleys, and growing up between cracks in city pavement, we see beautiful life sprouting and growing. We live in Eden.

My friend was no longer seeing a junkyard. She was seeing Eden. 

Nothing changed.

Nothing needed to. 

She got that she was creating a problem in how she saw her world, and the rusting bikes were a part of the problem she created. 

It sounds simple enough, yet these insightful moments poke us out of nowhere when in an intentional and committed conversation.

My client is no longer creating those bikes as a problem. She’s creating them as evidence for a beauty and profoundness in this moment that moves aside her former judgments that “it should be another way.”

True freedom and power are a consequence of owning our always-there capacity to create what we are seeing when we look at anything. We are constantly creating, just mostly unconsciously.

The way of mastery is learning to constantly, consciously create with grace and ease.

It takes work, and oh is this work worth it.

Much Love. ❤️