Mind Mastery on (and off) the Court

My son’s basketball team is having a tough season. They’ve lost BIG a few times in a row. 

It doesn’t matter which side of the court our team is on, even before the losses - you could see it in their faces and the way they move:

They’re carrying the weight of significance in their minds and in their bodies. 

It’s in their being when they're on the court.

Regardless of their individual and team skill level, being down on themselves and each other doesn’t help.

(Don’t we adults do this too? We carry stress and worry. We carry concern. We carry a sense of lack and a fear of what-ifs. We carry judgment and we carry resignation.)

I went to the coaches and said, “Hey, rough season. What doesn’t help is how much additional mental weight the kids are carrying." Yes! they see it too - and all the other spectators do too.

Isn’t it so visible when kids are carrying that mental weight? (Somehow we become accustomed to it in ourselves and other adults.)

I told them, "Mind mastery coaching is my thing - are you interested in having me come in to guide a conversation with the team?”

One of the hooks I use when working with teens in mind mastery is this: "How many of you have adults in your life who are stressed out, anxious, and carrying unnecessary weight on their shoulders?"

Every kid raises their hand. (And every kid wants to avoid a similar fate.)

Why do so many of us develop these mental habits as adolescents and nearly never move beyond them? Because we never learned mind mastery!!

The conversation with the team last week was powerful. It wasn’t what any one of us said - it’s what we all got present to. It’s what we experienced. 

An opening. A completion. An existential relaxation. 

We live in a culture that values information and knowing, but information ≠ transformation.

There’s magic in the work I do with people, and its impacts are profound and lasting not because it's informational or motivational - its transformational.

My son's basketball team needs to work on their basketball skills, no doubt. How much more effective will their performance be, though, when their own minds are no longer working against them?

Our minds are too powerful, our lives move too quickly, and the world is too beautiful for us to spend more time suffering than we need to.

What might it be like for you to release some of your stress, your fear, your worry, your anxiousness? What might it be like for you to further master your mind and elevate your being in all areas?

Over the next couple months, I’ll be hosting in-person Mind Mastery Experiences near Baltimore:

• for young adults, ages 17-21, on February 25th

• for adults, ages 22+, on April 4.

Consider joining this most valuable of conversations. I’d love to have you, and I'm promise it'll be worth the time, attention, effort, and money it'll take for you to join me.

P.S. As a transformational coach - a life coach, a soul 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. 💌

Dripping Gold

A dear client/friend is dealing with a sudden change in life. 

This was not in his plan for the new year! No, this isn’t in his recipe for the perfect year or the perfect life.

What’s your recipe for the perfect life?

We’ve all got one. In fact, we’ve all got a recipe for the perfect moment each moment of our lives. 

If it weren’t this cold or this warm or this humid or this cloudy. If I could avoid that person, or really be seen by that person. If he only did this, or she stopped doing that. If only the kids would consider this, or other drivers would stop doing that.

We think we know what would make everything better and perfect, and we get frustrated when things don’t go our way!

If only everyone else (and the universe) would cooperate with us, then we would get everything that we want!! The perfect life!

Of course, if it weren’t that thing bothering you right now, it would be something else.

After all, most of us have a resting state of being bothered by something.

You all know a person like that who complains about e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. Well, they may in fact be at the extreme, but we’re not far behind.

Really.

(This same game - of trying to get what we want and avoid what we don’t want - played out in the future has a name: worry. Worry has only two reasons: either we we won't get what we want, or we will get what we don’t want.)

My friend has gone through depths of emotion over this sudden change, and like any of us, he wants to move on!

Aren’t we often on the prowl for getting what we want?!

But here’s what’s been so inspiring about him during this time: he’s been standing in a commitment to use this experience as an opportunity to grow in his willingness to feel, to love, and to be okay. 

To love more and to appreciate more. To learn more and to grow more. To trust more and to ground more. 

He’s not just taken a lemon and turned it into lemonade. He’s taken a lemon and turned it into pure gold. 

There is gold dripping all around us, each of us, all the time, and mostly we ignore it…to focus on our opinions, to focus on what we think would make things better.

My work with this friend has been about seeing the gold around us and living from the gold within us, and he has shown me an elevation in his being that has inspired and moved me.  

May we all be so blessed and honored to see even an ounce of the beauty, love, and light bathing us every moment of our lives, even in the seemingly dark and lonely times...

Go find gold. You don’t have to look very far.

One last thing.

Perhaps you wonder why we are always seeking what we want and avoiding what we don’t want if it isn’t really the path to fulfillment.

Here’s the answer: it’s because we think (in our “bodymind”) that we’re not okay, we’re not enough, and we’re not worthy. 

And each of those is a lie.

If you don't believe me, reach out and let's talk.

P.S. As a transformational coach - a life coach, a soul 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. 💌

Current Problems Sourced in Old Wounds

Our current problems are often sourced in old wounds.

One day this past week, I woke up pitying myself and feeling sad. The night before, I had an experience with my wife and kids that left me feeling alone and unwanted.

So in my morning journaling, I forgave them and I forgave myself - for everything I could think of. I released us all from my judgments and expectations the previous evening. It was freeing.

And the feeling of aloneness still hung with me a bit. So I closed my eyes and sat with the feeling. I relaxed any tension in my body, and I relaxed my mind.

My mind gently drifted back in time, and it found an origin story to that aloneness…

I was 14 and a freshman in high school. I spent the first month or so of school sitting with upperclassmen I played with on the soccer team, but this day a 9th-grade friend asked me to come sit with him and his friends at a freshmen table. 

As I sat down at the table, excited, cheerful, and waving a big hello to the other 8 or so kids, one kid at the end of the table made a joke about my high forehead and some of the kids laughed. 

My world collapsed a bit. 

I was happy and excited, then all of a sudden I was disoriented, alone, and an outsider. I felt it. 

There are big-T traumas that many of us experience in life. There are also the little-T traumas that all of us experience. And these big and small traumas make a mark, a wound, and they drive how we get to show up in our lives…until they’re healed.

It was a fact for me in that moment - a fact in my mind, in my body, and in my heart: I’m just different and alone...

That story is bull crap, but it made a lot of sense to 14-year-old me. And I carried that story in my mind, I carried it in my nervous system, and I carried it into my relationships. I carried the feeling of that story throughout my life, and it even showed up the other night with my family.

In my journaling this week, I worked more healing magic on that formative memory. I forgave my old friends in every way imaginable. I forgave their parents, their families, and their upbringing. I forgave our culture. I forgave myself and my views, my insecurities, my pessimism. I forgave my lack of awareness then and after. I forgave my judgments of them and of me.

And I forgave my schools for never teaching me these simple and powerful awareness and healing tools.

I'm blessed and honored to get to source deep and lasting healing and freedom for others each week in my coaching practice - and to witness and experience the new worlds of peace, freedom, love, and passion that become possible.

"Trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you."

- Gabor Maté

P.S. As a transformational coach - a life coach, a soul 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. 💌