Make This a Safe Space Too

I’ve got a client who has dedicated her life to creating safety, health, and wholeness for others. She’s traveled for years and worn herself thin creating these safe spaces.

In our conversation last week, however, she realized that she hasn’t been responsible for creating her own inner safe space.

A safe space is “a place where people can feel confident that they will not be exposed to discrimination, criticism, harassment, or any other emotional or physical harm.”

Are you creating that kind of space within yourself? One free of criticism and harassment? One free of emotional or physical harm?

Most educators are committed to creating a safe space for their students, but they neglect to create an inner safe space for themselves. 

This has consequences.

When I’m not safe inside, I live a life of reaction from my own trapped emotional charges.

When I move to create safe external spaces from these emotional charges, without managing my own inner space, I’m living from self-righteousness, arrogance, fear, or despair. 

This is a fundamental lack of integrity. When we live from our own unsafe inner space, we can’t help but create unsafe outer spaces - even if we’re trying really hard. 

Being responsible for creating our own inner safe space is one of the most powerful and important things we can do. It's incredibly important, and most of us never learn how to do this!

This is my work: giving teens and adults access to inner safe spaces - freedom from fear and stress - to live an inspired and all-around fulfilling life.

It starts with recognizing how messy it's gotten in there, and then making a commitment to cleaning it up.

• "Sweep before your own door." - German proverb

• "Tend to your own garden." - Voltaire

• "Clean your own room." - Jordan Peterson

• "Remove the beam from your own eye before you remove the speck from your brother’s." - the Bible

• "If you want to correct the world, first mend your own heart." - Chinese proverb

• "If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place." - Lao Tzu

• "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." - Rumi

Much Love. ❤️

Mastery Is Made of This

I’ve been reading through a fun series of fantasy fiction novels a friend lent me. I love the insight and life wisdom that fiction can so easily put me in touch with sometimes. 

Courage. Boldness. Empowerment.

Trust. Forgiveness. Release.

Peace. Enjoyment. Love.

Those are all consequences of being on the path to mastery.

Each of us is committed to excellence in one or more areas of our lives. We’re either present to this commitment to excellence to some small or large extent, or we’ve resigned ourselves to a cynical view that we’ll never achieve that excellence.

Last night, reading the latest book in this series, I came across this line: 

“Mastery is made of mistakes.”

Isn’t that so accurate? It’s in making mistakes that we become aware of a gap between where we are and the mastery we aim to achieve.

Mastery is not hindered by mistakes. Mastery is made of mistakes.

I’m committed to mastering being - to me, this is mastering Presence, Peace, Love, Creation, and Joy. I’ve got a lifetime of mistakes behind me and in front of me to guide me along this path to mastery.

What are you committed to mastering in your life? What matters so much to you that even if you spend your life failing at it, it will be worth living your life for it?

Much Love. ❤️

It's Never Too Late for This

Over the last week, I took a dip into the pools of fear, self-judgment, and mental agony. 

It's funny how after years of being on the path to self-mastery, I still fall flat on my face sometimes!

Besides being a lesson in humility, it's a lesson in deepening my awareness and working the muscles of living intentionally.

My go-to reaction to these “flare-ups,” as I call them, is to RESIST.

My resistance takes the form of the following thoughts (thoughts in the conscious mind and thoughts I'm embodying):

• This shouldn't be happening.

• I should be beyond this.

• I'm not transformed enough.

• I'm too weak.

• This is too much.

• I don't know what to do.

• Etc.

Pushing as hard as I can against a solid wall is exhausting! A wall is only standing there, and without me pushing against it, there’s no energy needed from me.

Likewise, the emotional and mental challenges that arise for me, the ones that I still sometimes resist, don't require any energy from me to manage as long as I don't push up against them.

This time around, as is usually the case, the feelings and experience began to shift for me the moment I authentically said, "Thank you. Thank you for the gift you’re here to give. I don’t yet see what the gift is, but I know you’re here to give me one."

It shifts for me when I authentically say, "Thank you, I love you." And I say it repeatedly.

What I most want in my life is to experience and live from being unconditionally in love with all of life. So the moment I stop resisting and instead turn towards the feeling, thinking, or sensation with gratitude, love, and interest, everything begins to shift.

This post is a reminder to future me - a reminder to turn towards my experiences in life with gratitude and love, even when life seems really hard. That’s my access to creating miracles.

It’s never too late to turn towards my feelings with gratitude and love.

It’s never too late to turn towards my thinking with gratitude and love.

It’s never too late to turn towards my body with gratitude and love.

It’s never too late to turn towards peace.

It’s never too late to turn towards love.

It’s never too late to turn towards curiosity. 

It’s never too late to say, “I’m sorry.”

It’s never too late to say, “Thank you.”

It’s never too late to say, “I love you.”

It’s never too late to awaken gratitude for anything. 

It’s never too late to take action consistent with what I really want.

It’s never too late to turn, with love, towards anything.

Much Love. ❤️